Polytunnel Island

Its all very well planting courgettes under old bed frames pulled from skips and covered in plastic, but the only way to 'grow your own' properly on Lewis is to get a polytunnel.

We had re-dug the large ditches running either side of a flat section of croft by the house and named it Polytunnel Island. It took a while but eventually we bought the required piece of equipment to complete the name.

Our tunnel is 6m x 3m, and it was cheap!  I hereby give in to the idea, perhaps fact, that it will not last in the Hebridean environment, but we did so much research for so long and talked to so many people about which was the best tunnel to buy that we
a) never got round to buying it, and
b) couldn't afford the one that looked the best - despite the hope that we could get a grant to cover some of the cost.
But this year we are following the Nikey mantra 'Just Do It', so we are.

The polystyrene boxes came from a local fish farm - they were brand new packaging cases, but someone in marketing noticed they needed to change the name on the box.  They say 'Wild Scottish Salmon', but should have read 'Farmed in Wild Scotland', two very different things and something which would warrant a whole other blog post on fish farming...

...but anyway, I had to drive the van to Scalpay to pick the boxes up.  The fish-farm had a warehouse full of them and had contacted the Lewis & Harris Horticultural Producers group to see if any of their members could put them to good use.  Perfect, we thought, but unfortunately the logistic of picking them up from Harris proved too much for most growers and the majority of the boxes ended up in landfill.  Such a shame when needless waste occurs despite the best intentions.

As the year has continued though, they have been just the thing for our softer crops and seedlings.

Baby courgettes, picked young and roasted whole

Mixed lettuce leaves

Tomatoes

Oregano at the back, guerkin at the front

Meanwhile outside things have grabbed a couple of months of hot weather too. Beetroot, turnip, swede, rhubarb, red onions, rooster potatoes, cabbage and broad beans have all done well. Sometimes they have had a boost from an old bed frame cloche, but some have been given special treatment in our newest vegetable patch, carved out of the marsh grass last year with a digger.

Potatoes in the new bed - purpose built cloches in the background, made by Mark - they seem incredibly superior after my tatty bits of plastic on bed frames!

The beloved and faithful courgettes, 3 different varieties this year

and of course theres always eggs from our lovely hens... when they're not going broody and putting their sisters off laying...

One day, perhaps we will make it to our dream of having a Pick-Your-Own-Vegetables-and-More shop.

Customers will come and pick their own food from the ground so it is always fresh (home grown veg goes off noticeably quicker than shop bought because there are no chemical sprays on home produce...)

In the same way that at the moment my customers wander in and ask for eggs, I hope they could come in and wander around the vegetable patches, choosing what's ready and in season.

It's a way off yet, too many hurdles to straddle in learning what grows well in our Hebridean conditions.  But by getting the polytunnel on polytunnel island this year, I feel we are a step closer....

Last words

There's never a right time to say this, but I don't want it to get missed just because I never wrote it down. In fact its creepy writing it now, like I'm tempting fate to play its worst card.
However.
When I die, I would like the following as my epitaph:

Do not cry for me, I am not gone,
I am the wind on the grass and the corn.

Returning to work

A time has arrived, which I knew would come some day and I have always dreaded it. The end of my maternity leave.

I can't complain with the amount of time off I've been allowed - just under 9 years in all.  Obviously this has not been granted by one employer, but has been made possible by a sketchy combination of employer contributions, a generous tax credit allocation and various overdrafts, not to mention downscaling from our house in Coventry in the midlands of England and moving to the remote Isle of Lewis off the NW coast of Scotland.

But it is a time which has allowed both me and Mark to enjoy raising our wonderful boys and to see every stage of their development and safe entry into the school system... plus a couple of years just for good measure!

Looking back on what I felt was a turbulent time working, I can now see how decent people at my old work place did everything they could to wave goodbye in the kindest way.

I had been working for the Learning and Skills Council for 7 years and at the same time as applying for maternity leave, I was also applying for voluntary redundancy. I was given both, and 2 weeks before my due date, I waddled away with some lovely leaving presents for the baby and enough money to set us up for a whole year.  I couldn't have been more pleased to be leaving.  Regardless of the happy circumstances of having my first child, I had not enjoyed being a very small cog in a very large machine and had grown very bitter and insular despite outward appearances.

So naturally I had dreaded returning to the professional open plan office environment, with no soul and no love allowed, where decisions were purely business and people are forced to be schizophrenic, splitting their personalities between work and home.

However, things are different now. I am different. We are in a different world on the Isle of Lewis and I do not have to go back to where I was before.  I have been given a job which just ticks so many boxes for me, that I am still a bit scared to believe it is true.

I cant escape the nature of the work - administration; all the boring and arduous details that bog people down, but have to be done - the devil is in the detail. 

But it is for a small company - I will be able to feel the effect of my work and see the results directly.

It is local - I don't have to spend money on a car and petrol to get there and I don't have to spend time travelling.  I can walk there in half an hour or get the bus in 5 minutes.

It is informal - I do not have to struggle into tights and stupid shoes every morning and freeze my toes off in an air conditioned fashion parade.  I can wear jeans and boots if I like because nobody cares what I look like.

The boss is female - I am working for a mother of three, a friend and neighbour and I am already behind her and her business and everything that she wants to achieve. I can see her visions and understand the processes she needs to go through to realise her ambitions.  It is not something that I would do myself, but I know how to support someone else and I'm looking forward to being able to use my skills to help grow her business.


So here I go, an employee again and I never thought I would be this relieved to be returning to work.