egg fun and new vehicles

We held the inaugural 1st Annual Kilbrannan Farm Egg Hurling Competition last Sunday, amid cold temperatures but blue skies.

The idea is that you have half an hour to come up with, design, source and build, a device for hurling a decorated hard-boiled egg the furthest distance down the hill. You can use any material found on the farm. You can't just chuck it, there has to be some sort of mechanical device involved.

We made teams of two, girls vs. boys, and the boys won by a long chalk :-)

Today, we did a rash thing, and swapped our very swanky 2005 Jeep Grand Cherokee for a 1999 Ford F-150 pickup, and a 2003 Ford Focus wagon. Wagon? Surely that's an estate car? Well, it gets very confusing - a pickup is a truck, an estate is a wagon, a truck (lorry) is a tractor, a tractor is thankfully still a tractor, a caravan is a bloody trailer, but a trailer is a trailer too, and folk still think you are talking about a caravan! Woh, 2 countries separated by the same language. It's a wonder we didn't swap our SUV and end up with a hoop and stick - sorry, obscure joke reference in there.

What else? The ground tubes are in for the polytunnel, more on this in another post. I went mad and ordered satellite broadband, haven't got an installation date yet. I got my firearm's certificate, so could go buy a gun. Jane is on the board of the Mersey Tobeatic Research Institute, I'm on the board of the Queen's County Fair Association. I've joined the local Board of Trade, and there are discussions about me building a new website for Caledonia and area, more on this anon. The kids got great school reports, they are both doing really well. I think that's about it.

tragic news

As many of you already know, we were floored last Monday by the sudden and totally unexpected death of Jane's nephew, Kit. All of us with children can only hope that we never have to go through the pain of losing them, as poor Claire is now experiencing. All of our thoughts and best wishes are with Claire and Charlotte this morning.

The funeral is today, in Yorkshire, and Jane flew back to the UK last Friday to be with her sister. We were joking a couple of weeks ago, saying that we should save the proceeds from egg sales for a Funeral Flying Fund, as we realise the inevitability of making that trans-atlantic journey - but, bloody hell, we didn't think it would be Kit, or so soon.

I suppose it's at times like this that you feel a long way from home. Though, to be honest, when you've lived as an incomer on Skye, everywhere is a helluva long way away, and it's probably quicker and easier living in Nova Scotia, albeit a bit more expensive to get back!

So, the kids and I are holding the fort and looking forward to having Jane back on Saturday - I am sure that she is at least as needed and appreciated where she is though.

The sap is rising!

It's time for the first harvest of the year, and one I have looked forward to for a long time. I remember a fellow tapping birch trees in Lochranza when I was Breagh's age and have harboured a desire to do it ever since. Since we now own our own woodland, including several sugar maples, I have been waiting for early Spring to get doing. Jonathon came over the other day to say he reckoned the time was right - several warm sunny days with cold frosty nights, and the sap should be running.

We helped him put the taps, or spiles, into several of his trees and dashed off to the hardware store to buy some for ourselves. A brace drill, 7/16" (none of your metric nonsense here!) auger bit, 4 spiles, 4 small buckets, 4 plastic bags plus ubiquitous bundle of baler twine were required and off to the woods we went. Luckily, we have several sugar maples at the edge of our woods, at the top of the main pasture and because the buckets need emptying, we looked no further for larger trees. It's recommended that a tree should be at least 7 inches in diameter, but most folk wouldn't tap anything less than 12". We drilled a hole about 6cm deep (a 6cm hole with a 7/16" bit - hey! I'm ambidextrous), on the south side of the tree, about a metre (note, euro spelling) up. After cleaning the hole, the sap was already dripping out and tapping the spile into the hole with a bucket hung on in the center (sorry, couldn't resist), resulted in a satisfying steady drip. Plastic bag over the top in case of rain.

The sap is only 2% sugar, or so, but tastes nicely sweet and can be drunk fresh, used to make tea (note to self: could do with some mint leaves next year) or, most famously, boiled down to make maple syrup. It takes about 30-40 : 1 reduction to make good syrup, so a lot of boiling. Jonathon pointed out "it'll take the paint of your walls" with the steam, so we'll try to put the jeelie pan over the firepit and do the boiling outside.



In other news, Jane has been working with the horses on a daily basis and Mocha, especially, is coming on really well. Kids are doing fine, Breagh has applied to go on a week-long vet camp in Prince Edward Island in July. Cam won 3rd prize in a moose-calling competition! I've just about decided on a new business name, more on that in another post.