OCTOBER - "With unwearying patience the farmer starts again..."

Still hanging in there (photo by Ginny)

I've chosen two pieces from "The Country Child" by Allison Uttley to book-end my October offering. The first explains the farmer's relationship with Nature:

"... with unwearying patience the farmer starts again; mending, doctoring, bringing life out of death, sowing and reaping, he struggles with Nature. . . . 

Tom Garland . . was as much a part of the hillside as the trees and grass. He knew when a storm was brewing and sent the men to shut up the young things which could not look after themselves. He could smell rain afar, and knew the movements of the winds. He could build a wall with the great blocks of rough sandstone so that it was firm to stand the buffets of the mighty gales..."

Reflecting on Octobers Past, when harvest festivals continued to fill up the calendars of those Islonians who liked to go from church to chapel and onward to other villages in order to sing hymns and share in the harvest table, I find myself a little wistful. Remembering the childrens' offerings of harvest baskets, often decorated, I see, in my mind's eye, apples, cauliflowers, potatoes, onions and sometimes a handful of late green beans. A can of peas was added a little later. And, over the years, it became the norm to add a couple of apples to the cans and packets until very few asked for baskets anymore - whatever the reasoning.

Harvest visitors (picture by Ginny)

Having been unable to spend all of October at home, I'm offering, instead of a monthly account, a short piece written in summer, which seeks to explain my passion for Wild Scotland. It seemed to begin when my godparents, Peter and Maud Temperton, returned from their Scottish holiday to Wroot in the Isle of Axholme, bearing gifts! But was that the root cause - or was there something else?

Hope you enjoy this account and please accept my apologies for the break from the regular blogs.

From Tea Tray to Turbines

Passion is a crazy mixed-up thing. We talk about the passion we have when making love. Then there's the passion for special foods. There are so many things we can feel passionate about. My passion for the Scottish countryside began when my godparents came back from a touring holiday and brought back a tray bearing an image of Loch Lomond. A few years later, I did a geography project at school to which I gave the title "North of a Line from Stonehaven to Helensburgh". The older I grew, the more my passion opened up. I was hooked! I took Mum touring Scotland shortly after passing my driving test. She acknowledged the beauty of the places we visited but I didn't see any passion there. She didn't feel the things I was feeling.

In 1986 we took our young family to live in Orkney. My husband had a job teaching Maths at Stromness Academy. I stayed at home to look after the children. I saw so much more than a washing line full of nappies!

I watched purposeful mother hares making zigzags as they raced around the fields giving brief, but rich, comfort to their young which were left alone for much of the day. I collected groatie buckies with my children from the generous beaches around the Orkney coast. I welcomed the wheatears back every springtime - soon recognising them by their flight pattern and the way they settled in amongst the cows and sheep. I saw a snowy owl once in wintertime and many short-eared owls hunted along our regular shopping route to Kirkwall.

One May afternoon the umbelliferae was at its most beautiful as we drove home from Balfour Hospital with our new daughter. Three years later, in July, the curious monkey flower (mimulus guttatas) filled the ditch along the bumpy track to our home as I tried to stop her new sister from bouncing out of the Land Rover. Not the most comfortable journey!

Fast forward to Caithness in 2024, and, as the world seems to have lost its sense of balance, everything is clear to me whenever I walk out of my door and look, listen, smell, touch - and taste even - the beauty of a Scottish hillside.

Our first house in Caithness was in Wick and we came to know the seabirds and sea mammals very well while we were there. I even saw a well-travelled walrus on the beach by the lifeboat station.

The house we live in now is way across the county from Wick - and so different.

October at Stempster (picture by Judith)

We're on the edge of a wind farm and the wildlife is beyond magical. The large birds negotiate the turbines with the agility of athletes, I have never seen a casualty. I'm assured by wind farm detractors that there are casualties but I have never seen one. The smaller birds skim below the tall silver spectres like boomerangs, backwards and forwards, in and out of the trees and across the fields grazed by sheep and cattle. The wind farm cuckoos call to us in May and June from the other side of the woodland while their fellow migrants, the swallows and martins, swoop and snatch at insects on the wing.

Every little thing (photo by Judith)

Our walks up to and through the windmills are not without hazard. For example, by necessity we dodge otter spraints, sprinkled with slithers of shells, and fox droppings as well as badger excrement, berry-laden in season.

Our own garden yields wonders through the year. Here, in West Caithness and close to the Flow Country, we have an abundance of insect life, including rare beetles, butterflies of so many different hues and sizes and sufficient bees to pollinate every growing thing north of Inverness. We have fungi through much of the year, wild flowers which charm us with their combination of colours and fusion of fragrances and birds from the tiny goldcrest to the sun-blocking raven.

Buzy bee (photo by Judith)

We have caught mammals on the trail cameras - from field mice to roe deer. We have bats all around on summer evenings - there are plenty midgies for them to scoff! The foxes bark and leave their mark. They are stunning against a winter skyline. Badgers have interfered with the potato crop and the pine marten!!!! Well, what about the pine marten? We think it spends time in the attic! The occupant of one front bedroom hears things! We are certain the garden and our little woodland is frequented by pine martens as we have trail cam videos of them claiming squatters' rights there. Their poo is quite distinctive and they're not afraid to lose it! We've found it in all parts of our garden - even under a window where humans were sleeping. Pine martens are really not that easily scared - one of the humans snores!

Hedgehogs leave theirs too - smaller and easier to miss!

Voles, shrews and weasels are not shy at all and just go about their business as I lean on my yard brush and stand very still to observe them. Last winter a stoat came up to the French windows to give us the nod when we were eating breakfast.

One of the Stempster residents (photo by Ginny)

I've missed something, I'm sure! There is so much magic around us. My passion for Wild Scotland only grows in intensity and each season something surprises me. It may be a sunrise to beat all previous sunrises, a display of Aurora Borealis or a salmon jumping in the River Forss which runs through our valley. Henny, the hen harrier, keeps an eye out for intruders but she missed the osprey following the water course one  early spring morning!

Passion is a crazy mixed-up thing. It can be full of surprises. I have an on-going love affair with Wild Scotland - it began sixty years ago with a tea tray and it turns out, thanks to modern science and technology, that, like the pine marten, I have many Scottish ancestors.

Who knew!

Still flowering in the north of Scotland (picture by Judith)

The second passage from Alison Uttley's "The Country Child" concludes my October offering. This extract is close to my heart.

"Susan sat hiding on the damp moss-covered seat at the end of the garden between the sage and the herb garden. No one could see her there, a sure sign that the farm was governed by petticoats, said Tom.

She had come to sit and think, about trees and God, and hell, about animals talking and what was over the edge of the world. She knew she should be in the house helping, and she was deliberately sinning."