Is having to look at his electricity usage in attempt to combat the ever rising price of main grid electricity. Not really something we have to worry about up here, but the way we live up here is something that can easily be adopted by some.
Firstly, all houses on the isle have a 3kw limit to the amount of electricity they can use. Nothing beats a limit to make you sit back & see the things you really dont need and are in thereselves nothing but a waste of fuel.
We dont have electric ovens, kettles, toasters, gadgets, gismo’s. We cook using bottled gas which costs us £140 per year, hot water comes from either the wind power or the multifuel stove in the lounge.
We run 3 freezers & keep them well stocked up, each year, 1 cow, 2 pigs, 9 lambs & 30 chickens go into the freezer & this is added to in the summer with up to 180kg of freshly caught fish, as the freezers empty I fill the spaces with baked goods to ensure the freezers always run on the most economical settings.
Our electric fencing is run by 3 x 12v energisers, each small unit can power up to 2km of fencing wire, powered by batteries which are charged when we are on wind power using a low voltage charger, this provides more than enough for our needs for 4 pig runs, cows, sheep & ESA .
There are always ways to improve your power usage, you just have to put your mind to it & be open to suggestion. But yes, we are lucky up here, the isle has its own electricity company, we receive no national grid power what so ever & our quarterly bills are half what you lot on the mainland will be paying, but then we have far higher costs of living overall, so still constantly find ways to make financial cutbacks.
Does’nt look all that much does it…. But, when you wait 7 months for the summer timetable for our island ferry to return, bringing with it a once per fortnight day trip to Lerwick (4.5hrs there, 5hr stop, 4.5hrs return journey) meaning you can, or rather the hubby can, head for the co-op & pick up bags of mixed leaf salads, pots of fresh basil, coriander, watercress, tomato’s on the vine & deli sliced ham rather than the pre packed bernard M rubbish we get in the winter, this was the sarnie that was worth that 7month wait. Ohh boy did the tastebuds tingle.
Cow’s are out, Sunday am saw them gaining freedom from the byre with a mini stampede of high jinks & excitement, its great seeing them all outside enjoying the warm sunshine again & the wee bull, who’s just over a yr old now, was quick to get down to establishing just who is boss in the field now, we should see a huge difference in him over the summer, this will be the year he does most of his growing & maturing, i’m just keeping my fingers crossed he keeps his excellent temperament and manners, he’s certainly going to be a handsome begger when he’s filled out.
Been spending some (albeit it not a lot as it was to fantastic a day to be inside) time researching in the hope of bringing in a house cow this summer, trouble is we … I have my heart set on a Jersey, im very practically minded & am thinking about the quality of cream & cheese . The native Shetland cows do make good milkers, but the quality of the milk is a long way off from a Jersey when it comes to clotted cream, butter & cheese, I know there are one or two folks on Shetland who keep Jerseys, but finding them is proving the hard bit.
The first of the turkey eggs we moved into the hatcher has hatched today revealing a healthy wee lavender baby, 2 more are in the throws of hatching at the moment with another 3 pipped & set to follow.
Filed under: Chickens, Crofting, Island Life, Pigs, Self Sufficiency, Turkeys, animals
The first of the turkey eggs have just been moved from incubator to hatcher, so we sit with crossed fingers in the hope that a few of them will get through to hatching. Turkeys are well known for being hard to hatch.
That tumbling mass of newly born piglets doubled in size in just 5 days & are all now venturing outside & joining mum in exploring the piggy run. They all have homes waiting for them when they are 10 weeks old, demand has far outstripped this litter, we have orders for 5 weaners rolled over to the next litter, & we are bringing in another young sow & even with 2 sows, each having 2 litters a year, we still wont produce enough organic pork to match the interest we have.
I seem to be getting on well with getting everything planted & sown on time, or at least, im not behind with anything. The 80 broad beans are almost big enough to head out to the cold frame & harden out before planting them in the pea/bean area & the cabbage, broccoli & cauli’s will follow suit shortly afterwards. I’ve done over 200ft of carrots, still another 3 sewings to go & then 400ft of swede & beet.
Knackered !
After a lovely slow morning- Nursery kids visited to see the baby piggies, then after nursery my youngest daughter & I went delivering eggs & took a drive to see how many coloured lambs we could spot on the hill grazing.
We then had a very slow lunch with much talking about baby lambs & are we getting a cade lamb this year mum & some sorting out for said small persons upcoming 5th birthday. Then the afternoon & evening spent getting in most of the last of the seed tatties, just 15kg of Nadine, 7kg of shetland black & 7 kg of highland burgandy to go, and the onions all planted, the final 4 lambs were checked over & the ram lambs ringed (I promise, i get this done so quick its just a few seconds of slight discomfort then back to skipping around the field with the other lambs) & back to the house around 8ish just as the rain was starting.
Tomorrow is going to be a day of rain so its been set aside as IACS & tax return day & Ive also got a total wadd load of paperwork to start on in prep for us going into organic conversion this autumn, and with 14 cruise boats visiting over may, june, july & august, there’s the Hall Tea’s stores list to be sorted out & ordered from the shop and one or two things to be organised for the grand *refurbished* hall re-opening this saterday & a few dances in prep for the big 2 night wedding in a fortnights time.
Lil pigs have started being brave enough to come outside to play & i’m spending far to much time watching & laughing at the antics of them.
So much for spring ! Todays weather has been a bit of a sharp return to a winters evening.
The day started at 5am, got up to the rain pouring down. Got 9 batches of wild leavened bread started & left them for a cool slow first rise & headed off out to feed everyone & discovered 2 ewes going to lamb today. At this point I was thinking, rains ok, its supposed to clear just after lunch. First set of twins born at lunchtime, true enough, out came the sun so no need to worry about them.
After dinner tonight I headed off out on another day of hill lambing rota, this time Area2, up around the air strip & ward hill, normally a lovely walk, but by this time it was starting to blow up a gale with the offer of sleet among it. Got up to the bottom of ward hill & opted to stay at mid & lower levels, far to windy & wrong wind direction to climbing up over the hill & do the high area’s, had a lovely walk despite the wind, refreshing… Found quite a few sets of coloured twins, then headed back down to check on the other ewe that still had to lamb & do the evening feeding run.
Grey ewe had produced a healthy, but slightly on the small side set of twins but she wasnt really in the best place the field had to offer for lea from the wind, so picked up twins & walked mum over to the lea on the wall, they’ll all be fine & happy tucked in the corner there.
The last batch of bread is now slowly baking in the oven, the cookies I made at lunch time went down well with afternoon fly & i’ve an order for 9 doz eggs all packed, stamped & ready to deliver tomorrow.
We thought last week to be on the warm side, but today, I had to dig out the baseball cap to save my nose from becoming overly sunburnt ! Its been toasting hot the whole day.
2 more lambs this morning, both boys, fingers crossed we see a few girls from the final 4 ewes still to lamb, we have a new ram this year, so I planning on keeping any cross bred ewe lambs.
Piglets have passed the first 24hrs without a hitch, all fit & healthy with raging appetites. The heat today meant we had to spend the afternoon doing some pig pampering as it really did get to hot for both suzie & doodles. We gathered up buckets & made doodles a nice cooling wallow to lie out in, Suzie however, is a bit more refined & does not take to wallowing in mud unless its seriously hot, Suzie, if she is hot, will come over & lie down at your feet & give big happy grunts as you pour endless buckets of gently cool water over her & she loves a cold wet flannel laid over her ears. As it was so hot today we started to worry about the heat building up inside Suzie’s house, so we opened the door on the other end a little so she could have a bit of a through draft & as this meant that small pigs could have outside access if they so wished, we put another 3 low lines of wire on the electric fencing, but have not connected it to the fencing unit as yet, I’d rather they got to reach the first week before we turn this on.
We put a few basins of water into the big freezer tonight to make giant ice cubes, we started putting these giant ice cubes into the pigs water last year & they really enjoyed having a real cold drink when it got seriously hot & we’ll also get to work on getting up the shade brakes in the piggy patch.
We went up to the peats again after lunch & good a good 4 to 6weeks worth of peat cut & stacked, another 5 or 6 trips will see us finished cutting for the year & then we can move onto spending every spare hr of fine weather off fishing & filling the freezer with fresh caught fish.
Fantastic day again yesterday, blue sky’s, gentle breeze but with the promise of rain on the way, so we went and got a start on cutting the peats.
Before we could start cutting any, we firstly had to strip back the turf & this then gets layed in front of the peat bank allowing it to carry on growing.
Then we give the base of the bank a tidy up before we start cutting.
So we are now ready to spend a good 5 or 6 afternoons cutting & stacking with a view to having a cosy house next winter. We’re putting in a much bigger stove in the lounge than what was there when we came here & plumbing it into the central heating to do away with having to buy in seriously expensive heating oil.
Still no sign of anything about to happen from Suzie, as you can see, she’s still content to enjoy an afternoon outside mooching around in the sunshine.
Her other half *Doodles* is only concerned about when dinner will arrive, typical male…
I noticed a shortage of ducks yet again today, I suspect I now have 2 females off sitting on eggs, the first one to sit, *wee noisy duck** is due to hatch at the end of next week.
The hard job will be finding the resulting ducklings before this wee lass decides they are to be breakfast, lunch & dinner. She’s 100% hunter & as such cares not if her pray are wild rabbits or chicks/ducklings from your brooding runs.
Filed under: Crofting
Nothing keeps the boys out of trouble better than a good ole messy project of some kind. This is our most recent, its an old Zetor which has lived in the barn up at field along side the cows, spending many a year in humid slumber. Mechanically, its in pretty dern good shape, needs new brake cables throughout, new rear window, some parts of the rear linkage are missing & it also needs a ruddy good going over with a wire brush & a few coats of fresh paint.
Not much happening today, 2nd Lamb arrived in the morning, single ewe this time, think we have one more ewe going to give us a single & the remaining 4 should all produce twins. We didnt get the planned seeds planted today, the wind got up far to much for such work.
Filed under: Crofting
Over a week without a break in the sunshine, my we are being spoiled compared to the near constant drenching we had right through winter.
Another busy day today. I have a sow going to farrow for the first time any day now, so must not wander to far from base, ewe’s on the verge of lambing, 100kg of seed tatties & the onion sets arriving this afternoon so will start planting them in the evening, which means, this afternoon the tractor has to be taken out & the drills set up for tattie planting, which with 100kg, is going to take me a day or two to get them all in.
More seeds need to be got going today in the seed bed area of our main veg patch, the pea’s really need to be sown, as do the turnips & swede so that I can see how much ground is left on patch 1 to judge how much of our carrots can be sown there. We grow carrots for animal fodder too so carrots take up quite a lot of space.
At least this abundance of warmth & sunshine is really getting the grass going good, if this keeps up the cows will be able to come out of the byre & back onto grazing a week or 2 earlier than planned, usually its well into May before there is enough grass available to get the cows out.
Hopefully if all goes well today I’ll be able to find the time to squeeze in a start to the monthly round of hen house cleaning, 6 of them to do, it takes a day or two to get them all re-freshed & powdered down.
Filed under: Crofting | Tags: animals, Crofting, Gardening, Organic, Poultry
Greetings fae da shetlands, where I stumble through life attempting to be at one with the salt laden winds while being as self sufficient as possible & breed pigs, sheep, cows, ducks, geese, chickens & turkeys.
