A Croft in the Hills (8 page)

It was not a hard winter and by mid-February the larks were singing. Soon, we began to sense the slow tilting of the earth towards the sun and then a rash of activity broke out. Dung was carted
to the fields, the vegetable plot was enlarged and dug, houses were got ready for the new batches of chickens.

We got wind of activities on other fronts. The hill-road down to Loch Ness-side was being widened and resurfaced, the worst of the bends rounded and a fine new bridge built, to replace the
rickety one over the burn that cascaded down from Loch Laide. It was said that when this work was completed, the bus company would seriously consider putting on a weekly service to Inverness.

There were rumours of various new enterprises starting up in the district. A nursery garden, at the foot of the hill, where tomatoes were grown in soil heated by electricity generated by local
water-power, was already well established. Now, we learnt, another ‘in-comer’ was to cultivate the sheltered slopes immediately above this garden for the production of soft fruit:
another was setting up a small dairy farm and yet another was going in for mink. The place was buzzing with reports of the activities of the ‘tomato-man’, the
‘strawberry-man’, the ‘mink-man’ and the ‘dairyman’. All these concerns were sited in the comparatively sheltered district overlooking Loch Ness. Each time we
passed that way on our journey to town we would watch, goggle-eyed, for signs of the progress of these fascinating enterprises. We began to feel, with our adoption of more or less traditional
methods, distinctly back numbers. Still, our oats had impressed even the seed-merchant the previous autumn and our ewes were in grand shape. Perhaps there was something to be said for a quiet
merging into the landscape.

The scheme for the testing of cattle came into operation at this time. We had ours tested and found, to our dismay, that Daisy and one of the heifers were reactors. Daisy’s milk had been
declared free of bacilli and she appeared to be in radiant health, but she didn’t make the grade, so she and the heifer had to be despatched to the market at once. We bought in a good cross
cow, brown, with a white star on her forehead, which we christened Hope, in token of our feeling towards her, and a sleek, demure, quite enchanting little cross-Shorthorn heifer, which we could
only call Pet. The name exactly fitted her.

The byre had a thorough cleansing and disinfecting and whitewashing before these new beasts were installed in it and we hoped our little herd could now be established without further
skirmishings. A cow, particularly a house-cow, is so much a part of the family that one hates to have to exchange her for another. We had just got to know all Daisy’s little whims and quirks,
knew what blandishments she particularly appreciated and how to humour her and to cope with her occasional moods. Now we should have to start all over again with Hope. She was to calve in a few
weeks’ time and was slow on the move and quite placid; she proved an excellent milker and we soon came to have a real affection for her. A cow certainly responds to kindness. I soon
discovered that Hope would let down her milk most willingly to music—‘Lilli Marlene’ was her favourite tune. As soon as I began to intone it, to a slow rather melancholy rhythm, I
would glance along her back and see her ears twitch and a dreamy look come into the one eye visible to me. Then the milk would spurt steadily into the pail and I knew all was well.

The pace of spring was now increasing rapidly. Each evening at dusk we would see the gleam of fires, as the heather was burnt to make room for new growth. In the distance we could see the small
black specks of figures silhouetted against the glow. With sticks and switches they were keeping the flames under control. The boys of the neighbourhood took a sort of primitive delight in
assisting at these firing operations, and it did seem as though the purifying flames were really laying the ghost of winter in the hills.

With the approach of the lambing season there was another ghost to be laid—that of the threatening, elusive fox. A drive was organised and all guns mobilised. One cold Saturday afternoon
Jim and Billy set off, with the others, to search the crags and thickets round the Red Rock. They swarmed up precipices and slid down scree, but never a fox did they bag. However, a gesture had
been made and some good sport enjoyed. Communal activity always acts as a tonic—the men came home with a gleam in their eyes and a chuckle in their throats.

The ploughing was easier that year, for Jim and Billy could take turns at it, and all the field work went quite smoothly. But we were coming to a crucial point in our enterprise. Our capital was
all laid out in the land and stock and it would be some time before either could give us a substantial return. Could we hold on and keep the place going till that time arrived? Were we justified in
paying Billy a wage, small though it was? As Jim crawled up and down the field on the tractor, as I gathered pailfuls of stones from the garden plot, with Helen making mud pies in her own corner,
these questions were nagging away at our minds.

Finally, we went to see our man of business in Inverness. He is at all times most helpful and understanding, and a problem shared is usually half-way to being solved. The banker, too, was
co-operative. All bankers have a spine-chilling effect on us, but I think the small country-town banker who, in many cases, is of farming stock himself, is perhaps the one representative of the
order who does come within our understanding. Our particular banker has enjoyed several days shooting grouse and hares over our acres and looks positively human in rough tweeds with a gun under his
arm.

Finally, we decided that we could cope with the situation and that Billy could be kept on for the time being at any rate. The pullets were showing a profit and at this peak time of egg
production we would be cleaning eggs till midnight, while listening to a radio play. The ducks, too, were laying again. The sun had a warmth to it, coltsfoot was blazing along the sheltered bank of
the burn, the peewits were tossing and flashing over the fields, the wild geese had gone off, honking their way gaily into the white north sky. It was a time of promise after all.

Hope presented us with a tidy little black bull-calf, one morning at seven. Two days later the first of the lambs was born. Each morning after that we would look out first thing to see how many
new white specks had appeared on the moor overnight. Helen was the quickest at spotting them and she kept the tally. Each evening we would walk right round the flock, watching for any ewe that
needed help; but they were wonderful mothers and we only lost one lamb. Billy quickly skinned it and draped the small, fleecy coat over the body of a lamb which had lost its mother. The bereft ewe,
after an astonished nosing, adopted it as her own. We had some anxious moments, for there are so many creatures ready to make a meal of a new-born lamb—the fox, the buzzard, the killer dog.
The weather itself can be cruel. Driving rain is one of their worst enemies. But we were lucky, for the weather though cold was mostly dry, and the lambs got safely on their feet and began to
thrive.

One Sunday in mid-April, when everything was more or less under control, we left Billy in charge and set off for Loch Ness-side. The primroses were in flower on the wooded slopes, the birds were
singing their heads off in the leafing trees. The water was blue and glittered in the sunlight. It was a morning out of time and we each had a foot in Eden.

CHAPTER VII

THE PIGLETS ARRIVE

B
Y
the end of April the place was swarming with young things. Hope’s calf was let out of the byre and went charging round the field like some
fantastic clockwork creature. Home-hatched ducklings were weaving through the rushes, in a long, golden line. Tiny yellow balls of chickens were scattered over the short, bright grass. Lambs,
startlingly white, as though freshly laundered in a favoured brand of detergent, were bouncing about in the heather and making wild dashes across the fields. Then the goat made a contribution to
this nursery world, in the shape of a tiny brown kid. It was the most fascinating baby creature of them all. Faun-like, yet quite fearless, with bright, intelligent eyes, it would stand poised on a
pinnacle of stone, gazing quizzically at everything, then suddenly leap and cavort in the air, for the sheer joy of using its limbs. Helen would watch its antics for hours on end, completely under
its spell.

Meanwhile we had, thanks to our banker, added a further twenty gimmers to our sheep stock and put a fresh batch of five-week-old pullets in the rearing-houses.

We certainly had our hands full, but it was a real delight to be working among all these young things. We didn’t find the long hours a burden. I think the spring air, the fresh, plain food
and the deep, trance-like sleep we fell into at night kept us going. This sort of life generates its own energy, it imposes its rhythm and if you respond to it you can keep up a steady pace. There
is none of the rushing and jolting, interspersed with blank spaces of boredom, which wastes so much vital force in an artificial way of living. It has its own routine, of course, but within that
routine there is always something fresh cropping up to hold the interest and to challenge initiative powers. One is conscious of keeping all the faculties in trim—brain, brawn, imagination
and understanding are all constantly in play. One is on one’s toes, yet relaxed.

There was now only one thing needed to complete our happiness—a pig! Could we woo the banker to the point of allowing our overdraft the generosity to embrace one little porker, we
wondered. It appeared we could. Anyhow, Jim went to Dingwall market one beautiful May morning and came home with, not one pig but four small, squirming bundles of sacking in the back of the van,
and a triumphant twinkle in his eye. As we loosed each bundle its contents turned out to be a plump, dapper little porker, which scampered round the pen then stood four-square in front of us, on
its neat, pink trotters, looking at us out of unwinking eyes, brashly demanding sustenance.

We had to like the little beggars. They were impudent, yet fetching and they grew at an alarming rate. We had skim milk for them and potatoes, to which we added protein, and they found a lot of
nourishment in the ground itself. In fact, we had always wanted a pig or two, not only because the market was good and they could give a quick return, but also because of their value as
cultivators. Jim had fixed up a shelter for them from sheets of corrugated iron, lined with straw, encased in wire-netting. This he had placed in an enclosure on a piece of rough ground, full of
couch grass and heather. The whole thing, shelter and enclosure, was movable. Our idea was for them to bull-doze and fertilise, bit by bit, this piece of ground, which could then provide
first-class grazing for sheep and cattle. The piglets soon got the idea and the morning after their arrival their little pink snouts were black with burrowing in the peaty soil. Whatever it was in
the way of vitamins and minerals they got out of the heather roots and the ground, I don’t know, but they certainly did thrive. There was no lolling about in a clean, concrete sty for them,
they worked for their living and they liked it. The exercise in the confined space certainly didn’t prevent them putting on good, healthy flesh.

Neighbours came from far and wide to cast an eye over them, prod them with sticks, scratch their backs and murmur ‘porky, porky!’ into their appreciative ears. A pig does love to be
flattered, and the neighbours would say, as they lit their pipes and shook their heads slowly from side to side, ‘grand pigs, grand pigs...’ in a ruminative, almost wistful way. In the
old days, when weaners were to be had for half a crown, every croft had its pig, tenderly reared in a small, dark sty: in November it would be stuck and salted. Mrs. Maclean had given me the recipe
for the brine mixture and told me tales of the great feastings they had always had with their Christmas ham. However, these particular little pigs were to go to market, and go they did a couple of
months later, when they fetched more than double their purchase price and we bought six more with the proceeds.

That month we had a real heat wave. Warm, dry weather is so much the exception to the rule here that we tend to welcome it with open arms, and to revel in it unthinkingly. The heat shimmers over
the moor, the hills are shrouded in blue haze, the scent of the small flowers is honey-sweet and lulling. Helen scampers around, in the briefest of sun-suits, and in no time at all is burned gipsy
brown. But a heat wave brings its problems.

We hadn’t had much snow that winter, the springs were running low and to our dismay we found that there was not enough of a flow to drive the pump at the well. The storage tank in the
house was empty and we began a frantic search for an additional supply. We wished the golden well were not so far away, it would have solved all our problems. Neighbours, sympathetic as always to
our troubles, told us of several spots where they remembered water rising long ago. We followed their directions and eventually came on the old ‘horse well’, where our predecessors had
always watered the horses. It looked promising. Jim and Billy cleared the rushes, dug down to the source of it and laid a pipe, to connect the flow with that from our existing source. It was not
strong enough to make much difference immediately, but we were confident that it would help after a good spell of rain. In the meantime, we had to carry water for drinking and cooking in pails,
every morning and evening, while for washing we still had some in the big butt at the back door. When that was done I carried the clothes down to the near burn and laundered them there. It was very
pleasant on a burning hot day. I would lay the linen on a flat stone and rub it clean, then rinse it in the clear flow. Now and again, an astonished trout would flash through the washing pool: a
frog would give me an incredulous stare before bounding to the safety of a cool, green hollow in the bank. When my back began to ache I would stretch out on the grass and watch Helen splashing in
her own pool upstream.