Crossing the road

You would think it easy to move a group of Highland cows and their calves through a gate, across a little bit of tarmac road and through another gate, into a nice, clean, field of lush new Spring grass but, in my case at least, you would be wrong.

I was going to wait to the weekend to move the beasts as there would be more bodies about in the form of my wife Yvonne and some visiting friends, but an intemperate character and impatience got the better of me. The grass was over there, the cattle were hungry and over here and I was heartily fed up feeding them hay every day. So, as I rode down the field that morning, two bales of hay tied on the rack of the quad, the wee devil on my shoulder, urged, 'open the gate and let them cross the road, or be a tube for the rest of your days'.

Now, as a man fond of a challenge it would be fair to say that the wee devil was kicking at an open gate and instead of spreading the hay as usual I made for the gate of freedom with cows and calves following sedately behind. 'Nae problemo', I thought in my best Scottish/Spanish as an adrenalin surge of confidence took me to the edge of the field. Later I reflected that I would have thought this in Gaelic had I the linguistic ability, but I don't.

As an aside, that is not to say that I am an anti Gaelic type of person because I am most emphatically not. The truth is that I am deeply envious of Gaelic speakers and those from this area whether they have the language or not. Good on yous and please keep Gaelic and the crofting culture alive. I promise at some point in the future, obviously before I die, to try and learn some of the language, if not all.

But back to Highland cows and grass, gates and tarmac roads. The quad was parked at the side of the gate and for the first time the bales of hay were left untouched. Instead, I opened the first gate wide and crossed the road and swiftly opened the gate into the other field and then stood back expecting a 'Rawhide' like stampede of cattle down the banking, across the road and into said field. Which was what happened, sort of, in the sense that the older, more experienced cows crossed no bother but the younger cows plus all the calves point blank refused to go through the gate let alone cross the tarmac road. It was obvious, then, that this was going to be a case of re-joining cow with calf with some cajoling and the usual bribery to effect the desired end of having all the beasts in one field instead of now being spread between two fields.

Funnily enough, the wee devil had by this time vamoosed. But, the time was ticking on and so would I, for a while, as lunch was calling. The cattle, I decided, would have to fend for themselves for the next hour or so until yours truley was nosebagged.

Lunch finished, after a lot of coaxing and bribery with cobs and threats with a big stick the cows with calves on the wrong side of the road were ushered back through the gate, across the little bit of tarmac and back into the field with no grass. It was to take another three attempts in two days and this time with a lot of help from Yvonne and our visitors before the job was finally done. A case of another 'Skye half-hour' wee job turning into a marathon, snag-ridden, major undertaking.

I'll get the hang of this crofting business yet.

It always rains at Achnasheen

It has been a bit of a slog over the last four months and a lot has happened. At Romesdal the larks are soaring and singing high above the fields heralding the imminent end of the winter feeding season and soon Jay the sheepdog and I will be dancing to a different rhythm of crofting routine. (Jay is the wee dog above).

We have successfully calved three of our cows, or, more precisely, the cows calved themselves without any interference from us. I did have have to milk a cow a little as her udders were so full but she soon came right and now all is well. (Photos of cows and calves to come). We still have three more cows to calf and fingers crossed all goes well with them as well.

We have about twenty sheep but only expect three lambs as most are ewe hogs and wont go to the ram until next season. The darn critters are getting itchy and scratchy and the 'spot-on' I put on them a few days ago doesn't seem to have worked. Looks like a good dipping is the only solution and I am not keen on dipping at this time of year. Still, needs must.

We were planning to re-seed part of the croft this Spring but, logistically, are in a bind and now are just going to apply fertiliser to one large field as a stop gap measure. Next year for the re-seeding project, then. Just shows that you have to plan well ahead in this business, if it can be called a business.

Yvonne, my wife, had to go back to London and work a few days past and it is not the same here without her. It is peaceful enough, however, and Jay is good company. There is also always something to be done, from decorating the house, a seemingly endless task after the renovation, to planting potatoes, gardening and mending fences. As Calina says, crofting can be a hard life but also very rewarding.

Most every day I think back to morning of the 25th January 2007 when I found Calum dead in his bed. He died suddenly, without warning. One day he was here, feeding the beasts and giving me the benefit of having lived all of his 80 years as a crofter; teaching me slowly and surely the value of patience and tolerance around the animals; answering my questions about the Gaelic language and translating the Gaelic radio into English for me; giving me companionship whilst Yvonne toiled at the workface of darkest London, and the next day he was gone.

By strange coincidence Yvonne was arriving in Inverness that very day for a scheduled visit home. After assuring myself that Calum really was gone, I phoned Rita, Yvonne's aunt and our near neighbour, as the beasts still had to be fed and I would still have to go to Inverness in the Land Rover to collect Yvonne. Also, Jay would have to go with me in the back of the vehicle, a first for her. So, after feeding the beasts and a quick shower I put Jay's box in the Land Rover and began the first leg of the three hour drive to Inverness.

At Broadford about an hour into the journey, as promised I called Rita to find out how things were going. The funeral parlour staff had come and taken Calum's body already and I thought how easily it is that we are cleansed of this life. Rita had also very kindly, as well as informing the authorities, contacted all of our close neighbours as a gesture of respect. Reassured that matters were progressing, I filled the Land Rover with diesel, called Jay into the back and trundled on.

The January sky was dark grey as I crossed the Skye bridge at Kyle of Lochalsh with low cloud obscuring both landscape and seascape. I passed through silently with a swish of windscreen wipers as there was little traffic at this time of year. The next stop on the journey to Inverness would be at Achnasheen, where there was toilets and a nice railway station, set amid the most stunning scenery and guess what? When I arrived there, it was indeed chucking it down and I was not in the least bit surprised as it always seemed to rain at Achnasheen.

However, as a footnote to this entry, last week found Achnasheen both coming and going very pleasantly dry.

Highland cattle feeding time

A sudden change in circumstances:

Winter feeding of cattle and sheep is a fact of life for crofters in this part of the world and entails a daily routine of whatever your feeding regime may be.

My way is 'old fashioned', or so I've been told, as it involves a lot of hands on work with the cattle and sheep, is labour intensive and time consuming. And to be honest, that is a fair assessment.

In the byre each morning I prepare separate buckets of food for our sixteen Highland cattle of all ages. The younger ones get slightly less the older and larger beasts correspondingly more. They also get, in addition to a ration of cattle 'cobs', a mixture of bruised oats and 'shreds' - a by-product of the sugar beet industry. However, mixing the 'bruised', shreds and cobs in the buckets is the easy bit.

Next comes feeding time at the zoo.

When I first came up from London at Christmas 2006, to help Calum with the winter feeding, it was quite a scary experience feeding the Highlanders at the byre of a cold and stormy morning. The horns, you may think, but no, not in my case as a cow actually trod on my foot, jumping to escape a lunge from a larger beast, and it was very painful. So for me it is the feet not the horns.

As the days pass you get used to things and it gets less scary and you acquire the knack and experience kicks in. So now I take five yearlings into the yard, leaving ten larger cattle and a suckling one month old heifer calf outside. The five calves are given their buckets and then I call the two most dominant cows to the yard fence and feed them. I then race to the back door of the byre and quickly put out four buckets and the next four dominant cattle tuck in. This leaves four still to be fed and these hapless souls circle the eaters ineffectually, with pained 'why me' expressions.

I go out of the back door with a large stick in hand, stand guard and wait. With a bit of luck they will finish their food at roughly the same time. But, like humans, some are slow and some are fast eaters. And there lies the need of a big stick.

Morag, the black highlander and dam of the month-old heifer named Suzie, is at the top of the dominance ladder in the Romesdal fold and is a powerful and determined beast. The way it works in cattle society is that the strong eat whatever is going at the expense of the weak, given a chance and the fact that food is rationed to one bucket per animal. A 'state of nature' as they say.

So there we have it, back of the byre, animals munching me with a stick. Morag food finished and on cue rushes from around the corner intent on taking from a weaker beast which would start a domino effect (cause of my sore foot) and me positioned to stop her. So I whirl the stick in her face shouting and snarling, which she does not like, and gently tap her horns and she stops long enough for the four to finish.

I then slide open the back door of the byre, allowing Suzie to come in for her feed, and bring in the empties. I then close the door and wait a few minutes because I can hear Morag snorting around outside looking for more and determined to get her due.

The remaining four buckets are positioned right at the door for speed of distribution. I put a handful of cobs in a pocket, slide open the door, close it behind me and call Morag away with the cobs as a lure. Some of the other high status cows follow her. At a safe distance I scatter the cobs on the ground and hare it back to the byre.

Being intelligent beasts and knowing a full from an empty stomach the remaining four cattle are waiting. The buckets come out as do me again with my stick. Morag snaps the last cobs, turns and starts advancing, which is my cue to curse and holler and wave said stick. And she thinks better of it. Stalemate and compromise. She gets a little bit extra and I get all the cattle reasonably well fed.

And then I have to think about feeding them their hay.

Alternatively, I could save a lot of time and trouble and buy a bigger tractor, dump bales of whatever in some feeding rings, top with some cobs and never have to do battle with Morag again.

The Sea Eagle

I saw my first White Tailed Eagle today. The bird was soaring high above the coast just north of Kingsburgh road end and was quite unmistakable due its large size and, of course, white tail.

It would be hard to deny that the 'Sea Eagle', as the creature is commonly called, is a magnificent bird of prey. And there lies the problem for Crofters in this and other parts of Skye. There is a definite ambiguity amongst them as to the presence of such a large predator, especially when they have ewes ready to lamb and cattle just about calving. Moreover, whilst the Crofter may admire the Sea Eagle for its splendor and magnificence you get the distinct feeling that they would rather see the birds somewhere else, or not at all.

On the other hand, residents involved in tourism like the Sea Eagle very much as they attract visitors. The economy of the Island of Mull, for example, has benefited enormously from their presence and the pro Sea Eagle lobby would like a similar boost for the economy of the Isle of Skye. This sector would therefore like to see the Sea Eagle splattered all over the tourist literature.

To confuse the issue, someone told me that the RSPB, a pro Sea Eagle organisation by definition, whilst wanting the bird's presence tolerated does not want it's presence advertised, for fear of disturbance and also probably egg theft. So the RSPB just wants the bird to be left alone.

And there's the rub. A situation where a re-introduced species of wildlife has engendered a range of different responses and for different reasons. The Crofter would like to eradicate it. The tourist industry would like to use it as a marketing tool. And the RSPB would like to make it invisible.

The Beginning

For a person who has shirked responsibility all his life I now find myself landed with sixteen pedigree Highland cattle of all ages, twenty one Cheviot sheep (with one an interloper) and a female sheepdog named Jay. Oh, and also a croft on the Isle of Skye in Scotland where we all live.

Over the coming days, weeks, months and perhaps even years I will be using this blog to inform anyone who is interested of life as it unfolds here, with its ups and downs and bruises and sore backs from lifting too many bales of hay.

I would like to make it clear that I am incomer to Skye and originated in the industrial Central belt of Scotland. How I ended up here is a long and complicated story. Perhaps you will find out more as the blog progresses.

I like it here. On a mission yesterday to dose a relative's Hebridean sheep I met a local crofter (another term which will be explained in due course) who proudly produced a dead otter that he found by the side of the road. It was a magnificent creature! Now something like this happening to you is just not possible in a townie life.