Uist Lady

We had to step over last year’s Christmas tree to vote- but we turned out in good numbers.
Our sitting MP Angus MacNeil was re-elected with an increased majority. I caught up with him at Carinish Hall, where he was cautiously optimistic and determined to visit all polling stations the length and breadth of the Western Isles, ferries permitting.

Peter Rabbit is heard in Gaelic. Gonzalo Mazzei releases his beautiful production of five Beatrix Potter favourites on CD.

Paible school’s annual fund-raising fun run. Two and a half miles in beautiful weather. (Monty Halls viewers take note. We have lots of sunny days here!)

UISTLADY’S EXTREMELY AMATEURISH AND ILL-INFORMED NATURE NOTES:
Our swallow pair have been working hard on their nest, building it up with mud and straw. They fly in together each night to roost. We’ve seen them coming home as early as 8.15, and having a lie in until almost 12 hours later; but as the days stretch longer and longer they’re out and about by 6am and not home until after 9.
We have two pairs of wheatears around us, and lots of corn bunting paying visits every time the grass is cut. Short-eared owls cruise over this area quite often, as do buzzards. But today, as we were putting up another section of wind-break netting, a pair of golden eagles passed lazily overhead, mobbed by lapwing and oyster catchers. The sky is full of aerial battles at this time of year with ground-nesting chicks so vulnerable.
Deer are encroaching further and further onto the west side of our island, coming down from the moors near us in herds of up to 40, and decimating gardens with established trees. Nothing spooks them. It might well be that our new windbreak will now allow our saplings to shoot up, and provide lunch for the deer next spring
I heard my first corncrake of the season on Cnoc An Torrain machair a few days ago, but they’ve been here a week or so already, I’m told.
It’s still not completely dark by well after 11pm, so we are all enjoying the long days by getting lots of work done around our homes and crofts. The winds are mainly northerly though, so growth is slow. Even my mizuna leaves seem to be in suspended animation.
And Anneke and I STILL haven’t done the Preparation 500. What is to become of our garden?

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Last autumn our friend Anneke left the rarefied air of Perthshire and came to live in rugged North Uist, determined to start a community garden here. She’s looking at a number of sites but in the meantime has been given space in a polytunnel and a nice-sized patch in someone else’s garden to get going.
I immediately volunteered to help her, desperate to get my hands dirty and do some real work after far too many years festering in front of a computer.
Anneke is a Bio-dynamic gardener, so she called up on Tuesday saying it was a root day, and we could dig some beds.
I asked what a root day is, and how you know it’s one. Anneke says it’s a propitious day for planting roots, or equally, doing what we were doing and getting connected with the soil. And she has a bio-dynamic calendar to tell her this, but it’s do with phases of the moon. I’m pleased to report I did indeed feel connected with the soil, especially when hand-weeding the beds.

There’s Anneke, working hard on our three raised beds. To my relief, the soil was soft and easy to dig, so I didn’t have to stop every two minutes, gasping and wheezing.
Tomorrow, Anneke said, we’ll do the preparation 500. It’s a good day for that.
What’s the preparation 500? I asked.
Turns out it’s basically cow’s manure fermented in a cow horn underground overwinter. I wondered if I was hearing Anneke quite right, but this is indeed the case. She has brought one she made earlier over with her. We have to take out the resulting potent compost, dilute it in water, stirring a lot, and then spread it over the beds as an early conditioner.
But yesterday was very wet and blowy, so we couldn’t do that. We went instead to the polytunnel, sowed seeds and pricked out seedlings. Anneke said although it was a root day, instead of a leaf day which would have been better, it was still OK. I said with the blowy rain it felt quite leafy to me, but I don’t think my untutored views hold much weight with someone as experienced in Bio-dynamics as Anneke.

We pricked out cos lettuce, and sowed basil and celery seed, cabbage and leaf beet.
Anneke is trying jiffy pots,that swell up like bloated, burst tea bags when you water them. You put the seeds straight in, so we did the cabbage and leaf beets in those. I don’t think Anneke is too impressed with the jiffy pots so far, especially as when buying them in small amounts you can only get ones which contain the dreaded PEAT of which Anneke definitely doesn’t approve.
I’m looking forward to the cow horn ceremony at the weekend. We had escaped cattle trample Mac Lodge garden yesterday, and I’m pleased to report they splattered quite a bit of the fresh stuff around. Mr Mac says he will shovel it onto the bare patches in the grass.

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Frin and Lewis are doing a survey of the North Uist cockle beds as part of research to create a sustainable management plan for cockle-gathering on a commercial scale.

North Uist author Flora MacDonald has had her enchanting memoir Cocoa and Crabs shortlisted for a Tesco Bank Summer Read award. She’s up there with Banks, Rankin, Duffy, McCall Smith… go Florraidh!

The ladies of the Guild raised £1600 at their sale of work in Carinish church hall- no wonder, people were queueing round the block for their delicious baking.

…and Uistlady is getting ready to go to South Africa on a big adventure. More follows!

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The Met office has told us to get ready for a large snowfall tonight, and all schools in Lewis and Harris are to close tomorrow. Uist schools can use their discretion. What’s happened to our friendly Gulf stream?

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