About

I moved to the end of ‘Calums road’ in 1989, at that time my nearest nieghbour was 8 miles away, I had no phone (and little prospect of getting one for years) no electricity (and NO prospect of getting it) and the postman only delivered once a week. However I’d just come from the island of Scalpay where I’d lived and worked as a scallop farm manager for 4 years. Now that was REMOTE, no phone, no ferry, no electricity, no roads and if i wanted mail i had to go and get it from the post office on Skye! So moving to Raasay with it’s own ferry and a road right to my door seemed like a step in the right direction. Arnish the little township i moved to had been empty for a year or so, Calum, who built the magnificent road had died the previous year and his widow had moved to the south end and the elderly man that lived in my house had gone into care. At the time i had no money as I’d spent it all buying the house and 7.5 acre croft so i made ends meet by doing a bit of fishing and clam diving, lived very much off the land and sea as food was plentiful and grew quite a bit of my own. This was all when being green wasn’t quite so fashionable and i suppose at that time i had the carbon footprint of 3 chinamen but life has a way of sweeping you along.

Within a couple of years i had a big thirsty fishing boat because my wee one was too small to work all year round. I had a big generator to keep all my bait freezers going, the goats had gone cos i couldn’t always make it home to milk them due to the weather. I’d stopped making my own hay because i could by one bale for the price of one lobster or a few clams! so in a few years I’d gone from being greener than green to having a carbon footprint the size of you average Texan.

However old age and a career move (not to mention a lovely wife and boy) have meant that of late we have been leading a much more sustainable lifestyle. I turned the ‘Conqueror’ my beautiful 24′ fishing boat which I’d salved from 18m of water and spent almost 2 years rebuilding into an extension on the house.

We invested around £15k in a wind turbine, which might seem excessive but in 18 years my fuel consumption had gone from a mere barrel a year to run my trusty single cylinder lister SR1 3kw genny twice a week to do my washing to a wopping 100lts a week between our 7kw and 12kw lister twins. What with the freezers, washing machine going every day and a tumble drier we were fairly contributing to global warming and weather it’s true or not the oil bills were scary. Despite these horrendous fuel bills, all the hassel of moving barrels etc, etc we still only had mains leccy around 6 hours a day, the rest of our needs being supplied by a small ‘Rutland’ 12 v turbine and battery bank. The turbine as pretty much reveloutionised our lives, we now have 24 hour power 365 days a week and our surplus goes into heating. We have a big range cooker with 3 electric ovens and a grill, a tumble drier, and a toaster. I draw the line at an iron and we don’t have an electric kettle but we have all the rest of the stuff from China that everyone else does. The diesel genny will automatically start if the battery bank gets low but it rarely starts in the winter and even with the summer calm spells we still burn only around 100 to 200lts a year.

So anyone who says wind power don’t work is wrong, our turbine is only 2.5kw and has preformed faultlessly for over 2 years, unlike most other turbines it’s a downwind one, this means it continues to produce it’s full output even in storm force winds when other types either turn out of the wind or put a brake on. I’m sure there are plenty of wind turbines that don’t work because they are poorly sited, poorly made or in a place where there is no wind but our Proven is the dogs b*******s.

THE CAREER MOVE

As with most things in my life there was no plan it just happened. Whilst living here I’ve done many things but most of them have revolved around the sea, fishing, fish farming, sub contract diving but my favourite and longest method of paying the mortgage was diving for scallops with my skipper and good friend ‘Willy Eyre’. We would set off every day apart from sunday, weather permitting and go off in search of clams. Willy didn’t dive he couldn’t even swim but ha had a great nose for scallops, I’d been diving for scallops for years before i met Willy but i quickly learn’t to trust his ‘nose’ and in the end left all executive decisions to him! I would just put my kit on and go where he told me. For the last 18 months of my clam diving career we had an extra crew member. The dude, Ross my then 18month old son came out with us most days as the OH got the job of ‘postie’ on Raasay, so nappy changing got added on to the list of daily chores on the mv ‘Conqueror’ . In retrospect it was probably quite irresponsible but ‘needs must’ and he learned to count (scallops) at a very early age, climb ladders and he’s got great sea legs!

The arrival of said son the passing of 40 and approach of 50 made me think about less risky employment but jobs suitable for someone living where we do are few and far between. After a particularly close shave with the grim reaper i took a job as a marine engineer in Portree and i hated it, the traveling nearly killed me, i had only been doing it for a few weeks when the job as motorman on the ferry came up. Imagine my delight when i got it, week on week off, holidays and a pension ( i still have to pinch myself every morning to make sure i’m not dreaming!)

PINKY AND PORKY ARRIVE

The extra time round the croft enabled us to spend more time in the garden and start e veggie patch, we’d had ducks for years but got some chickens. We always ate plenty of things i’d caught, shot or swapped, deer,sheep, rabbit and of course plenty of fish. I’d always fancied keeping pigs but they do require allot of commitment, it’s not like we have anyone nearby to feed them if we go away. After much deliberation, a meeting with HFWhitingstall who was staying at the nearby ‘old schoolhouse’ and a chance meeting with a man who had some Gloucester old spot weaners for sale we decided to go for it and bought two fine10 week old GOS boars

They very quickly became part of the family and we were sad to see them go but we got Buster, Spot, Muffin and Daisy 4 more old spot weaners to ease the pain and we’ve never looked back. At the moment we have an assortment of GOS and tamworth pigs and weaners totaling 23 (i think)