Trees and sheep

Small trees and sheep don't  get on when they are in the same field . The ram hs managed to push the trees over and the rubbing of the horns has managed to strip the bark. An unequal competition and a couple of ex-trees

Sun's back

There are considerable advantages to living in a valley
- we get a nice view
- its relatively sheltered ( by Orkney standards)
- we can grow trees

But we realised there is a disadvantage. There is a hill to the south of us. And the sun disappeared behind it several weeks ago .
But today  I noticed that the sun has come back into the  house.

The house - at about 1400

 And if I turn round and take another picture :
 

 
The sun hasn't been high enough in the sky to appear over the hill since the middle of December. I'm sure that the sun has been on the house for a few days, as the hill is a bit lower towards the  west.

 Another 20 minutes or so and there is  bit more sun.

 The sun probably came back a few days ago, but the weather has been so overcast that we didn't notice.

The other pond

Weve fenced in a bit more of the pond to  try and discourage the otter(s) , adn the ducks are getting bigger so that is also hopefully a bit of a deterrent.  But we do need a 'Plan B' either if we loose another one or if we get or breed young  ( and small) ducklings .

There is another pond  and there are some pictures from last March of the ornamental pond.

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but on close inspection , all is not well ( ignore the hail - we seem to get a fair bit of hail up here )

 A lot of the timber is rotten and rotting and doesn;t support someones' weight ( how do I know that ?) . So we have decided it is going to come out . The wood, once  its fired out can probably be recycled to the  fire .








But  ducks will need water. We think the pond just fills from run-off from  up the hill a little. Ducks like water and  ideally some that flows. We certainly have a lot of  water at the moment. There is a rivulet   of water that runs  down part of the garden  so the great plan is to divert it into the pond and aid the flow of water into the pond.


Remember days onthe beach building sandcastles and moats and building  walls to channel the water ?

Well it was a bit like that .

 Here's the water  running down the side of the  path .

So about an hour with a spade , and relying on my seaside experience with sandcastles. moats and the tide, the water was diverted

And  over the afternoon the pond filled up a bit more .

But of course water that goes in has ( eventually) to go out.

And it flows over the low point of the pond , on its way to the Bay of Isbister via a  burn or 2  . And round the pond is field. and excess water on the field makes mud  .

So the next job is a runoff for the field  once the drainage channels have been filled in with hardcore and some stones  and the path put back.

 
 

And then there were four

Dont read ( or look) on if you are of  a sensitive disposition . 

The labels to this post are are "ducks" and "otter" . 

Have a guess what has happened if  'duck' and 'otter'  are in the same post.

You have been warned

So we went to lock the ducks up and there were only four of them. The one that was missing was one that  had a bit of a limp for a  couple of days . After a quick look round the adjacent  land there was no sign of the limping duck.

  

And on closer inspection there were quite a few feathers  scattered around the grass - certainly more than is usual

So I thought I'd better have a look along the burn. There were feathers in the water and stuck to the vegetation along the  burn.

And a bit further up the stream we found the (inevitably, by now ) ex -duck .

Dont read (or look) on if you are of  a sensitive disposition . 

( more detailed pictures on request if you are interested  in which parts of the duck the otter took )


According to 'tweb they normally hunt at night. This one - if in fact it is an otter that is doing this , but no-one has come up with an alternative suggestion- is hunting through the day , so its either very hungry, or very confident.
 I need to find out about otters and their hunting habits. We can put  wire mesh grids in the watercourses that run into the pond, but there is no point doing that if the animals are prepared to go  onto the land to go round any obstacle.
  We wonder if the limping was caused by an attempt from the otter a couple of days ago . And  this one was the slowest out of the water or away from the pond  when it came back to finish off the job.

Or we can fence the land either side of the stream  they are hunting in . But how far out from the burn do we need to fence ?
The side of the burn are overgrown, so   is there any point in cutting back the vegetation for a distance away from the pond ?
Is it worth it at all  or do i just need to sort out  one of the other ponds we have and move the ducks. It would be a shame because  this  pond has lots of fresh , running water.

So we will fence it off a bit, and not get any  more ducks  pending more information.

Neeps and Tatties and

We couldn't grow  our own bird  this year - they are still a bit  young and small . 

But we did manage some local produce over Christmas.  Clapshot is a local delicacy that we have been introduced to.

I suspect root vegetables can do well here. The climate is mild, and long hours of daylight in the summer  and as an added bonus  they wont get blown away.  

Neeps (Turnips) and Tatties ( Potatoes). Ours are grown locally and supplied from the organic producers down the hill. Boiled and mashed together with added chives or nutmeg. There is a typical recipe here.

And with it, North Ronaldsay mutton.  North Ron sheep are the same group  as our Borerays - North European short-tailed sheep. 

The sheep are restricted to the foreshore for most of the year - a 13 mile drystone wall round the island was built in the late 18th Century to keep the sheep off cultivated land. And they have evolved to  cope with this. 

They graze predominantly on seaweed.  Whilst sheep normally digest in the rumen ( stomach) at night, North Ron sheep do it at  high tide There is  an explanation  on Wikipedia  of ruminant digestion.

Their normal diet is low in available copper  (<5 ppm) and so they have developed an extremely efficient  physiology to take up  and use copper. Sheep cannot excrete excess copper and  so are susceptible to copper poisoning , and North Ronaldsay sheep even more so.  Put north ron sheep on ordinary grazing land and they develop copper poisoning with liver damage and liver failure 

There are some human diseases that are due to abnormalities of copper Wilsons disease , Menkes disease , and a few other things as well. The treatment ( at least of Wilsons disease) is penicillamine , which also prevents liver damage in North Ronaldsay sheep. 

The semi-feral flock of North Ronaldsay sheep  are managed by the Sheep Court. And a number each year go for mutton.  - even as far as London. But this one came from a local butcher 

So just before Christmas - North Ronaldsay mutton, Clapshot and some locally grown vegetables