Tuesday 17 December 2013

Some context

I've posted, in reverse date order, a photo a month from 2013. They are not necessarily the best photo from that month or even depicting the highlight of that month but they do evoke a memory, tell a story or illustrate perfectly something Rum specific about our lives. Either a moment of great landscape natural beauty, a captured brush with wildlife, something amazing about the land on our croft, the freedom Davies and Scarlett have in our lives here, a celebration shared with the community of people here on Rum or one of the many amazing opportunities that have opened up to us since we moved here that we would not enjoy back in our old lives.

Winter challenges continue here - the replacement wind turbine arrived but it is as yet too windy to go up a ladder and install it. We have been winkle picking and done fairly well but forecasts are not good for ferries this week to get the winkles off of Rum to where they need to be to fetch the best prices. We lost our original cockerel Dave who was ailing anyway but we thought had turned a corner and pulled through. Most devastatingly we have lost two of our pigs - the two young girls. I think they are just too small and skinny to cope with the harsh cold wet winter we are having with constant relentless wind. I am very worried about their two brothers and even Tom and Barbara and we are trying to improve their housing to keep more of the weather out but as we know ourselves it is a tough world here.

As I write the wind continues to howl around outside, shaking the walls of the static, rattling the roof and making so much noise it is hard to hear the radio, to sleep, to carry out a conversation. But we are almost at the shortest day, almost at the turn of the year and with that will come the slow journey back towards spring and all of the rewards for these short dark weeks just now.

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