Install a wind turbine, obviously!
It's been uncharacteristically still for the last ten days... Rum local hero to the rescue on the car front, lending us a vehicle to get around, looking at the poorly Pajero and generally helping us out. Tomorrow Ady is playing mechanics apprentice and fingers crossed it may live to cross the river once more.
Davies and Scarlett had a letter from a friend in Monday's post to say she is visiting for the weekend - hurrah! Much excitement at this great news, particularly as we thought we had waved our last visitors of the year off already.
I've ordered a selection of soft fruit bushes to fill the fruit cage including cranberries, raspberries, gooseberries, blueberries, whitecurrants and rather excitingly a novelty honeyberry bush too. All paid for and will be on the way once they are in their dormant period and ready to transport.
We've decided on a site for our orchard and will mark it out on the next dry day we have. I have emailed a couple of Scottish apple tree suppliers for advice on varieties and we'll work on a proper orchard plan. The next decision is to whether protect individual trees from the deer or to create an entire orchard cage area screened off. My initial feeling is to section off the whole area but we'll do a price up of both options and see which comes out best.
After nearly 18 months of pig keeping and numerous pig moves we have finally cracked the perfect pig move technique. We used to just have them roaming for the half hour or so it took to set up a fence and lure them into the new fenced area which when it was just Tom and Barbara was fine as they follow the pig bucket anyway and are always more interested in hanging around us while we work, chat to them and scratch behind their ears than heading off on adventures. But with six pigs the lure of a whole island to discover is greater than a handful of pignuts and it took us *hours* to get all of them in last time we moved them. So we have invested in extra posts and developed our new, patent pending Nic & Ady Croft 3 Pig Moving Grand Plan which basically entails extending the pig pen on one side, wiring it all up, making it live and then cutting the middle section of fence and removing it giving them a double size pen. When it is time to move them more we will just ushed them to the newer side, reinstate the dividing wall using the spare posts, move the other three sides round to extend it, wire it all back in and cut the divide again. This will give them a larger pen comprising half new grass and half old which gives them wallow mud on the older side and allows them to fully dig up everything plus fresh ground to root on and feed on to supplement their twice daily pig feed. Result! We are very pleased with ourselves :) Hurrah for living and learning.
Good to hear about progress on the car. Keep us updated in future blogs about that. Even though there's 4k people on my island, the threat of our car not starting (touch wood it's OK) is something that makes my blood run cold considering my lack of knowledge of such things. Respect to Ady for going down to try and assist. Hope it works out, fingers crossed.
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