Our new home Bluebell from across the glen

                    with Rose and Honeysuckle in the foreground.

          and below from the back garden up the glen to Sgurr Domhnuill.

             Our latest arrival on November 5th 2007 at just 24 hours old, Daisy daughter of Dede.

Much has changed on the croft since our arrival in June 2004 and since we moved into our new

house just in time for Christmas.

The vegetable patch (20 x 30 metres) has developed with a 50 ft poly tunnel, small greenhouse

 and lots of raised beds. 2005 and 2006 saw the production of good crops of vegetables and

plenty of soft fruit  in the summer. We sold over 500 lettuces to local businesses and are now

tucked into our stores of onions and potatoes with parsnips, leeks, broccoli and greens seeing

us through the winter and early spring.  The tunnel and garden are overflowing with young

plants and produce for our guests.

On the livestock front, our first home produced pig meat was butchered with the pig meat being

quite dark and very tasty. Bacon and ham are now being cured but we warn you - taste our pig

meat and you will never be able to buy 'ordinary' pork or bacon again.  A succession of 2

weaners are being reared outdoors to take their place. Shamrock (aka Shamy), the only Jersey

cow for many miles, provides all our milk and presented us with a beautiful heifer calf named

Sunshine (Sunny) in September '05. Sunshine went off to a friend on the Back Isle in August '06

when Shamy reared an adopted black and white calf called Bertie and she has produced a

beautiful heifer calf called Showers.

This is the Reserve Champion at the local show (we ate the champion!) and the new cow

Dede due to calve in September '07 and Molly who is a young heifer plus 2 sock lambs we

have reared for the freezer.

  Our Christmas goose was so good we hope to increase production for 2008 with the

introduction of a new gander in 2007 none of our eggs hatched. Chickens, ducks and

geese provide all our eggs and we now also rear a special breed of fat chicken that

weighs up to 8lb when killed (you are welcome to order one). We now regularly use

an incubator with 5 chicks hatched in March and it now holds 20 more eggs of varying

origin! What fun it will be for children over the summer.

We are really pleased with our new house and much of its style and features will be

incorporated into the self catering houses. The house itself has a kitchen designed with

cookery and smoking courses in mind and a large Aga. So watch this space for more

updates and photographs will be added as the garden progresses.           

            Shammy our first cow and Sunshine her heifer calf. At present in November 2007

  we are still trying to get Shammy pregnant again, after adopting and rearing Bertie after Sunshine.

                                          Vegetable garden - summer of '05.

                                                   .......and 2007, the blueberries are coming on nicely.

           Lucy our five year old black lab.  and with one of her accidental puppies - note the white toe!

                                                            Some of the local wildlife.

                                              We pick a lot of wild fungi during the season.

         If you are interested in wild flowers we suggest you visit in June as there were over a

thousand (yes!) orchids on the top half of the croft mostly of the variety on the left ranging in

colour from very pale pink through to very dark purple. Perhaps we should have called it

Orchid Croft!

             One of our visitors in December 2006 who liked it so much he stayed for 3 months!

                                                    Toby and one of the first pigs.

                                                    The next generation - February '06.

Bluebell Croft, 15 Anaheilt, Strontian, Ardnamurchan, Scotland UK PH36 4JA   Tel 01967 402226