Be part of it

You may or may not have noticed the recent addition of a little yellow button on the right hand side of the blog.

Subscribers to the WW newsletter will already know what this is about (if you've not signed up to receieve them and would like to please click on the tab along the top that says 'wondering how to join in'.

Our long term vision for our croft is to create a place we can share with others. Share with family and friends as a place to come and visit us. Share with WWOOFers as somewhere they can come and gain the amazing WWOOFing experience that we enjoyed last year - learning new skills, meeting new friends, discovering different ways of life. Share with visitors to the island - either as campers or day trippers or tourists who are interested in learning a bit more about us and our way of life. Share with people who want to learn more - as a retreat, an educational centre, somewhere to come and see a different life in action.

We would love to create a model of self sufficiency here - as close to growing / rearing all our own food, living an off grid lifestyle with regards to energy and water. A sustainable and low impact lifetsyle with permaculture principles, ethically reared animals, sitting alongside the National Nature Reserve we live in. Setting all that up from a bare field with nothing on it is a pretty big task however and there are times when it all feels rather overwhelming and working out what has to happen first in order for the next thing to happen can be quite tricky. Especially if you are impatient and want it all to be there and sorted and up and running as soon as it possibly can be!

A friend recently explained Critical Path Analysis to me, something which he rightly said I was doing anyway, just not in a very measured and aware way. I've since done a bit more of that sort of thinking and together with Ady, Dragon and Star we are coming up with a list of various options for things to focus on first, next and later. We have a lot of projects here that we think WWOOFers would love to get involved in and we have a lot of contact from WWOOFers asking to make arrangements to come. The trouble is we are not set up yet to have WWOOFers even though some of the projects that we'd love to get help with are the very ones we need to do in order to get ready to have WWOOFers.... We'd also love to offer camping here, it would bring in revenue, help with the lack of accommodation on the island, start to create a target market for the other things we want to offer. But again we are lacking even the most basic facilities to offer campers.

When we first planned our start up of the croft it was with the idea that we would have sold our house and be using funds from that to set up. A dire housing market and no interest in the house when it was on the market meant we chose to move here anwyay and start up on a much smaller budget.

I've been looking at various options for raising funds in order to start the projects here to get the croft up and running and in a position to accept WWOOFers and progress with our plans. I had heard about Crowd Funding and learnt a bit about it as a concept and with some thinking it through we have come up with the following idea.

Currently our facilities are about as basic as it gets; but with injections of cash and willing hands to help we plan to put in a compost loo, solar powered rainwater harvested shower block, earth oven and fire pit, storytelling circle. Woodburner fuelled open air bathhouse. A visit to Croft 3 promises to get better in terms of what we can offer the longer you leave it before you come.

So here's the deal - you contribute now and your money goes towards making all of the above happen. You get to decide when you cash in your contribution against a visit here. Come this year or early next year and muck in with making stuff happen - perfect for the more adventurous types who are happy to live alongside us as we do. Wait awhile and have a more luxurious stay or hang back until we are a way down the line and come for a feet up, tea brought when you click your fingers type experience!

We promise that all donations go straight to the pot for Croft 3 visitor offering improvements. You will recieve a voucher for the value of your donation to be redeemed as and when you want subject to booking availability and if you volunteer your time while you're here you automatically double your value.

Our first funds will go towards a compost loo. We have sourced this from the wonderful http://www.freerangedesigns.co.uk/ and are very excited at the prospect of working with them to create a loo on the croft. That will enable us to take on WWOOFers and start taking camping visitors and day trippers. The cost of that is £1800 approx.

What you can spend and what you'll get for it:

£10 gets you a day trip visit to the croft. We'll spend time with you between boats on a day trip to Rum. Show you round the croft, make you a cup of tea (and maybe a home made cake!) and share whatever is going on at the Croft with you that day. That may mean feeding animals, sowing or harvesting crops, a spot of green building or simply enjoying the sunshine and the view.

£25 gets you a weekend camping on the croft - we'll give you all the information you need, meet you from the ferry and bring you to the croft. You'll need to bring a tent and sleeping bags / camping stuff. We can do you a stonking deal on Croft 3 produce to eat while you're here.

£50 gets you a week camping on the croft - as above but for longer!

£100 gets you three repeat camping trips - perfect for those wanting to experience the difference between visits.

We've already had our first contribution - I know you'll probably never come here camping but I hope to bring you breakfast on a silver tray at some future point when you visit, thank you for kick starting us off.