March

March has come in like a lamb with an almost cloudless day, bright sunshine, and a light northeasterly breeze - so warm that we have been sitting out on the terrace for the first time this year. Last night's frost, and the continuing low air temperature, have meant that snow remains on the hills.

March has also come in with a lamb, the first in the village. This little chap was born last night but he seemed happy enough in the sun. As Pat said in yesterday's Diary entry, the earliest lambs aren't due until mid-month, this one being the result of leaving the tup in with the ewes a little late last year.

At nine this morning we set off to walk into the Ormsaigmore common grazing, an area of heather and coarse grassland shared by the crofters in the Ormsaigmore township, each crofter having the right to use the land to graze a set number of animals. Some of the land is fairly flat and offers reasonable grazing but most is steep, rocky slopes or bog, the haunt of pippits, the occasional snipe and small groups of hardy, black-face sheep.

We were looking for this. It may look like a ragged pile of rocks but it's the remains of a small croft house near the Millburn called Carna Fearsa. It was a single-storey building with outside measurements of about 9m by 4m: allowing for the thickness of the stone walls, that would have given an internal living space not much bigger than an average sitting room. The room may have had a temporary internal partition, but there are no signs of it now.

Carna Fearsa was occupied by the Livingston family, who had three sons, Alan, Donald and Archie. When they left Carna Fearsa they moved to Lighthouse View in Ormsaigbeg. Donald, affectionately known as 'the DL', inherited Lighthouse View and became one of the village's much-loved characters.

It's good that a young crofting family in the village have chosen to name their new house, built on the opposite side of the Millburn, after the old Carna Fearsa croft.