What will I miss most...

It's obvious that I love having the animals...some people say, well you will still have the dogs, but working the dog is the best thing I do and today Moss herded a flock of sheep so we could catch an unhappy ewe...see left. Adriane is a little black Hebridean that appeared on a road and was unhappy and left unclaimed. Adriane, a human, posted on the NYSS e mail because this little ewe was so distressed in a a large flock and could be heard bleating pathetically in the night.

I went with Moss and after some good herding from Moss (which in itself is a wonderful thing!) the little ewe was brought to our farm where she was very quickly at home in our small flock of Shetlands.

I think she is exquisite.

The other picture is of m with Cloud. I spend a lot of time with my beautiful and elderly cow. She loves company and I'm better than nobody although she would obviously prefer another cow.

The move to Speyside MUST include some land before too long. Despite the peace and quiet of the Spey Valley, there is absolutely nothing compared to having our own land and the animals to graze it.

What has gone...

A break from my house history for some photos.

A lot of things are staying with the farm; the tractor, the trailer, the truck, the grass cutter, even the livestock, what's left.

I have "let go" my lovely convertible Saab and my handy Suzuki GN 125cc, my commuter vehicle.

In Speyside there is not a commute. Either I can walk to work or it is 30 miles so too long a ride for a 125cc. As for my "Last Fling" (the registration was LF04), we now have a sensible Skoda with room for dogs, tents, kyacks and Dad.

We will have one car, one motorbike, several bikes, a scooter in progress and a kyack!

A History of Homes.

For 2 years I lived in my granny's house with my mum and dad and brother but of course I don't remember it.
Then we lived in a huge Victorian house with a massive garden and an elm tree. It was beautiful. I lived there with the same parts of my family until I was 9.
The immediate family emigrated as £10 Poms and after a short time in a flat that we rented, we lived on the edge of the Australian bush in a bungalow which was set in a developing estate. newly built for all us Poms. It was a 3 bed but expanded to 4 when my granny and her new husband joined us for 2 years. The furniture was stylish Swedish, a foretaste of IKEA and my dad still has the "room divider" consisting of bookshelves, desks, cupboards, LP dividers and so on.
When we left Oz, we lived for a few months in a rented house near my secondary school and I slept in the garden shed with a tin roof, rather than share a bedroom with my older brother.
Back in England, I stayed with one then the other of my aunties while Mum and Dad looked for a business.
We then lived above the business, a shop, in a 17century black and white house. The best thing about living here was that I got my first dog, but we didn't stay long and were soon back in the suburbs of Birmingham in a semi (1950s?).
Mum and Dad went up market to a bigger semi with a beautiful garden in a posher suburb but I had left home and started my own life of "changing homes".
No photos as I don't yet have a scanner.
More later. The farm is at the end of a long list.

Summer holiday.

on


A beautiful summer day with the lavender smelling sweet and the chickens stocked up with rowan berries, when we loaded up the vehicles for our moving trip to Grantown. Queensbury Van Hire is a local firm and we had no problems with their prices or efficiency. I drove the truck and used a borrowed sheep trailer (see above).

It only took 2 hours to load up the van, 1 hour for the truck and trailer the evening before and 8 hours to drive there. We unpacked the following day in pouring rain and it rained all day but so did it everywhere else.

We drove back to the farm the following day, in pouring rain from Perth onwards.

As we drove in convoy we were able to exchange notes on what had taken our individual interest and it was all identical! Bad driving...another Queensbury Van...flooded fields with folorn cows...

Our own cow was standing folornly too but she always looks like that.

Then our farmhouse...devoid of all the home comforts we have accumulated over the last 30 years. Now we don't only have space around us with our land but also within our house. See the photo of breakfast today.