Year: 2020

As the Corona Virus takes hold of us here and we are now pretty much put in lockdown, the concept of self isolating is not so bad at Glengorm.

Having closed all our tourist business off now, we get to enjoy the peace here at Glengorm. Whilst I am aware we can have too much of a good thing, it will be interesting to see how our animals benefit from a lack of humans roaming around.

Calving is well under way here, and we now have about 8 calves. Our younger mothers, the heifers are leading the way. The calf which I wrote about previously is doing well. Heifers are basically cows which have not yet have a calf, once they have had a calf they become a cow. The inexperience of heifers, when they are a first time mothers, can be an issue. The heifer when she has the calf, doesn’t always know what to do with it. Whether this is how to feed it or how to protect it. The one which I wrote about before, was hidden by its mother for nearly 3 days after being let out of the shed. The heifer appeared to have fed it, but we did worry that it may have died as we could not find it. It was eventually found safe and well.

Lambing starts here on the 3rd April. The sheep are all being moved about just now into the fields in by. This makes it easy for our farmers, Alexander and Ross to get around them all easier. They will get checked 3 times a day to make sure no one is getting in to trouble, and any sheep in need of help will get it.

The tups, at the moment are now confined to the shed. This is to keep them out of the way. Today they were clipped, this will help them not to overheat too much when the weather improves.

They look pretty skinny without their coats! They have a bit of an MOT when they are brought in and a few of the tups were also fitted with springs which helps their horns not grow too close to their faces.

Stay safe everyone.

Glengorm Castle was built back in 1860, and we finally started a replacement window plan last year. We have decided to replace 10 windows every year, and this is the week for the new 10 to go in.

Unfortunately for us 3 of them don’t fit!!!!! So the week didn’t start too well. We are at present trying to get them altered to fit as in the light of the loss of business from the Corona virus ,we don’t really want to have to shell out for 3 new ones!!

Anyway, the week has got better and today the sun was shining when we came to get the 4 new ones for our special wee sitting room at the top of the tower. This room is a sitting room with 360 degree views and is part of and accessed through the Tower rooms apartment. The staircase is very steep and narrow, and this causes problems getting anything in and put of the room. Last year we changed the sofa and we had to cut up the old one and chuck it out the window. I then did an unprecedented thing for our castle and replaced it with one from Ikea which I could carry up myself and build in the room. It doesn’t look like the best piece of furniture for the room, but it does the job.

To get the new windows up there, we had the loan of a Manitou from our very lovely neighbours at the cheese farm.

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The windows up there, are past their best. This causes leaks into the tower which travels down and causes damage. We are hoping the replacement of these will prevent some bad leaks which have appeared this year. The rain has been relentless this year and we are battling against the elements being so exposed. One of the windows had to be taken out in order to get all the others in to the building.

The windows are all case and sash and are being replaced with timber case and sash and we needed to send the weights for the pulleys up on a lift of their own too.

Our land management at Glengorm includes several areas of set aside, which totals about 300 acres. Set aside is areas of land which are fenced off from farmed animals in order to encourage natural growth and habitats. We have been assisted with subsidies and grants to help do this but the real motivation for this is for conservation and biodiversity, and to encourage a natural habitat to attract native wildlife.

Out today on a blustery walk to the sea, we went through one which is set aside as a wetland. The area as suggested is very wet and boggy and is carpeted in rushes. At this time of the year it doesn’t look up to much but in the spring and summer its rich vegetation attracts a myriad of insects and birds. At the moment it is home to what seems to be an abundance of frog spawn.

It seems this year that there is much more spawn about then previous years. This may be helped by all the wet weather and rain we have been having this year, today has been the 4th dry day of the year!

Other set aside areas have been created for scrub and vegetation, coastal sea flowers, mosaic habitat, ground nesting birds and wader grazing.

On the estate we also have SSSI, this is a site of special scientific interest. This is the volcano, ‘Sairde Beinn, it is an area of conservation due to its geological interest.

Conservation to us at Glengorm is very important, encouraging biodiversity and native species, and the growth of ecosystems. Our Wildlife Project was set up to help us achieve this and to help make the wildlife here available to all.

All our set asides compliments our farming here at Glengorm. Our highland cattle and blackface sheep are as native as farmed animals can get and live outside year round and enjoy the hilly landscape here. They are allowed access to some of the set aside areas in the winter season as this in turn encourages the cycle of life which thrives there.

Over the last 3 years, we have felled the block of forestry trees which is in the middle of Glengorm. The trees had to be felled as they had reached their maturity and were all starting to fall over. This was done over 3 years as we were limited to how much weight the Glengorm road could take and also to only taking the wood out between April and September, the drier months, to help the roads.

The majority of the wood was taken away and sold, but we have kept a supply to keep our wood chip boiler well fired for the foreseeable future. Coinciding with forest felling, our rhodedendrons were carrying a disease, so we were then instructed by the Forestry commision to clear an area with a 500m diameter to clear all the affected bushes.

An end result of all this felling and clearing is that, a lot of the trees left were exposed and left unsupported, and subsequently they have all being falling like dominoes.

The high winds and sheer volume of rain that we have had this winter has waterlogged the ground and we have been unable to do anything to prevent the trees from falling. The huge noble firs by the Lodge have all gone now, some huge ones fell, and we had to chop down the rest to avoid further damage to the walls and telephone lines. The Beech along the side of the road still stand and we hope they will hang in there. Around the estate there is a lot of blown over Oak trees and at the moment we are leaving them in situ to see if they will evolve and adapt and start growing up in this position as we already have some really old ones which have done this.

This winter we have completed replanting 90,000 native hardwood trees in the old forest which include Hazel, Hawthorne, Blackthorn, Rowan, Alder, Oak, Cherry, Aspen and Birch. We have had to fence off a huge area surrounding the forest and Castle to prevent the deer from getting in and eating them. This year we are going to replant closer to home and finish tidying up all the recent casualties in sight of the castle.

The tidying up is ongoing. When the weather is not too wet, Tom is out with his willing helpers chainsawing, shifting or burning debris to ty and get us away from the graveyard of trees. The piles of tree trunks and logs are still stacked where they fell, but they will get moved soon and will be used for firewood or will be chipped for our boiler.