J&D > A few days ago we parted with all our remaining chickens – three Buff Orpington hens : they’ve started a new life in retirement with Tracy, in Benbecula. We’ll now be buying our eggs – and we’ll get them from those with small flocks who look after their birds well ; and indeed we’ve already bought our first box of eggs since 2005, from Catriona Walker. Here’s a retrospective of our two main flocks, over the years.
Continue reading →D > Despite the gloriously sunny and mild late Spring weather, visitors to the island, being not acclimatised to island conditions, come to our wee shop dressed as for the depths of winter! The lambswool twill scarves, that I weave by hand on our Glamårka floor loom, seem to sell themselves, and as I can’t weave more hours in the day, the scarves are in short supply.
Continue reading →Denise > It’s late May, but it still feels like early May – thanks to powerful cold winds from melting glaciers in Greenland. Everything natural is at least 3 weeks behind. Nonetheless, during the past few days, we’ve been getting a good spell of warming sunshine – and that has encouraged plants to throw out new branches, leaves, and even flowers. At this time of year – or, rather, that time of year (ie in a normal early May) wild flowers are, predominantly yellow. We were over at the croft, a couple of days ago, planting half a dozen oak trees, and everything was yellow. Or green. Except …
Continue reading →Posting to this blog has lost momentum. Until the purchase of our house in Wales is completed, we daren’t allow ourselves much freedom to make plans for our new lives there. Similarly, until both our remaining properties here are sold, we have to work hard and keeping things going here, just in case things don’t work out as well as planned. We really can’t afford to let ourselves get stuck in limbo-land. So, for now, we’re just getting on with the mucking out and making good – whether the benefit of us or those who follow.
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Dusk at Clachan. Photo by Becky Bridge
Both our own home An Gàrradh Mòr and Carrick Eriskay are now ‘on the market’ with Bell & Ingram.
Photos of the interior of our own house – An Gàrradh Mòr – here at the walled garden have appeared from time to time in these blog posts, but here’s a wee tour of the principal rooms, in no particular order.
This is a very significant milestone for us, in what has to date been a long and fraught journey without signposts or reassuring waymarks. We hope it becomes more straightforward as options narrow.
Continue reading →Quite possibly you’re thinking (you wouldn’t be the first) “Have they gone mad? From walled garden and croft plus holiday lets and a life unfettered by traffic and crowds, to a very ordinary and very modest bungalow on the main road from Lampeter to Camarthen …?!?!?!” Well, we’ve certainly asked ourselves the same, time and again ; and yet a very still small voice – and a very persistent one! – tells us that it’s time to let go of these things, to live and to travel through life more lightly. New opportunities – and challenges – that perhaps are better suited to our ages and circumstances, or the needs of our family – or, for that matter, the world about us, will unfold soon enough. And we will not have need of a large house, extensive outbuildings, or land.
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Jonathan & Denise >
Snow is very infrequent here : most winters we get nothing more than a light dusting on a couple of occasions. Jack Frost is, likewise, a seldom-seen visitor to the island.
True, many a winter we see the top of Beinn Mòr, Beinn Coradail or Thacla topped with snow and glimmering with ice on their rocky ramparts ; but that’s more than a fifteen hundred feet up and more than a couple of miles from the nearst roads.
The winter now well behind us was been no different.
So what a surprise, then, this morning, to wake up to this –
An Garradh Mor, Isle of South Uist : Snowfall in Spring! Our first ever Uist snowfall in April!
Hand Writing
J & D >
1st April we’re re-opening the Hebridean Woolshed’s wee shop here in the walled garden in South Uist.
So, when you’re ready (and permitted) to come, we’ll be ready to welcome you. Until then, let’s just enjoy the stillness and quietude, the wild primroses putting out blooms even amidst the chilly blasts of March.
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Denise > In this case, that’s ‘make do’!
Isle of South Uist : Machair gate at Tipperton – make-do-and-mend!
Denise >
Isle of South Uist : Beach at Smercleit – Sand pummeled by hail (melted) and ‘signed’ by Tilly
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