It’s even my colour!

If I said that it was raining today when I arose that would be an injustice, it was LASHING down, straight down, not sideways, as is more common in these parts but vertical with a force that would put our shower to shame (more of that later). It was this deluge that kept me, the cockerel and the pigs indoor until much later than is normal for us all. OK, Dandy our ‘boss cock’ did start a rather subdued crow that sounded more like a gargle around 6:30 but that’s still almost an hour after his usual ‘wake up call’.

I did eventually venture forth into the monsoon just after 8:00 and got round the feeding in record time, mainly because nobody needed their water troughs filling as nature had done it for me 🙂 There was a good 3″ of water lying in the wheel barrow that I’d emptied last night, which allowing for its shape would indicate around 2″ of rain had fallen during the night, and still it was coming down like ‘stair rods’.

Still, as I was finally out of the house I decided to stay out and tidy up my workshop until the rain eased off, which UKWind said it would do around 11:00. Sure enough it did and I set about making a pen up for splitting up the weaners on Friday night for Saturday morning. We have 6 ‘spotties’ left, 4 boars and 2 gilts, the 4 boars are going with me and the boy to football in Portree on Saturday and the 2 gilts are coming with me on Monday to visit my parents 🙂 Or should I say I’m dropping them all off on the way 🙂

I made up a pen around the trough where I was feeding them leaving one side open, I’ll feed them in there a couple of times before shutting the gate and turfing the two girlies out.

6 wee 'spotties'

The pen is made from stout galvanized steel hurdles firmly fastened to the wooden fence with ratchet straps and once the two green painted gilts are out  we’ll put the travel crate inside there and they’ll happily sleep in that.

After that was done I was driven inside, or at least back in the workshop by that scourge of the west coast, the dreaded midge which was gathering around me in clouds. However, before long the sun came out, the temperature rose and the ‘wee beasties’ vanished enabling me to do some ‘outside work’ which consisted of checking and topping up my 12v  battery bank under the small ‘Rutland FM’ wind turbine.

This large battery bank of around 800ah (10 times bigger than your average car battery) is supplied by a 50w solar panel a small hydro turbine driven charger of around 85w and of course the 50w wind turbine. As it is used only for low voltage lighting in the house it tends to get over looked and required a good deal of water to top it up (very naughty of me to neglect it 😦 )

Rutland turbine and solar panel at night

A pleasant surprise

After that I went in for a spot of lunch which consisted of last nights re heated rabbit ‘yum yum’, it was whilst eating lunch that I saw the two young hens destined for my neighour hanging around the kitchen window. Feeling lucky I tried to coax them into the garden shed so that I could catch them for her. Normal practice being to catch hens whilst they are sleeping in the hen house, unfortunately this group of 3 cockerels and 2 hens roost outside in various places so I thought it was worth a try in daylight. Not a chance, the two hens were off like a shot, I did however catch the boldest cock, quickly pulling his neck and hanging him up for tomorrow nights dinner :-), which just reminds me!

Sorry I just went outside on a hen hunt, it’s 22:00 now and I managed to find one of the hens, fast asleep under the eave of the shed where she was hatched. Perched on a bit of wood with the other two young cockerels I caught her easily and put her in a crate though there was no sign of the other one.

Anyway, where was I? Ah tomorrows dinner, well I left him hanging up for an hour or so to cool down a bit whilst I fitted a new satrter switch to the Land Rover to replace the one that melted during the minor fire on the way to ‘Belladrum’

Serious switch

As I’d had so much difficulty trying to source the correct one that works off the key I went for a big button like they have on Aston Martins 🙂

Then it was back to tomorrows dinner, now I’m far from an expert chicken plucker, as this is only my third but I am improving. I sought the help of various sage folk and of course t’internet some said pluck hot some said pluck cold and some said pluck with hot water. In the end I plucked the way that Jessie Nicolson of Torran recommended which was an hour or so after killing and grabbing just a few feathers at a time so as not to tear the skin. I did it over a bag tied to the hydraulic jack handle in my now clean workshop and it took me around 15 mins

Dinner

It was shortly after this that the postie made one of  her twice weekly visits, well that’s not strictly true. Whilst the ‘post person’ does visit the north end of Raasay on Thursday and Saturday, this week wifey is relief postie so she’s here every night but anyway today she came in an official capacity bearing gifts!

How did they know?

She arrived with an unmarked parcel containing nothing other than a purple, shower foot scrubber 🙂

Thanks

In the very same shade as my nail varnish! and I must at this point make it perfectly clear that I am not in the habit of varnishing my toe nails on a regular basis. We were at a festival and both wifey and I were a little drunk 🙂 I must also point out that the bath water is that colour when it comes out of the tap and I did not miss my big toe nails, I just do not have any 🙂

Anyway, whoever you are thanks very much and I’ll have a shower tomorrow and report back 🙂

And speaking of ‘dongle’s’

I’ve just read Yorkshire miners comment about my dongle hanging episodes, so before you get misled by that and the temporary nail varnish I’ll just explain a little about ‘dongle’s’.

Funnily enough I was round at my neighbours today hanging my dongle out of her window! The dongle in question being the mobile phone internet thinky. Not only are we quite rightly as ‘Yorkshire (he can’t help that 🙂 miner’ points out 11 miles down a cul de sac, we are also 10 miles from the telephone exchange so Broadband is a pipedream and dial up a nightmare.

This however does not stop companies trying to sell it to you, as I found out 3 or 4 years ago. “Would you like a broadband package, blah, blah, blah” says the person in some air conditioned city office who’s grip on geography is only slightly better than George Bush’s. “It won’t work up here” I inform him, “Oh yes it will, I’ve checked your post code” replies the salesman who’s 1 day ‘sell broadband course’ did not include any info on its limitations. “Oh no it won’t” says the person who has spoken to more BT engineers than most people and has spent hours on the internet researching the possibilities (albeit on a crappy 28kbps connection :-)).

This guy is so good, or so determined to earn his commission that I agree to take the package. A week (not the two days later) the router and software arrive, as do the BT engineers all shaking their heads and muttering obscenities. Of course it does not work, their time has been wasted, I have to send all their crap back and spend the next three months trying to get the Broadband package removed from my phone bill. Still at least the poor soul in his shitty job got his commission 🙂

This is an old story and one I have touched upon with my next door neighbour, so when somebody phoned her recently with an all in package, she did as I did and told them it’s not possible up here. Of course she got the same reply as me about the post code and has now got a useless router  and has to go through the lengthy rigmarole of canceling something that she said would not work anyway!

I get around the lack of land based broadband by a satellite link subsidised by the Scottish government http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/People/BroadbandforScotland/SEBroadbandInitiatives/LatestNewsAnnouncements which provided free equipment, installation and a subsidised monthly rental with http://www.avantiplc.com/scotland . It has on the whole, after almost a year performed very well, there were a few glitches at first which is when I resorted to my ‘dongle hanging’ as I found that I could get the mobile phone internet to work by hanging the dongle out of our bedroom window in a polythene bag.

It provided a much more reliable connection than the ‘dial up’ so I took it around to my neighbours to see if it would work there, sure enough it worked fine but only with the dongle hanging out of the window!