I lied!

I didn’t mean to honestly. Last night when I said I was going to bed after a long hot soak that’s just what I intended to do. However after scrubbing unsuccessfully at the ‘Farm Oxide’ green paint, the remains of the ‘Rock Ness’ nail varnish and the Nissan Primera underseal that adorned my body. I contented myself with removing the left overs from Jamie Lee’s farrowing  and counting the various in sect bites that I’d acquired whilst painting the roof. Swatting cleggs (horse fly) whilst balancing on a ladder with a paint tin in one hand and a brush in the other may look amusing but is rarely successful!

Upon finally exiting the bathroom around 22:00 I was greeted by a ball of fire blazing through the frosted glass on our north westerly facing front door, I keep calling it front door but its the only one we have! Obviously it was going to be a mega sunset so I donned my pyjamas, riggers boots and camera to investigate.

sunset 1

Walking to the end of the road I was treated to this around 22:20

sunset 2

followed by this 5 mins later

sunset 3

and just before the midges drove me in at 22:30 this fiery feast over Loch Arnish, Ard Torran and Skye beyond.

As for today

Well it’s 6:45 so I’d better get on with it, caravan roof to paint, feed to get from Portree, 4 piglets to catch for customers on Skye, broken Land Rover to fix if the parts arrive, lawn to mow, and of course animals to feed

Very productive

21:00 now on what remains of a lovely and very busy day. I did indeed go out to feed everyone this morning, checking first on Jamie Lee and her 8 wains who could well be 4 boars and 4 gilts. I’m in no way going to put money on this and you will see why later, well you will if you can be bothered to read this

After doing the rounds of the pigs on the croft it was out on the quad to feed the 7 boars and 1 gilt on the hill who are enjoying roaming around the north end of Raasay so much that they have of late missed a couple of feeds. I found them eventually charging through the braken about half a mile away, to be honest I would not normally spend much time looking but I was curious as to where they were bedding down as they’ve not been near their shelter for days if not weeks.  Pigs have excellent body clocks and are obsessed by grub so if one does not turn up to be fed then something is wrong. On the other hand if 8 don’t turn up they’ve either got lost, been stolen or are just having a great time and can’t be bothered coming home. As far as getting lost goes well they’d turn up eventually, pig rustling in these parts would be a first so I tend to not worry and opt for number three

Low maintenance sheep!

Next it was feeding the Soay sheep, these wiry half goat half deer creatures are renound for their hardiness so why on earth am I feeding them when they have got plenty of grass! I’m feeding them for several reasons, firstly to try and stop them heading back to Plockton from where they came a year ago and secondly so that I can catch the beggars when I need to. They only get a wee sprinkle of feed when I feed the pigs but it keeps them distracted long enough to grab one if need be.

Wee cheep and sheep

Not only do the sheep tuck in but one of the ‘Wee peeps’ that is now about half the size of a hen and renamed ‘Wee cheeps’ also gets stuck in

'get me outta here'

though not for long! Pretty soon she was scrambling over their heads to safety!

Whilst they do not need shearing and are immune to most of the things that sheep routinely die of Soay sheep are not, as I have found a beginners sheep. They don’t take any notice of sheep dogs, don’t herd, instead they scatter and they can jump clean over a 9 year old boy, let alone a poxy fence!

Once all the routine stuff was done it was the school run then over to Portree for feed on the 8:55 ferry, returning at 11:30 with 25 bags (625kg) in the back of the ‘Old girl’. Home just after 12:30 I got on with preparing and undercoating the roof on our classic Thomson Glenelg caravan http://www.thomson-caravans.co.uk/. We got this given last year as the previous owner thought we might make use of it for a hen house or something! Being built somewhere between 1974 and 78 this  was in its time the ‘Rolls Royce’ of caravans being built in Scotland with a hardwood frame and proper floor boards. It has since become a member of the family and revolutionised the whole ‘festival experience’  as well as complementing our 23 year old Land Rover and making us look like pure hippies or tinkers and certainly not like the ‘upstanding’ members of the community that we are

Problems with counting

Bags of feed, money, pigs, whatever it is I just can’t count it or should I say, I can count it but then I forget and get mixed up, it’s not an age thing as I’ve always been the same. For the last week since we weaned Brambles wains I’ve been convinced that there were 4 gilts and 3 boars.  As we needed 3 for Christmas and 4 had been ordered as 2 pairs by 2 people it seemed sensible to keep the 3 boars as one of the customers had specified gilts. These 7 jumpy wee darlings have been charging up and down in front of the house for 6 days so it’s not like they’ve been out of sight. Anyway the plan was to catch the 4 gilts, put them in a crate and take them over to Sconser to meet the two customers off the 17:00 ferry from Raasay.  Realistically that meant leaving Arnish with them boxed in a crate in the trailer at 16:00 to give us time to trans ship them to the cargo van for the crossing. I’ve lost count of the times we’ve done this kind of operation and it’s always much easier than you think, or it usually is! Today however things went decidedly pear shaped and we ended up with two gilts and two boars in the crate. Ha well time was short and one of the customers was not fussed what he got so we’d just have to live with two boars and on gilt until Christmas. It’s not really a problem but the boys can give her a hard time, well you know what guys are like hey!

The last of its class

Anyway after much squealing and some bruised toes (mine) we got them loaded and headed south down ‘Calum’s road’ for the ferry passing this submarine at Brochel.

HMS Sceptre and SD Warden

Which can only really be HMS Sceptre the last surviving member of the Swiftsure class of ‘attack submarines’ S104 launched in 1978 she can’t be long before decommissioning or whatever it is they do with these things when they pass their ‘use by’ date!

http://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/operations-and-support/submarine-service/fleet-submarines-ssn/swiftsure-class/ though according to this link HMS Superb is still in service when she is in fact decommissioned at Devonport having hit a rock in the red sea last year. Something that the ‘Senior service’ seem to be doing with great regularity these days. I’m thinking of HMS Trafalgar hitting a rock off Skye 5 years ago because the crew could not read the chart because it was obscured by the tracing paper that was being used over it to save money! Chart cost £12, submarine repair £5, 0000, 0000! Hmmm and of course this years famous mid Atlantic bump between  HMS Vangaurd and the French Navies Triomphant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Vanguard_and_Triomphant_submarine_collision which between them were carrying 32 ballistic missiles and up to 96 warheads Don’t get me wrong I’m agreat fan of the Royal Navy I just question the sanity of these huge deadly things charging around the worlds oceans at 20 or so mph without out windows to see the other traffic or any rocks that might be in the way. And please don’t give me this b*****cks about all their active and passive sonar as these guys and their US counterparts were dragging trawlers and fishermen to their deaths for years before the cold war ended. Not only that but they did not even have the decency to admit it despite several boats recovering bits of submarine in their nets after being towed backwards! After a spate of sinkings in the 70s and 80s and with tensions between the east and west easing the navy now are more ‘up front’ about their subarine excersises and broadcast to fishermen if subs are in the area, however it does still happen

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=submarine+fowls+trawler&btnG=Search&meta= as this french trawler and her 5 crew found out!

Poor wee chap

We made it just in time for the ferry, all went smoothly on the piglet front and my recurring nightmare of piglets running down the A87 did not come true so we returned with armfuls of cash and headed home for a barbecue!

Bambi 1

Passing this wee chap just before Brochel

Two hinds and one calf

His mum, on the left was ‘barking’ for him

Bit of a panic

and as he was unable to get to her and in a bit of a state we left!

Once back at the north end wifey got busy on the charing bits of dead animal front and I got on with feeding everyone which is when I discovered that we still had 3 gilts left and not 2 boars and one gilt as I’d thought. So it had all worked out in the end, so don’t ever take anything you read in here as gospel because I am as they say ‘an unreliable witness’