July/August 2000
Well what can I say - another two months have almost passed and I apologise for not keeping my site up to date. The above picture is of yours truly bottle feeding "Leo" (the name was quite popular a while back) but unfortunately he did not survive so I have ended up with 10 lambs from 10 sheep. I experienced my first sheep auction a couple of weeks ago and the price seems to be rising so most farmers are a bit happier. Of course for most of us there is little or no profit in keeping sheep but I feel that it is a worthwhile tradition that needs to be kept alive. The Scottish landscape would be very different if these fluffy four-legged hoovers became extinct. That reminds me - the price of wool is almost the same as the price of having a sheep sheared. There is no local market so if anyone wants some genuine wool from Coopers croft let me know around June next year. And another thing - would anyone like to sponsor a sheep for the winter !. Just a little idea that would help pay for winter feed, jabs, milk etc. I was thinking that a donation of £10 would be about right. You would get : The undivided attention of a 6 year old ewe, although I have to say that their conversation is a bit limited, they only talk about baar's and you only see them at meal times. The chance to "name your ewe" A photograph of your ewe with a personalised cloven hoof print as a mark of authenticity. I will publish a list of all sponsors and their adopted sheep names. Send a cheque or postal order and your details to me. See contacts section for my info.
I have realised that many of you will not know that I returned Nell to her owner in late April. There were a number of reasons for this but basically I could not cope. I was not prepared for her and she arrived just before the lambing season. I had very little control over her (not surprising) and she had to spend most of her time on a lead. I did not feel it was fair and arranged to take her back. I was gutted but it was the right thing to do. Nell is now being trained and will probably turn out to be a very good working dog. One day I will think about getting another but at least I will be better prepared. I have finally got most of the items I need to start producing framed pictures, calendars etc. The idea is to be able to offer a complete service for weddings and other occasions and I seem to have had a reasonable start.
I was the official photographer for two of my local friends a couple of weeks ago. This was my first wedding. It was hot, humid and the midges were driving everyone nuts. I did manage to rattle off 4 rolls of film and ended up with a fair set of pictures. Thankfully I am able to scan and tweak the pictures on my PC so the final results are quite good. I have another wedding in September so hopefully I will get better with practice. On the house front nothing has changed. My idea of building a temporary living module in the front garden requires planning permission and it would seem that my best bet is to get proper plans dawn up for the main house re-build and find somewhere local for a few weeks during the actual construction. I have a friend who is generating ideas for me which I will pass on to a timber frame company.
My finances are, and always will be, severely restricted but I am sure that a good design need not cost the earth. I will insulate and draught proof the existing living room, create a better kitchen and add a porch to get me through this winter. I have had a few visitors over the last couple of weeks but the season is very short and I doubt that I will see anyone else until next year. I have to confess that it will be much nicer for visitors when I have a proper house but until then I just take them to the top of my hill to soak up the view. Funny how my tin shack gets forgotten after that. My range work starts up again in mid September and it will be nice to get back into it. Funny, I was sitting at home shelling peas the other day and I thought it was an appropriate thing for me to do. The raft race: Despite a great deal of 11th hour work by myself and Alan Taylorson our raft did not win the day. Unfortunately the wind was howling down the loch and our craft had too much windage. Before you ask - I was not rowing. The four girls from the Rhiconich Hotel tried really hard but the elements were against them. Never mind there is always next year...
June 2000
There goes another month and still not a lot has happened. Stopped bottle feeding Leo(!) last week as he was having trouble getting it all down his neck. I guess he would have been happy having a bottle each day for the next 6 years. All the sheep have moved onto pastures new for a while to let the croft recover a little. Having said that it does seem to be a much better shade of green than the surrounding land so overgrazing should not be a problem. My experiments with solar water heating are proving interesting. I have built a panel of about 1/2 sq metre using 15mm copper tube and lots of black paint. I managed to get a double glazed window insert from Wickes in Inverness and sealed the whole thing up. I was amazed to see the panel air temperature shoot up to over 50C (the limit of my thermometer) in a matter of minutes. I then added 50mm of insulation to the back panel and forgot about it. The next day I found the inner glass panel had cracked. I can only assume that the air temperature had rocketed and caused the break. The glazed unit was bedded on silicon sealant so there is no mechanical strain. Anyway I have since discovered that most panels use single glazing..... The panel is now connected up to my hot water tank and I will be interested to see how the whole thing works.
I now have to develop a logging and control unit to ensure that the circulator pump does not operate until the water in the heating circuit is greater than the tank water. To be honest I am surprised that more people do not use this technology - it is so simple. Anyway if it works up here then it will work anywhere !. Hopefully I will be able to add windpower to my house before the winter arrives. Unfortunately this is an expensive area but I may find a company that will supply a wind generator in return for advertising. That's all for now. I should have some pictures of the Kinlochbervie raft race for the July page.
April 2000
Funny how things work out.... In my last newsletter I mentioned that I was looking for a Border Collie. Last tuesday a friend told me that he knew of a collie pup that needed a good home.... well I now have a 5 month old energetic fluffy pup called Nell. This is going to be an interesting few weeks for both of us, especially as she is not house trained and I do not have a kennel - yet !. We went shopping on friday to get food, doggy bowl, worming tablets etc (no the tablets are not for me). At least she travels well. I have the materials for building a kennel but the weather has just turned bad and we have gales from the north-east. Not good building weather. Nell will have to live in the house for a while and I will have to watch her like a hawk - especially after meals !.
The above picture was taken with a low res camera connected to the pc. Trying to get Nell to stay still and pose while I press the camera button is no easy task so apologies for them being out of focus. 1 April...... I should have known better than to assume that winter had finished. I heard Nell moving around the hall at 6.30 on saturday morning so I thought I would let her out for a run in the garden. I opened the front door and we both looked out into a blizzard of Antarctic proportions. Nell turned round and went straight back to her bed. This left me with a slight problem. I knew that, despite several walks, she had not "been" for at least a day and was probably a tad uncomfortable. So I had to chose between a "loaded" dog and a blizzard...... The blizzard won ! I have started to train her with the basics such as sit, stay lie down etc but Nell seems to translate these commands as "do whatever you want to ". I guess it will take time
8 April I have sheep !. No it's not a personal problem. The bad weather took us all by surprise last week so my flock have arrived today. I have just returned from a walk along Oldshoremore beach with Nell. It's her first experience of the sea but she will be ok. I am still building the kennel & run for her but I may have to make it from wrought iron - she chews & eats everything. Next: June 2000
March 2000
Is it possible that winter is over ?. Trust me to move up here just as we have the wettest winter for many years. I feel sorry for the sheep, it seems they never really dried off before getting wet again. Today the weather is great and I even managed to sit outside and bask in the sunshine. My sheep are due to arrive back on the croft and should start lambing in about a month's time. I am still hoping to get a digital camera and will post pictures as and when. I had to attend a four day first aid course in Inverness at the begining of the month. This is part of the job requirement for my range work and I need to keep my certificate current each year.
My plans for the house re-build are still changing by the week but I really must make some firm decisions soon or else I will be spending another winter in this tin hut - not! I guess there is not much going on at the moment. I am still looking round for a Border Collie but they seem to be in short supply. According to my web statistic software I am getting around 1000 requests for pages per month which is very encouraging. Most of the requests are from .ac.uk so I guess that a lot of BAS people are keeping in touch although I haven't had much e-mail. There have been several requests from .com, .ie (eire) and .nz (new zealand). Trying to keep my site popular with the search engines is a pain especially when I created a string of keywords but forgot to put spaces after each comma. The net result was a single word of about 100 characters that could not be recognised by any search engine. Hopefully I will now get more interest from casual surfers.
January 2000
I am having to write this in February as my web software decided to eat my web site just before Christmas. The software also refused to load the three backup files so I had to start again from scratch. To add insult to injury the software then decided to place the same files on every one of my pages - just as I finished recreating the site. This was enough to make me buy Dreamweaver v3 which I should have bought in the first place !. More unnecessary expense but at least I now have the "best" html editor on the market. I cannot really advertise myself as a "webmaster" if my clients sites keep going awol. Christmas and New year were celebrated in style, the usual excesses of food & drink by all and sundry but very enjoyable.
I had to attend a course at the Met Office College in Shinfield (Reading) as part of my new job. This was a journey back in time as I did my Army apprenticeship (1969) at Arborfield which is just down the road. I did have a drive around and was pleased to see that all the old wooden "spider" buildings have been demolished and replaced with far more suitable accomodation. I needed the course to qualify as a met observer for air traffic control which is part of my job at the range. It was very strange to be back in the classroom, especially as the majorority of the other students were about 19 years old. Thankfully we all managed to pass and I then spent another week at RAF Lossiemouth to work with proffessional met observers.I popped into BAS between "courses" and was quite amused when my ex-boss asked if I wanted my old job back. Tempted ? - nah.
About a week later I went on holiday to Fuerteventura (Canary Is.) to complete the days out of the country for my tax claim. Travelling from the highlands is not easy and I had to leave at 3.30 am on saturday morning to catch the 2 pm flight from Gatwick. I booked the holiday through the internet and Airtours. The problems started when we were dumped at the hotel and realised that the good beaches were in the north and south. We were in the middle of the island. There were other problems with our hotel, food etc but it's not really worth wingeing any more. Enough to say that I cannot recommend the Island and will not use Airtours again.
Anyway the good side was we had great weather (max 28C) and I met some good people. Maybe they will keep in touch (Mo, Marc & Ruth - hint). So it's all back to normal now. I do not intend to do any more travelling which will upset Mastercard as they are happy to collect interest from me. The priority is to get the new house designed so that work can start around June/July. I need to complete the new wing before next winter so that I will have somewhere a bit more practical to live. It will also provide a storage area so that I can move out of the old building and demolish it. I am going to be very short of funds so will probably end up building most of it myself.