living the dream pt I

i have taken no photos to show you yet of bandromin farm, the b&b and farm we are staying at but it’s quite nice… lots of rolling green hills with a nice view of a loch (what the scots call “sea lakes”). our hosts have been incredible so far and i’m feeling quite lucky at the moment! there are over 500 sheep, a handful of cows, and a good amount of chickens as well as a dachshund, border collie, a kelpie and three kelpie puppies. we hit the animal jackpot!

typically we start our day by taking care of the sheep– we’ll go with jamie and as well as feeding there is usually something else to do with them. the other day we tagged (plastic ear tags) all of them and gave them preventative medicines. jamie and alex take turns wrestling them and sort of holding the sheep down while the other tags the ears, i jam the medication, vitamins, or what have you into their mouth and we send them on their way.

i’m taking over B&B duties here for a day as our hosts go out of town and will be looking after and cooking breakfast today and tomorrow for scottish guests who… get this…. run their OWN bed and breakfast. so no pressure, right? alex will be driving a manual transmission jeep (which jamie is teaching him how to drive!) to help corral sheep or something of the like.  bottom line: our scottish hosts have just left their household, farm, and B&B in the hands of cynthia and alex.  (as soon as they left i did the kevin mccallister thing: “i made my parents disappear……….. i made my parents disappear.” alex suggested running around naked.)

the work here is fun and interesting and we are only six miles away from oban, a pretty sizeable town where many tourists come to catch the ferries to the isles around here (mull, coll, and tiree). also home to the oban distillery which i am quite anxious to pay a visit to! alex is chopping wood and driving quad bikes around so you could say he’s pretty happy. we are making great strides in our livestock knowledge and are eating and drinking quite well– they even procured ingredients for me to make my own stir fry with prawns, awww! that’s special.

life is good. overnight trip soon to the isle of iona via the isle of mull on monday.