Free A Croft in the Hills by Katharine Stewart

were lucky, for the weather though cold was mostly dry, and the lambs got safely on their feet and began to
thrive.
    One Sunday in mid-April, when everything was more or less under control, we left Billy in charge and set off for Loch Ness-side. The primroses were in flower on the wooded slopes, the birds were
singing their heads off in the leafing trees. The water was blue and glittered in the sunlight. It was a morning out of time and we each had a foot in Eden.

CHAPTER VII
    THE PIGLETS ARRIVE
    B Y the end of April the place was swarming with young things. Hope’s calf was let out of the byre and went charging round the field like some
fantastic clockwork creature. Home-hatched ducklings were weaving through the rushes, in a long, golden line. Tiny yellow balls of chickens were scattered over the short, bright grass. Lambs,
startlingly white, as though freshly laundered in a favoured brand of detergent, were bouncing about in the heather and making wild dashes across the fields. Then the goat made a contribution to
this nursery world, in the shape of a tiny brown kid. It was the most fascinating baby creature of them all. Faun-like, yet quite fearless, with bright, intelligent eyes, it would stand poised on a
pinnacle of stone, gazing quizzically at everything, then suddenly leap and cavort in the air, for the sheer joy of using its limbs. Helen would watch its antics for hours on end, completely under
its spell.
    Meanwhile we had, thanks to our banker, added a further twenty gimmers to our sheep stock and put a fresh batch of five-week-old pullets in the rearing-houses.
    We certainly had our hands full, but it was a real delight to be working among all these young things. We didn’t find the long hours a burden. I think the spring air, the fresh, plain food
and the deep, trance-like sleep we fell into at night kept us going. This sort of life generates its own energy, it imposes its rhythm and if you respond to it you can keep up a steady pace. There
is none of the rushing and jolting, interspersed with blank spaces of boredom, which wastes so much vital force in an artificial way of living. It has its own routine, of course, but within that
routine there is always something fresh cropping up to hold the interest and to challenge initiative powers. One is conscious of keeping all the faculties in trim—brain, brawn, imagination
and understanding are all constantly in play. One is on one’s toes, yet relaxed.
    There was now only one thing needed to complete our happiness—a pig! Could we woo the banker to the point of allowing our overdraft the generosity to embrace one little porker, we
wondered. It appeared we could. Anyhow, Jim went to Dingwall market one beautiful May morning and came home with, not one pig but four small, squirming bundles of sacking in the back of the van,
and a triumphant twinkle in his eye. As we loosed each bundle its contents turned out to be a plump, dapper little porker, which scampered round the pen then stood four-square in front of us, on
its neat, pink trotters, looking at us out of unwinking eyes, brashly demanding sustenance.
    We had to like the little beggars. They were impudent, yet fetching and they grew at an alarming rate. We had skim milk for them and potatoes, to which we added protein, and they found a lot of
nourishment in the ground itself. In fact, we had always wanted a pig or two, not only because the market was good and they could give a quick return, but also because of their value as
cultivators. Jim had fixed up a shelter for them from sheets of corrugated iron, lined with straw, encased in wire-netting. This he had placed in an enclosure on a piece of rough ground, full of
couch grass and heather. The whole thing, shelter and enclosure, was movable. Our idea was for them to bull-doze and fertilise, bit by bit, this piece of ground, which could then provide
first-class grazing for sheep and cattle. The piglets soon got the idea and the morning after