blog

Summing Up

by bean a' chroiteir - 12:15 on 06 October 2008

Our news and bits and pieces I keep forgetting to mention…

Firstly, Ciorstag, our lovely black and white cow, left the croft on Thursday. She is about 14 years old and has given the Crofter (and his Grandfather before him) a calf every single year bar the first two. A lovely, if slightly shy cow, I was rather attached to her for various reasons. My favourite “cow photo” is one I took of her almost three years ago standing behind the house with the winter sun behind her, giving her a golden outline. There’s another reason too though: last May we had the cows down at the township fank for the vet to dose. Not wanting to take them back to the croft via the road, the Crofter let them out onto the hill and said we’d have to get them back onto the croft in the morning as Ciorstag was due to calf. At some point between then and the morning the “we” became the Wee Crofter and I as the Crofter had to go and drive buses! So, off we set onto the common grazing, me not in the best of form as I was feeling rubbish... Crossed the glen and finally saw the cows in the distance but shout as we might they weren’t for coming at all (they usually do). This, of course worsened my mood considerably, until, nearing them I saw the reason for their reluctance…lying on the ground was a tiny white calf, barely born! Once we reached them Ciorstag nudged her newborn onto her feet and together we all started the journey home. They know the way fine (cows are amazing with routes, places etc) and though it was slow, we got there in the end. All the way I had to keep prodding poor Ciorstag along (she had just given birth remember) and she was perfectly happy for me to get up close to her calf and encourage her along too. It was quite an experience, not least because I found out the next day why I was feeling so rubbish…I was pregnant! So, it was with not a little sadness that she was sent away on Thursday. The soon-to-be-defunct scheme that pays for the disposal of animals that are too old to enter the food chain meant that the Crofter could either keep her, and thus encumber himself with hefty vet bills when she got too old and disposal costs thereafter, or get rid of her before the scheme ends. Sadly, no matter how much we loved her, it just wasn’t viable to keep her. I hate that word “viable”! So, my weepiness was understandable on Thursday! Of course, in farming, a farmer wouldn’t give it a second thought, but crofting is different and the old way would definitely have been to keep her and let her see out her days on the croft – after all those calves she’d given it was the least she could’ve expected. It’s so sad that money has to be a consideration.

Anyway, that was more of a full blown story rather than a snippet, so I’ll keep the next few short! I laughed the other night as I gave the baby Crofter his bottle before bed to hear the Crofter once again refer to the tiny wee patch of garden that I tidied up over the summer as the “Tommy Burns Memorial Garden”. I’ve probably mentioned this before – it was never intended as a memorial to anyone, but the Wee Crofter thus named it and it the name has stuck! It makes me laugh though, and there aren’t many men as deserving as the great TB, so I think we’ll still be calling it that in years to come!

Baby Crofter is eating us out of house and home! Breakfast today: cup of milk, bowl of porridge with one mashed banana, half a slice of toast…and by the time Dadaidh comes home, he’s grabbing toast left, right and centre. Lunch: pasta with chilli tomato sauce, one big bowl of, followed by baby biscuits and enough rice cakes to sink a ship! Tea: cup of milk, veggie curry and rice, one big bowl of, followed by more rice cakes, sweetcorn, and, I can’t remember what else. Oink, oink, Baby Crofter! He is getting more hair again – it seems to grow in fits and starts! His forearms are like Popeye’s - so chunky that some of his clothes are too tight to fit over them! His feet are too big for his sleepysuits! He is eager to get on the move but has yet to work out how it’s done…His latest is screaming at the top of his voice when he isn’t being paid enough attention and crying when I leave the room – which is nice though sometimes very frustrating! He makes up for it though in a million different ways – not least when he turns to one of us when our name is said – Curraidh, Robbie, Mamaidh and Dadaidh! He’s also putting his arms out to be lifted – it melts your heart and makes you feel incredibly special!

The Crofter is alive and kicking but getting sent to the doctor this week to check out his tetanus status. He keeps getting dirty cuts and scrapes out on the croft and when he came in last Sunday with a rather large bump and cut on his forehead (he hit it with the fencing post thingy) I cleaned it as best as I could and announced to the needle-feartie that he needs a tetanus as one day one of these cuts will get infected.

The Wee Crofter is also eating us out of house and home. Every meal gets demolished and he swears it was the best meal he’s ever had. Hmmm! Why then does he ask for pizza at every given opportunity (one day I’ll surprise him and give it to him!) On Friday night he scoffed a huge plate of battered sole – I think he’d have eaten ours too given the chance! Last night was Greek Chicken (it comes in a marinade from the butcher that the old wifies refer to as Greek Sauce!) and he polished off far more than I expected!

As for me, well I get a mention in the school’s latest newsletter – headline news no less! (A thank you for designing the website banner!)

It has turned cold – the tops of the mountains over on the mainland are white and on Friday morning we had a lot of hailstorms. It grew clearer over the weekend, but cold! When I went up to bed on Saturday night the wee thermometer on my alarm clock read 11.7 degrees! Brr! And yet, there is a single flower blooming on the towering peaks of the rhododendrons.

The fire has been on every day for the last eight days, though we are being a bit mean with it: not putting it on before late afternoon and not burning more than half a scuttle of coal per day! Our wood burns well enough. Of course, we now have to use a child proof fireguard which seems to take up half the room – I’m sure we’ll get used to it! It takes me back to the house I lived in as a child and all the houses I lived in with the Wee Crofter where, being electric or gas fires, it was safe to finish off drying the socks and pants on the fireguard. Rest assured with a sparky real fire, we’ll not be doing that this time round! As for the central heating – well! I phoned up the oil suppliers that deliver on the island last week to get the current prices – to fill our oil tank is going to cost a whopping £556!!! So, of course, the heating is being restricted too – an hour in the morning and not again unless it’s really cold mid-afternoon before the fire goes on! I expect everyone is making similar adjustments because of fuel prices, so realise that we are not alone in feeling this pinch! I reckon sales of woolly socks and jumpers will go through the roof this autumn!

Ha! I feel old!  Listening to this week’s radio pre-match football programme on Saturday, I heard that it was two decades since Hamilton Accies last visited Celtic Park and realised that I was there – twenty years ago? Surely not! Ten maybe, but note twenty? Really? Definitely feels more like ten…!

Anyway, that’s your lot! A bit of a marathon blog! I’ll post another blog before the week is out… and then HOLIDAYS! I’ll not be here for just over a week!

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