You know, I can’t even think of that word now without doing my There Will be Blood / Daniel Plainview impersonation, at least in my mind. Daniel Day Lewis bellowing like John Huston with constipation: ‘Drainnn-edddggge, Eli, it’s called draaainnn-edgggge.’

Anywho, I am not sucking any one’s oil dry using a metaphorical straw. No, I’m freeing the locked water on the croft. This is as satisfying as Plainview’s drainage.




drains follow the old 'lazy beds'

These photos are poor but I need to confess that the hard – or should I say heavy – work was done by a local digger. The big trench to left above. But I had to hand-dig the last bits of ground, right at the fence line, allowing the water to feed down onto the shoreline and into Loch Roag. You can almost hear the earth sigh in relief when the pent-up water is released. As the main trenches here are about 1/2 to 3/4ths of a meter deep, the flow out was a virtual torrent at first.

I know the terrain doesn't look particularly promising now. But we can move forward with putting some poly tunnels here for year-round crops of some sort or another.



ahhhh . . .