A Croft in the Hills (4 page)

Jim brought in more logs while I made an enormous dish of scrambled eggs and then we shut the door reluctantly on the stars and drew the supper-table close to the fire.

All that month winter fretted at us. There was little we could do outside but repair fences between the storms, but we carried several fallen tree-trunks down on our shoulders and cut them with
a cross-cut saw. On the fine days we would work away at the chopping and splitting till the sky faded to mauve and clear shades of green and gold came up about the setting sun. Every morning, when
I opened the door, I would find two out-wintered Shetland ponies waiting patiently for their bite of bread. They belonged to a distant neighbour and one day we had taken pity on them and given them
some crusts. So every morning, till the spring grass came, they would be there to greet us at the door.

In the evenings we made plans and discussed endlessly the absorbing topics of sheep and cattle, hens and pigs, fertilisers and farm-machinery and crops. This ‘shop’ never grows
stale. It has an inexhaustible fascination, perhaps because one has the assurance that one is dealing with fundamentals, perhaps because one knows that there’s always the unpredictable
lurking in the background ready to upset the best-laid schemes, perhaps just because it relates to things one instinctively loves. We began to long for the days to lengthen and the air to soften so
that we could start putting our plans into operation.

On Christmas morning the plumber arrived to try once more to connect the pump. He had walked the two miles from the bus and was quite tired out when he reached us and amazed at the wintry
conditions in our hills. In Inverness, he said, there had been promise of a reasonably mild day and he had had hopes of getting the job done. We have now come to accept this sort of thing. We leave
home on a bitter winter’s morning and find spring, with a flush of green in the trees, at Loch Ness-side. It’s not the distance of two miles that does it but the rise of close on a
thousand feet. There was little he could do, the plumber decided, so he shared our Christmas dinner and set off again to walk to the bus. At dusk we lit the candles on our little Christmas tree and
played games with Helen till bed-time.

There was a party for all the children of the district in the village hall, to which we took Helen. We met her future teacher and a dozen or so lively youngsters. There were games and songs and
a piper and there was tea and cakes and oranges and sweets. It was a simple little festivity but a very happy one. Everyone asked kindly how we were faring. ‘It can be fearful wild here in
the winter’, they said, almost apologising for the climate in their hills. ‘We like it’, we said, and they looked at us out of their clear, shrewd eyes and I think they almost
believed us. We began to feel that we nearly belonged.

On New Year’s Eve we sat by the fire talking, as usual, and when midnight came we filled our glasses and slipped upstairs and pledged each other over Helen’s sleeping head. We went
down again and got out the black bun and some extra glasses and put fresh logs on the fire. We thought it more than likely we should have a neighbour for a first-foot. Distance would not daunt the
people of Abriachan, we were sure, and the night was fine.

We sat till two o’clock, getting drowsier and drowsier. No one came and we went to bed. At about three-thirty we were dragged from the depths of sleep by what sounded like an aeroplane
crashed outside the front door. We fumbled our way into heavy coats and staggered out, to find three neighbours clambering off a tractor. There was much handshaking and back-slapping. We poked the
fire into a blaze and drank a toast. Later we helped them to remount and stood at the door, watching the tractor lurch off on its way to the next port of call. How the two passengers managed to
keep their precarious balance, draped over the rear mudguards, will remain for ever a mystery. But we were immensely cheered by their visit and went back to bed and slept till the middle of the
morning.

During the first days of the new year we made many pleasant visits to neighbours. Some we had called on before, but there was one whose house we had never been in. He lived, with his brother and
his cousin, in a high fold of the hills to the south-west. Several other families had lived up there at one time, but now only the ruins of their little dwellings are left. Finlay’s place,
however, had been completely modernised under the Hill Farming Scheme, and there, in the little house nestled in the shelter of the rock, we found a most heartening welcome. We were given tea
before a fine red fire and were shown, with quiet pride, the bathroom, the new scullery with its gleaming sink and hot and cold taps, the enamelled cooking stove, the bright paintwork
everywhere.

Later we were told how Finlay’s forebears had been evicted from a place in a fertile glen and had started all over again in this green upland, first building themselves a rough house of
stone and thatch, then clearing little fields from the heather. We were also told how the men who now live there had laboured, as boys, before and after school, to make the road which carries
cattle-floats these days up to their snug farmstead. We began to understand how it was that the Highlander made such a splendid pioneer in Canada and New Zealand.

Towards the end of January the wind at last got back to its normal westerly quarter and the air became soft and damp again. The plumber returned and our shining new taps at last began to
function. It was thrilling to see the water actually flow from them— it was bright green in colour, but somehow that only added to the delight. After a time the piping settled down till there
was only a faint tinge of green about the water and it had no ill effect on our stomachs.

The mild spell, unbelievably, continued. There was almost a warmth in the sun and the midges were dancing. Encouraged by this overture we took a spade to the garden plot. It had been neglected
for years, but it had a dry-stone wall protecting it from the north and east and we could see its possibilities. In a couple of days we had the turf skimmed off and our spades bit delightedly into
the good, black earth.

We began to get very impatient to start the real work of the place. The first essential, we knew, for the growing of crops, was sound fencing. Every afternoon we went up to the old woodland,
selected pieces of timber suitable for making into fencing posts and carried them down on our shoulders. We pointed the ends and stuck them to soak in a pail of creosote.

But we realised that it would take weeks to make all that were needed. Our land marched for almost half a mile with Forestry Commission land. This Forestry land was unfenced, pending replanting,
and sheep from various airts were roaming over it and finding their way into our fields. On our next trip to Inverness Jim went to see the Forestry people and asked when they meant to fence. To our
astonishment and great satisfaction they said that although they did not intend to plant immediately they would put forward the fencing and make a start at it in the early summer. This news cheered
us greatly; it really did look as though things were going our way.

We bought a tractor and a single plough. The tractor had a small bogey attachment and during the long weeks we waited for the ground to dry out for ploughing we found this extremely useful for
all sorts of carting work. We were able to fetch wood in large quantities, both for fuel and for fencing posts, and load after load of stones for patching the road.

February brought another blizzard and the road was blocked again, but this time we had the larder well stocked. We were learning! By the end of the month the larks were singing. There is perhaps
nothing in hill-life so thrilling as the sight and sound of the first returning lark. You go out, on a still February morning, your footsteps ringing on the hard cobbles of the yard. Suddenly,
something makes you stop in your tracks and look up. Against the pale blue sky you see two, maybe three, or even four, small brown specks tossing madly in the air. As you look, one detaches itself
from the rest, rises in a series of ecstatic leaps and comes slowly down again, its song rippling from its tiny throat. How something so small can let loose such a volume of sound is what amazes
you. Soon the others join it and then the whole sky rings with music.

‘The larks are singing!’ Each year we make the announcement to one another. The words are sober enough, but what they convey, it is almost impossible to express. It means that our
hills and moors are again fit places for new life, for song and work and laughter, all the things we cling to so passionately, in the name of living. Each year, the rising of the larks has meant a
little more to us, as we emerge from one more winter to greet the new season.

After the larks come the peewits. They usually arrive at dusk, and far into the darkening we hear their wild crying. Next morning we go out eagerly to watch them flashing and swooping over the
bare, brown fields. Each day after that we listen for the curlews and, when we see them gliding over the moor in the evening light and catch the sound of their call, which seems to come from some
other very far-off place, we know that spring is really with us.

By mid-March the upper field in front of the house was ready for ploughing. It was to be sown to oats. The bigger field, below the house, was to carry a crop of oats, undersown with grass, and
we were to grow two acres of turnips and half an acre of potatoes. Later on we would put more under grass. We were to work on a five-year rotation.

On this still March morning we could feel the warmth of the sun on our hands and faces. Not only to see the sun, but to feel its warmth, that was what gave a lift to the day! Jim hitched the
plough to the tractor and began slowly turning over the sward. I stood watching the work from the door and as soon as the household chores were finished I went out to dig the garden. Helen
scampered between field and garden, calling encouragement to each of us. It was a morning none of us will forget.

Of course, winter had not finished with us. The very next day, the wind shifted unaccountably to the east and sleet began to fall. Jim finished ploughing the top field, completely unperturbed by
the weather, and in the afternoon he made a start at the lower field. We knew that there were patches of bog here and though we had scythed the rushes and given the drain a preliminary clearing the
ground was still treacherous. As dusk was falling the tractor stuck and no amount of manoeuvring would get her clear. We went along to our nearest tractor-owning neighbour, who came willingly to
the rescue. It was then that we got our first inkling of what good-neighbourliness can mean in lonely places. Since that day, we have borrowed and lent everything from a loaf of bread to a broody
hen and have exchanged services of every kind, from a hand at the dipping to the rescue of a snow-bound truck. We are all faced with the same fundamental problems and we have learnt how utterly
dependent we are upon one another in dealing with them.

CHAPTER IV

CUCKOO-SNOW

W
E
were soon well in the grip of spring fever. In the lengthening evenings we would take a pleasure stroll round the fields after supper, for to stay
indoors had become positively irksome. We acquired our first stock—a dozen laying hens, which we bought from a neighbour. We settled them in the stable, in a litter of peat-moss and straw,
and began to keep a tally of eggs laid.

About this time it came to our ears that the croft immediately to our east was likely to come up for sale. The man who had bought it, a few years previously, was trying to run it in the time he
could spare from another full-time job and it had become a burden to him. There were about fifteen acres of well-fenced arable ground, some more rough grazing, and the croft carried the right to
graze sheep on the open hill on the other side of the road, a right shared by four other places in the neighbourhood. There was an excellent steading, with a brand-new corrugated iron roof, and a
small wooden bungalow adjoining it, in place of the ruined dwelling house.

We were tempted to acquire this place as it would give a reasonably good access road to our land. Our own very indifferent road came through part of this holding and in the past, we learned,
there had been a certain amount of dispute about rights of way and the upkeep of communal gates and fences. We could grow our first crops in the well-fenced fields, thus giving ourselves time to do
the other fencing more or less at leisure. We could winter cattle in the steading and keep the one near home for the house-cow and the hens in deep litter. The proposition was certainly
attractive—could we scrape the bottom of the barrel? We had still our basic stock to buy.

For several days we looked at the thing from all angles. Then, over a cup of tea at the kitchen fire, on a blustery, wet afternoon, we discussed it with J. F., the owner of the croft. We could
have it lock, stock and barrel, he said, it was proving too irksome for him, with his other commitments. The lock we knew about; of barrel there was no sign! But we agreed to examine the stock.
This consisted of one cross cow, in milk (she was brown and horned and had a touch of Guernsey about her, her owner said. This was later borne out by the quality of the cream she produced), and
four stirks, all hardy crosses, two score sheep, a couple of goats, two dozen hens, a dozen khaki-Campbell ducks and—Charlie, a straw-coloured Highland pony of uncertain age. There was also a
cart, a set of harrows, a mower, a turnip-chopper, barn tools, all things we should need and have to spend precious time looking for in the second-hand market. Here they were on the spot. Finally
we did a deal and the signing of one more scrap of paper satisfied our land hunger at last.

The animals were in poor shape and we got them cheaply enough. They had had a lean winter of it, but we knew a summer’s grazing could work wonders—and so it proved. We were able to
sell the stirks in the autumn for more than twice the amount we paid for them. But in the meantime our immediate problem was to find something to put in their bellies, until such time as the
natural herbage had grown sufficiently to satisfy their appetites.