Being Hosts

We've had lots and lots of visitors in the last couple of weeks. Last Wednesday saw the Loch Nevis arrive at Rum pier bringing seven people to visit us :). It's never occurred to me before that once it is close enough you can yell to people. For some reason despite the fact we can clearly see each other and wave there is some sort of invisible force field between those on board and those on land that precludes verbal communication so we've only ever waved. Not any more! My lovely friend Jonathan disproved that by calling out from a great distance away :).

We were welcoming a family (minus one child, plus an additional along for the ride adult) visiting between boats and another friend and his daughter visiting for a couple of nights. None had met each other before being from different parts of our different worlds long before we came to live on a remote island but I guess having people like us as friends is enough in common for people to hit it off with each other fairly quickly!

We did the whistle stop tour designed to take in as much of Rum and our lives here as possible between boats which includes: walking to Croft 3, taking the path that the static took (apart from crossing the river) with running commentary from me as to the various landmarks along the way ('here is where the wheels fell off', 'here is where I thought Ady might have a nervous breakdown', 'here is where we couldn't see for midges' 'here is where I cried'), a speedy introduction to the animals on the croft complete with pause in my talking as we go up the rather steep hill on the croft. I like to pretend this is in order to give people the opportunity to take in the unspoilt beauty of the surroundings - the dramatic peaks and jagged skyline, the river, the sea view, the woodland complete with majestic red deer lurking, the skies whether blue with fluffy white clouds, grey with drizzly rain or somewhere inbetween complete with majestic eagles soaring overhead, to listen for a moment to the sound of silence, of peace, of feeling utterly immersed in the gorgeousness of nature and overwhelmed by how very lucky we are to be living here. The truth is that the hill is so very steep I cannot climb it and talk at the same time without collapsing into a wheezing heap so I have to shut up!!!

Next is a refreshment stop - I was not the best host at this point and having realised we didn't actually have enough cups to give everyone a drink I went without myself and then felt very bad for not offering some form of food - next time I'll be better prepared with home baking or gorgeous things on doilied plates.

That done with a bit of a tour of the static and the croft and some general arm waving in the direction of things we plan to do in the future 'house maybe here, compost loo maybe there, camping site in that area, polytunnel could go here, fire pit, earth oven, storytelling circle down in that corner.' we made our way back down to the village. Visitor footwear, weather conditions and level of bogginess of path permitting we may take a different route to give a different perspective of the crofts, the views and the island.

Village centre next, taking in shop, teashop, village hall, wildlife garden, byre. Currently we have Market Day on a Wednesday where I am usually to be found joining in with the sitting behind a table groaning with wares from the village - gorgeous crafts, homemade baking, preserves, toiletries, home grown produce, some of which I can even take credit for making :). This week I just brought along customers :)

Stepping stones across the river mouth as it meets Loch Scresort taking in the wildlife garden and then a quick peep in the old dairy before walking along the coastal path through the campsite along to the visitor centre. We had enough time to walk the south side nature trail to the otter hide taking in the very different feel that the south side of the village has to the north side with more shady woodland and closer proximity to the sea.

Then to the pier to wave off the day tripping friends, extracting promises that next time they'll visit for longer. I intend to hold them to those promises...

Back to focussing on the friends staying for longer. An evening stroll to the shop to meet some of the other islanders and have a beer in the early evening sunshine. Midges meant this was not quite as idyllic as it could have been but it was not far off.

The fuller island experience (48 hours rather than just 4) also took in the Sheerwater boat trip - not much in the way of wildlife out there that week but we glimpsed porpoises and saw a few seabirds. We took a car ride to Harris beach hoping to spot various animals but only actually seeing the highland cattle and a couple of deer from a distance. Our guests did the castle tour on their last day before we waved them off on the ferry.

Earlier on the same day we'd had another five friends arrive for a week, crossing over with leaving friends briefly. The weeklong experience is different again and this week our friends joined us on many walks, evenings sitting round the fire, the Sheerwater boat trip, walks around the island, a couple of fishing attempts including a very successful afternoon that saw us coming home with enough of a catch to feed ourselves that night. A few evenings down in the village, calling in at the houses of various on island friends for cups of tea or even cocktails!

I hope we gave all our recent flurry of visitors a real taste of our life here - the challenges and victories, the things that make us smug and the ones that make life tough, an introduction to the people, wildlife and history that we share this island we all call home with.

From our perspective it has given us plenty to think about. Having realisations of how far removed from our previous life we now are. What we used to take forgranted but now don't miss, what we accept as fine but when seen through the eyes of others we appreciate as bigger compromises than everyone is prepared to make. The lack of plug sockets with electricity connected to charge up phones, cameras, ipods, games consoles. The challenges of quite where to put nine sets of muddy wellies, soggy raincoats and slightly damp socks. The logistics of providing breakfast, lunch and dinner without a working fridge let alone a freezer, a fruit and vegetable order that doesn't arrive, getting through a weeks supply of breakfast cereal in the first two days and discovering that home made pizza for nine involves standing pummelling pizza dough for the best part of an hour and then a further two hours rolling them out, topping them, cooking them and serving them.

It's tough to realise that in order for people to visit us they will be travelling for a long time, spending money on getting here and likely taking time out of their annual leave entitlement to do so. That our role in their adventure is to provide a gorgeous place to stay, with access to us and a sliver of our lives to take away and better understand what we are doing here. Not to provide a luxurious B&B style, fully catered five star experience because that is way out of our reach. In our previous lives we prided ourselves on being excellent hosts. Our house may have been small but we tried to cater and provide for everything, spending time on lovely food, snacks and drinks. This last week and latest rash of visiting friends has educated us that these days our responsibility is to merely be ourselves - to let people come, see quite what it is we are doing, share some of our plain lifestyle, simple food and very basic accommodation but maybe go away again feeling inspired, relaxed from the escape from the mainland ratrace, a bit more connected to nature, to food production, to us - their crazy friends. Hey if nothing else we get to send them back on that ferry marvelling when they arrive home at their flushing toilets, running water, plug sockets, landlines, 24 hour supermarkets and fitted kitchen appliances with a feeling of relief that it's not them who hit a mid life crisis and ran off to live a crazy dream.

Come again soon, our lives have been the richer, more interesting and affirming for your visits. And if you've not booked to come and see us yet, please do.

To every season...

It is with a sort of melancholy that I read an email from a friend today who has returned from a travelling adventure abroad and is now setting up home again in England. But the same sense of yearning fills me when I read the blog of another friend who is the throes of planning their travelling adventure for next year. I question whether a wanderer ever really settles or remains forever a wanderer at heart?

By the same token as I embark on the relatively small task of planning a two night stay back on the mainland to attend to medical matters for child and dog, larder restocking and possible reintegration to the masses along with purchases of essentials such as underwear, charity shop rummaging and clothes we can try on before we buy them I am rather daunted at the prospect of leaving the island. The expense, the return to the rat race and schedules and clock watching, the thought of all the traffic! Maybe we're better staying home :)

As I turned over a new page on our calendar last week and realised it was the fourth such page turn we'd done while here, therefore we are over the three month mark I thought I should mark the occassion with a return to getting the others to talk about how they are feeling, what we have achieved, how life has changed. This is probably a more than one post sort of topic really and indeed Ady has yet to come up with his contribtution but I can share Dragon and Star's words along with my own summing up of what has happened in our first quarter of a year here on Rum.

Dragon
Bad - The static move. I didn't like it, it was too much stress for everyone. Just not very nice.
Good - Everything! I love having animals and experiencing all the different weathers and being part of the community.
Learnt - Loads from Mike (Ranger), lots about biodiversity and loads about different plants and animals like lungwort, maidenshair spleen wort. Learnt about red deer on Rum and bookbinding with Claire.

Star
Bad - The static move was the only bad thing. It was horrible moving it with Daddy stressing.
Good - getting animals, especially the geese arriving.
Learnt - Loads on Rum. Jewellry making with Mumma for craft fayres to make money. Lots from Mike about nature, stuff from Claire about bookbinding and doing Teashop, doing shop stuff with Jinty, learning about Craft Shop with Fliss (can you tell she is spending lots of time with different adults?!)

I'll post up Ady's and mine in another blog soon.

I've been revisiting our original business plan, written way back last December at the end of our WWOOFing adventure on the basis of a 3 hour trip to Rum. At the time it felt like a useful exercise in spilling out all our hopes and dreams and trying to fit them into neat little boxes. To be honest it still feels rather like that and on a tough day it can feel like the whole mountain is all still infront of us to climb with no clear path and no suitable footwear or kendal mintcake in our rucksacks. We don't have many tough days though really and frankly the view of that mountain is so breathtaking we console ourselves with it's beauty instead!

But a quick round up of what we have already achieved in those three short months won't go amiss...

Livestock. We have a cockerel (Dave), ten hens (I've lost track of the names but I know they include Mrs Nesbitt, Mumma, Chip, Pecky and Ginger) - one of whom is currently sitting on three eggs due to hatch this weekend, five ducks (again I've lost track of names), a goose and a gander - Margo and Jerry. We have our pigs Tom and Barbara (who have definitely been practising at being a breeding pair so maybe wee piglets will be with us before too long) and of course Bonnie the dog who is more pet than livestock.

This was all challenging, involving sourcing the livestock, getting it here (both here to Rum as in on the ferry etc. plus getting it from the ferry to the croft, specifically for Tom and Barbara who could not be carried along the rough track in boxes like the birds were). It also involved putting up fencing, creating houses / shelter, making feeders, digging ponds / wallow pits and coping with the inevitable mud that so many pairs of tiny feet create in wet weather.

Getting our home onto the croft. Again those six words can never quite sum up what a challenge that was. But look, here it is :)

Our house, on our hill, on our land. With the most amazing, breathtaking views in all directions. We watch Hallival disappear and reappear in cloud, sunshine and mists, we watch eagles soar over the peaks, gaze at stars as they twinkle in the inky black skies we are getting now the nights are drawing in and we have no light pollution, the moon wax and wane it's way through it's cycles, the sun climb high into the sky and then create shadows and gorgeous pink and orange skies as it sets away behind distant peaks. Our home with real beds, sofas, table and chairs, a shower, running water, our stuff around us once more.

We have made a start on living off grid, partly relying on modern technology - we now have internet, superfast speeds, mobile phone signal and I have just ordered a landline number using the broadband line. We have power in the shape of our petrol generator for running my Kenwood mixer for cake making, giving things a boost and seeing us through the darker days of winter. But we also have renewable, sustainable, greener energy by way of two large solar panels and inverters. We're using 12 volt batteries which I know are not a green solution really but enable us to harness and store the free energy the sun chucks at us. We have the pigs electric fence wired up with a solar panel trickle charging it.

We have a rainwater harvesting set up on order and in progress and plans for various other water solutions in hand. We have a compost loo waiting to be ordered and a whole loads of exciting plans for projects including earth oven, solar cooker, solar showers and more.

We have become part of the community - we know who everyone is and they all know us too. We have had people round for coffee, beers, dinner. We have accepted favours and done them in return. We have helped and been helped. We are involved in weekly events such as the Market Day selling produce, we have crafts for sale, cakes for sale, eggs for sale. We are involved in community projects such as venison processing, events organising, community polytunnel. We have joined in with various community events including Beach cleans, ranger events, Jubilee celebrations, Midgefest, danced at ceilidhs and are part of in jokes and catchphrases. We have made friends, put down roots and feel properly involved in what is happening here with the community.

If I try and quantify the things I feel a bit sad about leaving behind when we stopped travelling it is adventure, possibility, new sights, sounds and experiences. When I round up our first three months and what a rollercoaster ride it has been so far and promises to continue being then I realise that 8 acres of our own and 8 miles across in each direction as an island is probably more than enough to wander for the time being.

Bring on the friends!

It's been an odd sort of week ( is it only me who is put in mind of Arkwright doing his round up as the lights go down on Open All Hours when typing such a phrase?). We waved goodbye to Julie & co and theoretically had a lull between guests (mad week coming up, guests arriving on Wednesday til Friday, day trippers also coming on Wednesday and another set of friends coming on Friday for a week - social-tastic!) but have very much enjoyed being a bit 'hosty' to a couple of sets of potential crofters. Croft 2 - the other 2/3 of 'our' field is up for grabs in the current round of croft applications here on Rum. As newest crofters we have had various potential crofters come for chats or get in touch online which has been great. We are really excited at the prospect of neighbours, new friends and additional numbers for the community. We are in the luxurious position of having *no* impact on the decision making so are able to remain utterly subjective and have personal favourites within the array of potential applicants - both on and off island.

What we have most enjoyed though is giving people our take on Rum, on Crofting and on this lifestyle. A lovely slice of positive reinforcement for what we're doing and why we're doing it. The same applies to Home Education actually - a letter inviting us to make contact with the local education department of the council arrived within the last week and I have had a couple of conversations with people about education and our personal brand of it lately too. All very good for reaffirming our beliefs and committment to the way we do things here. Happy, healthy children with an innate curiosity and zest for life and learning, passions and interests, a really impressive ability to engage with people in a variety of situations and a reputation that precedes them for 'being cool'. You know what - if I had that aged 38 I'd be proud, my kids have it aged 9 and 11. I can merely bask in their reflected glory - they are their own very amazing and awesome people but I might just snatch a wee bit of enabler credit :)

But back to Rum. This has been a good week for reminding us why we are here and love it so much. Ady has been doing a spot of Piermaster duty, seeing the big ferry in and out. I have been very embroiled in community stuff from Midgefest prep to baking cakes for the teashop,  manning the stand at the Produce Fayre, volunteering to take on stuff at the Residents Association Meeting, getting involved in Ladies Night (local women getting together socially after dark). We've had people up for dinner and enjoyed several putting the world to rights sessions. As I said to someone earlier this week, everyone here on Rum wears lots of hats, we are not defined by just one role. Personally I pull off mother, wife, Home Educator, cake baker. Midgefest Posse member, hostess, pusher of social opportunities, friend., crofer.... all while still trying to be a decent daughter, sister, sister in law, remote friend and my various other off island roles too. Most of the time I feel I do a half decent job  but like many other people I know a cloning machine might well come in useful if ever they are up for sale on ebay!

Exciting times - we are utterly cut off from the outside world really. News can take a day or more to filter through, The Olympics has brought home to us how remote we are without a TV as watching even a snippet has become an epic event. All that said we are throwing so much time and energy into making sure that we play our part in demonstrating how vital our community is that we seem to find little enough time for sitting down and checking emails, uploading photos, keeping the blog up to date etc. let alone slobbing out infront of the TV.

This weekend saw Rum's first Midgfest - an intended annual event celebrating our smallest but most powerful Rum wildlife. We had kids crafts, ranger events, pebble painting, pinata, willow midge, parachute games, sea eagle spotting, barbecue and curry on offer at the teashop, a disco in the evening and plenty of bunting, flags and other fun and games. A fabulous day in the gorgeous sunshine with lots of community members participating and surprisingly few of the actual midges turning out to attend.

pebble painting and mask making at kids crafts

It's the Midgecatcher! (some people know him as Ady!)

some of the fabulous painted pebble midges

raffle prizes - some top wins on offer

Midge pinata - fun for all the family!

We said the other day that just three months in this already feels more like home than anywhere else has ever done. Fantastic people, gorgeous scenery, living our dream as crofters, getting to grips with off grid and sharing our lives with friends old and new. What more could we possibly want?

Day of days

Today has been one of our really productive days. We achieved everything we set out to do - and more. Another few steps closer to feeling like we have really arrived on the croft and are living it, doing it, making it happen.

Our goose and gander were due to arrive on the late boat this evening - this completes our current plans for livestock. We do have goats pencilled in for year two, turkeys on our wishlist and would like to get a drake to move in with our ducks. We have a broody hen sitting on eggs so could be celebrating our first croft birth in the next couple of weeks and our pigs are looking like they may be gearing up to learning what to do to provide us with piglets at some future point but for now we are not looking to increase the mouths to feed here for a while.

We were given an old chicken house shortly after we moved here, donated from someone no longer living on Rum. Ady and I got it to the croft with a combination of manhandling, sheer determination and plenty of heaving it about swearing and it's been stood ready for geese. This week Ady penned off another strip of land next to the ducks for the goslings to call home until they are settled here. Geese are perfect smallholders .livestock as they don't actually need any looking after really. They graze so don't need feeding and are pretty self sufficient. They pair for life so one goose and one gander is perfect as our breeding mama and papa and having got them still small and downy (ish) we hope to have them semi tame rather than scary, hissing and terrorising!

This morning we finished off the goose area, cleaning out the house and making good the floor which Barbara the pig had managed to fall through on one of her various jaunts out of the pig pen before we persuaded her to stay in there.

We then decided to tackle the duck house issue. We had been housing them in a wheelie bin and it was more or less working but looked a bit odd and five of them were really too big for it. We have accrued a collection of galvanised iron corrugated sheets so decided to construct a new duck house from some of them. Sledgehammers, nails and fence posts later we were proud constructors of a new duck palace. The ducks love it (we know, we chased them in to ensure they realised what it was and they stayed in there for ages and ages!)

We also banged on some more panels to the chicken house to make that more weather proof. It does all look very erm rustic but I love how it has all been donated / found / stuff we brought with us from home rather than perfect and overpriced animal houses.

Meanwhile Dragon and Star (I stress again for someone I know is reading and has made contact but should really have done their homework far better - they know who they are! that Dragon and Star are not *really* their names!) were spending some quality time with Tom and Barbara (their actual names) Pig. They are very affectionate and friendly pigs who love nothing better than lots of attention, strokes behind the ears and rubbing of their backs and bellies.

We collected some cut reeds and grass which had been left drying out to use as bedding and put fresh bedding in all the birds housing before calling it lunch time.

A feast of a lunch later we gathered tubs and walked down to the village to do some raspberry picking. There are loads of wild raspberries in and around the village, just some of the array of free food to be foraged here on Rum. There is already a resident jam maker here so I won't be making plain old raspberry jam for sale but will be making some for ourselves and possibly doing some twists on classics (my strawberry and chilli jam, bramble and lavendar and other such combinations were real hits back at home) along with some other stuff such as raspberry puree should we be lucky enough to harvest sufficient for such things. For now, we have enough to make a very lovely eton mes for dessert tomorrow using some of our own eggs to whip up some meringues :). It was a very nice couple of hours collecting them in the sunshine with the kids eating most of their harvest anyway.

On the late boat came Margo and Jerry - our goose and gander. Very cute and still a bit fluffy they are too.

And finally... today we managed to get up signs on 3 of the 4 gates to the croft. I'll make up the fourth one tomorrow and we'll get that up too.

Our land, our home :)

What life looks like

Not nearly enough pictures of late. Let's make up for that now!

A few from one of the highlights of our week each week - the Thursday trip to Soay aboard the Sheerwater. A two hour boat ride away from Rum and back again with our Rum Ranger aboard to help us spot bird and sealife.

A Great Skua aka Bonxie

dolphins, a very frequent sight. We were lucky enough to witness the SuperPod that has been in the area a couple of weeks running, a truly magical experience.

blurry but still beautiful

more with the ranger, we were lucky enough to join in with some bird ringing.

a gratuitous shot of Star just because she is gorgeous and this photo makes me smile!

waiting for the blow! we've seen minke whales the last 3 weeks running, totally spectacular to be so close to such amazing creatures within a couple of miles of our home.

being a caterpillar! Cousins enjoying a Biodiversity Event with Ranger Mike

more of the same, the biodiversity race, a firm fave with us here :)

wildlife spotting, while cousins were here we saw a wide array of seabirds and some minke whales and porpoises

eggs! It's been pancakes for lunch very regularly here at the croft!We have a broody hen currently sitting on a clutch of eggs so may well have our first croft 'birth' sometime soon :)

We had the most excellent Elsa Jean McTaggart playing a gig here last weekend which had all us Rumics up and dancing. The menfolk were not at all shy in getting on the dancefloor - young and old!

and the rest of us quickly joined them with a ceilidh taking us far into Saturday morning

red deer at Kilmory, as photographed by Dragon

our croft warming barbecue, well attended despite the weather

with the grandparents - Star loving having her favourite grand dad to wrestle with

another gratuitous one - sunset from my lounge window. These are the views that will carry us through winter.

being a bit whimsical

It puts one at a distinct disadvantage when someone has been reading your blog and tells you so the very first time you meet them!

I remember my first blogs way back in 2003 or so. A bunch of friends and I were experimenting with the whole idea of weblogs / online diaries, mostly to share our days with each other as Home Educators. It was all very mundane back then, way less about recounting our innermost thoughts, toying with the idea of being writers with something of interest to say, or heaven forbid create some sort of income generating business opportunity. It was very much a school gates type exchange, a coming together of parents who had in common only the fact our children were NOT going to school.

As a teenage I wrote in my diary every day, I still have a collection of various notebooks, doodled with hearts, flowers, hopes and dreams, tearstained, written in with green ink, turquoise ink, in a variety of emerging handwriting, documenting my experiments with all sorts of cusp of adulthood type stuff. Reading them now (as I sometimes do) is like witnessing a caterpillar forming it's chrysallis and slowing emerging out - same basic DNA, totally different end result. My early blog posts are a similar sort  of thing - a fairly new parent, Home Educating still a very experimental idea, coming to terms with this new path I was walking along and learning alongside the children. I realised along the way that blogging is not quite like a diary once you put it 'out there' it becomes public property. You no longer have control over who reads, how they interpret it, what they do with your words. As such I do have a couple of private blogs but I did keep a public blog for Home Education on the basis that it was reading about other people raising their children in a different way to the norm that gave me the courage, inspiration, hope and strength to do what we do with Dragon and Star. I felt that I had some level of responsibility to provide similar for people walking along that path behind me. I have no idea if I lived up to it, but various lovely comments on those blogs assure me I reached out and touched people.

It's intetesting reading back over our journey on this blog as 'Wondering Wanderers'.I started it really keen to fully document the adventure, the highs and lows, the learning and growing. In some ways I have fallen short as I have not been here blogging every single step of the way as I'd hoped I would. There are times, both as WWOOFers and as brand new crofters on Rum when I have been aware of my potential readership and self-censored. Call it the Dooce Effect ;), call it politically astute, call it Pollyanna-itis or merely put it down to limited internet access and a care about what my family and friends are reading about us. But to be fair our adventure thus far has been amazing, soul-feeding, inspiring and everything we hoped for and more. Sure, the four of us have private memories and in jokes and things we have shared with people that never made it to the blog but in the main I think you certainly get the edited highlights here, if not the full low down.

In the last few weeks I have met a couple of people for the first time that have read this blog before meeting us. I have no idea if we live up to the blog in real life, I certainly talk enough to blast people with words if nothing else! I've been telling people that we are happy here, life is good, while not without challenges this beats sitting in traffic jams, worrying about fuel costs, watching crap TV and office politics any day of the week. I told a friend this week that I miss being in the van, on the road and I do. I think last year awakened within us a wanderlust that will perhaps never be satiated. I hope Dragon and Star allow it to consume them in a few years and it leads them off in search of adventure, experiences and wonderous sights, sounds and memory building. I hope it lies settled enough within Ady and I to inspire us to quirky risk taking and small scale adventures within the croft here on Rum.

Anyway. This was not what I came to blog about.... I was here for updating.

Julie, my sister in law, infact I think I am dropping the 'in law' and just calling her my sister from here on in. I've missed her so much this last year or so and a three week stay here reminded me just how much her lack of being in my life has left a big gaping hole. I have made some amazing friends here already and while I will never find replacements for the people I miss from my old life I feel very lucky that I am not friend-bereft here by any means. We are people who need people. So Julie left today after a lovely long stay and another planned for just two months away. We have now had visits from my parents, my 'sister' (who counts mostly as Ady's family) and just have our adopted 'parents' Lynda and Stuart to come and stay until we feel we have the full family seal of approval on our new life. Our first lots of friends all arrive together in a cluster in a couple of weeks which will be lovely.

Sharing our idyll

Very slack on the blogging front again, even with internet!

It's been busy here on Rum and the island has a whole new feel when it is awash with tourists. A particularly busy week this week with the levels of visitors meaning the actual islanders are outnumbered about 4 to 1. While the sun continues to shine here on Kinlochv village meaning we are all sunkissed, barbecuing and enjoying the summer the rest of the UK seems to be suffering all sorts of extreme weather conditions.

We've almost been having a bit of a rest from the stressy side of our new life here and I think after all the angst of the static move we probably needed that downtime. It coincided nicely with the arrival of our first guests - my parents. They came for a week and stayed here in the static with us. We explored some of the island with them, they had a castle tour, met the rest of the islanders and got a real taste of our life. It was fabulous to see them and share our new home with them and to celebrate Mum's birthday with her in person. Parting again and waving them off on the ferry was tough, as we have no plans to visit Sussex again any time soon so we knew it would only be on their next visit all the way up here we'd see them again.

Two out, six in though as we had a weekend to ourselves before our next visitors arrived - SIL Julie, her mother, Dragon & Star's three cousins (9 yo twins J&M and 4yo L) and their dog Mable. They are here for nearly 3 weeks and it's lovely for the kids to have playmates, Bonnie to have a rough and tumble puppy pal and us to have Julie around. More sharing our new life, showing off our island and merging the life we used to have with the one we live now. Watching Dragon and Star show their cousins the best places to swim in the river, to gather beachcombed treasure from the shore, where to spot the best nature and wildlife and introducing them to the other islanders makes me realise how very quickly this has become our home.

Life on the island for us continues alongside all of this hosting guests. We've been on the weekly boat trip wildlife spotting and been lucky enough to witness close encounters with minke whales and super pods of dolphins - weekly catchphrase 'The sea is ALIVE!' as we enjoy ever more spectacular scenery and nature spotting as the weeks go by. I've been selling cakes to the teashop, eggs to the shop and bartering for salad and sausages. Rum is holding a weekly Market Day on a Wednesday and I've been selling home baking and crafty bits aswell as enjoying the company of fellow 'traders' for a couple of hours in the village hall and chatting to the tourists.

Tomorrow, weather permitting we'll be playing host to all comers to our Croft Warming Barbecue, our way of toasting our new home and saying thanks to all those who helped us finally get it here.

In the meantime we are also getting to grips with 'infrastructure' type stuff on the croft. Sorting out water, power, toilet and starting to think hard about what is going where and longer term plans for the land, livestock, crops and buildings. We've been researching, reading and just walking the land getting to grips with what we've got, what we could have and how we're going to get it. Fruit bushes arrived last week and seem to be doing okay planted down at the bottom of the croft and we have geese arriving in a couple of weeks time. We've made a duck pond and got our first WWOOFers booked to stay. I have a whole list of projects to fit in and although our pace of life is the slowest it's ever been I can't ever remember being busier!