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.