Uist Lady

Great visit to Skye. A little moody weather, but lots of good stuff showing Skye at its best. Travelled the length and breadth of the island looking at local food, to find:

and
Shitake mushrooms, carefully cultivated on birch logs.
The ingenuity and persistence of food producers in the adverse circumstances- climate, distance to market for example- knows no bounds.

Off now to Blairgowrie in Perthshire to help out at the inaugural Rattray Art Festival, instigated by a dear friend of mine, who has decided we must celebrate the opening of the exhibition with Pimms, Pies and of course Paintings.
My kind of friend.
Also to the Lairg Crofters’ Show on Saturday. Tell me what you’re all up to.

Bookmark It

I’m leaving the Outer Hebrides to head for the Inner Hebrides on a two day foodie tour of Skye in my capacity as PR consultant to the Scottish Crofting Federation. This promises to be a treat.
I’m hoping for a better crossing than last Friday’s sailing to Lochmaddy from Skye, in something of a hoolie during which absolutely everyone including the crew was ill.
Then I’m heading to Perthshire for a few days. When I return, I’ll be catching up with Lynne Hoy and her sister Nancy Ririe from the US who are coming to North Uist to plot and record Clachan Sands cemetery. Why, you may ask?
It’s a rather lovely story and I’ll tell you about it in a few days.

Bookmark It

This unassuming plant has been creating quite a stir in the world of naturalists and orchid-lovers. A large colony of Spiranthes Romanzoffiana, Irish Ladies Tresses to you and me has been discovered on Benbecula in this stunning location:

The orchids are rare in Britain, found only in tiny pockets on the west coast of Scotland, parts of Ireland and Devon. But almost 600 specimens have been counted by SNH field workers by this loch, raising lots of questions, as the plant has never been known to set seed here.
Now that such a large colony has been discovered, the field workers will be returning to the spot in a couple of weeks to see if they are indeed setting seed. At which point, all good botanists’ hearts will be a flutter. Watch this space.

Bookmark It

Next month holds excitement for the many of us on the Uists interested in archaeology.
From the 18th to the 25th there will be a conference of the Hebridean Archaeology Forum, which will be attended by some 30 people from the mainland including many of the BIG NAMES associated with fascinating digs and studies carried out on these islands’ pre-historic sites.
Thanks to our local archaeologists, Kate MacDonald and Becky Rennell who together form Uist Archaeology, members of the public are invited to join the conference and the field trips alongside the professionals. We’ll be there!
And the last ever dig on Baleshare beach starts up again for three weeks. It’s being carried out by SCAPE, which specialises in recording sites threatened by coastal erosion before they are lost for ever. There have already been three digs at various points on the beach, revealing quite a substantial settlement.
And this. Wonder if we’ll find any more like it next month.

Bookmark It

Uist residents and holidaymakers joined the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers in a ‘bioblitz’ to record the wildlife in the Balranald RSPB reserve in North Uist.
Like Louis, above, we grabbed large nets and skimmed them over the flower-rich grasslands known as machair.

Isabel, 7, from Haltwhistle was fascinated by everything she found, especially these tiny machair snails.

Lots of people joined in. More than 200 species were recorded, including 25 species of bird. Buglife’s Craig Macadam talked with passion about even the humblest creepycrawly we found. He’s just written a guide to mayflies, and showed me how to identify them.

Ali was well pleased with her rare waxcaps.

And I think I learned the difference between moths and butterflies.

This moth vibrated its wings on my finger to warm itself up before flying away. Strange but nice.
(Read my report of the bioblitz in today’s Press and Journal or the local papers later this week.)

Bookmark It

With my PR hat on, I attended the Black Isle Show last week to promote the Scottish Crofting Federation’s Scottish Crofting Produce quality mark using the medium of pies.
Yes, pies are good communicators. They drew hordes into the SCF stand, and as they sat there ,plump and juicy waiting to be eaten we were able to tell our salivating visitors of their great assets.
For one, they were filled with prime young grass-fed mutton. The sheep which obligingly provided the filling for our pies grew up in Rogart, Sutherland eating grass and heather. As part of SCF’s Scottish Crofting Produce quality mark scheme, it was not fed lots of artificial inputs, nor were the pastures where it was reared. Research now proves that the meat from sheep and cattle reared in this way contains more goodies like Vitamins A,E and K, more CLAs and more Omega 3s than their equivalent grain-fed intensively reared animals.
So our pie fillings were about as healthy as can be. They were hand-made by Allan Doherty, a true artesan baker who with his wife Alex runs the Ullapool Bakery. The pastry was just right, crumbly and delicious.
Then there’s the environmental aspect. The Scottish Highlands and Islands need a healthy balance of livestock to graze them to maintain their fragile eco-system, and at this moment there aren’t enough sheep on the hills, for a variety of reasons.

By creating a line of Crofter’s Pies, featuring young mutton, SCF will also create a demand for mutton, encouraging crofters to grow more sheep for an assured market. That will benefit the crofter, the environment, the local economy and the consumer. That’s my reasoning anyway, and SCF like the notion enough to start serious product development.
And at the show, it seemed visitors couldn’t get enough of our pies. They loved everything about them, particularly the tender, flavourful meat. Now we just have to bring them to market.
Who ate all the pies? The good folk of SCF:

Bookmark It

I’m off to the Black Isle Show tomorrow- if you’re passing I139 on Thursday come and say hello. There might even be a bit of mutton pie to sample as we’re doing crofter’s pie tastings as a bit of informal product research…more follows!
Meanwhile, join me and 30 others on a beautiful walk to the tidal island of Vallay a few days ago:

I think you’ll agree Vallay is absolutely magical. There’s an exhibition about it in Taigh Chearsabhagh until January, well worth the visit, if you’re in these parts.

Bookmark It

This week saw the South Uist and Benbecula Agricultural Society’s annual show at Iochdar. The weather wasn’t up to much, but at least it didn’t rain. Cattle were back at the show after a two year absence, and the show had a good buzz this year. Next year the show will move from its traditional Wednesday after Games week to the Saturday after the North Uist Games, by the way, thus helping crofters who can’t get time off their other jobs, and also adding to a great week for visitors coming for Games and the Young Piper of the Year competition.

Supreme cattle champion was this babe just three months old. She was too shy to get any closer.Her breeder is Iain Francis Morrison of Gerinish.

Supreme sheep champions were these wedder lambs from John Maclean of Garrynamonie.



You’ll find all the results on a new page on the left hand side.

Bookmark It

stop press: I’ve now posted the results of the games on a new page on the left hand side

The South and North Uist Highland Games take place in the same week, separated by one day, during which Highlands and Islands Young Piper of the Year competition takes place in Benbecula.
They are sociable days, calendar days when you are sure to meet old friends and people you haven’t seen perhaps for the last year.
Here is the week in pictures:
The South Uist Games took place in overcast, windy conditions.



Young Piper of the Year was James D MacKenzie, of Back, Lewis.

Connor Sinclair from Crieff is under-15 champion, and definitely one to watch::

The North Uist Games. Ranald Fraser of Lewis swept the board in field events:



The start of the hill race, which was won by a Glaswegian holiday maker. That’s the nice thing about the games, anyone can join in. Islanders don’t mind if mainlanders beat them-well, not that much.

Bookmark It

Another good weather window, so we went on the two hour walk of the RSPB reserve at Balranald.
You never know whom you might meet as you go round. We met several people, known and unknown, and Hougharry beach was incredibly crowded with at least TEN people on it.

Bumping into RSPB bird recorder Brian was very interesting: he revealed corn buntings talk in dialects. A researcher from Aberystweth University has been here studying the different dialects talked by our 70 strong population of corn buntings. Apparently it varies from district to district. Brian has promised to put me in touch with the Aberystwyth man when he’s next here in about three weeks, so watch this space.
We also found two people measuring out the shoreline into a 4m square. ‘A plot for a house?’ suggested Mr Mac trying not to sound facetious. It was merely an opening gambit after all.

It turned out the pair were recording the flora within the plot to compare with a study last done on the same spot in 1976. They had a check list of about 90 species. It’s a Macaulay Institute, Liverpool University and SNH study. Lots of people come here and study things, but we rarely get told who they are, what they’re looking at and what the results might be, so it was handy to bump into Robin and Sara. They’re doing the same thing right across the Scottish islands and North Coast. Robin’s doing it for his PhD, Sarah for probably the best summer job ever- and a chance to suffer hypothermia and sunburn all in one day, most days.
We know that our islands are incredibly rich in biodiversity, but most of us are quite ignorant of what is there, right under our eyes. So I’m excited when Keiren Jones, our machair apprentice tells me we’re having a Uist ‘Bioblitz’ in August, where a dozen or so experts are coming from far and near to record what they find in Balranald over a day. Members of the public are invited too.

Bookmark It