Harvest Coming Home

It has been a sensationally good year on the allotment. I think in part, the success of the crops may be a result of buying seed from a different supplier. Up until this year, I have always relied on Suttons for all my veg seeds, but I have often been disappointed by poor germination rates, and ultimately by poor plants. This year, I bought Thompson and Morgan seed. Has that made such a difference? Who can say? This year could just be a 'special' year. We will have to grow Thompson and Morgan seed for a few more years to be able to make any claim that one is better than the other.

The weather here in the spring of 2020 was mild, often sunny and mostly dry. There were no late frosts. Summer has been quite wet. We have had a couple of 60mph storms, but the allotment is reasonably well protected from the wind. 

Due to the coronavirus lockdown, I had more time than in previous years to lavish on careful tending of the soil, the growing plants, and the weeding.

The results... well ! The photos below tell the tale - and yes, I am sorry the grass paths on the allotment need a trim. I'll get onto that tomorrow...

The kale is just amazing, and really yummy. 
On the left are the brussels sprouts
- coming on nicely and will be ready for picking in a month or so.

The harvest from one row of potatoes...
On the right are the next ones to be harvested - four more rows...

The runner beans are by far the best I have ever grown at Roskhill, and possibly the best ever!

Do you remember my excitement when the carrot seeds germinated...???
Look at them now...!!!

The onion crop, hung out to dry.
The potatoes await being stored in hessian sacks.

Do You Write Reviews?

More and more these days, we are getting used to shopping online for pretty much everything. More and more, we have then become used to follow-up emails from the supplier asking us how we like our purchase, and urging us to write a review. I suppose there may be some value in such reviews if there are enough of them to paint an overall picture, as 90% of positive comments will indicate that the product is probably 'OK', even if 10% have left negative remarks.

I personally have a slightly uneasy feeling about anonymous reviews though. I am concerned that it is all too easy for a reviewer to leave unpleasant, malicious or unfair remarks in a similar way that online bullying can infect the pages of some social media websites.

When it comes to accommodation, in 'the good old days', providers who were registered with the scheme would get an annual Quality Assurance inspection from a representative of the national tourism board. This resulted in a private written report for the provider, telling them what they were doing well, what needed attention, and a public overall star-rating was then awarded. A 5-star rating was reserved for the very highest quality accommodation, and was rarely awarded. 4-star was 'excellent', while 3-star was 'good'. The most basic accommodation gained 2-stars, and 1-star didn't really exist.

All that has now gone, in favour of public online reviews written by the guests themselves. We market our cottages through Airbnb and Booking.com. Both of these platforms nag the guests to leave reviews following their visit, but there are differences in their approach.

Both operate a star-grading system, and both expect providers to maintain a star score of 4.8 out of 5 or better, otherwise penalties may be applied, with very low-scoring properties being unlisted from the platform - though Booking.com is slightly less draconian than Airbnb in this respect.

Airbnb ask guests to separately rate; accuracy, check-in, cleanliness, communication, location and value, and then give an overall quality rating - so a guest who rates using the old tourism board stars where 3-star was 'good', can easily leave a rating that results in a harmful average of under 4.

Airbnb also invites the accommodation provider (whom they refer to as the host) to write a review of the guest, and neither host's review or guest's review are published until both have written their reviews. This system is supposed to encourage guests to respect the properties in which they are staying, and to leave them tidy on departure, as hosts are likely refuse a booking request from guests who have poor reviews - though in practice, a guest with poor reviews can simply re-register with Airbnb under a new name and 'wipe their slate clean'.

For the host, reading positive review comments from happy guests is rewarding, and there is little doubt such comments encourage other potential guests to book highly-rated properties. On the other hand, negative comments in a review can be quite hurtful, especially if they relate to issues that could have been easily dealt-with if the issue had been brought to the attention of the host during the stay. Another irritation in reviews is negative comments about issues that we have no control over, like the weather, or the distance to the nearest pub. Thankfully, we have very rarely found ourselves reading negative comments about our own properties.

So - when I do leave a review for something (which I have to admit - I seldom do) I think carefully about what I say and how I say it. I would like to think that everyone does the same... 

More Words On The Weather

When it was first talked-about, I never imagined climate change and global warming would happen quickly enough to have any affect on my life. But - rather suddenly, and all over the world - people are now beginning to realise that climate change really is here already.

In the UK, we are becoming more and more used to hearing news and weather reports of record temperatures (both highs and lows), of gales, storms, floods and other weather events that are still often described as 'extreme'. The recent 'extreme' heatwave affecting the south east of England was one of several such events in the last decade or two. There is every likelihood that such events will soon become the norm rather than the exception.

Here on Skye - so far - we have not been experiencing any 'extremes'. Unlike the south east of England, where weather is often strongly influenced by the area's proximity to continental Europe, the weather here is largely of a maritime nature, influenced by the vast Atlantic Ocean which is our immediate neighbour. 

Skye weather is never anything at all like the weather in the south east of England. The warmest it ever gets here is many degrees lower than in the south, though the coldest is probably about the same - we might get down to -3C some winter nights. We usually get a little winter snow, but it doesn't last long. 

However, we get much stronger winds than in the south. Gales of 50mph would here be considered a stiff breeze, and occur several times a year - winter and summer... Storms reaching 70mph are not that unusual.

And we get a lot of rain. But because we have always had a lot of rain, the landscape absorbs it. The spate rivers rush with peat-brown water for a day or so after a downpour, and then everything returns to normal. Of course - the landscape here is largely natural, and has not been over-developed by acres and acres of non-absorbent tarmac and concrete....

So far - the most obvious way that climate change is affecting the NW Highlands is in a change of the seasons. Winters have become milder. Spring is drier. Summer is wetter. And the whole climate year seems to have moved on a month or so - meaning that now, in mid August, is already beginning to feel like mid-September. It is the same in the spring, when April doesn't happen until May.

We seem to be being faced with a lot of 'new normals' these days. Or am I just getting old?  But, where would I rather be in 2020 Britain? The dry and sultry south or the cool, wet and windy north west...??

Silly question...!

Roskhill, Skye, July 2020 - photo by Sue