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.

quick roundup

There have been no dramatic developments recently, but a steady trickle of stuff happening that I thought I would just precis, in case there was anything of interest to anybody!

We went cross-country skiing for the first time last week. The kids were off school because of the snow, but we managed to get out to some folk locally who rented us all skis and boots for the afternoon. It was good fun, in a kind of falling down sort of way, and bizarrely enough, everyone wants to give it another go before the snow disappears.

The weather has been very variable. There was a big dump of snow a couple of days ago and then a day where it started at at -12 went up to +10 and rained. That got rid of most of the ice and snow on the drive thankfully, as it is back to sub-zero again.

Jane and Breagh have started training with the horses. Slowly introducing lunge rope work. It's going reasonably well, as far as I can see.

Our big seed order went in this week. If we manage to turn over enough ground to plant all the seed, then we are going to be pretty busy. Before we get livestock, we are going to have to address the poor state of our boundary fences, but we're thinking we might get away using electric fence for now, and tackle the fixed fence bit at a time. Jane is at a workshop on organic crop rotation today, and I have a chainsaw safety course tomorrow. She was at a spinning workshop a couple of weeks ago, and I passed my firearms safety training and am waiting for a firearm posession and acquisition licence.

We have managed a few days work in the woods, but nowhere near enough. The plan is to thin the areas of woodland edging the fields first. That should give us enough small log wood for fuel, but we need to be accumulating 6+ cords for next year. A cord of wood, for those who don't know, measures 8' x 4' x 4'. We still haven't decided which route to take for heating the house and water, and that will affect the amount of wood we need to store dramatically.

The house renovation started, but is taking a long time to get moving properly. I have worked on new wiring plans with an electrician for the upstairs and the room that will be Breagh's bedroom is completely gutted. I'm waiting for electrical supplies to come to get on with the next bit.

We have been getting fresh milk from friends who have a small herd of dairy cattle locally, so urged on by another friend, we have added cheese-making to the usual yoghurt production. Jane has made cream cheese, cottage cheese and mozzarella with great success.

We had a chem-free filter and uv treatment added to our well water system. The water was very iron-rich and smelled sulphurous, but now is drinkable straight from the tap, and no longer do we emerge from a shower dirtier than we went in. It tastes great now - I always wanted a private water supply, and it had been a bit of a disappointment. Mind you, it made me examine the plumbing in the basement - yikes, add re-plumbing to the todo list.

I still don't have a good name for my internet business, despite the best efforts of friends and family! I've had a busy spell recently doing several new website builds and a couple of voluntary projects. One, possibly of the latter type will be looking at a community website for this area - badly needed. I was at a local Board of Trade meeting the other night, at which speakers were outlining the opportunities for business startup and expansion in North Queens. Apparently, we are also in a biosphere designation. Need to look into this stuff more.

Cam has a girlfriend, Breagh has a cold - we trundle on...

Bogie Freezer

By George, it's been a bit nippy out. The thermometer was only reading -18C most of yesterday, and -20 this morning, but with wind chill the forecast reckoned -26C. Freezes the very bogies in your nose, so it does - an interesting sensation. I had icicles in my beard when I was out ploughing the drive and repairing the barn yesterday!

Another un-anticipated problem of the low temperatures became apparent when I trundled thankfully to the beer store the other night, and found the beer frozen in the kegs! Not good. I had cleverly found a suitably cool spot for storing beer kegs to clear and condition. Unsuitably cool, as it turns out. You know the 'slushy' soft drinks you can make, like flavoured snow - well it was like that - a beer slushy, yum, it might just catch on.

The animals are all taking it in their strides though. Jane has a chillblain on her toe, and the kids have fallen whilst cavorting on the ice sheets, but the horses and chickens seem happy enough! As Jane pointed out, last winter our biggest chore was wading through knee deep mud wrenching silage out of a bale for the cows, this winter it is gently chipping holes through the ice on chicken drinkers and buckets, with a hammer. Makes for an interesting life, though, eh.

Other than during the snow flurries, though, it has been clear, sunny and pretty stunning weather-wise. Suits us fine.

Who am I?

We're having a dreadfully struggly time here at barkerlane acres. The problem is one of identity. Namely, what should I call my new web development business.

I never really liked 'lanetech' - it was short and reasonably memorable blah blah, but apart from being incredibly unimaginative, it just sounds kinda cheesy, like Krazy Komputers, or Cybershack (actually, that's not too bad!).

Of course, finding a business name has become a lot harder since the internet came along. It's not good enough to come up with a good name, it now has to be available as a domain too. Trying to find a .com that hasn't been registered is frustrating to say the least. Nerves are becoming frayed, is all I will say.

You name it, I've looked it up... so, I'm throwing it open to ideas. Can anyone make a decent suggestion? If I get a few, I'll maybe post a poll on here and the best of three votes gets it...

... and a happy new year 2

Well, my significant other has already reported all the juicy news for Hogmanay. The festive season is over. Enough with the over-indulgence and jolity. And on with the rest of the year, which as Richard says, gives us plenty to go at.

We have started the new year with some head scratching; still trying to decide on how to change the heating system for this place, which must happen. Oil is very expensive (not to mention all the environmental stuff), and it is very cold (currently minus 16). Wood costs us our time and a little chainsaw fuel, giving us an opportunity to vastly reduce heating bills, and gives us a valid excuse to spend time in our lovely woods. We have hopes that Mocha, the big horse may be able to haul timber from the woods one day ...

We really need to sit down and plan veg beds for next year and order seeds and fruit trees/bushes soon. We're probably going to try a little of a lot of different kinds of things and see what works and what doesn't this year. We don't really know what to expect,as there are so many new factors - new climate, new soil, new varieties of veg, new pests. Speaking of pests, as far as growing is concerned, I think our biggest challenges will involve keeping friends and foe out of the garden - the friends, our dear chickens, and the foe; the graceful and much admired by all passing drivers, white-tailed deer. I think they will look less beautiful if I see them munching my brassicas!

As the winter rolls by, dealing with snow and ice are high on the daily agenda. There is a lot to learn, the dangers of one kind of snow after another (and there are so many different kinds of snow - I'd forgotten!) on the roads, walking over different kinds of deep snow, how long it takes for the chicken drinkers to freeze, that sort of thing. But there are so many lovely things too, the different patterns made by ice on the windows, following tracks in snow in the silent woods, the (distant) shrieks of the kids having a blast as they sled down the hill, our hill, a dream hill for sledging.

We've come a long way this year, in more ways than one, but there's still so much to learn. Better go pick up a book ...