It has poured incessantly for the past four days and its feels as if the rainy season has arrived. The land is sodden and the Highland Cattle look permanently bedraggled. I'm waiting for a break in the weather to finish painting the outside of the house, one of many snaggy jobs to be done.
The Romesdal river is ferocious as it hurtles itself the short distance to the sea fueling a water cycle that would make any desert dweller green with envy... for a while.
Daylight fades about five in the afternoon and darkness rules until after seven the next morning and it is only early November. The hours of darkness will lengthen yet and the daylight fade correspondingly earlier in the run up to the longest night and the turn of the year.
The Highlanders are looking hungry and eying me keenly when I enter the fields. The winter feeding regime is but a week or so away and then it will be seven days a week in all weathers until the end of April next year.
But, hey, let's not anticipate and not be SAD just yet, and give an account of happenings since to last post.
Blackie was sold at the Portree and will not be jumping any more fences as he was 580 kilos of prime Highland beef. The beast will have entered the human food chain by now, no doubt. He had a good life. He was free range and well looked after and what more can you say, as life at Romesdal is as far from factory farming as we are from Timbuktu.
We had friends from Glasgow visiting and returned to compliment, which was very nice. Yvonne flew up from London and I caught the Uig to Glasgow bus just outside on the A87. We both like Glasgow having lived in that city for many years. Its like going home.
And then I had my first visit back to London since Calum died last January. Regular readers of this blog will already know that Yvonne works in London whilst I look after the croft on Skye.
I may have given the impression earlier in this blog that I don't particularly like London. Well, just to set the record straight, I must say that I do. A famous Englishman from the past once said (paraphrase) 'if you are tired of London then you are tired of life' and I agree. But not to work in and commute on the Underground every day, just to visit and soak up the cosmopolitan atmosphere.
The Kennington Tandoori is hard to beat for an Indian meal experience and one was had. Along with a play at the National Theatre, another Indian meal with friends in Ealing and night out at the pub with some old work mates. It was back home to Skye and the croft with new lease of life.
Rita and her family had been looking after Jay. And I had missed Jay, having been constant companion for so long. Yet the lure of the city proved too strong and off I jolly well went with nary a backward glance. But it was back to reality and it was in this period that Blackie was sold.
The Foot and Mouth outbreak in Southern England imposed countrywide movement restrictions on livestock and a temporary cessation of market activity, but now the ban had been lifted. The major township task to be done with regard to the sheep-stock club flock was gathering, grading and selling the seasons crop of lambs. And you may recall from 'The Gathering', this had also been done in July for the purpose of managing the health of the flock.
However, I thought I would miss out on this as Yvonne and I had booked a week's holiday in sunny Cairo. And sunny it was and warm too at temperatures of over 30 degrees. And as far from Skye as, well, Timbuktu or slightly less and with more people and I think more smog. The air was terrible. My eyes streamed all the time and a permanent, dirty, haze enveloped the city.
But it was also fascinating, of course, and we did the tour of mosques and museums and pyramids and the Sphinx and saw another culture amid a strange land, a gift from the river Nile. Cairo made London on our return look like a medium sized market town with clean air and back home on Skye the air was intoxicating (or was that the duty free whisky?).
And the Vet had not gathered the sheep from the hill and back only a day I was thrown into hill walking with a purpose and an excitable Jay, shedding lambs and dipping sheep and hardly a pause to take stock, until now.
And now I prepare for winter
The Romesdal river is ferocious as it hurtles itself the short distance to the sea fueling a water cycle that would make any desert dweller green with envy... for a while.
Daylight fades about five in the afternoon and darkness rules until after seven the next morning and it is only early November. The hours of darkness will lengthen yet and the daylight fade correspondingly earlier in the run up to the longest night and the turn of the year.
The Highlanders are looking hungry and eying me keenly when I enter the fields. The winter feeding regime is but a week or so away and then it will be seven days a week in all weathers until the end of April next year.
But, hey, let's not anticipate and not be SAD just yet, and give an account of happenings since to last post.
Blackie was sold at the Portree and will not be jumping any more fences as he was 580 kilos of prime Highland beef. The beast will have entered the human food chain by now, no doubt. He had a good life. He was free range and well looked after and what more can you say, as life at Romesdal is as far from factory farming as we are from Timbuktu.
We had friends from Glasgow visiting and returned to compliment, which was very nice. Yvonne flew up from London and I caught the Uig to Glasgow bus just outside on the A87. We both like Glasgow having lived in that city for many years. Its like going home.
And then I had my first visit back to London since Calum died last January. Regular readers of this blog will already know that Yvonne works in London whilst I look after the croft on Skye.
I may have given the impression earlier in this blog that I don't particularly like London. Well, just to set the record straight, I must say that I do. A famous Englishman from the past once said (paraphrase) 'if you are tired of London then you are tired of life' and I agree. But not to work in and commute on the Underground every day, just to visit and soak up the cosmopolitan atmosphere.
The Kennington Tandoori is hard to beat for an Indian meal experience and one was had. Along with a play at the National Theatre, another Indian meal with friends in Ealing and night out at the pub with some old work mates. It was back home to Skye and the croft with new lease of life.
Rita and her family had been looking after Jay. And I had missed Jay, having been constant companion for so long. Yet the lure of the city proved too strong and off I jolly well went with nary a backward glance. But it was back to reality and it was in this period that Blackie was sold.
The Foot and Mouth outbreak in Southern England imposed countrywide movement restrictions on livestock and a temporary cessation of market activity, but now the ban had been lifted. The major township task to be done with regard to the sheep-stock club flock was gathering, grading and selling the seasons crop of lambs. And you may recall from 'The Gathering', this had also been done in July for the purpose of managing the health of the flock.
However, I thought I would miss out on this as Yvonne and I had booked a week's holiday in sunny Cairo. And sunny it was and warm too at temperatures of over 30 degrees. And as far from Skye as, well, Timbuktu or slightly less and with more people and I think more smog. The air was terrible. My eyes streamed all the time and a permanent, dirty, haze enveloped the city.
But it was also fascinating, of course, and we did the tour of mosques and museums and pyramids and the Sphinx and saw another culture amid a strange land, a gift from the river Nile. Cairo made London on our return look like a medium sized market town with clean air and back home on Skye the air was intoxicating (or was that the duty free whisky?).
And the Vet had not gathered the sheep from the hill and back only a day I was thrown into hill walking with a purpose and an excitable Jay, shedding lambs and dipping sheep and hardly a pause to take stock, until now.
And now I prepare for winter
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