Fencing, WWOOFERS and a Very Special Woodland

How is it that as you get older, you blink and time seems to have vanished from existence??!! I was sure only last week it was just New Years…..but it seems Valentines has been and gone, and we’re steaming on towards March showers and April Flowers! I think Terry Pratchett’s portrayal of the ambiguous and relative nature of time in ‘Thief of Time’ sums it up beautifully – I am just one of those whereby time goes by much faster, and I haven’t yet mastered how to slow it down a bit! Lucky for us all that mother nature seems to be very fixed in her time schedule, and as the snow drops are flowering, the daffies are sticking their heads through, the sheep and cows are nearing lambing and calving, and the days are getting longer, it would appear that spring is sprunging!

Sooooooo. Keith has started fencing, and he has transformed the old argocat we got before Christmas into a fencing tool extraordinaire.

Work on our SRDP biodiversity scheme has started, with the mounding and fencing of the new woodland area at the entrance to Orbost Estate. The Rowan and Birch trees are ordered, and will be planted in early March. The area has to be deer fenced to prevent the local deer and cattle population from eating the trees once they have been planted! We are going to be naming this woodland the Clan MacLeod woodland, and in co-operation with Clan MacLeod Members worldwide, we hope that the woodland area will become a relevant and accessible feature on Skye for modern day MacLeods. Within the woodland boundary, we plan to build a Clan wall incorporating stones from all over the world where MacLeods now live. It’s a project important to me, as my heritage stems from MacLeods on Skye, and was infact the reason I first came to Skye many years ago!

Fencing wise, it is the first 1.5km of a 20km fencing scheme to be completed over the next 2 years……hmmmm! It’s quite overwhelming at present, but as we get each part completed, it will become less scary….hopefully! We have registered as WWOOF hosts (willing workers on organic farms) and although we are not a certified organic farm, as we are farming for biodiversity and ecology, we fit into the WWOOF ethos. We are hoping over the next wee whiley that we will have WWOOFERS  come and stay and experience life on Skye, eat cracking fresh local food, and help out with the fencing and biodiversity projects. It’s quite an exciting time really – so good to be able to ‘do’ and make meaningful changes to the landscape and farming operation at Orbost that will benefit the amazing wildlife that we live alongside.