A Fifties Croft in July

Phew! Almost didn't make it, but here is the extract from Wendy Wood's book for the month of July. There's such a lot of interest this month, but I have made do with two extracts:

"My field generally looks quite small to me, but covered with new mown hay it looks the size of the Atlantic. I turned the whole field twice - that sounds as if I were a female Cuchullin, but I mean of course that I twice shook and turned all the hay on it. The task was frequently interrupted by the need to remove toads, big ones and little ones, to a place of safety and better usefulness. I like them, for they have so wise an air as they sit humped up and stare into your face, or clamber clumsily away as if they had on outsize trousers that impeded their movements. It must be a shock to them to have the whole roof of their world suddenly removed, exposing them to the scorching sun. Suppose you were in a wood and without warning the trees all disappeared! I remove the toads, tickling them under the chin, which they like, and put them in the garden among the lettuce, where they can gorge themselves on slugs to our mutual benefit."

The same month, she had to attend the funeral of a good friend:

"Returning from the funeral we were wrapped in a heat haze which blotted out the hills, rolled over the water and came creeping up to hide the rocks beside the road. The silver of the rising moon that night shone subtly through the mist, a light so diffused that the whole earth seemed luminous, a place of strange mystery. In the early morning when the mist rose, it wafted up the hillsides on the breath of a breeze, leaving the glen below freshly washed and every blade of grass individually polished. Combined with the lights on the sea, it looked like the beginning of an entirely new world. All among the heather tufts, the spider webs still held the entangled mist in millions of gossamer saucers at every angle, as if flocks of angels had moulted on the hillsides. When the sun had fully risen, each web imprisoned a rainbow, and as the moisture evaporated, the airy threads disappeared against the varied background. As I climbed the hill to look for the cow to milk, the land below showed lochs and seas of cloud mist, studded with magic islands."

June on the Croft in the Fifties

Reading the chapter on June in Wendy Wood's little book From a Highland Croft, published in the 1950s, was less exciting than I had been expecting. I thought June would be full of the glories of a Highland summer but in those days, even more so than now, summer came late and June felt more like the back end of Spring:

"The first of our calves came today. The mother is an old hand and so I was lucky to catch her on her way to a hidden place on the shore. It would have been unnecessary work to have had to put the calf into a creel and carry it back home, with an infuriated cow bringing up the rear and bellowing to the whole neighbourhood about my kidnapping. It is a bull calf. Some years it is nearly all bulls that arrive and some lucky years nearly all heifers. I hope that this first event does not presage a "bull year". I gave the mother half a bucketful of chopped raw potatoes. I also gave her a hot drink of pease-meal, and because it was not the more usual oatmeal, she gave me a look like a gillie offered sixpence at the end of a hot day. I have no oats left. Preparations for the sowing of this year's oats started a long time ago in the building of a new hen-house in the woods away from the proposed crop, and the purchasing of rolls of wire for a fence to protect the latter.

The ploughing of the field was not easy, for it had not been disturbed for many years, and the soil is very shallow. The ploughman was young and new to the job. He turned up in a bright blue shirt, a joy to see, and I strongly suspected that he had anointed his head with oil, as one appointed. It is always a thrill to see the first brown wave in a green plain, and I could tell by the ploughman's worried face that his job took a bit of daring, like cutting out a green velvet dress without a pattern. I noticed too that when I was in the house, all proceeded in silence, but when I came out, the horses had to be "clicked" and sworn at with terrible swears. Not that the creatures behaved any differently; they just plodded on good-naturedly with the job they knew so well.

It must have been a lonely life, and a hard one, living out in the wilds but it had a rhythm and a balance that we lack today. Have a great summer everyone!

Wendy's Croft in May

The extract I've chosen from Wendy Wood's book From a Highland Croft, written in the 1950s, for May is interesting because she writes about things that having fallen out of favour back then, are now right back in the mainstream - at least in part. She had been cutting rushes to use as bedding for the cattle, and then...

"After cutting rushes I turned to a tougher job, for, lacking my pony, I had to creel the seaweed on my own back. The weed lay on the shore in a rough semi-circle like a rusty scimitar. It was in that half-decayed condition which is so good for the fields yet is unpleasant to touch. I could have put on rubber gloves, but the weed is the very best of hand softeners, and I found the under layers warm. The loch water was so crystal clear that it almost tempted me in for a swim, but the appearance was sufficient, for a test with the pinkie nearly paralysed me.

Big farmers sometimes regard crofters as being behind the times, but with no more than lime or shell sand, seaweed and dung, we are enriching our land, while they with chemical fertilisers, will ultimately impoverish theirs beyond retrieving. I have tasted some of the produce grown by "medicine" and whether it is grass for beast or cabbages for humans, I think it is responsible for some of the diseases of man and beast. The forced production of eggs is spoiling the hens, and the unnatural milk yield is spoiling the cows. In my grandmother's day the cures for human ills were such as sea water, horn broth and elm bark, and folk lived actively to a great age. The cattle had no more when ill than boiled seaweed or home-made cod liver oil, and half the diseases that keep vets busy today were unknown."

I'm not sure I agree with absolutely everything she says but, as ever with this wonderful little book, we are given a glimpse of an older, more balanced, and possibly wiser age.

April on a Croft in the Fifties

I haven't had anything to say about my bit of hillside since my last extract from Wendy Wood's book - it's been cold, wet and miserable and I have not been at all inspired - but, nevertheless, it is time for an April look at croft life fifty years ago. And what a wonderful passage this is:

"In a town many a person stops to watch a man at work digging up a pavement or a road; and here at home I find myself ready to 'stand and stare' at the first ploughing of the year without sense of time. It is not only because it is so fundamental, but also because there is so much movement to it. All winter the still, flat field has been without much interest, for only an occasional crow or a few sheep have crossed its dull surface, but when the plough scrapes in at the gate, the field wakens to know that is it springtime.
There is a great deal of preparation and adjustment before the shout of the ploughman starts the great rhythm of moving earth. The horses tuck their heads in and sinews ripple under their glossy coats, the great hooves plod to a hidden tune, the traces strain, and behind them the coutler cuts the green turf like the prow of a ship, while the following share lays aside the regulated waves of shining furrow, a slow, inevitable march of rising, turning slabs. Behind them the ploughman paces, exact in his skill, his body bent intently, the muscles strongly modelled on his bare arms. At his back, high and low in the air, are the swirl and dip of the white-winged gulls and the hoodie crows crying their joy at the treasure that has lain too long in the winter-locked larder. A lark rises, pouring the silver of its treble to fall like narrow ribbons on the dark broad bands below. The dog dashes round the field barking, his eyes glistening with a fever of excitement at the wakening earth. High above, the clouds move majestically across the inverted blue fields of the sky, and between the two an eagle soars remote. The air is warm, and as I lean over the stone dyke my body relaxes from the tenseness with which we have fought the cold winds of winter. There is a faint scent from the newly turned turf, reminiscent of the smell of uncooked plum pudding. Somehow this is not just an ordinary ploughing; it is symbolic, a ceremony, a saga; with delight akin to pain I sense the hidden significance of brown earth. It is small wonder that I sing on the way home."

Wonderful! And as so often in these extracts, a glimpse of a world not that long ago but completely unfamiliar to us now. Oh, how I'd love to see horses ploughing the fields round my house.

Two of her remarks strike a familiar chord though. That feeling of a body constantly tensed against the cold is one I've felt myself, and the physical frustration of a late Spring holding back the release of all those tensed muscles is palpable this year. And her description of 'delight akin to pain' also reflected words I've written in my own journals. Here on the hill, sometimes when I look out across the firth, and the air is full of birdsong, and the Sun is warming my back, I have declared the scene to be so beautiful that it's almost painful. Her remark is so similar to mine that I think there must be some deep genetic memory at work. A glorious Spring to you all!

March on a Highland Croft

Time for the March instalment from Wendy Wood's book about life in the Highlands of Scotland in the 1950s.

"Drip, drip - the rain tub is full and running over, wellingtons and sou'westers are the garb all day long, and the stream is suddenly visible right up the hillside among the bare trees, a series of waterfalls too impetuous to keep to the usual course, somthing that has suddenly leapt from the paralysis of a frosty trickle to a sense of power and joy. It makes a multitude of sounds as it splashes and surges, tucking dead leaves under its shining apron. All night I hear it thundering as if a line of vehicles were pounding ceaselessly along the road.

The croft seems alive with little things. The wren pops in and out of her winter nest beside the stream and I am anxious in case she is swamped out of her home. The robin that roosts in the woodshed gives a sleepy chirp at night when I go with the lantern for logs, and I see him fluffed up with his chin amongst his breast feathers on the handle of the hoe. A vole is living there too among some rubbish in a box. I am well aware of a tiny worn path from her house into mine, and no offering of cheese in her own parlour will stop her pilfering meals in my pantry."

Although the talk everywhere today is of climate change, Wendy's account of Spring is not much different from what I see around me here on the hill. In fact, in some respects, her Springs seem to have come earlier than mine. Her winters might have been colder and deeper, but she talks about lambs in March and of being woken by the cuckoo calling, but the lambs come later than March here, and I haven't heard a cuckoo yet. There is snow on the ground as I write, and more forecast next week - it certainly doesn't feel as if this part of the world is warming up much.

And Picture of the Day is this one of a wren posing like a professional for the camera in my garden.

Pleasures of the Fireside

The latest instalment from Wendy Wood's From a Highland Croft has me wishing my wood-burning stove was fixed. I really must get it sorted...

"I had intended to visit friends today but the log fire with its leaping flames was too good to leave, and I have volumes to move into a new bookcase made this morning. It is not a decorative affair, but it is sturdy, and I should be prouder of the job is I had not hammered my thumb with emphasis. It is where a bookcase should be, beside the fire, where I can stretch out a hand for a favourite book or a reference. I say "where a bookcase should be" but in this cottage, bookshelves, mostly over-loaded, are all over the place. Time to read and time to think - isn't that a real luxury? Here we have lovely places in which to do our thinking according to our moods: beside the couthy fire or out on the rough shore by the length of the loch and under the height of the sky; in the silence of the small room or by the noisy waves in singing wind. One minute I am out to get water at the well with the tang of winter on my face, the hills showing purple and deep blue in the fading light and the holly leaves silhouetted in detail against the evening sky, and the next minute I am inside at the fire and busy with the big bellows and amusing myself making long sighs or wee puffs, that make the flames and the sparks we used to call faeries go leaping up the chimney; with the smell of toast, the tinkle of a spoon in a saucer, all one's senses are satisfied."

That's just how I feel about living in this place. It's lonely and maddening at times - the threat of being cut off in the winter and those damn ticks and midges in the summer - but I too feel that overwhelming luxury of choosing where to do my thinking. I can wander up to the back of the woodland and pretend I am alone in the world. I can walk down to the pond and connect with the newts - those links to a far older world. I can sit by the window and look out enigmatically at the ridiculously beautiful view. Or I can snuggle up in a chair with my dog by a radiator (the stove being broken) and write or read a book from one of my many overloaded bookcases. Life doesn't feel so bad today...

Venison and chickens

There are times, as I sit here in my modern-day croft, with a dog at my feet and the wind whistling outside, that I feel like a real countrywoman. And when I read Wendy Wood's From a Highland Croft I really feel that I understand how she felt. Most of the time that is. Most of the time I could imagine myself living her life. Most of the time. Not in January though...

"Even on freezing nights my pony is quite content to be outside...In winter she grows a marvellous coat, almost vieing with the Highland cattle...But snow time is not the coldest in the glen, and the frost can make harder conditions for the beasts when every waterfall is static, every burn looks like blurred glass, and the water hole in the broken ice gets lower and lower. Tanks are frozen, and that strange medley of old baths, sinks and tubs which acts as field supplies for stock is filled with ice as solid as the metal.
On a day showing the first signs of thaw I crossed the hill to get the food supply. Below me lay the mountain loch, still gripped in ice, and to my amazement, in that still atmosphere the loch roared! It roared exactly like a lion. It was some time before I gained its shore and found that the wind was getting under cracks; the level of the loch had dropped since it froze, the imprisoned wind was roaring to get out. Had I heard such a sound in the darkness I certainly would have wished for a rifle in my hand. On the hill beside the loch lay a fine young stag: it had died of thirst beside the frozen water. There was the spoor of a wild cat that had taken advantage of a bigger prey than it could have brought down for itself.
Next day I took up a saw and cleaver and brought down some of the carcass for the dogs. Judging by the latters' behaviour, I think it must have been a dog's dream of paradise, after so many meatless days, to have a whole leg of venison thrown to him, all the better for being a bit 'high'."

Cutting up dead animals that I might bump into on the hill is, I must confess, way beyond my capacities as a country dweller, though I suspect I am not alone in that these days!

Happy Hogmanay!

Well, it's Hogmanay here in Scotland - New Year's Eve to the rest of you. We tend to do New Year in a big way here, though not as big as we used to. In fact, until recently, Hogmanay was celebrated more than Christmas. The Golfer used to say that he remembered his father working on Christmas morning, and only getting the afternoon off.

Traditionally at Hogmanay we first-foot, though it doesn't happen so much these days. What used to happen was that shortly after "the bells" (that's midnight to the rest of you) friends and neighbours would visit each other, bearing gifts. The first person over your threshold in the new year was your first-footer. It was considered lucky if he was tall and dark. Traditions vary locally but in my area, the first-footer would bring you a lump of coal to wish you warmth, shortbread or black bun to wish you food and , of course, a bottle of whisky to wish you - well, plenty to drink I suppose! You would take a drink from his bottle and then he would have a drink from yours and so the party would begin. It was not uncommon for that group then to move on to the next house in order to first-foot them and onwards and onwards, often well into the next day.

Since the Golfer died, my Hogmanays are rather quiet and, to be honest, I prefer it that way. I never saw the appeal of ruining the beginning of a brand new year with a horrendous hangover and sleep deprivation. Now that I am no longer expected to party I bring in the New Year very gently - watch the daft programmes on the telly for a while, then come through here to think about the Golfer and how my year has gone - another year without him. I have a glass of something warming. I don't need to have the radio on to hear when midnight comes - my neighbour always fires his shotgun to welcome the new year (you get used to it!). Then I go and stand outside and breathe the air and, if it's a clear night, look up at Orion striding across the southern sky. I feel very small and very connected.

I've quoted passages from Wendy Wood's book here every month since I began this blog. It was her passage for Hogmanay that first grabbed my attention. When I first came to live in the country I was lonely and isolated. I missed the companionship of the town, especially in the dark nights of winter. But she showed me that being in the country could be special too and now that I live alone, I find myself bringing in the new year in much the same way that she did.

"Hogmanay! I turned on the wireless and listened to the habble of excited crowds milling round in a city square and I turned it off again to hear the silence. The clock ticked into it irrevocably, like drops of water wearing the year away. The kettle hummed and was silent again, as if regretting its momentary conversation. It was five minutes to twelve.I opened the door to let the old year go, and stepped towards the loch. The black water was like a dish of stars stirred with a giant's spurtle. It lapped with a crisp sound as if it were more alive than usual, yet no breath of wind disturbed the air. The woods that arise abruptly above my little cottage were obviously waiting, with a million twig-hands upheld to receive unquestioningly what the new year might bring. A lone oyster-catcher gave a sharp disturbing cry.

Again there was silence except for the gentle swish of the water, but something moved. At first I could neither identify nor locate the sound, then I realised that it came from a bunch of bracken on the mound beside me, and I knew who it would be. I tried to be as completely immobile as the rock on which I sat; then I saw her, the roe deer who brings her Bambi every spring to drink at my well. The moon outlined her slight form, her delicate little head turned in my direction, but she did not flee; she stood there expressing faith in our mutual kindliness. I wonder if she too feels the drama of the turning year?

A cloud passed over the face of the moon and when I looked again she had disappeared. Somehow she had given the night a legendary quality, as if the black Morvern hills remembered the hind that was the mother of Ossian. I felt suddenly small in the immensity of the night, in the infinity of history, on a star among stars in the profundity of space. The doe and I were insignificant atoms suspended in wide, deep, peace. A breeze ran up the loch, the trees whispered, and right across the firmament, like a finger drawn across a darkened pane, a meteor streaked. So came the new year to the western Highlands."

Happy New Year to you all and let's hope for a peaceful 2008.

Crofting Life in November

It's November, so time for the next extract from Wendy Wood's book about life on a Highland croft in the 1950s.

A stag is roaring on the hills across the loch. He is very late in throwing out his challenge, but last month there were nights when you could not sleep for the noise of stags roaring; it was like being beside a lion's den.

I have been putting off a routine job that I dislike: the job of sweeping the chimney. If you wanted a professional sweep to come here, you would have to pay ten and twopence in fares alone, and either put him up and feed him, or pay for a hotel for the night, so naturally we are our own chimney sweeps. I have the usual sweep's outfit, but take the added precaution of attaching a rope to the ring brush before I push it up, in case the thing gets stuck in the uneven surface of the chimney, for then I would have to be without a fire till I could stop a lorry driver who likes diversion on his job.

These are indeed days when one needs a good fire, for there is hard frost at night, frost and a full moon. The hills look as if they were cut out of black metal. The crisp stillness is awesome. The grass is furry white and the sky wide with stars except where the moon will brook no rival and sails noiselessly, remote and cold, drawing the great tides in her skirt and causing the farm dog to cry its suddenly remembered wildness to the echoing hilltops.

Life has changed almost beyond recognition in the last fifty years here in the Highlands, yet it is still possible to feel that connection to something bigger than oneself, standing at the back door on a dark, still night, with the sound of owls in the pine tree and the Milky Way overhead. Not bad!

October on the croft

It being October now, I thought I'd bring you the appropriate extract from the book From a Highland Croft by Wendy Wood (see the September extract here .)

Acorns are a great help as additional feeding for the hens, and it was necessary to hurry and pick them up before the squirrels and mice got them, so I went out with a basket, the dog at my heels. Then I went back for a hat, as acorns falling from a height on to one's head are irritating, to say the least of it. They were plentiful, big brown ones, little green ones, and some rosy pink. My fingers were busy among the moss and fallen leaves, and not wishing to spoil my focus by looking up, I passed from tree trunk to tree trunk with my head down, always making for the tree of biggest girth in the hope of greater harvest.

From a crofter's point of view, an outrun of rocky hill covered with oaks is a curse. The cow is lost to sight within a few yards, and it is difficult enough to know where you are yourself, much less the cow, when foliage cuts you off from familiar landmarks. For this reason I put a bell on my cow, but the crafty creature, preparing to sleep outside, soon learnt to lie down at dusk and keep quite still, so that I could be within a hundred yards of her yet unaware of her presence. One night after plunging about for hours along the rocky shore and up the even rockier hillside, I gave up the hunt...In the very early hours of the morning I heard the sound I had so eagerly listened for at night - clang-clang - and there at the gate, deliberately swinging her head "clang-clang" stood the cow. She got a good skelping for her behaviour and well she understood, for the next evening I heard "clang-clang" at the byre door as the sun began to set. It sank a crimson ball and lit clouds near and far like banners, throwing out its glory for miles, tinting the crests of the hills and dipping the lower slopes in purple dye.

Skelping is a Scots word for smacking - not very politically correct to skelp your cows these days but I can imagine her frustration on those cold October evenings - the fireside would be calling and once it was dark it was really dark - you wouldn't want to be out alone on the hillside.

Lost World

Since I've been driven in by the dreaded midges, I thought I'd take the opportunity to share with you a fascinating little book I found in a second-hand bookshop a few years ago. It's a slim volume - a year's diary of a woman living alone in a croft in the West Highlands of Scotland. The book is called From a Highland Croft and it's written by Wendy Wood. I've found it inspiring to turn to when I've found the going tough here in the pond since the Golfer died.

In preparing this post I did some research on the net into the author and was surprised to discover that she was not the simple countrywoman I had thought - see here and here. So much so that I wondered if her tale of simple country life could still be trusted. I decided that, at the worst, she was an early downshifter and that, in any case, her prose is so lyrical and the picture of a way of life now all but gone that I had to share it. Here's a quote from her September entry - can you guess what year the book was published in? I'll reveal the date at the end of the post - I think you'll be surprised.

When the wind rises, the air is full of the swish of silver birch, occasionally interrupted by the clatter of falling oak or alder leaves, crisp and dry. There is a tang in the air and I am getting anxious about the bigging of my new byre.

There is something very primitive about prising stones out of the hillside with a crowbar and rolling them down. There was something decidedly primitive too about the adder that was coiled up asleep below one stone and met my hand as I levered. The sharp edge of a spade soon severed his connection with life, and by morning the birds had cleared the pieces.

Meanwhile, the cattle sale is due and that is the greatest day of the year for us...Some of the crofters have as many as eighteen miles to drive their beasts to the sale, five miles of which is dangerous going, where contest among the animals for place may throw them to destruction.

The owners arrive at the place of sale hungry enough to want a kebbock of cheese apiece of a size that would need a peat cutter to make inroads on it. Once the beasts are safe in the sale field on the side of the hill it is time for a dram, followed by a ceilidh round the fire.

Lots are drawn for the places on the sale list, each glen hoping to sell after the bidding has warmed up and before the buyers are cold - if the buyers would just go to the hotel now and have a dram!

Men hate to part with their beasts, but the money gained is the rent and the grocer's bill and the cost of feeding stuff for the year, plus a 'fairing' for the family which is to be bought down at the shop before starting for home in the gloaming.

Wonderful stuff! So, when did you think this lady was describing life in rural Scotalnd? 1952 - only fifty years ago - almost in my living memory. I am still blown away when I think of the way our lives have changed - in many ways for the better of course, but we have also lost something.

I'd like to share more of Wendy's life in her croft with you all; I hope to post an extract every month and I hope that you enjoy it as much as I do.

By the way, I should add that harming or killing adders is now illegal in the UK.