TOMBRECK - Winter in the Highlands

Extra-special thanks to Sue and Tober for all their highland hospitality during my stay at Tombreck, the rundown hill farm they are bringing back to life. They make a great partnership; Sue is an eco-architect and has done the designs for the building work, including a straw bale house, while Tober has lots of different farming experience from fish farming to crofting. They both have a deep respect for the land and all things living on it and are rejuventing the farm using their hearts as well as their heads. More about their work at: Tombreck.
It was a bit chilly though...minus 7 degrees registering on the car thermometer there...

...but how good to have a bit of real winter for a change. Fellow WWOOFer Richard shared his caravan with me and we got it nice and cosy thanks to the wood-burning stove.

The arrow in the picture above shows where the cosy caravan nestles beneath mighty Ben Lawers.

Sue and Tober lost their ducks earlier this year, no doubt to foxes. I helped the duck project along by building this palatial duck shed - fox proof and no doubt earthquake proof too.

What next? My plan now is to move up to Scotland and start getting involved for the long term with projects like Tombreck and others in the area. The wild parts of Scotland and Wales must be amongst the best parts of the world to start building the resilient communities that will give us and our children the best possible future in the face of the problems that are stacking up for us: climate change, peak oil, loss of food and material resources, water shortages...not to mention the collapse of the financial castles of sand. The communities that survive into the future will have to live on the resources that they live amongst and manage them for the future, the core of these being water and trees. There's plenty of water up there! Loch Tay is about 15 miles long and up to 500ft deep. There's beautiful trees galore and Sue and Tober planted another 3000 this year to keep them company with plenty more on the way.

I'm really drawn to moving back to Scotland and to the Loch Tay area: it's beautiful, it's near my daughters, Amanda and Laura and there are great projects and people working there already. It will mean a bit of travelling up and down to be with Debi and the boys but it will be the best place to build the things we dream about. One day we'll have our eco home in the highlands and carry on developing our healing work as part of a resilient community.

Here's a few more photos from around Loch Tay...

...looking west to Ben More from Tombreck...

...looking north east down the loch...

...and looking west up the loch towards ben More again.

And a few more wintry shots from around Perthshire thrown in for good measure:

While I was in Scotland I had a walk up Ben Vrackie with my chum Brian, its the 46th time he's been up the speckled hill this year...

..and he's been up all the corbetts once and the munroes twice - is their a Hill Addicts Annonymous he can join?

Stunning views from the top of Vrackie:

And finally, a familiar view from the road north to Aberfeldy, Schiehallion, "The Fairy Mountain".

More soon and Happy Christmas and New Year to all blogees!

Summer at Tombreck

One of the tasks at Tombreck this summer has been digging out the old steading floor to take the foundations for two homes.

The old cobble floor doesn't look too bad at first site but Perthshire bedrock is lurking not far below. The lads from Sweden gave it a good go, I gave it a good go, Debi gave it a good go and that's Tober and Jean giving it a good go by taking out a massive boulder almost as big as the Matterhorn.






Why not use a digger? Well apart from all the diesel, it just wouldn't do such a good job. We were able to separate out the stone that would be useful for building from the general hardcore and the rubbish. And it was such a feeling of bloomin achievment too!!

Tombreck - another roof on

I looked in to catch up with Sue and Tober and friends at Tombreck who have been having a very cold but very beautiful winter up there - minus nineteen or thereabouts. Down South everything grinds to a halt at a mere minus one of course...

Willy and Wendy's straw bale house is on the left of the picture above, see more about that via the link in my previous post along with some excellent pictures of the winter scenery up there.

The South Byre roof which I worked on last year is now all slated and Ewan and Tober have a lot of the internal partitions up as well.

With the cold weather they have all been using lots of fuel up there, above is the log burning boiler which heats Sue and Tober's house - I know it well! It takes a whole barrow load of logs in one go, a couple of loads heats up the enormous hot water tank on the right of the picture. Sue said they got down to three days supply of logs at one point during the really cold weather - a bit scary.

Tombreck in mist and rain

I had a nice few weeks up at Tombreck helping again with the renovations of the South Byre and looking after the farm generally for a few days while Sue and Tober had a break. I really enjoyed the physical work of helping Ewan to put up the roof and its got me very interested in doing more eco-building.

That's fellow volunteer Andy from Australia doing a bit of stone work. His last job was working in a nickel mine...

Sue nicking one of Millie's carrots...


Duck house moving time; this is the house I made for them last winter, its earthquake proof construction means that it needs four people to lift it.

Lots of opportunities for moody shots of misty trees...


...and moody shots of misty trees and mountains.



Back down South for a few days to see ZZ TOP with my great friend Stone from as long as I can remember - they just get better and better, Boogie on Mr Billy!


The roof ready for its sarking boards. We had a lot of rain though! Some days we just gave up and packed up, others we kept on working keeping sheltered as much as we could.

Eco Living - One Horse Power

This is Millie, a recent arrival at Tombreck. She is being trained to pull timber up from the woods for fuel etc. And here is Jean who has worked with horses before and has been helping to train her.
Apparently, in times of yore, horses would have trained each other. A young learner horse would just have been harnessed up alongside an old expert. All this stuff we are re-learning...

Horse-power is a lot different to tractor-power, you can't just stick a key in the thing and off you go. (Mind you horses don't need diesel and tractors can't breed.) The eco-way does generally seem to involve a lot more work and skill.

The Way of the WWOOF

If you want to explore the eco world, volunteering is an excellent starting point. I don't know of a better way of getting to know people than working with them. It's easy to get going, the best known eco volunteering organisation probably being the excellent WWOOFing network, (used to be Willing Workers On Organic Farms now Worldwide Opportunities On Organic Farms), with over 500 active hosts in the UK and a worldwide network beyond that. It's a long established organisation and works well. The deal is that you help the hosts, typically on a small farm doing organic and other interesting stuff in return for your board and lodging. You meet some very interesting people and can experience varying degrees of low-impact living. It's good to have a useful skill or two to offer, obviously experience with plants is useful but your hosts may be glad of other skills as well. I always end up doing woodwork on projects and often give therapy treatments for sore backs etc.

Student volunteers working on Nigel and Cassie's roundhouse at Lammas, 2009

Lammas again, fresh air washing up - the plate rack was blown away later...

Nigel and Cassie's roundhouse looking good two years later

I'm very interested in how people can learn to cooperate and in alternatives to the harsh unreality of growth at all costs economics, so have been very interested to visit and work at various communities and cooperative ventures. If that interests you too, the Diggers and Dreamers site is a good way in to this world, it's how I found Chickenshack and went on to work with Steve Jones of Sector39 fame. Having also visited the Crab Apple Community at Berrington Hall and the community at Canon Frome Court I have to say I admire what all those people are doing but it's not for me! mainly because of the lengthy meetings of the decision making process. I struggle to stay focused on what people are saying for any length of time being much more of a practical person. (The decision making process is different here at Treflach - more about that in another post soon).
One of the most interesting places I've worked at is the Lammas Eco Community - it was also the most challenging! I arrived there, over two years ago now, just at the beginning of three weeks of very wet and windy weather. Back then it was really hard core, a sort of cross between a building site, a refugee camp and a failed squat, all flapping tarpaulins, mud and cold. I almost turned tail and headed off that first night, I'm really glad I stayed though, it was great experience for low-impact building of roundhouses etc. and I have some great memories, like reading stories to Nigel and Cassie's kids by the light of a wind up torch and a candle inside a yurt swaying from side to side in a storm. Volunteers have put in a huge amount of energy into this wonderful project and made an important contribution for which the Lammas residents are always very grateful, as are all the other hosts I've worked with.
So if you have the time and are interested why not treat yourself to a volunteering adventure this year!

A chance to visit beautiful places too, Ben Lawers from Tombreck on Loch Tay, Perthshire

Eco living - More about Ducks

The duck house I made at Tombreck during the winter is now in full use. The ducks seem to be perfectly happy there (they have their own bath and a big pond not far away) and they usually produce an egg each a day. They are some eggs too! Rich and with a beautiful golden yolk. They usually lay them in a handy little clutch too...

They are good fun to watch waddling and quacking about in their compound. They eat lots of pests and, as they have webbed feet, they don't scratch up the ground like chickens. Their big treat of the day is when they are let out in the morning and get the slugs collected from the polytunnel the night before. They come charging down the ramp when hatch is opened and chomp up their slugs like gourmands at a banquet. If they feel threatened at all they hide in the undergrowth and stay still - ha ha! no one can see us now...

Clouds Mountains & Trees

A few shots from Scotland this summer: Ben Lawers through a group of ash trees, the last flashes of sunlight on the far side of Loch Tay, and some Miscellaneous Clouds Mountains & Trees. The last two shots are from Carie Woods, on the farm next door to Tombreck: magic, mystery and time slowed right down till you can hear it creaking.