Ladies and Gentlemen....

Elvis is now in the hen hut!

Errr - thankyouverymuch.

Early on May morning

Let us renew ourselves.

Beltane blessings on this beautiful dawn.

Here...

And straight to work. During our prolonged absence, the pigs had done a grand job clearing the potato patch for us. They have moved back to their home croft now, but we will be taking delivery of our own two in August. The top half of this field is really good growing land, and once the new drainage ditches are dug, and the rushes are dealt with, then the rest should come into production as well. Not really sure of the best way to oust the rushes. Digging them out is just too much - their roots, while not deep, are very tenacious, to put it politely, so not an option. Chemical treatment is the most often proffered advice, but not really what we want to hear, and also, so much of the land around us is already rush covered, they would soon be blowing back with the wind when they set seed. Our neighbour, suggested cutting them back, before they seed and pouring some rock salt into them, so we are going to give this a go first, and combined with good drainage, we are hopeful that we can at least keep them at bay. He is determined to sort out his rush problem too, so that should help.

Our first early potatoes are now in. 25kg of Duke of York, or Eersteling, as my republican leaning husband prefers to call them. We have differing views on potato planting methods. I prefer to dig out a trench, lay the tatties in and then cover them up again. John is very influenced by the no-till school, and prefers to dib them in. In the end we worked out a fairly efficient system which satisfied his no-dig tendencies, and my slap dash lets get this job done style. Using a narrow spade, he dug out a small hole for each potato, while I followed on putting in the pots, and adding a good handful of our potent seaweed and well rotted manure (horse/cow/sheep) mix. John then lightly raked the sods back over the top, and it was done and dusted. Just the Kerr's Pinks, which are a maincrop, to plant over the next couple of days. Not sure how they will work out, but they seem to grow well enough here, if the Crofters' Market stand is anything to go by. No time to chit either!

Maddie Mor agus Maddie Beag are doing well. They have grown quite a lot since we last saw them. They still came running up eagerly when they saw the red trug, so we know they have forgiven us. Some happy news today is that one of our other neighbours is giving us a ewe with a lamb! Oo-er that means 3 sheep to shear now!! Our little group of livestock is expanding rapidly.
The acrobatic sheep in the second picture is my neighbour's. He was herding some of his flock into his trailer, to move them to another field, and I guess she just didn't want to go.

What else? Baking! when we arrived back, I had the pleasure of opening several packages from the well known online book retailer, which I had ordered thinking I would only be away for a couple of weeks. Among them was the River Cottage handbook on Bread, by Daniel Stevens. What a marvellous book. Everything works! I have never made such soft springy loaves, and I feel almost confident enough to try these scones out at the local show.

And our Good Friday picnic on the croft. Hot Cross Buns (from the Bread handbook) and cups of tea all round.
On with the potatoes and then off to the peats - see you there!

Bread

We made some bread this morning. James was in charge of the mixing. He decided against waiting for the dough to rise, and added some broken up dried spaghetti to the mixture. I couldn't quite find that method in the River Cottage bread handbook, but if you decide to try it, the result is a very chewy, yet crunchy but extremely tasty loaf.









And there isn't any left now, sorry.

Hoping to be back online properly tomorrow. See you then. x

This moment

A moment on Earth Day. I am happy to be joining in with Soulemama again this week. I hope you have a wonderful and blessed Easter weekend. xx

Moving swiftly on

Not much time to draw breath now we are here. Bags to unpack, peats to cut, ploughing of fields, and a lot of tatties to plant!
My laptop lead has broken, and my camera charger is inside a box, inside a storage unit, so I am making do with my mobile phone right now. Normal blogging service will soon resume - I am so keen to share all this with you, and I want to visit you all properly. I miss catching up with everyone. Thank you so much for all the beautiful comments. In the meantime...









..we are all happy to be here... xx

Leaving Lothian

A few last special moments in our old family home.

Quick one-liner

I am still packing, wrapping loading and unloading. Lifting so many boxes and things that are probably too heavy. I look around at the chaos in every room and cannot for a moment imagine how this will all come together in 5 days! Except that it will.
See you on the other side. xx

Faster than the speed of light

That is how quickly time is flying right now.  Quite what Mr Einstein would have made of that I am not sure, but a whole week has zoomed by since i was last here. Life seems rather like the Glasgow train, photographed here by Kenneth.

A week in which we have been organising and packing. Mostly books.  Boxes and boxes of them.  It takes up so much time, as we take them from the shelves, stack them into the boxes, then exclaim over forgotten gems.  So, I might find John sitting leafing through  Erich Fromm, or I could be caught sprawled on the sofa, engrossed in Rumi - even James can be found delving into a box to retrieve Katie Morag. 

Trying to work out what we will take with us, what we will leave, and what kristine will need in her new flat.  Now we know where that will be and what size the rooms are, we can plan things a lot more effectively.

So - what else can I say?  Stuff!  Too much of it.  I have already confessed elsewhere about the six dead laptops we came across in a cupboard - i could ask for the spaghetti factory explosion of leads and chargers from long extinct weee equipment to be taken into consideration. I am pleading guilty to owning a mountain of CDs that we will never listen to, whilst a large hill of empty cd cases slumps beside it.  We haven't even opened up the loft yet!  And yet we are not unique in the amount of clutter we have. Think of all those lofts, cupboards, cellars, drawers, handbags, sheds and garages all over the world.  It blows my mind!

Still...

we have been breathing in as much of the Spring air as we can, and reveling in the beauty of this garden for our last few weeks here.  We see the violets and Spring bulbs bloom in their familiar spots, and are stopped by the bright sunny face of the first dandelion.  Lemony sorrell suddenly bursts through and we marvel at the delicate crimson tips of the daisy.   All through the cold winter, this growth has been slowly, secretly beginning, but now it is gathering pace - speeding up and off it goes!

The hens are all laying, Erin is growing and changing all the time, and the weather has been gorgeous.  It even looks like one of Santa's elves has come out to enjoy some spring sunshine! Hope you all can take some time out to enjoy the season.

Ah well - back to the workshop. Oh -but look -here are my old Bunty annuals!  Sshh - maybe I'll just risk one eye... ;)

xx

Procrastinating - This moment

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple moment. A moment I want to pause, savour and remember in the busy days ahead

I am joining in again with Soulemama this week. Hope you all have a relaxing weekend.