Deer as punctuation marks

And potential toilet walls as advertising space!

We stepped out of the static this morning and as I put my wellies on I noticed I was not alone - a majestic stag was sharing my air space looking for all the world as though this was his croft rather than ours!

not even on zoom!

What was really amusing was that I was looking across the croft at a herd of about five hinds in the distance and didn't even notice the stag right next to me!

We were up early this morning as Dragon and Star were off to spend time with Ranger Mike for the J Ranger programme. J Ranger aka junior ranger is something the three of them have come up with together and are happily spending a morning a week on. So far they have covered biomes, continents, latin names for various Rum birds, tree identification, Darwin's tree of life, rangering around the world. They have participated in events including Changing Seasons, red deer rut, biodiversity challenge and Rum bird identification and more. Today was a really special treat though as Mike was doing some  bird ringing and Dragon and Star got to observe and assist in that. I stayed around for a while as it was really cool and we learnt about setting the nets, how birds are ringed and the various information gathered and looked at Mike's books with all the necessary reference information to work out the age and gender of captured birds.

It's a really exciting time of year for birders as we are in a good geographic location for lots of migratory birds who stop off here for a while on their way to their winter homes. We also have lots of fledged young heading off and this is a very busy time of year for birds with populations at their peak as young have hatched but none have yet failed to survive a winter. Just last week we saw our first swan here on Rum and we have been watched large skeins of geese fly across the sky for a few weeks now.

Today we were priviledged to have close encounters with robin, dunnock and great tit while I was there and the further encounters for Mike and the children of goldcrest (the UKs smallest bird) and more tits after I left them to it. Bird ringers have to be 14 and there is full training and guidance required before you can get fully involved but we were very fortunate to be able to assist and watch and learn from Mike as he ringed the birds.

recording details - ring number, sex and age, weight and wing measurements

I went back up to the croft to do some helping where I could on the Grand Decking and Skirt Project that has been undertaken this week. Sandy has been up helping us create a skirt around the static. This has various purposes; it looks a million times better, it stops the wind getting underneath and lifting the static, it helps keep warmth in rather than a constant draft under there and it just give a rather more permanent feel to the place. Sandy, master joiner / carpenter / wood worker has also built us some decking between the two doors on the static so we now have a veranda. We shall be taking cocktails, watching the stars (and maybe even the northern lights), the wildlife and the rising and setting sun from our veranda - I very much look forward to inviting people to sit on it and calling the 'darhling' :)

My role in helping largely involved making tea it has be to said. I also made soup and rolls for lunch and I did remove all the nails from a large pile of reclaimed wood. I was also very important in supporting Sandy in his role of taking the mickey out of Ady who is a wonderful man but will never be a carpenter when he grows up! He should probably also cross off carpenters apprentice from his list of potential careers too!

Dragon and Star appeared back at lunchtime, rather like the Bisto kids - having told them to come home when they were hungry I suspect their noses led them this way as sweet potatoe and red onion soup served with fresh from the oven crusty rolls smelt very good indeed in the cold autumnal afternoon if I do say so myself.

I finished off a story we'd been reading - the kids and I spent most of yesterday snuggled up together while I read it's been ages since we read a story together and we finished this in two days and loved it. Definitely need to stock up on good books on the kindle for more of that over the coming months.

The day ended with a delicious venison pasta bolognaise and the introduction to Dragon and Star of Fawlty Towers. They were not convinced despite Ady and I roaring with laughter - surely this is timeless comedy...

And finally following the suggestion of a friend our latest way of securing funders for the compost loo is offering space within it's walls to post something up - advertise, declare undying love, write a poem, place a work of art.. I can't think of more captive an audience than someone using the loo. Your chance to be a piece of our toilet wall.., who could resist!

Hunkering down. And then getting back up again to enjoy the sunshine.

Warm, wet and windy. That's what we've been promised here on Rum. Frankly I'd prefer dry, crisp and still - a bloody good frost or eight would harden the ground up beautifully, we could do without the drama of high winds and if it would only stop raining then maybe the croft would stop being more of an agricultural 8 acres of land and less of a large water feature.

But it is, what it is. Without the water I would not be moved to taking daily photographs of the river - sometimes it runs so low I can wade across in ankle height wellies and pick out individual rocks on the river bed, just hours later it can be running so fiercely and high that I'm calling Bonnie and the kids away from the edges for fear they will be washed away. It stopped raining for five full days last week  by day three I was actually doing sneaky little raindances behind the static when no one was looking because actually I'd rather put a coat and waterproof trousers on that walk across the croft to gather rainwater and carry it back in 20 litre containers. Plus my hair can carry off greasy and unwashed far better when everyone else also looks bedraggled thanks to the rain!

It's still far too early to be starting to think about what we're finding hard, mostly because as yet we are not really struggling with anything but whenever we try and say that there is always someone ready to tell us how we've not even *started* with the tough times yet, so we tend not to say it now. We'll just wait til February and we can either start being smug then, or leave!

We've all spent a large amount of today outside. The sun shone pretty much all day and we had all the doors and windows open on the static to give it a good airing. The kids spent hours playing down beside the river including a game which involved making the car really muddy and then cleaning it off again. At one point Star was pointing some odd shaped cloud out to us and said 'over there, by that eagle...' It made me realise once again how we must never take this forgranted - kids playing down beside the river, spotting eagles flying overhead. We are living our dream and must savor every moment.

Ady and I have been moving wood about. We were lucky enough to have some leftover wood scraps donated from the builders who have just finished working on Kinloch Castle and spent a couple of hours on Friday bringing it up as far as the river and then another few hours today loading it in to the car, bringing it across the river, up as far as we could get it and then unloading it. Lots of walking up and down a very muddy hill carrying heavy loads of wood - rather like WWOOFing again! My knees are telling me I have worked today, always a satisfying feeling when curled up on the sofa by candlelight at the end of a day.

We've collected a punnet of the very last of the brambles for the very last few jars of jam this year. I've baked bread, we've had a lovely roast dinner. Friends came up for a cup of tea and some home made cakes and we talked about crochet club, reading group and other events to see us through the darker colder weeks ahead.

Ady and I have been projecting ahead, wondering where we'll be this time next year, discussing the small incremental changes that always feel so monumental in terms of the difference to our day to day lives they make. After our year on the road in our van, living with people in all sorts of off-grid situations we never assume toilets will flush, taps will deliver running water, there will even be a plug socket to charge a phone let alone one that works. It's interesting to read on facebook of how friends are turning their heating on for the first time while our nod to the changing season this year is an extra jumper and hot water bottles at night. Yet, when we arrived here not even six months ago it was a bare field and we came off the ferry with a car and a horse box towing all we owned. We sit here less than half a year on with our candles, our roast dinner, me checking facebook and the kids watching iplayer. It's thanks to low tech, alternative technologies certainly and we still rely heavily on nature and the elements to provide but it's living out our dreams that is keeping us warm at night, hopefully a few extra layers and the glow of being part of something fantastic here on Rum will continue to keep us cosy as winter creeps ever closer.

Where it's at

Bring on the autumn! It is utterly stunning this time of year. We didn't notice the season changing anywhere near as dramatically from spring to summer but the last week it has felt as though every morning when we step outside the front door nature has marched along another few steps. I've been taking photos but have realised I probably need to be creating a plinth or something to be standing on to ensure I am in the exact same place to be taking a photo a day to properly record it.

We have waved good bye to the last of our visitors for this year with a sense of sadness, particularly as this was a run of family visiting, but also a sense of normality returning. Visitors are lovely to have but add to the burden of our day to day existance. Rainwater has been a precious commodity this last week as Rum experienced an unexpected dry spell for five days running which meant Ady and I were staggering across the croft with 20 litre jerry cans in each hand gathering river water instead of rainwater harvesting which is usually a very reliable water source. The increased visitor have also meant more gas used in cooking and kettles boiled and of course more toilet emptying duties.

I don't really hold with squeamishness over toiletetting - as a mother I have wiped more bottoms and dealt with the disposal of more nappy contents than I can count. I still deal with washable sanitary protection and mooncup emptying and feel very strongly that we have gone way too far down the line from our ancestors who used to lob chamber pot contents out of upstairs windows. There is a line somewhere between responsible disposal of human waste and creating a problem that we could all deal with perfectly well ourselves without using drinking water to flush our waste away.

Currently our method of dealing with waste is digging holes and burying our collected few days at a time wast. A perfectly acceptable, if rather time consuming method. Our dream is to make use of a compost loo instead so we can be getting on with other things. We are hoping to hit our fundraising target to achieve this in just under a month so please excuse the shameless plug to the place to assist with that if you are able.

http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/investment/compost-loo-1240

Venison Processing

I'm aware I have lots of posts to catch up on but first wanted to answer a couple of questions about the venison processing and having not actually blogged about that properly I thought I'd do a whole post rather than just reply to comments.

When we went off WWOOFing last year one of the things Ady and I were keen to learn more about was butchery and processing and we did a little bit of that at Evergreen. When we arrived on Rum and discovered there was a chance to get involved in venison processing we were really excited and leapt at the opportunity. One of the other islanders had written an application and been successful in getting a lottery grant to set up a Community Interest Company. The grant will cover the start up costs involved in getting the business off the ground which include: training, tools, processing and packaging costs, insurance and various other equipment. Any profit not ploughed back into reinvesting in developing and growing the company will be passed to the community trust to be spend on further community development projects.

There are two directors (one is me!), a secretary and a further four islanders attended the training course (including Ady) to be self employed workers doing the processing and packing. We have an agreement with SNH to purchase culled deer from that at the same rate as they sell to game dealers and use the on-island deer larder to process them for a set fee per animal. We will then need to package, store and sell the meat.

There are about 1000 red deer on the Isle of Rum, a percentage of which are culled every year. More on SNH policy on deer management can be found on their website. As a meat eater myself I feel very strongly that we have a big responsibility to ensure the animals we eat have had a good life with high welfare standards, opportunity to act naturally and a humane death. I can't think of a better example than the red deer here on Rum who are wild animals killed while out on the reserve.

Our training course was really good - Barry who came to train us is a master butcher with many years experience in both butchery and training to pass on his skills. Six of us from Rum Venison attended along with two of the seasonal ghillies currently assisting the SNH stalker in the red deer cull. Between the eight of us we had varying levels of previous experience but we all felt we learnt loads over the three day course.

I won't post up pictures of the more graphic parts of skinning and butchering the deer - due to the red deer research project on the island parts of the culled animal go straight to the project so we are passed headless, footless, innardless animals which makes for a slightly less messy butchering experience than I was expecting.

We learnt how to quarter the animals, create various cuts and put aside the rest for processing. We spent time cutting steaks and other prime pieces, diced other meat into casserole and stewing meat and then learnt about mincing, mixing with pork fat and rusk and seasoning to make sausage mix and then filling and stringing sausages - a real art which some of us took to quicker than others!

We also did plenty of theory, about labelling and marketing, advice from Barry about what equipment we need and where we are likely to make the most money from the meat.

The stag cull is about to end and with the hind (female red deer) season about to start in just a couple of weeks and us waiting on delivery of freezers, packaging, knives and so on we have decided to start with our first three beasts then. Until then we are already doing well in sales of the meat we trained with and I think plenty of islanders have already sampled our sausages! We certainly enjoyed them for dinner the other night and are planning on venison curry, a venison roast and some delicious venison steaks in weeks to come.

Busy doing nothing

For people who don't actually have jobs we never seem to have a spare moment!

Since we arrived back home on Friday out feet have barely touched the ground. We spent the weekend trying to cram as much of sharing our island with Lynda and Stuart into daylight hours as possible, within constraints of weather. They stayed at Kinloch Castle and joined us at the croft for evening meals, took breakfast at the castle and we took lunch to them. As an arrangement it worked fairly well although I know they are looking forward to trying out the new B&B on Rum next time they visit and hoping to maybe even stay with us the time after that.

I remember walking across the bridge from the village towards the castle, past the turn off to the Kilmory road which takes you to our croft on our very first visit to Rum and trying to imagine this being our home, a road I walked daily. I remember getting a tiny fizzle of excitement at the thought that one day it might not just be our home, it might also be a place we could share with family and friends - show them round, talk to them about, see if they could feel the magic we feel here and understand that compelling feeling we had to make this our home. We've now shared it with most of the important people in our lives - family and several sets of friends (although I am still fixing my brother with a stare and hoping he'll make it here, his own rather busy life taken into account of course!).

It was great to share Rum with Lynda and Stuart who have been such a source of support to us over the last couple of years. We have stayed with them several times while living in Willow last year and they came to our rescue on more than one occasion. They have listened to our late night pouring out of hopes and dreams from our plans to go off in the first place to our notion to apply for a croft on Rum and have encouraged, believed in us and championed us every step of the way. You might not get to choose your family but somewhere along the line Lynda and Stuart have definitely become part of ours!

We waved them off on the boat on Monday while waving in Ady's brother and family, most of whom came to visit earlier this year so are back for round 2. This time it's a brief stay of just 4 nights and Ady and I are otherwise engaged for a lot of the daytime while they are here but we're looking forward to a whole afternoon and evening tomorrrow with them, all day on Thursday and most of Friday too before we wave them off again.

Meanwhile Ady and I are doing venison butchery training. More on that when we finish the course tomorrow but suffice to say we are really enjoying it, learning loads and tonight we dined on sausages from a deer that we skinned, butchered and processed into sausages ourselves. Delicious :)

Back to where we once belonged

Over five months in and we had our first visit back to the mainland this week. The bright lights and razzledazzle that is Fort William! Supermarkets, McDonalds, Boots the Chemist, people, traffic, noise....

Clearly the honeymoon period has yet to wear off for us because we currently miss nothing about the mainland (family and friends excepted). Sure we love the cinema, theatre, museums etc but realistically they were infrequent treats rather than day to day life. If we want infrequent treats we can still have them, just not quite so often and at greater expense with more planning required. We're only 100 miles (and a ferry trip!) from Inverness, there is a cinema / theatre on Skye, we can hold film nights here on Rum and we're hoping to put together a fabulous schedule of events and visiting attractions right here next year. There is nothing you can't order online and get delivered and the excitement of getting a new clicky thing to light the gas rings through the post as a parcel will never wear thin compared to just nipping to the supermarket and buying one :).

The reasons for our mainland trip were to get Bonnie spayed and for Dragon to have an appointment at the eye department which was a referral to our GP from a routine opticians eye test back last year that we failed to get sent through in Sussex before we moved so had transferred up here. We originally were supposed to go off at the beginning of September to do both but the hospital cancelled the appointment so it was all rescheduled for this week instead. It all took precision planning; checking ferry times, joining the local car club and getting documents printed off, signed, verified, membership paid for, car booked and arrangements to collect it made. By very happy coincidence our dear friends who are now considered family traveled back to Rum with us for a visit and had booked a holiday cottage large enough for us to stay too so instead of an expensive and cramped stay in a budget family room in a large chain we had the luxury of a gorgeous holiday cottage with bath, sky tv, large kitchen and space.

That was the highlight of our stay really, being with friends in such nice accommodation, oh and meeting someone in McDonalds who we met on the day we moved to Rum and got chatting to in Mallaig as we waited for the ferry to take us off to start our new lives. They recognised us and were really pleased to hear we have settled in so well and are so happy here.

Everything else was stressful, didn't go to plan and simply served to remind us of why we now live where we do and enjoy the lifestyle we have chosen. Circumstances contrived to mean that instead of getting spayed Bonnie was discovered to have come into season (her first and within hours of the planned operation). After discussion with the vet the decision was made to not go ahead after all and we'll have to return at some point to have that done. Dragon's eye referral turned out to be an over zealous optician finding something that either wasn't there in the first place or has healed itself nearly a year later. The doctor and I concluded perhaps the optician needed glasses! Of course we are far happier with the news that there is nothing the matter with Dragon's eye than any other possible news but given it had never given him any trouble anyway so was less a cause for concern and more us being conscientious about  following up appointments and the delay caused by the cancelled appointment had meant the delay in getting Bonnie to the vets it all felt like rather more than just a wasted few hours...

Determined to find silver linings and rescue the justification of the expense, car hire, ferrry prices, time away from home and need to call in favours in animal sitting back on the croft we did manage to combine our trip with our first visit to neighbouring Canna for a couple of hours. We didn't meet any of the islanders and although it is nice to have visited we certainly didn't fall in love with Canna like we did with Eigg and Rum on our first trips. We'll go back, probably next summer for a full day trip but it was great to have finally got there and to have seen another edge of Rum's coastline that we'd previously not navigated.

We also spent lots of time filling up the car with shopping. Tins, jars, bottles, supermarket own brand stuff that will see us through - long life milk, tinned fruit, vegetables, meat and fish for those Famous Five times when we're cut off from food deliveries by cancelled ferries and need to wash down our tinned feasts with lashings of ginger beer. We bought Dragon and Star's chocolate advent calendars ready to stash, Ady and I got a thermal base layer set each, I stocked up on socks, both Dragon and Star spent some of their cash stash on toys, we visited a sweet shop, bought kitchen bits like new scales, whisk, pastry brush, cereal bowls.

On Friday morning we were not at all sure the boats would be running but got to the ferry, loaded our stuff on the van for Rum and paid freight, nipped to the CoOp and stocked up on loads of meet to stash in a friend's freezer to see us through the next few months, parked the car and returned the keys and then got on board. It was a rough crossing and we were greeted at Rum with one of the most severe hail showers I have ever seen but it was fab to be back.

We've a crazy couple of weeks ahead with visitors galore before I suspect it will all go quiet for the winter. We're still getting batterings from the weather and although with every storm I get a little more confident at the static's ability to stay put we will be packing an emergency bag and stashing it in the car tomorrow and going through some evacuation procedures with the kid so that in the event of a middle of the night loss of the roof or similar we all know what we are supposed to be doing. Hopefully having a plan and a packed bag will be enough to guarantee it is never needed.

Never let it be normal

Ady has been down helping at a friends' house this week during the mornings leaving the kids and I to our own devices. We've done various things with this time but today the sun was shining and I was up for a bit of time to myself, just me and Bonnie to enjoy the croft in the sunshine. Dragon and Star stayed in the static to do some tidying of bedrooms / playing while the dog and I set off with some empty punnets to fill with blackberries. We ended up being out for nearly two hours and it was just blissful.

The sun was shining, the sky was blue, it was crisp and clear with a nip in the air but enough warmth still in the sun to keep it enjoyable to be out in. As Bonnie and I scrambled over a fence (from the outside of our croft to the inside I hasten to add, no trespassing!) I experienced one of those moments of pure happiness and being in precisely the perfect place at the perfect time. A freeze framed moment to keep safe in a bubble preserved forever.

One of the things I have noticed about our fellow islanders is their love and respect for Rum. Noone here just views the island as the place where they live, it is not just a postcode, just your address or your neighbourhood. No one is here with grand plans to 'get away from this place'. In this respect it is so very different to anywhere else I have ever lived. The same goes for people's jobs here - no one is biding time, hanging out til something better comes along or moaning about wanting to leave and looking for a different job. It's simple, everyone is here because this is where they want to be. When it stops being where they want to be then they leave. Life is tough enough here for it to only work if this is truly where you want to be.

When Ady and I got married, in a Las Vegas wedding chapel (no, not by Elvis!) it was by a very American 'preacher man' type guy who struggled with my name (in America they don't have the name 'Nicola' - it's Nicole, so he kept calling me 'Nicole-ah') and clearly performed hundreds of ceremonies, conveyor belt style every week. But he did take the time to chat to us before the service, learn a little about us and discover why we were there to get married and what it meant to us. As we slid our wedding rings onto each others' fingers he told us 'never let them only mean you're married'. It's a phrase that 13 years on I still think of regularly. Every time I fiddle with my wedding ring, or feel Ady's ring as we walk hand in hand, or scrape dried on bread dough from mine after I've baked bread I am reminded of that. Our wedding rings are not just a physical reminder that we are married, they are a symbol of being married to each other, a little piece of each other that we wear with us every single moment, awake and asleep, in sickness and in health, even when we are annoyed or cross with each other, together or apart.

Today in my moment of walking up our hill (those who live here or have visited will know about our hill...), Bonnie by my side, a full four punnets of brambles ready to be made in to jam in the bag over my shoulder, sun shining down, panoramic view all around I was reminded about never taking this forgranted, never letting it only be where I live. To always feel the wonder, the awe and the excitement of this being where I get to call my home.