How the years have gone and how well I remember the Coronation of our late Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. Although she reached ninety six years, her death was still a shock and so sad. I feel sorry for who we used to know as Prince Charles, now King Charles III. It is obvious that he dearly loved his mother and to immediately become King, it is hard to imagine his feelings. In Uist there wasn’t any electricity until the late 1960s and few people had a radio, so we didn’t really see what was going on in London at the time of Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation. However our neighbour got newspapers from his brothers on the mainland and we saw some lovely photos and got news then. I was very pleased that our late Queen was in Balmoral and that she was able to do the important business with the outgoing and incoming Prime Ministers. She sure did die in harness in her beloved castle. All this might change people’s minds about independence – let’s hope so!

We’ve had a good spell of weather and it has been more like summer although we are in September. I think the harvest work is finished now and the crops were good but not quite as heavy as last years. The potatoes will be lifted in October. Some of ours got spoilt when they weren’t fully grown; we think that it was the strong wind that got to them. However they are big enough and lovely and dry. My garden is good but the weeds fairly grew back when the sun was shining recently! The plants are better than they have been for years. We’ve eaten all the cauliflower as once it’s ripe it won’t keep. Lettuce, beetroot, onions, cabbage, carrots and kale are all looking good so there will be plenty of nutrition for the winter. Jean and I have made stovies twice so far this year and I thought that I would let the readers who haven’t ever made them, know how to make this simple dish:

Best use a large pot, approximately 4 litres.
Add about 1 ounce of butter (just enough to grease the pot). I have a stove but a slow cooker or low temperature in an oven would be the nearest equivalent as this must be cooked very slowly! All the vegetables must be chopped up very small;
1st chop about 3 large onions and spread them out to cover the bottom of the pot.
Then add the potatoes, carrot, turnip, cabbage, lettuce, broccoli and kale.
The only thing I add after that is salt.

The reason that stovies are so tasty is that water is not added and they cook in their own juice. Of course you could make some with less vegetables but I think that the most important ones are potatoes, onions and carrot which would still be very tasty. Some people cook meat or serve meat with them but I never do, probably because my mother never did. I can still remember, before the school canteen opened, when we came home from school, we could smell the stovies and would be delighted thinking of the tasty dinner awaiting us having only had pieces for lunch.

The young ones have been busy taking the bulls away from the cows and they will now be separate until June 2023. The calves will be with their mothers until January or February. The bulls will be put to Griminish where they will be getting silage. Archie is the oldest; he’s fourteen years old and is still the boss! The cows will go to Vallay until June; some are over there already and the rest will follow in October/ November.

Once upon a time Scotland was full of hard working young people so I wonder what has gone wrong. There seems to be a shortage of workers all over the islands and it is the same on the mainland. I read in The Scottish Farmer that farms growing fruit like strawberries are really short of workers. I know that a lot of that is caused by Brexit but it is also reported that the Scottish workers only want to drive machinery and won’t dirty their hands. Why should young fit people get social money if there is work available. Many people will remember the Job Creation Scheme; I think that it started in the 70s. When some people couldn’t get work, the townships here would create work, for example, cleaning rivers, building cattle pens, sheep fanks and many other things. They didn’t get big wages but got enough to pay the bills until they got something better – something has to change!

It was nice to hear that our late Majesty the Queen liked the Psalms very much and that her favourite one was Psalm 23 so I think that I will choose it again for this month and our new Prime Minister chose Ecclisiastes Chapter 3, Verses 1-8 which I’ve favoured before so I will leave you to enjoy those.