Moonshine Mohair at Keldaby Farm – Page 8 – Here at Keldaby we raise the beautiful, gentle and shyly friendly angora goats that provide Moonshine Design with the cloudsoft and highly lustrous mohair used in our fine selection of hand dyed, hand woven goods. Wrap yourself in a throw, toss a scarf or shawl around your shoulders or luxuriate in our fabulous ruanas. Step back to a more romantic era in a Western Isles hood. Discover the magic of mohair socks dyed in every color of the rainbow.

Maeshowe…or Maes Howe if you prefer

Fri, May 23 First a couple of catch-up things: number one, I want to thank Liz Sorenson for getting us all on the Orkney trail. She and her partner John Nove own an old farmstead on the furthest out Orkney island, Papa Westray, and they rent this now totally renovated farmhouse as a self-catering B&B when they are not in residence. Liz owns Sheep & Shawl (www.sheepandshawl.com) a small yarn (and much more) shop in South Deerfield MA. We had planned to rent their place (www.papawestray.co.uk/papay/peatwell.html) until Michael joined us and we needed larger accommodations. In hindsight I am glad we are staying on Mainland which makes access to many sites a whole lot easier. Papa Westray is really out there and scheduling around ferry times is not easy! Second, I mentioned the “loving bowl” I am giving my son and his fiancee. The official word for this type of bowl is quaich which is pronounced–and I was given much instruction on this–as if you were preparing to expectorate mightily while saying quake.

We have reserved our place for an 11 o’clock tour at Maeshowe so we are all prepared to leave Stromness, dressed for the cold, by 10:15. We get a really good guide Aneka who is from Poland (each group going in is limited to about 15 people) and we are inside the mound for over an hour.

This 4700 year old structure is truly impressive. Four massive standing stones form the corners of the chamber and probably predate the chamber itself. The walls of the chamber are perfectly built with cells off the main room which are assumed to be burials sites. The entrance, which is aligned to the winter solstice sunset as the sun sets between the Hoy hills as aforementioned, is narrow and low (a little over a yard high and about 20 feet long.)

Photography is not allowed within the chamber. This is a postcard showing the winter solstice sunset rays. The bright spot is from my camera...sorry. — Photography is not allowed within the chamber. This is a postcard showing the winter solstice sunset rays. The bright spot is from my camera.

A stone slab, which is positioned to be pivoted, marks and can close off the opening. The roof was originally corbelled stone but is now a concrete dome. This site was certainly noted by the Norsemen who spent time in this chamber and probably lived in or were visiting this region and there are several examples of runic writing, graffiti actually, inside the chamber. Although some of the runes describe great treasures found here, nothing has ever come to light since the Norsemen returning from the crusades carved their comments here: “Ingibiorg, the fair widow….” and “Thorfinn carved these runes….” about 1150 CE

Among the various Norse inscriptions there is the well-known dragon (or lion) which we had expected to be bigger but is only about 4 inches high.

From Maeshowe we drive to Orphir where there is the ruin of the Norse round church modelled on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Only the apse remains, built by Earl Hakon after the slaying of Earl Magnus and upon his return from pilgrimage. Like Maeshowe, it and the adjoining earls’ bu (drinking hall) are mentioned in the Orkneyinga Saga.

We watch a short film in the Orkneyinga Saga Centre on this murder and atonement tale.

From there we drive south down through Burray (skipping the Fossil Museum and its dreadful coffee!) to South Ronaldsay, intending to explore the Tomb of the Eagles. By the time we get there, however, the wind has picked up and the temperature has dropped even more (it is just a micro-degree away from sleet I am convinced) and we learn at the visitor centre that the walk in is more than a mile and the entrance fee of 7 pounds (wish I could find the symbol on my keyboard!) per person seems high plus the description of the site itself seems underwhelming so we give this spot the slip and head up to St Margarets Hope so Michael can see if the people in The Loft still have the cabling needle which had inadvertently been left there when he exchanged the yarn earlier. (They replaced it.) Back in Stromness Jill made dinner.

Jillian’s Really, It’s Very Simple Lamb Chops (from the Dounby Butcher)

Mint Sauce: 2 handfuls fresh mint (right from our cottage’s courtyard) finely-chopped

2 tsp sugar Almost cover with boiling water.

Add 1/2 tsp salt and

1/3 c malt vinegar. Let sit.

Grill lamb chops on top of stove (we have definitely decided the oven does not work) with

sliced mushrooms.

Serve with boiled new potatoes and steamed broccoli.

At the same time (and for lunch, etc) Lynn has made:

The Great Everything Is It Soup? Stew? Casserole?

In a crock pot put onions, parsnips, garlic, leeks, carrots, celery, savoy cabbage, hot peppers, mixed Italian herbs, all sliced or diced.

Add chicken broth and

about 1 1/2 c soup mix (a dried mixture we had bought at the co-op of barley, red lentils and green and yellow split peas.)

Slow cooked over 4 slices of the wonderful Orkney bacon for 8 to 10 hours on the “low” setting of the crock pot.

Serve with plain Greek yogurt and

sprinkle with fresh cilantro.

More Spite & Malice, more knitting and more of the Chelsea Flower Show. Having given up temporarily on the netzpatent, I am reading the George Mackay Brown Island of the Women.

The Orkney Folk Festival

Weekend, May 24 & 25

When we planned our trip it seemed we were going to take in much of the folk festival yet as this weekend has approached, we have become very laid back about it. We are so laid back in fact that we don’t buy any tickets, we don’t drive out of town. Still, although the festival takes place on nine different islands, much of it happens right here in Stromness.

We pick up a program flier and are rather alarmed at the prices of admission to many of the events, 10 to 20 pounds a person ($18 to $36) which wouldn’t be daunting if it were dollars instead of pounds or if we had any idea which events might be most worthwhile. Meantime the town does begin to fill up in a moderate sort of way. This is more like the Newport Folk Festival circa 1964, when I sat right at the feet of Pete Seeger, Theodore Bickel, Joan Baez. We hear strains of music drifting from pubs and there are groups forming outside a couple of cafes down near the pier for impromptu pick-up sessions. No one is willing to say “Let’s go here…let’s go there….” We are all waiting for the other person to take the initiative. It doesn’t happen; we haven’t done our research and we are unsure of each other’s musical tastes and don’t want to impose. (At least, that is what I think.)

On Saturday there is a pipe band in Sinclair tartan that takes shape and eventually marches down Ferry Road to Victoria Street and plays for quite a while near the Stomness Hotel. We wander toward the pier and sitting around a table, ales in hand, is an informal group playing fiddles, clarinet, bodhran, guitars, squeezebox, flute and penny whistles.

There is a fiddlers’ rally scheduled for Sunday afternoon in the Stromness Academy Lecture Theatre and we decide that will be our big commitment, pound-wise. Meanwhile the caretaker for the cottage has shown up–the first actual contact we have had with someone connected to our spot–and he fixes the Wi-Fi connection (we have no idea what magic he has wrought but now Michael can get email and although I can get on line, I can’t get email) and sets the TV so we will be able to watch some of the DVDs that have been left there.

We see two young fiddlers and Michael asks them how long they have been playing. “Since I was four” says one.

Sunday morning Lynn and I go for a walk along streets not previously visited and shortly after lunch we four head over to the Academy (high school) so to be sure to get tickets. It’s lucky we do because by 2 o’clock the auditorium is packed and the concert begins. There are three different groups participating in various configurations, both the West Mainland and Orkney Strathspey & Reel Societies and the Orkney Accordion & Fiddle Club plus four of the five members of Feis Rois Ceilidh Trail. I know I have never seen so many accordions in one spot! They fill the stage. We recognize the young fiddlers sitting on the wall (above) in the youth group.

The director is a woman who with a minimum of fuss manages to get the groups on and off and reconfigured. During the intermission and after a particularly beautiful piece has been played Michael goes down to speak with her about it. It is a wedding piece written by a young violinist and the director pulls a copy of the music from one of the music stands and gives it to him. (He will upon returning home take the theme, embellish and enlarge it and compose variations on it for piano and play it for all of us on a recent Monday afternoon. We are misty-eyed when he finishes.)

One of the members of Feis Rois is the young–and very handsome–Eric Linklater, originally from Stromness (and not a relative of the writer Eric Linklater), whose playing we wish we could hear more of. Jill manages to buy the last copy, possibly in all Mainland, of his CD at the Reel in Kirkwall. The two sopranos have clear, sweet voices and they sing several traditional Gaelic songs, a guitarist accompanies.

Upon reflection I do wish we had bought tickets to one of the closing concerts that evening but instead we head to the cottage and another evening of knitting and a very strange and dark episode of Dr Quirk, I think it’s called.

And here are our weekend meals.

Chicken Tikka Masala, a classic Cynthia non-recipe concoction making use of the strange vegetables lurking in the crisper drawer.

In a wok cook over a fairly hot flame, in olive oil

1 lg onion, sliced

6 to 8 cloves garlic, sliced

1/2 a bell pepper julienned

1 hot pepper

1/4 head savoy cabbage

2 sliced and parboiled parsnips

Add 1/2 bottle dark beer, salt, pepper, cumin, herbes de provence

In a separate pan cook 6 chicken thighs, cut into manageable pieces and 1 c sliced mushrooms

Combine and add 6 to 8 oz tikka masala sauce (jars of all these Indian sauces are widely available there) and a Tbl chopped cilantro. Squeeze a lemon over the top. Serve with herbed rice and a dash of chili powder.

A bottle of Tesco’s Chilean shiraz went well with it. Like all my “recipes” there is a great deal of latitude here!

Sunday night Jill prepares Tabouli for 4

2 c bulgur

2 tsp salt

1 1/2 c boiling water

1/2 c olive oil

juice of 2 lemons

2 cloves garlic chopped fine

1 onion, diced

1 green pepper, diced

1 cucumber, diced

1 tomato, diced

1 Tbl finely chopped fresh peppermint or spearmint

1/2 c finely chopped fresh Italian parsley

1/2 tsp black pepper

In a large bowl mix bulgur with salt and boiling water. Cover for 20 minutes stirring occasionally. Add the oil and lemon juice and let sit for another 10 minutes. Toss in chopped vegetables, mint, parsley and pepper and refrigerate for several hours, stirring from time to time. Serve with pita, black olives and feta.

Along the Crafts Trail

Tues, May 20

A bright, sunshiny day, windy and no rain in the forecast. We head out early, north toward Birsay, watching our map which has all the studios and shops selling local crafts noted. Then we see a sign for the Barony Mill and we decide to check this out first.

It’s a lovely collection of farm buildings and the man who greets us is clearly happy to tell us all about grains and the milling process. We learn about the various grains in Orkney, especially the primitive form of barley called bere.. There are paper bags filled with barley, wheat, oats, bere and he asks us to identify each (we do fairly well) and then he takes us on a tour of the mill itself.

By the way the lower left bag contains the bere. Bere isn’t grown much now but had been the staple of Orcadian baked goods up through the 19th c. Jill buys a booklet of bere recipes and a bag of ground bere to bring back. The mill is about 150 years old–the building of it, especially the amount of wood which needed to be brought in, cost the family three generations to pay off–and is water powered. I get to open the sluice gate that starts the belts and then the various grindstones turning. Our guide explains the different gear ratios for each step of the process.

After we leave Barony Mill we head up to the village of Birsay, a rather rag-taggle place, wind-swept and very remote feeling. The ruins of Earl Robert’s mid 16th century palace (half-brother to Mary Queen of Scots and not a pleasant fellow) is here, much of it surrounded with scaffolding and some desultory reconstruction going on. His son Earl Patrick found the palace insufficient, abandoned it and built the more elaborate, more Renaissance palace in Kirkwall.

The kirk From there we drive out to the headland of Birsay and although we can look across to the Brough of Birsay on an island just a few hundred feet away, we can’t get there because the tide is high and the causeway is under water. We walk along the beach but it’s very windy so we sit in our Focus, eat our BLTs and Michael and I share an Orkney Dark Island beer. We will be back another day after we’ve checked the tide times.

At the Yellowbird Gallery, where following my own tenet that if you take up someone’s time in a shop you should then buy something, I acquire several cards, reproductions of larger prints. They (husband and wife) also make small ceramic “rocking robins”, lovely little birdlike forms that do indeed rock back and forth. Then we’re on to Fluke Jewellery (www.flukejewellery.com) where Jill buys a couple of silver charms for her granddaughter Fayley’s charm bracelet. Michael, who has previously found a tiny cowrie shell, learns from the artist that such shells are tokens of good luck. But what we are most interested in finding is The Woolshed where we meet Denise Dupres and where we know we will find yarns, roving and finished goods made from the North Ronaldsay seaweed-eating sheep.

The fleece is not particularly soft and there is a fair amount of kemp but nonetheless it makes very handsome sweaters. Jill buys a vest, Lynn and I each buy a sweater and a skein of rainbow-dyed yarn. (I know I’m going to need my sweater as the weather continues cool and windy even with all the layers I’ve brought with me.) Michael buys a kit with yarn and a pattern for a scarf and hat. We cut across the West Mainland and drive into Dounby where we find a cafe in the small local hotel and although we have had our BLTs , we stop in for a pick me upper.

Afternoon snack in Dounby where we find good coffee

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The coffee is good and the teenage boy who serves us bobs a little curtsy as he sets down the cups. Then we go across the street to the Dounby Butcher where we buy lamb chops and pork sausages from the owner’s farm. The farm turns out to be one we saw when we were at Skara Brae and we learn from a passerby who happens in that the shop has just been named “Best in Scotland” …the owner proudly shows her plaque to prove it.

We think this may be the herd belonging to the Dounby Butcher

Nearby is the Harray Potter studio where we meet up with the potter himself, Andrew Appleby, and see a much greater range of his work. Among his several styles he has studied the neolithic art very closely and incorporates many of these motifs into his pots, mugs, buttons. (www.applepot.co.uk) We also admire his chickens…

Back in Kirkwall we park again near the main shopping street and spend a lot of time in the Sheila Fleet Gallery (Jill orders a ring) and other shops. And finally on a more practical level we shop at the Tesco supermarket, finding everything we will need for the coming week. As guardian of the kitty (we had each put in 200 pounds) I find that after this foray into Tesco we have about half our joint account left. I must mention that although all of us are certainly familiar with sheep and cows and by now have seen thousands of ewes with their babies and cows with their calves we continue to ooh and aah every time we see more (which is all the time!). They are dotted everywhere in the landscape, often grazing around abandoned farmsteads.

Back in Stromness Michael and I go to the library because there are signs saying “Free WiFi” and a “Open 2 to 7 PM” the window…but inexplicably it has closed early.

Barony Mill Supreme

4 fresh pork sausages, sliced and fried in the wok, then set aside

1 chopped onion

2 sliced parsnips

3 large cloves garlic….sauteed together

1/2 head of savoy cabbage

2 Bramley apples (Granny Smiths would do) sliced

Combine all with rosemary, salt and pepper and cook until the cabbage and apples are slightly carmelised.

Serve with mashed potatoes and healthy dollops of butter and yogurt.

We had a very nice Chilano tempranillo and, while playing our usual Spite & Malice, vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce (50:50 ratio of dark chocolate and yogurt).

Lynn continues to win. Then we knit….

Down the Darkling Road to….?

As unlikely as this seems, this being my birthday and all, I am sitting in the waiting room while a doctor injects another shot into Bob’s eyeball. It gives me a queasy feeling and I am squinting as I write this and I also know that I am relieved it is his eyeball and not mine. The drug, which is used conventionally to fight colorectal cancer, turns out to also stabilize macular degeneration. How, I ask myself, would someone figure that out? What possible similarities can there be between a malignant cancer way down the gut and a condition that ultimately robs a person of center sight? Who said, “Hey, let’s try this stuff in an eye!”

But this is not what I wanted to write about at all though there is a tenuous connection. Aging and not being the person you once were, that’s the connection. Last Friday we packed our van with all the paraphernalia for the Sheep & Wool Festival in Rhinebeck: tables, table cloths, the two dollar rug I once got from my cousin Nancy, a director’s chair, gridded panels and fixtures to hold scarves and yarns, photos and shawls, lights and their spare parts and tools, decorative wreathes of autumnal leaves, Vietnamese baskets and several plastic tubs of product, our clothes and all our paraphernalia and after tearful farewells to the dogs we left. (The cockatiels and the cats Mischa and Muizza, the goats and the peafowl are pretty stoic about farewells and didn’t immediately fall to the ground, abject and pleading. Elli had to be dragged from the van. Fenris was burdocked to Bob’s leg)

We had gotten all the way to Hawley on 8A having already parked to eat the many strange and mislabeled dishes from Keystone that Bob had bought for lunch when I remembered the essential paperwork–parking pass, insurance papers, sales tax certificate–all sitting right on my desk and although I suspected we could probably survive without this bureaucratic back-up, I knew it was best to go fetch it. So back we went. The dogs had dragged a 10-pound bag of sugar out into the kitchen and chewed a hole in it, thinking no doubt, they would find doggie kibbles or kitty bits, but fortunately as I had forbidden Bob to come in again, Elli and Fen walked away from me and went out the back; I am just chump change to them. So we are on our way again feeling only a bit aggrieved.

I’ll skip the drive, the set-up, even the night at the motel not far from the Kingston/Rhinebeck Bridge where we had stayed last year and where we planned to stay just Friday night as we had made plans to spend Saturday with our Staten Island friends Barbara and Michael. We didn’t need dinner on Friday as our Keystone lunches were still sitting cannonball-like in our stomachs. But I will add that the night attendant in the motel was a close relative–we’re talking personality here–of the owner of the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. I reminded him of a teacher he had had. “Whew, that’s probably not so good,” I said. “Oh no, I liked her a lot! But why are you only staying one night?” he wanted to know. I explained.

Saturday was not a beautiful fall day but the crowds were as always thick, the food lines endless, the buildings crowded with folks wearing all the sweaters and ponchos and vests they had made. There was a sprinkling of women with pink or lime green or turquoise mohawks, but our business seemed slow and leaving the fairgrounds at 5:30 was the usual traffic jam that stretched for miles. When we had finally gotten across the bridge I said to Bob, “Hey, give Mike a call and tell him we’re heading down 199 so we’ll be there soon and just check with him for the landmarks we need.” The sun was already setting, the sky dark with clouds and I had just realized that I had left my Kindle back in the booth. Bob dialed the number, then said,” Uhhh, she says the number is not in service.” He tried twice more, I tried. The number was not in service. Great! Clearly they have forsaken their landline for cell phones. I look in my address book, we have only a box number, no street name. I look on my phone–maybe they are in my contact list. No, they’re not. By now night has fallen and 199 has segued into the narrow, winding, mainly shoulderless 209 which will take us through Stone Ridge and New Paltz and on to Wawarsing. Headlights are blinding me, deer are waiting to leap in front of me, some jerk is tailgating with his high beams on and we are trying to remember something, anything about where we are headed. “I think their farm is called Deer Run Something” I venture, “And wasn’t there something about a water tower?” And after a fairly abstemious day I am already smelling the home-smoked meats that Mike has prepared for us and tasting the bottle of red wine he has promised to open.

As slowly as we can in a long line of commuters rushing to get home, we try to read the names on the little roads that turn off 209 and we do see a tower of sorts, though it’s on the wrong side of the road and we do venture down a couple of these little roads but they end up in trailer parks and I’m not about to knock on a stranger’s door to ask if they know Barbara or Mike or have ever heard of Deer Run Farm. Nor is Bob. I pull off into the state police barracks to ask but there is a sign on the door saying “We are all away patrolling the roads. Please use the phone” and an arrow pointing. I don’t and we drive out again, followed instantly by a state trooper from the barracks. Ah, I think. I’ll pull over and he’ll stop to ask why we were at the barracks. I stop, he doesn’t.

Because I don’t have my Kindle with me (Damn!!) I can’t check email so next I call home where Bob’s daughter Sally is minding the farm and ask her to turn on the computer and find old email with just maybe a phone number. She finds one…it is Barbara’s work number. Not hopeful, though I know she is actually at work right then at SUNY New Paltz, I leave a pathetic message but I know she won’t check her phone. And so, defeated, angry about forgetting the Kindle, annoyed that people would relinquish their good landlines for crummy cell reception, hungry, worn out and feeling about 105 we head back to the motel. Our Best Exotic Marigold desk clerk is amused to see me again, crestfallen and weary, and we get another room. In Kingston we find a diner where we eat a meal not unlike the Keystone lunch. We vow we will never do the Rhinebeck show again. We are too old, period.

The next day Barbara comes and spends several hours with us and we have a great time and make plans for them to visit later this year. We warn her of our closed bridge. Sales are still pretty underwhelming but yesterday I signed us up for another year. And this morning I found, in a little tray on my desk, a business card with a map drawn on the back and Barbara’s cell phone number carefully saved from last year. You just can’t let age get you down!