Tuesday, 8 October 2013
Sunday, 6 October 2013
Blog post brought to you by a brisk south-easterly
All the while we have tenants renting out our house we have a small amount of money per month which we re-invest back in to something to make our life easier up here on the croft. That has been spent on things like our solar panels and invertors, the pipe and plumbing bits to take water out of the burn and hook the static up, the costs involved in getting our compost loo here (helped along lots by the crowd funders and donators of the loo itself). This month we spent it on a wee wind turbine. It's just 500w max but plenty for our modest requirements living a life as we do with no washing machine, fridge, freezer, toaster, kettle or microwave.
Our current power set up is pretty straightforward but not very intuitive. We have a small solar panel which charges up a battery from which the water pump and the main lights work in the static. A second larger solar panel is connected to another battery which runs the internet for a few hours each night and during sunny days charges up various things including torches, mobile phones, tablet / netbook / kids games consoles. A petrol generator fills in the gap and is run most evenings for an hour to so to charge everything up and give us some light to eat dinner by.
So we've invested in this little wind turbine which will hopefully lessen the need for the genny and therefore save us money on buying in petrol and the planet on us burning a little less petrol. It should also mean that rather than rely on a set time every evening we can charge stuff up as and when and maybe even have the internet on all the time - something which will please Davies and Scarlett no end and make replying to emails, researching things and uploading a quick photo to the blog a much easier affair. Long term it may mean we can look at appliances like a dehumidifier to reduce the condensation and damp in the static, maybe run the little fridge in the static (currently run off bottled gas). It's another of our small steps meaning only small mistakes experiments. If it doesn't work for us or goes wrong we have not invested too much money and will have learnt some more about wind turbines and alternative technology into the bargain.
So the turbine and charge controller arrived. We already had a pole to mount it on - purchased to the spec given to us by the turbine supplier. We forced ourselves to work slow and steady on it rather than race ahead in excitement and after two days we finally raised the pole late this afternoon. With a wind turbine you work backwards, doing all the wiring and electrics first before finally putting the rotor blades on the turbine and lifting up the pole last. It was quite a momentous feeling standing that pole up and seeing, hearing and actually feeling the blades start to turn and lights come on in the static to show it was working, generating power and making this work.
It's not been without teething problems, swear words and experimental bodging and we still want to further secure the pole with some more guy lines but for once we are sitting here listening to the wind with glee and delight as it feeds power into our battery bank and charges up things for us rather than threatening to take the roof from our heads and keep us awake.
You live, you learn
A couple of weeks ago we hit a bit of a wall. Regular readers and those who know us well could probably tell by the tone of posts. In our original business plan we hoped to built a house in year one here on Rum. We speedily readjusted that ambition to year two and set about lots of research accordingly. Permaculture principles and our own wisdom dictated that you make small, slow decisions and then any mistakes are small too. We always planned to spend at least a year living on the land learning about our environment before choosing a house site. We wanted to be familiar with where the sun rose and set at different times of year, where the wind blew most, the rain fell least and so on. After our first winter we were ready and had a house site marked out - it took into account sunrise and sunset, access, drainage and lie of the land, access both for building materials and for us to live in it. We looked at various options for house builds from metal agricultural building type sheds to kit houses to log cabins and took lots of advice. If our house had sold down south we were pretty much poised and ready to go.
Except it didn't. So we thought about alternative short term temporary accommodation which would be better than the static and buy us time to build what our actual dream home might look like if time pressure were no object (money will always be an object even if we sold our house, won the lottery (which we don't even play) and struck oil or found an export market for mud on the croft!). I never meant to raise my children in a caravan, this was supposed to be a pop up temporary housing solution to get us to Rum so we could start building our life here and making our dreams come true.
Next year our plan is to sort out a longer term short term house for us. Something that will be suitable for the two or three years it might take us to build our alternative green build dream home. Something that we can have a washing machine and a bath in. Somewhere with more space than the static, less damp and condensation, somewhere that feels more like a home and less like a slightly upgraded camping trip. This will take some doing - it comes with a pretty big price tag but we have A Plan - to be unleashed upon the world once we have worked out the final details ourselves.
In the process of arriving at The Plan we had some frank family discussions. About whether this life is working, about whether the highs make up for the lows, if the tough bits are simply too tough and whether when we look back on this period of our lives (which for Davies and Scarlett is a very big period of their lives and forever will be - what you do when you are 39 and 49 is much less likely to be life forming than what you did when you were 10 and 13) it will be with affection, with appreciation of an experience worth having or as a period of endurance not worth the high costs.
We turned to our usual tried and tested Goddard method of checking where we're at - Bad, Good, Learnt. We did it for our 18 months here so far:
Davies:
Bad - missing friends
Good - the little things - during the course of this conversation I have seen an eagle out of the window. Here on Rum it's a constant stream of little things that I actually notice and lift me rather than an overall good or bad.
Learnt - About people and what a community means.
Scarlett:
Bad - moldy toys and a small space to live in.
Good - Having all the animals.
Learnt - so much about wildlife and nature.
Ady:
Bad - the toilet, the lack of power, the weather, the mud, issues with transport.
Good - Freedom, true satisfaction of achieving victories. Truly relaxing of an evening with candles and firelight, no distractions, the remoteness, the community.
Learnt - About power and alternate technology. About having gratitude fro small, meaningful things, prioritising achivevements, about agriculture and horticulture in a totally different climate. I've learnt some hard lessons.
Nic
Bad - No bath. No washing machine. Missing friends and family.
Good - Feeling that I am really living. That all victories are real, genuine victories, that everything is worthwhile and makes a difference, that choice I make are truly my own and have an impact and an influence.
Learnt - How to peg out washing according to wind direction. Something that never made any difference at all in a sheltered back garden. How to read a weather forecast long and short term and apply it to planning your day and week ahead activities -which day would be good to get washing done, collect firewood, drive across the river when it is low enough. How to ensure that you genuinely do have enough food in your 'store cupboard' to feed your family when the boat may be cancelled, planning dinner making use of a freezer a mile away.
I actually think we have learned even more than we listed above. I know that if we'd known before we moved here just how many challenges we'd face then we probably wouldn't have come. Because we could never have believed just how many amazing highs we 'd experience or appreciate how rich our lives are as a result. Davies probably summed up best talking about the 'little things'. This week the colours on Rum have changed. The light is different, the sky is somehow lower. I could not capture than on camera to share with you in a photograph and my words fall way short of explaining what that means. It is part an assault on all our senses - were we to be blindfold or hold our hands over our ears, or to stop inhaling deeply and tasting, smelling, feeling the season changing then we would still somehow know. There is in turn an urgency to finish getting firewood up the hill and chopped up, complete that last pick of the brambles before the go over for this year and hang one last load of washing out to line dry before that joy is once again lost until the spring, alongside that there is an internal slowing down and keeping pace with the winter - earlier to bed and later to rise as the daylight hours reduce, a feeling of *needing* to be outside in the middle of the day soaking up as much daylight as possible. We are only 2 weeks away from the ferry timetable changing to the winter times.
The people we were 2 years ago may have chosen not to take up the offer / challenge / invite / opportunity to come and live here and take this life on. But we are no longer the people we were 2 years ago and it has become clear to all of us in our recent period of re-examination of our lives and what is important to us that everything we have learned tells us that this is the right place for us for now, if only because there is still so much more to learn.
Except it didn't. So we thought about alternative short term temporary accommodation which would be better than the static and buy us time to build what our actual dream home might look like if time pressure were no object (money will always be an object even if we sold our house, won the lottery (which we don't even play) and struck oil or found an export market for mud on the croft!). I never meant to raise my children in a caravan, this was supposed to be a pop up temporary housing solution to get us to Rum so we could start building our life here and making our dreams come true.
Next year our plan is to sort out a longer term short term house for us. Something that will be suitable for the two or three years it might take us to build our alternative green build dream home. Something that we can have a washing machine and a bath in. Somewhere with more space than the static, less damp and condensation, somewhere that feels more like a home and less like a slightly upgraded camping trip. This will take some doing - it comes with a pretty big price tag but we have A Plan - to be unleashed upon the world once we have worked out the final details ourselves.
In the process of arriving at The Plan we had some frank family discussions. About whether this life is working, about whether the highs make up for the lows, if the tough bits are simply too tough and whether when we look back on this period of our lives (which for Davies and Scarlett is a very big period of their lives and forever will be - what you do when you are 39 and 49 is much less likely to be life forming than what you did when you were 10 and 13) it will be with affection, with appreciation of an experience worth having or as a period of endurance not worth the high costs.
We turned to our usual tried and tested Goddard method of checking where we're at - Bad, Good, Learnt. We did it for our 18 months here so far:
Davies:
Bad - missing friends
Good - the little things - during the course of this conversation I have seen an eagle out of the window. Here on Rum it's a constant stream of little things that I actually notice and lift me rather than an overall good or bad.
Learnt - About people and what a community means.
Scarlett:
Bad - moldy toys and a small space to live in.
Good - Having all the animals.
Learnt - so much about wildlife and nature.
Ady:
Bad - the toilet, the lack of power, the weather, the mud, issues with transport.
Good - Freedom, true satisfaction of achieving victories. Truly relaxing of an evening with candles and firelight, no distractions, the remoteness, the community.
Learnt - About power and alternate technology. About having gratitude fro small, meaningful things, prioritising achivevements, about agriculture and horticulture in a totally different climate. I've learnt some hard lessons.
Nic
Bad - No bath. No washing machine. Missing friends and family.
Good - Feeling that I am really living. That all victories are real, genuine victories, that everything is worthwhile and makes a difference, that choice I make are truly my own and have an impact and an influence.
Learnt - How to peg out washing according to wind direction. Something that never made any difference at all in a sheltered back garden. How to read a weather forecast long and short term and apply it to planning your day and week ahead activities -which day would be good to get washing done, collect firewood, drive across the river when it is low enough. How to ensure that you genuinely do have enough food in your 'store cupboard' to feed your family when the boat may be cancelled, planning dinner making use of a freezer a mile away.
I actually think we have learned even more than we listed above. I know that if we'd known before we moved here just how many challenges we'd face then we probably wouldn't have come. Because we could never have believed just how many amazing highs we 'd experience or appreciate how rich our lives are as a result. Davies probably summed up best talking about the 'little things'. This week the colours on Rum have changed. The light is different, the sky is somehow lower. I could not capture than on camera to share with you in a photograph and my words fall way short of explaining what that means. It is part an assault on all our senses - were we to be blindfold or hold our hands over our ears, or to stop inhaling deeply and tasting, smelling, feeling the season changing then we would still somehow know. There is in turn an urgency to finish getting firewood up the hill and chopped up, complete that last pick of the brambles before the go over for this year and hang one last load of washing out to line dry before that joy is once again lost until the spring, alongside that there is an internal slowing down and keeping pace with the winter - earlier to bed and later to rise as the daylight hours reduce, a feeling of *needing* to be outside in the middle of the day soaking up as much daylight as possible. We are only 2 weeks away from the ferry timetable changing to the winter times.
The people we were 2 years ago may have chosen not to take up the offer / challenge / invite / opportunity to come and live here and take this life on. But we are no longer the people we were 2 years ago and it has become clear to all of us in our recent period of re-examination of our lives and what is important to us that everything we have learned tells us that this is the right place for us for now, if only because there is still so much more to learn.
Friday, 4 October 2013
At the wings of a turkey
dreadful photo of me, but lesson learned to hold a turkey LOW to the ground and nowhere near your face!
Tuesday, 1 October 2013
Win some, lose some
After the busyness that was last week we have been focusing more on ourselves and our croft this week. Yesterday we took a walk up the hill behind the croft. We've long planned to follow Primrose Burn, the fas rushing little waterfall at the edge of our croft where our water comes from. I've looked on maps and it appears to split into two and then stop which we refused to believe so decided to head up the hill and find out for ourselves.
Armed with kendal mintcake bought to us last month from friends who live in Kendal and save for just such an adventure we headed off. Walking anywhere on Rum is hard work - the ground is boggy, very uneven and hard to tell what you're putting your foot on next. The topography is extreme so you are almost always either climbing uphill or downhill too. That means that even a miles walking feels like you've done at least three!
We discovered that the burn does indeed fork off in two directions and both seem to disappear. One is clearly a spring, the other is probably also a spring but may run faster when the water levels are not as low as they are currently. What we did learn though is that most of the water is from neither of those orginal places but from the steep banks of the burn at a certain point where the banks are running with water down the rocks from the ground thereabouts. Rum is like a giant sponge - very mossy and there are places where even when we are on fire alert and it has not rained for weeks and weeks that water still runs from the peaty ground. I think Primrose Burn is one of those natural places where water always runs. And hurrah for that!
We climbed high enough to see right across to Eigg on the south side of the island and Skye and Soay on the north but not quite high enough to see Canna and Muck to the west. The mainland to the east is always visible anyway. A sea eagle glided over head for a while and we startled a herd of red deer hinds and saw lots of small birds darting about which we failed to identify. It was a gorgeous last day of September day as the photos I uploaded yesterday show.
Today was less rewarding - I spent most of the day fixing up the net roof of our fruit cage. We have not yet moved our fruit bushes into it as we were waiting for their dormant time before transplanting them - fingers crossed for dry weather tomorrow as that is our planned job for then. Once we've done that we'll see how much space we have left and order some more soft fruit to fill the cage for next year. The turkeys have made huge holes in the cage roof by roosting on it and I am not at all sure we have prevented them from still roosting on it, indeed in trying to chase one of them out of the fruit cage earlier it landed on a different area of netting and ripped that. I may have sworn at it quite a lot! The turkeys are like toddlers who mash up your lipsticks, use your nice paint brushes for painting custard on the curtains and blunt your good scisssors by using them to dig in the mud, they just trash everything! They have ruined my herb spiral by eating all the herbs and walking all over it, trampled all over my raised beds and wrecked the roof of the fruit cage. I have chased them out of the polytunnel countless times and I worry constantly about them getting into places they shouldn't be. Much though all our ethics and beliefs in livestock keeping are for free ranging animals demonstrating natural behaviours these turkeys are pushing me to my limits and I think we will have to resort to a large pen to keep them in check. We're currently researching cheapest options to build something that gives them a nice large area to do their thing in without ruining anyone else's things...
In other news I am actually looking forward to the rainy days forecast for the end of the week as I have lots of reading and researching I am keen to do to plan ahead for next years crops.
So turkeys on the naughty step, rain a-coming but happily anticipated and much needed Goddard time being taken.
Armed with kendal mintcake bought to us last month from friends who live in Kendal and save for just such an adventure we headed off. Walking anywhere on Rum is hard work - the ground is boggy, very uneven and hard to tell what you're putting your foot on next. The topography is extreme so you are almost always either climbing uphill or downhill too. That means that even a miles walking feels like you've done at least three!
We discovered that the burn does indeed fork off in two directions and both seem to disappear. One is clearly a spring, the other is probably also a spring but may run faster when the water levels are not as low as they are currently. What we did learn though is that most of the water is from neither of those orginal places but from the steep banks of the burn at a certain point where the banks are running with water down the rocks from the ground thereabouts. Rum is like a giant sponge - very mossy and there are places where even when we are on fire alert and it has not rained for weeks and weeks that water still runs from the peaty ground. I think Primrose Burn is one of those natural places where water always runs. And hurrah for that!
We climbed high enough to see right across to Eigg on the south side of the island and Skye and Soay on the north but not quite high enough to see Canna and Muck to the west. The mainland to the east is always visible anyway. A sea eagle glided over head for a while and we startled a herd of red deer hinds and saw lots of small birds darting about which we failed to identify. It was a gorgeous last day of September day as the photos I uploaded yesterday show.
Today was less rewarding - I spent most of the day fixing up the net roof of our fruit cage. We have not yet moved our fruit bushes into it as we were waiting for their dormant time before transplanting them - fingers crossed for dry weather tomorrow as that is our planned job for then. Once we've done that we'll see how much space we have left and order some more soft fruit to fill the cage for next year. The turkeys have made huge holes in the cage roof by roosting on it and I am not at all sure we have prevented them from still roosting on it, indeed in trying to chase one of them out of the fruit cage earlier it landed on a different area of netting and ripped that. I may have sworn at it quite a lot! The turkeys are like toddlers who mash up your lipsticks, use your nice paint brushes for painting custard on the curtains and blunt your good scisssors by using them to dig in the mud, they just trash everything! They have ruined my herb spiral by eating all the herbs and walking all over it, trampled all over my raised beds and wrecked the roof of the fruit cage. I have chased them out of the polytunnel countless times and I worry constantly about them getting into places they shouldn't be. Much though all our ethics and beliefs in livestock keeping are for free ranging animals demonstrating natural behaviours these turkeys are pushing me to my limits and I think we will have to resort to a large pen to keep them in check. We're currently researching cheapest options to build something that gives them a nice large area to do their thing in without ruining anyone else's things...
In other news I am actually looking forward to the rainy days forecast for the end of the week as I have lots of reading and researching I am keen to do to plan ahead for next years crops.
So turkeys on the naughty step, rain a-coming but happily anticipated and much needed Goddard time being taken.
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