Festive bleatings from the Sparrowholding in Scotland
‘Surely it’s not that time of year again?’ I hear you cry – and I can only concur. In the halcyon days (daze?) of my youth, my dear old mum regularly warned me that each year would fly past faster as I aged matured. Only now do I realise that I should have listened to her … because had I heeded those pearly words of wisdom, I wouldn’t be sitting at some ungodly hour attempting to pen the annual update – so squeakily close to Christmas that even now I’m bracing myself for the whoosh as Santa’s reindeer storm past. Come to think of it, I may not be alone in the family in having issues with the passage of time, given that Farmpa distinguished himself this year by not only dropping his watch down the toilet but then also flushing it for good measure …
To gird myself for the exhausting task of documenting a selection of Elwisian escapades from 2018, I needed to boost my energy levels in the wee sma’ hours, which naturally involved ‘dipping into’ the fudge supplies originally destined for the offspring’s stockings on Christmas morn. However, as I see it, I’m taking one (OK, possibly more than one …) for the team – I mean, just think of the favour I’m doing their teeth and waistlines! Of course they will must never know about this selfless service I’ve done them, so I won’t even receive a modicum of gratitude for my significant sugary sacrifice.
February 2018 saw an avalanche of family members – including all three Elwis offspring plus their gamest of grandparents, SuperGran and Farmpa – descend on the unsuspecting Coylumbridge Resort in Aviemore to recreate our school mid-term weekend ski breaks of over a decade ago. But gone were the days when HunterGatherer and I would lead our trio of compliant snow-ploughers down the slippery slopes. This time, upon disembarking from the chairlift, we barely had a chance to re-assemble our middle-aged limbs and point them vaguely in the right direction before the gleesome threesome zoomed off down the piste, leaving a pair of pathetic parents trailing in their powdery wake. With the fearless five busy carving up Cairngorm, the golden oldies enjoyed pootling around the Highland countryside until the seven of us reconvened for dinner – some of us having rediscovered muscles we’d forgotten we even had. After three fabby days together en famille, we left Aviemore standing (just) but took many magical memories (and bruises) back home with us.
February 2018 saw an avalanche of family members – including all three Elwis offspring plus their gamest of grandparents, SuperGran and Farmpa – descend on the unsuspecting Coylumbridge Resort in Aviemore to recreate our school mid-term weekend ski breaks of over a decade ago. But gone were the days when HunterGatherer and I would lead our trio of compliant snow-ploughers down the slippery slopes. This time, upon disembarking from the chairlift, we barely had a chance to re-assemble our middle-aged limbs and point them vaguely in the right direction before the gleesome threesome zoomed off down the piste, leaving a pair of pathetic parents trailing in their powdery wake. With the fearless five busy carving up Cairngorm, the golden oldies enjoyed pootling around the Highland countryside until the seven of us reconvened for dinner – some of us having rediscovered muscles we’d forgotten we even had. After three fabby days together en famille, we left Aviemore standing (just) but took many magical memories (and bruises) back home with us.
Other than the aforementioned family weekend in the frozen north, sightings of the daughterly duo were relatively rare this year, as both continued to eschew the ‘delights’ of Scotland in favour of the ‘bright lights’ of London. DD1 (27) remains entombed in the office of a city law firm for most of her waking – not to mention sleeping – hours, very occasionally emerging to buy a new handbag (which is about the only type of shop they don’t have in the planet-sized building where she works – no doubt a cunning plan to prevent staff from having any reason to leave the building at all …). Fortunately, she does have a genuine excuse to escape back to her flat occasionally, in the form of the new love of her life: an enormous Chartreux (breed not colour, I’m assured) kitten called Oberon [King of the Fairies, for anyone not acquainted with Midsummer Night’s Dream]. His arrival will hopefully prevent the re-occurrence of ‘Pigeongate’ – a major avian incident which unfolded on the tiny balcony of DD1’s flat this spring, when a couple of amorous pigeons tried to set up a precarious home under her deckchair. Given the plethora of pigeon poo accumulating daily outside her French window, spring was a stressful time for DD1, so she is hopeful that the presence of a panther-like prowler behind the patio door will ensure the plucky pigeon lovers choose someone else’s balcony in 2019!
Having always aspired to be a mover and a shaker, DD2 (25) somehow managed to end up in a tree house in a yoga camp in Bali when the earthquakes kicked off this summer, which led to a rather surreal telephone conversation between father and daughter, involving him instructing her to conceal herself under a table. She was also appointed Oberon’s godmother when her big sis’ was abroad. However, the King of the Fairies proved to be more King of the Jungle, evidently viewing DD2’s flat as a giant adventure playground, and the casualty list to date comprises one vase, one clothes line and (most tragic of all) one bobble hat… Not to mention the Saturday morning when kitty’s extremely disgruntled godmother was rudely awoken at 7 a.m. (having got in at 4 a.m. …) by having a full glass of water knocked over her face. To say we are looking forward to the said Oberon’s stayCATion with us at Xmas would be an overstatement. DD2 still spends much of her working life doing what many could only dream of: being paid to sit around and watch TV/listen to music all day. This year, she’s been entrusted with the terrifying task of speaking at conferences (although fortunately, the benefit of being in such a niche industry is that no one knows what she’s talking about anyway – as usual!). A couple of times a week, to ensure that her long-inactive legs still function, she swaps her headphones for a hockey stick, and charges around sporting the colours of Westminster and Hampstead Ladies. This year has seen her on her best behaviour, with not a card in sight [unlike a certain other hockey-playing family member, of which more anon …].
Son&Heir (23) spent most of 2018 running his own personal training business, often at dawn or dusk on the shores of Loch Leven. As his eager clients kept coming back for more, one can only assume they were so distracted by the beauty of the loch that they didn’t notice how exhausted they were after myriad gruelling guerrilla fitness circuits! In January, he is embarking on an exciting new career path when he heads off to Edinburgh to take up a post as a tech resourcer with a recruitment company. After enduring a year of the purgatory of the parental home, he moved out and rented a house this summer, although he still pops home regularly (bearing washing), so I know he loves us really … Of course, there is a story behind the washing, but I couldn’t possibly reveal it for fear of embarrassing him. Or perhaps, in the spirit of Christmas candour, I could … When viewing his new residence, Son&Heir failed to notice that there was no plumbing for a washing machine. In fact, it transpired he wasn’t even aware that washing machines required plumbing, so he simply plugged it in at the electric socket and waited for it to start filling. He’s still waiting …
Strawberry plants and veggies growing in tubs in spring
Man of the soil HunterGatherer continues to be (in his own words) ‘a digger of dirt’ for approximately half the year and a clipboard-toting inspector of agricultural spreaders and sprayers the rest of the time. Upon his return from work each evening, he heads straight to speak to the only other residents of our smallholding capable of engaging in any semblance of sensible conversation – the Shetland sheep. In fact, Yours Truly now plays second fiddle not only to a flock of woolly women but also to a feline femme fatale … For if any of you worried for one moment that we might suffer from empty-nest syndrome once all three chicks were ensconced in other nests, rest assured that they were easily replaced in our affections by ‘Minerva’ from Sunny Harbour Cat Rescue in Fife.
The summer months of 2018 also saw HunterGatherer participating in a spot of Munro-bagging with a couple of former hockey teammates. He suspects that one of the said gentlemen must have been a particularly vicious army PT instructor in a former life, as this self-styled commandant led his ‘troops’ (all two of them) on some pretty arduous day trips – including one that involved cycling 12 kms each way on a rough and rocky track, plus the small matter of shinning up two Munros in-between.
Although it was actually a plethora of urgent proofreading tasks that conspired to make Yours Truly’s festive preparations fall significantly behind schedule this year, much of 2018 has been devoted to tutoring eager teenagers in the finer points of English language and literature. When not spouting forth about the niceties of Norman MacCaig’s enjambment, I had (until a nasty, lingering knee injury stopped play two months ago) been enjoying plenty of (occasionally over-) enthusiastic hockey activity. Indeed earlier in the year, I earned the dubious honour of being awarded first a green and then a yellow card by an ‘outrageously unjust’ umpire [and yes, I told him so – that was what resulted in the second card …]. I’ve decided that this season is to be my last playing competitive hockey – there are only so many bashes one’s body can take, and the fact that I’m currently awaiting two orthopaedic appointments is probably ‘a sign’. Another ‘sign’ is without doubt the number of Saga and funeral-plan leaflets that arrive unbidden through our letterbox these days! And the final deciding factor was a sudden issue with my one ‘good’ eye. During a recent trip to the optician, he told me, “You have a vice ring.” At least I thought that’s what he said – apparently he was talking about a ‘Weiss ring’ (an ophthalmological phenomenon rather than a drug cartel, which was a relief). Either way, playing contact sports is probably best avoided henceforth, so I plan to seek a substitute ‘softer’ sport. Watch this space!
Meanwhile, as tinsel is getting tangled and mince pies are being munched all over the country, we prepare to bid farewell to 2018. This Christmas epistle comes to you all with very best wishes from HunterGatherer and Square Sparrow for a wonderful festive period, and a healthy and happy new year to follow in 2019!
Lambing, tubs and other signs of spring in Scotland. Seed time plus the new generation of woolly jumpers.
Even by Yours Truly’s intermittent blogging standards, it’s been rather a long time since my last rural bulletin, so buckle up and hold on tight for a whistle-stop tour of spring in Scotland, as viewed from here at The Sparrowholding.
In my defence, one of the reasons for the paucity of posts to date this year has been that work has been pleasingly manic for both HunterGatherer (with spreaders to calibrate, soil to sample and fences to build) and Yours Truly (with spurts of prolific proofreading activity punctuating my planting of the finer points of poetry and prose in the fertile minds of myriad pupils).
At risk of descending into oxymoron, I did say ‘pleasingly’ intentionally above, because when you are both self-employed, work tends to appear on a feast or famine basis and thus the feast periods are to be celebrated. Fortunately, our only real famine of this year so far was caused when March roared in like a lion – or, to be more precise, like a ‘Beast from the East’. The ensuing solid mile of snowdrifts between us and Kinross, saw The Sparrowholding cut off from civilisation for a couple of days. If by chance you didn’t see the photographic evidence at the time and are interested, scroll back to March on the Square Sparrow YouTube, Instagram and Facebook accounts for photos/micro-videos.
Our lovely little flock of nine Shetland ewes have been equally busy these past few months, first growing and then producing a veritable posse of 17 leaping lambs (as evidenced by various videos and photos here and on the Youtube , Facebook and Instagram accounts). This year’s gang of woolly warriors are particularly beguiling – though, of course, we say that every year.
Talking of things sheepish, we’re hoping that this year’s wool harvest will be good, as it transpired last year that some of our lovely girlies’ wool is exceptionally ‘fine’ – in the literal sense of the word! As I reported in the March update, late last summer a 'friend of a friend' of mine asked if she could have a fleece to spin for the 2018 Royal Highland Show (if you’re interested in country life but have never been before, and you live within travelling distance of Edinburgh, get it on your bucket list now!).
Anyway, we duly sent ‘the spinning lady’ away with Tufty’s gorgeous brown/grey fleece, and you can see the photomontage of the subsequent process that the fleece underwent and the shawl that it eventually became in a previous blog post if you missed it first time round. It is so exciting to see our girls’ wool transformed in this way, and if I didn’t have arthritis in my hands that makes dexterity a thing of the past, I would love to have tried spinning – and perhaps felting – for myself.
Given that the lady who did spin Tufty’s fleece was incredibly complimentary about the resultant wool, we’re hoping either to sell the fleeces individually to spinners this year or to group together with a couple of other local producers to get all our fleeces made into balls of wool by one of the UK companies who offer this service. Sadly, this is a very expensive business – hundreds and hundreds of pounds! – so we’ll need to weigh up carefully what is the best way to proceed. It just seems a real shame that a gorgeous natural material such as wool is no longer valued whereas eco-unfriendly, micro-fibre-shedding ‘fleeces’ have become the norm instead…
The thing I love best about spring in Scotland is that any foray outside – such as a leisurely stroll along the track just above us – is akin to walking along the green paint aisle in B&Q, thanks to the countless shades of green in every possible nuance to be seen in the hedgerows on either side. HunterGatherer and I amused ourselves the other day trying to think of names for all the shades. The track has also been a source of inspiration for some of my tutees at The Learning Cauldron for students who find it difficult/ unappealing to sit inside and concentrate.
Meanwhile here at The Sparrowholding itself, HunterGatherer has only recently begun his spring planting activities in the garden. The winter went on for soooooo long that we are at least a couple of weeks behind last year, so the “tub meister” has had to make up for lost time this past couple of weekends! Currently, there are giant red tubs containing all manner of veggies adorning our vegetable patch, and some of the seeds are just poking through the earth. We've been asked on several occasions where he sources his tubs, and the answer is that they are empty sheep mineral lick tubs (which also make great sleeping places for lambs, it transpires!).
Better still, the micro-orchard which we planted in the autumn at the bottom of our two-acre paddock is bursting into bloom, which means that our courageous little fruit trees (four apple, one cherry, one plum, one pear plus a couple of hazel bushes) survived their first winter against all the odds.
It's reassuring that the garden is back in action again with the advent (finally!) of spring in Scotland, but I have to confess that it’s sometimes a tad demoralising when we see all our fellow gardening and smallholding Instagram friends from 'doon sooth' posting photos of full-grown plants. However, such are the joys of living in these precarious Scottish climes – and there, are of course, compensations...
From Shetland fleece to Shetland shawl: Tufty’s coat of many colours
Some of you may remember that last June I posted a short video of HunterGatherer, using old-fashioned hand clippers to shear Tufty’s gorgeous Shetland fleece. Well, the stunning fleece which appeared in that self-same video has been on a rather exciting journey since the day it left The Sparrowholding later that summer in the car boot of a friend of a friend, who just so happens to be a keen spinner and knitter.
As you’ll see from the (many!) photos in this blog post charting the fleece’s progress after leaving us, it was first washed to remove any grubbiness (not that our lovely sheep are particularly unhygienic, you understand, but paddock life isn’t immaculate either!).
Tufty looks a gorgeous milk chocolatey brown colour if you see her in the field, but while being washed and spun, her wool seemed to change hue slightly and in some of the photos K. kindly took, it looks almost grey.
After Tufty’s coat of many colours had been washed and allowed to dry, K. (the ‘spinning lady’) discovered that the fleece was so beautifully fine that she didn’t actually need to card (or ‘comb it out’ to you and me) it and she was able to start spinning it into yarn straight away.
Once K. had spun sufficient yarn for her intended purpose – a shawl – she got out her trusty knitting needles and began to create the gorgeous Shetland shawl which you’ll see in the photos below. HunterGatherer and I were so excited to see the end result. Doesn’t it look fab? Now who wouldn’t want to cosy up in that soft sumptuous woolliness on a chilly evening?
The 'spinning lady' spun the yarn and created the shawl with the intention of exhibiting it at the Royal Highland Show at Ingliston near Edinburgh in the summer of 2018. I’ve certainly got the date writ large in my diary and the plan is for HunterGatherer and me to go along and admire it if it is indeed one of the exhibits in the WRI tent. I might even take a photo of it home with me to show the lovely Tufty and her cheeky twins! The process that transforms it from a fluffy fleece to a finely spun yarn is slow and labour-intensive.
However, the end result is absolutely amazing, and perhaps one day either HunterGatherer or I will have to try our hand at spinning so we could create a home-spun yarn here at The Sparrowholding. Time alone will tell...
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