Archaeology

Have been meaning to write about this stone for a while now.  Danny and I found this on a walk out to Start Point lighthouse not long after first moving here.

After spending far too long looking at photos of stones with holes in them on the internet, we decided that it was a fishing weight -- and eventually I got round to take my stone down to the Orkney Museum to show it to an actual archaeologist -- and it seems like we're right!

This is what they had to say:

The perforated stone that you found by Start Point lighthouse is a weight of some kind. It could be a loom weight, but at around 750mm at its longest point it seems a bit small for that. I think that it is more likely to have been used for fishing, either as a net sinker or, to my mind, I think it is a weight for a ‘long line’. This was a very long line with many hooks attached, hundreds and even a thousand or more, which was dropped into the sea from a small boat. The hooks were pre-baited the night before. The age is difficult to know, as these things were used over a very long period of time, from at least the Viking Age to the early 20th century.

So it's entirely possible that we've got a 2500 year old fishing weight sitting on our dining room table...!  Pretty cool....

Hello little friend!

Went sea fishing today -- didn't manage to catch anything, but we did spot this adorable little sea urchin!  Isn't it/he/she adorable?  :)  

Side note -- this photo was shot from ABOVE the water through about six feet of water -- just goes to show how clear the water up here is!

Duckies all grown up now!

The moment we've all been waiting for -- our first duck eggs!  For comparison, the two on the left are the duck eggs, and the one on the right is a hen egg, so not massively bigger, but very pleased that after months and months of feeding them, they are finally feeding us!  Pretty incredible that these cute little adorable balls of fluff are adults now!

Heat and other modern conveniences

Do you know what these things are?  I didn't either until this morning -- they are temperature sensors for the heat pump, and apparently replacing them was the thing we needed to do to get the heat working again.  

We also managed to get a replacement hot water heater this week, so after half of December and most of January we now have both hot water and heat again.

(Some) modern conveniences are definitely an improvement on living without...

Still snow!

Woke up this morning to a winter wonderland!

Here's Cookie's first proper play in the snow.  She was trying to attack it!  Freya has been sensible and stayed inside by the fire...

Hard to figure out where to measure the snow as the wind blows it about so much, but I think this is a fairly accurate measurement -- 1.25 inches!

The sheep are totally not bothered, but I have given them hay now...

And here's the snowy picture postcard view of our little house!

Snow!

UPDATE:  Still snowing!

Been snowing heavily for a few hours now -- if this carries on, I will have to buy some hay for the sheep!

2022 Egg Count

I never counted our eggs at Bwlchyrhyd, so can't make any useful comparisons here, but we had a total of 519 eggs in 2022.  Considering that for huge chunks of that time we only had one hen laying, I think we're on track for an egg-filled 2023!

I herewith give you the last two eggs of 2022 and the first two eggs of 2023...  :)

Nearly Homegrown Xmas Dinner

You may remember seven months ago we got some adorable little ducklings...  Well, they are all grown up now, and there are (well, were) three males.  Completely superfluous to our egg laying needs, so Xmas dinner here we come...

This photo is the ducks just before we selected our dinner -- don't ask me which one we took other than it was a male!

Danny the ever amazing built me this plucking machine out of bits of a broken washing machine -- it's not quite as efficient as the ones you can buy, but it certainly makes the job a lot easier to only have to do a bit by hand at the end rather than the whole thing!  Also, we've read that ducks are harder to pluck than chickens, so we'll see how the plucker goes with the chickens next autumn...

Anyhow, Friday was dispatch day, so he spent two days resting in the fridge, and then yesterday I roasted him!  He weighed in at 1.4kg deadweight, so rather on the small side, but Indian Runner ducks are really egg birds, not meat birds.  Regardless, it's plenty of duck for just the two of us.

On the plate:  Duck raised by us, cabbage and brussels sprouts grown by Margaret Rendall on Sanday, and potatoes and neeps (that's rutabaga for you Americans) grown by James Muir, also on Sanday.  So that's something like 3/4 of what's on this plate was produced on this little island!  Next year hopefully more of the veg will have been grown here at Sparrowhall (as I think I am starting to understand the wind a bit better hopefully).  :)

Winter Solstice

Today is winter solstice, new candidate for my favourite day of the year, because it means now the sun will start coming back...

This is sunrise, at 9am this morning...

And this is sunset (3pm) ,which you can't properly see, because too much cloud...

Nathan Pyle brilliantly expressed what the sun does to us at this time of year:

This is SO bloody accurate.  It never goes above the horizon now...

BUT, today is solstice, so now it is going to come back..

We had a little bonfire this evening to welcome the sun's return...  (no bones were burnt...)

 

Snow!

Today is day 8 of a Met Office warning for snow and ice -- and we've finally had some!  Woo hoo!

Winter

Things to do when it's dark/cold/wet/windy:  Knit.  Finally finished the gloves I started last winter!  (There are two of them, but I haven't figured out how to hold the camera with my teeth yet, so...)  Now to start on the matching hat...

Happy Thanksgiving

We are celebrating Thanksgiving a day late because it fits my schedule better and I can't really see that it makes any difference what day we do it up here -- fairly confident that I'm the only person on the island who is celebrating Thanksgiving..

So our modified menu includes a chicken pot pie -- made of course with a chicken that we harvested...

And, of course, pumpkin pie, made with a pumpkin which was leftover from when the school bought all the children pumpkins for Halloween and now has a new destiny in life -- to make my tummy happy!  :)

 This Thanksgiving I am grateful for being here on Sanday and I am grateful that I have Danny in my life...

Time for some sheep sex...

Friday was the big day, but no pic until now because I had my Covid jab AND my flu jab on Friday and have felt like crap all weekend.

Pete the ram is now in with the girls and he has six weeks to make us some lamb babies...!  

Crappy photo -- the only way I can get them to stand still at a distance from me is to put food down -- so of course (with the exception of black ewe) they all have their noses to the ground.

I doubt I will succeed in catching Pete in action -- I don't think I ever saw Rhodri in action at Bwlchyrhyd either -- but he did his job well, so I have every confidence in Pete.  Watch this space in 152 days or so...

Sparrows

This time last year, we had tons of sparrows here at Sparrowhall -- this year, not so many -- here's why:

Still swimming...

Six months on I am pleased to report that I am still swimming regularly!

During the summer I swam nearly every day -- sometimes spending as long as 20 minutes in the water -- and there was one glorious day where I got out and lay on my towel in the sunshine without drying myself off first and it was lovely!

Swims happen less frequently now -- maybe once or twice a week -- but I am still doing it and looking forward to swimming through the winter.

Today was a lovely swim -- surprisingly nice weather for the end of October!  Here we are post-swim all bundled up -- but half an hour later I was sweating like a pig!

RIP Big Boy

Yesterday morning we went for a beach walk in absolutely horrendous weather and saw our first otter which I was quite excited about...

And then today we discovered that an otter has killed our lovely cockerel Big Boy.  And I don't even have a decent photo of him to post here. [Now updated with photo that Jane took when she was here -- thank you Jane!] He was so sweet and gentle, particularly after Mental...  So I guess we do have predators here -- we were thinking that because no foxes, we didn't have to worry so much about the chickens.  I guess we were wrong.

We are also missing two ducks, but haven't come across the duck carcasses anywhere, so no clue if the F***ing otter got them as well or if they've just gone for a wander.

Don't look a gift goose in the mouth...

Went to work this morning and came home with 17 geese that were destined to be buried in a hole in the ground...  Waste not want not I always say, and two slightly bloody hours later, we have 17 packages of pairs of breasts ready for the freezer...  This should keep us fed for a while!  

ONE YEAR AT SPARROWHALL!

Today is one year since we came to Sparrowhall!  There have been some ups and downs, and more downs than we expected, but overall we absolutely love it here and are so glad that we came...

To mark this day, I've done "portraits" of everybody who lives at Sparrowhall now.  I did think it would be a nice idea to get all the animals together for a group portrait, but Pete declined to organise that for me, and Danny's idea of getting the spider to write "congratulations" in her web didn't come to fruition either...  :)

Here are the chickens -- I did manage to get them all in one shot.  There's the big white cockerel, the only white hen left from the original three, three black cockerels from this year's second hatching who will soon be dinner, four black hens -- three from the first hatching and one from the second, and the two bantams which Jake has now identified for me as Wyandottes.

This obviously is Cookie the troublemaker...  Trying to climb into the car, one of her favourite spots.  Today we went out in the car and a few minutes after leaving the house, Cookie suddenly materialised from under my seat so we had to turn around and take her back home!

The ducks -- the mother is the slightly lighter brown one in the middle, and of the 10 ducklings, we have four boys and six girls.

Freya -- who is still wary about coming in the house since Cookie's arrival...

Pete the overly friendly ram...

And these are the ewes -- that's Shy Ewe way in the back, Brown Ewe on the left, with White Ewe just behind her.  In the front left to right we have Black Ewe, Nameless Ewe, and Greedy Ewe...

And of course Jessica and Danny...  :)  We went for a walk out to the Holmes of Ire today -- probably my favourite place on Sanday (excepting Sparrowhall of course) -- behind our heads is just nothingness until you reach the North Pole...

Meet Pete!

On Saturday we had an excursion all the way down to South Ronaldsay, the absolute opposite end of Orkney to us, to buy Pete the ram...  (I know, but he came with the name, and he had a traumatic enough journey getting back here in our car and on the boat, so didn't want to add to his trauma by changing his name...)

He's getting to know the girls through the fence, and they're all really looking forward to November when they get to have fun together...  :)

He is ridiculously friendly and will just randomly follow me (or Danny) around if we are doing anything in his field...

Here goosey goosey goose...

Greylag geese are everywhere here and are considered a pest in Orkney as they can eat over 1kg of grass a day each.  Ever since we first moved here, Danny was determined that he was going to get some for our dinner -- and finally he did!  Introducing Danny's first goose:

We don't know it's gender, so I will just refer to the goose as it...  :)

Plucking was much more time consuming than with a chicken as once you get the feathers off then there's all the down -- but I will be faster next time now that I know what to expect...

Weighed in at just under 4.5 lbs after cleaning.  I just roasted it plain this first time to have a baseline of knowing what to expect from these geese.

70 minutes in the oven (first 15 minutes at 220c and then the rest at 180c) was a little too long but not much.  Next to no fat on it at all, so the meat was a little dry but quite tasty.  Will need to put bacon on it next time I think...  Wondering if maybe it's because it's so early in the season and they will get fattier as we get more into winter?

Fingers crossed this will be the first of many!