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...
We were thrilled to be featured in this autumn list of top gardening blogs by the lovely folk at Thompson & Morgan Seeds. Our garden here at The Sparrowholding is still – even after 20 years! – very much a 'work in progress', and we have so much we still want to do.
Our major impediments (and the reason for the sporadic nature of our gardening blog posts!) continue to be time and money, but even though we may have to cut corners at times and not do everything the way we'd like to, we still have the pleasure of tucking into our own produce for six months of the year (from asparagus and fresh herbs in May through to late plums and fresh herbs in early October) – not to mention leeks and parsnips during the winter months. If you’d like to see more of our photos and short videos, do check out our Facebook, Instagram and YouTube accounts.
Quick shout-out this month for our long-suffering polytunnel, which is a life-saver at times. Literally, a life-saver in mid-April, when it can provide much-needed shelter for newly born lambs, protecting them from sudden spring snow showers and freezing rain. Even our rough-tough Shetland ewes are grateful for a windbreak during the worst of the weather.
Mark you, the little blighters don’t show much appreciation, as the minute they are unleashed in the garden, the first thing they do is try to scale up the side of the polytunnel and put their sharp wee hooves through the plastic. New polytunnel plastic sheeting may be required soon at this rate!
This winter, we’re planning to cut back Vinnie the Vine significantly, as we noticed during our five days in France last summer just how draconian/vicious the pruning of the vines there was. And we presume that in the land of grapes, they know precisely what they are doing. Our hope is that if we follow suit, the savage Gallic approach might help promote the growth of more grapes – a feature that has been significantly lacking in the last couple of years! We’ve had lots of vine and vigorous leaf growth, but very little fruit.
HunterGatherer is sharpening his sheep/vine shears as I write…
https://blog.thompson-morgan.com/7-supreme-scottish-gardening-blogs/
I've often been asked which is my favourite season, and the truth is that I cannot ever pick one season over the other. Each has her own beauties, with the result that as soon as the new season arrives, I am immediately smitten. So at the time of typing, I am relishing the kaleidoscope of colours that abound in woodlands and hedgerows, munching Victoria plums to my heart's content and opening conker shells with the excited anticipation of a five-year-old.
The only aspect of autumn that I dread is the selling of this year's crop of lambs. But before you ask the inevitable question ("What about Pickle?"), let me reassure you...
Being a farmer's daughter, I should be resilient, nay impervious, to the annual partings inherent in rearing livestock. However, there are sometimes exceptional situations when one has to break the rules. And Pickle is one of those "exceptions".
Having fed him in the wee sma' hours for weeks, watched him trotting round the kitchen while I prepared his bottle and become accustomed to hearing his unique, high-pitched bleat bellowing from the field every time I venture into the garden, there is simply no way that I can load him into the wagon and send him off to market, and nor can HunterGatherer.
So Pickle will stay – most likely as a winter companion to FatHorse, a summer companion to our new tup Ivan (of whom more another time...) and, most importantly, a year-round companion to Yours Truly.
As you'll see from the photos below, our wee woolly warrior has grown somewhat from the early days. And here he is in all his autumnal glory...
Pickle is not the only living thing that's been thriving here at the Sparrowholding: there have been rich autumn pickings from Victoria our plum tree, who has excelled herself this year. Meanwhile, in the polytunnel, various other veggy goodies have been growing and Vinny the vine has been hard at work creating myriad bunches of tiny green grapes... Ah yes, there is much to love about autumn!
A few more of these and we'll be making some yummy green tomato chutney... If I can find the recipe I used last year!