Today I had a simple enough job. Put in a new post for a gate – known here as a ’strainer’ because it takes the strain of either the weight of the gate or the tensioned fence in the other direction, or both. The post itself is like a 7ft section of telegraph pole and it weighs about twice as much as I can lift. And we live on a very slopy croft. So I devise a sort of strap arrangement which allows me to drag it with one end on the floor. I traverse the steep part of the slope above the chickens with no possibility of stopping. Like some all-or-nothing ice climb. If I let the damned thing go it will roll down the hill and be a 30mph sledgehammer long before it has got to the chicken house. Chickens are so trusting. They cheered me on from the other side of the electric fence, unaware of their mortality.

@ Tales from Green Willow Croft

Writing, publishing, and crofting in northwest Scotland — what’s not to like?