Where Eagles Soar…..
It has been a busy old week.
We have welcomed many new guests to the farm and waved others on their way. So many fascinating people from all corners of the globe, with so many interesting stories to tell. This week we welcomed Koreans, Americans, Germans, Norwegians, and a lovely lady who grew up on a little island off the south coast of Australia. She grew up in the bush on a tiny island, but now lives in London. She had travelled to spend some time on our island, revelling in dipping her toes into the waves, eating oysters fresh from the sea and enjoying being surrounded by the ocean, and once again catching up on the joys of island life.
The farmhouse washing machine has been constantly whirling then and the washing lines are filled with sheets drying in the sea breeze. At Persabus as far as possible everything is ‘line-dried’, on occasions, even the Happy Farmer, you thought I was going to say is ‘hung out to dry’….but no, even the Happy Farmer is part of ‘team washing line’, dodging showers and rain, when the climate is changeable, and making the most of any breeze, and of course on days like today taking advantage of the heat of the midday sun, hanging out those never ending baskets of sheets. It is calming to know then that alongside our crazily busy, traffic polluted cities, where life is lived in the fast lane, on our little island farm, the sheets can still dry freely in the breeze.
The same ocean breeze that permeates the casks, to help mature the whisky, also blows through our laundry. After a day of distillery tastings our guests can cosy down into fresh, crisply laundered bed sheets, that have a lingering scent of the Islay sea air.
After ‘oddles’ of laundry today then, I sat with a cup of tea in the garden and admired the huge blue skies that have been enveloping our island for days now. The garden troughs have been all planted up with a beautiful collection of flowering plant varieties by Anna, one of the Persabus team members. After a morning’s hard work there is something immensely satisfying about sitting in our sun filled garden and watching clean, white sheets blowing gently in the breeze.
Swallows were swooping about in the garden. They have made their nests, as they do every year, in the farm sheds.
Pottery waiting to be glazed on the work benches needs to be carefully covered in plastic sheets at this time of year, as those swallows, unwittingly, can make quite a mess as they fly back and forth to nests, feeding their young. Persabus is their home too for these few months of the year.
In the distance, we watched
two Golden Eagles soaring overhead above the hill
They were circling, riding the breeze, levelling off, before dive bombing down to catch their unsuspecting prey.
‘So long as it’s not Hansel the horse’ was the Happy Farmer’s cheering thought and with that he took to the hills on his quad bike to check the beasts all have plenty of water on this scorching day.
Until next time….
