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The weekend after the County Show and the Riding of the Marches (see my previous post) attention shifts to the island of South Ronaldsay, the connected isle closest to the north coast of Mainland Scotland. When I say ‘connected isle’ I mean that we are at the end of the Fourth Churchill Barrier, built during WWII to protect the shipping in Scapa Flow. The Barriers are how we get to Mainland Orkney without a boat - which is how it happened before they were built. The main road to Kirkwall goes over the Barriers.

The above is an old postcard of the Barrier connecting Burray and South Ronaldsay, taken many years ago. Only the very top of the concrete cabin on the left hand blockship, the Collingdock, is still visible today as the sand has built up enormously over the last eighty years, making this one of Orkney’s most popular beaches.

The weekend after the County Show is the Festival of the Horse and the Boys Ploughing Match. The Festival takes place in the school in St Margaret’s Hope. An extra-ordinary event which simply could not be conceived in today’s society. Young girls, and very occasionally boys, are dressed up as plough horses in wonderfully embroidered and decorated costumes which include a harness. Many of the costumes are family heirlooms, carefully stored away for the next generation to wear when their time comes. They resemble pearly kings and queens from London’s East End. This year’s winner was Rosie, wearing a costume made by a neighbour for her own daughter who did not win when wearing it! A few extra decorations must have been added. For the Parade of the Horses the girls are led out by the plough boys - that’s the bit that elicits the raised eyebrows now.

During the week before this event there were generations of families on the beach at the Sands o’Wright, the scene of the ploughing competition, each evening. All were practising hard. Like the Ba’, this is Serious Stuff. It seems to mainly involve three generations of each family. The youngster taking part, who may or may not be all that interested. Most are interested, although it must be quite overwhelming for some of the peedier ones. Then there’s Dad, who may well have been a winner in his time, and Granddad who often Knows Best. Boiler suits seem to be required gear for practice days, often matching across all the generations.

Dogs have been known to run wild across the furrows and so the area is now fenced and roped off. In truth, the dogs find the whole event much less interesting since that happened. There is much serious measuring between the tops and bottoms of the furrows which should be perfectly parallel. Advice is given - sometimes heeded, sometimes not. Rosie’s brother David was triumphant this year in his class. A good day indeed for them - but the dogs were unable to comprehend being on a beach without a ball and their body language let us know exactly how they were feeling!

Another Orcadian tradition honoured and enjoyed. And so we went home for a cuppa and/or a GravyBone or two and hoped that summer was not truly over just yet. Note the coats worn with the shorts!

The thing is, life on Orkney is Incredibly Busy. People keep visiting us. We love having them and catching up but I’m in the middle of trying to reclaim the garden after doing precisely zilch during June. A month which anyone remotely interested in gardening knows is when growth really kicks off and any progress made in the spring can be lost if you are not Out There often (No) Everyday (No) Once a week at the very least (No). Thank heavens for tatties - plant early, earth up once or twice, dig up and eat - and the globe artichokes, which really just get on with it by themselves. We love a globe artichoke and have eaten a lot of them this week, with garlic mayo for dipping with our own garlic. The violet kind, extra yummy, bulbs supplied by horticultural wizard friend Jill. And for those who still worry about garlic breath, be it when kissing or at any other time, do remember that the fresher and juicier the garlic, the less time it lingers. Yes, I do need to get that bench painted and yes, it is meant to be blue all over! Love a blue bench.

Show week has been and gone. I was a bit last minute with my entries for the Hope Show but still came home with a full podium of 1, 2 and 3, the red card (gold medal, first place) for my broad beans. I always love the goats. The baking and floristry are amazing. It’s a fabulous day out and this year friend Sue was here from Sussex to share it all with us. Islands or parishes have their local shows and then the winners go forward to the County Show on the Saturday of Show Week. It’s a really full on time and then the day after the County Show is the Riding of the Marches around the boundaries of Kirkwall.

Almost as soon as the Cathedral service was over the Kirkwall City Pipe Band powered up and then the horses and riders arrived to be entrusted with the town banner and sent off to check for anyone invading our boundaries. There was a large cruise ship in and so the Council Convenor welcomed its passengers and assured them that no harm would come to them! They must have been delighted to witness this annual spectacle. In the dry and almost in sunshine. Thanks to Anne Flint for her Scapa Beach photos.

People are drawn to Orkney for all sorts of reasons but to start a walk to Durham Cathedral might not be considered a logical one. Unless you are a church enthusiast, like the poet Jay Hulme and his friend Anna. They had resolved to walk from St Magnus Cathedral to Durham Cathedral - I suppose for something to do in the summer holidays, inspired by some masons having worked on both buildings. Jay and Anna joined us at St Magnus on Sunday 7th July and, as I write this, they have probably arrived at Durham. It was great to send them on their way. You can follow their adventures here on Substack in their blog Kirkwall to Durham. It’s a super read and I thoroughly recommend Jay’s poetry collection The Vanishing Song.

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Now the excitement on the Islands, well our island of South Ronaldsay, revolves around this.

Until next time - which won’t be so long.

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There is no getting away from the fact that baking is not my strongest suit. Even with Orkney butter and beremeal there’s potential for breakthroughs of the unwanted kind - like the marzipan layer in the middle of my Simnel cake coming through the upper layer of fruit cake. Not to worry, a bit of lemon icing and eleven marzipan balls to represent the true apostles and no-one will notice. An easily fixed, relatively minor issue in the Easter feasting at our house.

An Orkney Easter story requiring more than a little ingenuity to put right has been gripping the nation - or indeed, I might even say the world. The northern isle of Sanday is one of my favourite days out (apart from the 07.00 departure time for the ferry). The flattest of our islands and therefore the most at risk from climate change, it has wonderful beaches, a lighthouse with vertical stripes (the only Scottish lighthouse painted in this way) and is home to seascape artist Bill McArthur, whose work I admire very much indeed. I can seldom visit without coming home with another painting. It was also the last home of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, a former Master of the Queens Music and founder of our St Magnus Festival.

Sanday has been in the news a lot in the past couple of months. First a large piece of shipwreck was either washed up or exposed on a beach and it was (as in all TV archaeology programmes) a race against time to try to save some of it from the wild winter tides. We are awaiting more information to be revealed from what was salvaged.

And then there was the Easter Egg story…

Sanday has excellent local shops. I know the community shop and Sinclair General Stores the best, but the latter is under new management since I was last out there for BBC Radio Orkney. Dan Dafydd, now in charge, has had a marketing breakthrough, turning his massive Easter Egg ordering error into a brilliant publicity story whilst raising funds for the RNLI lifeboat charity. Newspapers and TV programmes at home and abroad (and I mean further away than the UK mainland!) have been carrying stories of how Dan ordered 80 boxes of Easter eggs instead of 80 eggs. That amounted to about 1.5 eggs per member of the Sanday population. So Dan decided to raffle (everything that happens in Orkney has a raffle) 100 of the eggs in aid of the RNLI and that is how the story hit the headlines. The eggs were from Nestlé who couldn't take them back and so Dan ended up posting them to people all over the place who heard the story and wanted to help. Locals and people outwith our islands were buying eggs to donate to the Orkney Foodbank, with volunteers meeting the ferry back to Kirkwall to take them to the collection centre. Dan even had to re-order to satisfy demand. Once Nestlé realised what was happening they promised to match the monies that he raised for the RNLI one for one, and that gave him even more reason to keep telling his story. As I write this on Easter Monday I haven’t won the 100 egg raffle (phew!) and Dan has raised about £7,000 which Nestlé will double for the Lifeboats. There are still T-shirts, mugs and other merch (I’m a young person at heart) to buy on his Facebook page. Such a fabulous story.

The RNLI celebrated their 200th anniversary with a wonderful service in St Magnus Cathedral before Easter. To add the flavour of island life, neither the crew from the Thurso boat, visitors from the Head Office or the colours could get here on the Saturday as all the ferries were cancelled because of bad weather. The first ferry across on the Sunday morning was met by taxis who collected the flags and people and got them to the Cathedral in time for the colours to be carried down the aisle during the first hymn: well done the taxi drivers, legal or not! The marketing manager had asked Dan to attend the service but, a week before Easter with calls coming in from all time in support, he simply couldn’t get away from base.

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I make no apology for mentioning the RNLI in two posts running. Nothing makes you more aware of the charity than living on an island but I learned from their marketing team at the Cathedral that they now have three boats stationed on the River Thames: it is not just around the coast that the brave volunteers save lives. Just as the public rescued Dan from drowning in chocolate, so it is the public who entirely support the work of the RNLI.

The first landmark was the wreck of the Irene, a merchant ship stranded on the rocks near the Head. It was telling that it had deteriorated so much in the easterly storms of this winter.

7km doesn’t sound very far, but the path at the start of the walk was criss-crossed with sheep tracks demanding focus on balancing and, on this occasion, many rabbit carcasses picked bare as myxomatosis has been somewhat rampant over recent months. Nature asserting its checks and balances as there had been too many rabbits in the crops and vegetable gardens. The dogs were a bit over interested in the bones.

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Next stop was a tea-break by a ruined cottage. We warmed our backs where the sun had soaked into its stones. Then onwards down to St Peter’s Kirk with its wonderful long table communion pews, and Newark Beach. I’ve never seen Newark with the tide so low and the 1.5km or so walk along it in the deep, soft sand left by the winter told on me later.

The south end of the beach and the walk up the hill were new territory for me. Why do hills always come at the end of walks?! Thankfully our friend Malc had bowls of delicious fish chowder at the ready to restore us, and Nick had arrived to transport us home. The rest of my day was spent in front of the TV for the final three matches of the Six Nations rugby. I felt justified at being a couch potato.

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Sunday morning and I was in St Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall. It is where my exploration as to what part I can play in the lay ministry of the Church of Scotland started, although that has developed further in the village kirk here in The Hup. Amongst other contributions to the service I was to ring the bell of HMS Royal Oak during the prayers of Remembrance and Hope. Sunday was the fifty-fifth anniversary of the Longhope Lifeboat Disaster. The Irene was one of the two vessels that the Longhope boat set out to save.

This Sunday we will be ringing the Royal Oak bell again, this time in celebration of the 200th anniversary of the RNLI. The brave men and women, all volunteers, who risk their lives to rescue anyone in danger at sea. When you live on an island you cannot help but be aware of the might of the sea around us. Its danger and its healing. Its rhythms and mood swings, and just how much it demands to be respected.

One thing that has hitherto held up Christmas preparations was getting ready for Handel’s Messiah on 10th December. There were lots of extra rehearsals but the performance showed how worthwhile they were. Poor Nick. After three months of rehearsing he tested COVID positive three days before the performance and missed it. I hung on until three days afterwards. And yes, there was a sell-out audience but I caught that light on a pillar during the afternoon run-through. Singing had priority over card writing and baking. But the singing is over now.

St Magnus Cathedral is taking up a lot of my time at the moment - more time than blogging and writing. I am exploring a rôle in the lay ministry - there are so few new ministers coming into the church these days that all help is welcome. So we’ll see where that goes. Prayers are the new recipes for now….

I am always late to making our Christmas cake so there’s nothing really new about that this year. We much prefer a lighter, rubbed-in style of cake, not one dark with molasses and almost dripping with booze. I love a glass of sherry or whisky with my cake, but the fruit doesn’t need to ooze it. So tomorrow will be just fine to get the cake baked, so long as I then get it marzipanned about a week before Christmas. That’s time for the paste to dry out before it is iced. And I just use a lemon icing - a water icing made with lemon juice not water. It goes so well with the richness of the marzipan. And the decorating? Well, I was never much of a one for that. It’s the cake that matters. Above is last year’s spectacularly presented cake: it tasted fabulous. I am a woman and therefore I do like to change my mind about things. I might just set to and make a stollen instead of the usual cake as we never get through both in prime condition. And we still get marzipan, which is always homemade.

We will have a baked gammon for Christmas, but most of our feasting will be on Orkney’s amazing seafood. We are almost Scandinavian and so much of it will be smoked fish and shellfish, with sourdough, potato salads and pickles. And a good few glasses of the fabulous Orkney Avavit made by the Orkney Gin Company. The only akvavit made in Scotland, this delicious caraway infused spirit has been a favourite of mine since it was launched a few years ago - after my beloved whisky, of course - and is perfect with what we call ‘deli sups’. It was recently featured on James Martin’s Saturday Kitchen, a very popular UK TV show, and I am certain that the husband and wife team are flat out trying to get Christmas orders out. Luckily, our village shop has stock…

I think that I feel I must always write a long post to you but, of course, that isn’t the case. I’ll try to be better at keeping in touch in the coming months. For now, I’ll simply say good luck with your preparation for Christmas, if indeed it is a festival that you celebrate. And whatever you are up to and getting ready for, stay well.

It’s amazing how much less scary it seemed with just the wind and before the rain started falling heavily as it is doing today. Our border collie has even refused a walk this afternoon!

Now, back to Babette’s Feast. In Sussex I met Troels Bendix, a wonderful sourdough baker , chef and founder of Sødt. He prepared and cooked much of the food for Babette’s Feast, including the pastry boxes or coffins for the quails - whether you watch the film or not you will understand that they had to be tiny for the birds. Troels taught me much about the mystery of sourdough, that Sicilian lemons make a wonderful marmalade when paired with a few black peppercorns, and he hosted a hugely generous reception when my book A Feast of West Sussex was published.

My practical sourdough skills came on leaps and bounds in the summer when I visited North Ronaldsay to visit Louise who runs the Lighthouse Café on the island. I went to chat about the famed North Ronaldsay seaweed-eating sheep, the only rare breed in the UK to have a Grade 1 listed monument, the sheep dyke, associated with them. Yes, we talked mutton and Louise’s pies, but we also talked sourdough as she had come to Orkney after running a very successful bakery on Mull. Her top tips, which have greatly helped me, are:

• If you are an occasional sourdough baker (i.e. less than every day or two) feed your starter four times before using it.

• Keep the starter out, not in the fridge, when preparing to use it.

• Always use the starter on the rise, i.e when increasing in fermentation bubbles.

The inter-island flights are an adventure for most of us, although they are a way of life for anyone commuting into Kirkwall or to the islands (some teachers go to the outer isles daily). It’s an Islander plane, about an 8-seater, which flies into North Ronaldsay low over the dyke. Days like we’ve been having with Storm Babet render the outer islands cut off, the plane is unable to fly any of its busy schedule, and there are no inter-island ferries either on many routes. Certainly not to North Ronaldsay.

Planes from the Scottish mainland have generally made it into Kirkwall these last few days, but the supermarket shelves are empty as the ferries bringing supplies are not crossing the Pentland Firth, one of the roughest stretches of sea around the British Isles. There’s plenty of local produce in the local shops, but supermarket shoppers are facing the reality of living on an archipelago in the winter.

Amid all of this our builders, who are working outside, have not missed a day. When the wind was from the west, they were working at the east end and now it is from the east, they’ve moved to the west. I’ll share photos when they have finished. I’ve been baking a lot to keep them happy - they are Victoria Sandwich and beremeal shortbread fans. I have even supplied them with soup when I was worried about them and the Barriers were closed and I was beginning to think about making up beds for them as they both had to cross the Barriers to get home. But they got home and they got back - and the baking goes on. They taste-tested my Hallowe’en apple cheesecake, my latest blog for Orkney.com. It got a thumbs up. Stay safe - and eat cake.

Skara Brae is almost always top of the Wish List for visitors arriving to stay with us. It’s synonymous with Orkney. The incredibly preserved Neolithic village is at the Bay of Skaill on the coast of West Mainland. Skaill House, perhaps the grandest house in Orkney, is now part of the joint entry ticket to Skara Brae. The Laird at the time - and of course those before him - was completely unaware of the Neolithic village at the bottom of his garden - well, a bit beyond that, a couple of fields away - until it was partially exposed during a violent storm in 1850 which ripped away sand dunes and some of the grasses covering the ancient site. The Teletubbies-like ‘village’ - I hope that is not too disrespectful of the soft green tussocks - shows incredible skills in working with stone, as do all of Orkney’s World Heritage Neolithic sites. My nephew, a trained mason, said that no modern work could be any better.

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What is so exciting about Skara Brae is seeing the layout of the houses and the basic furniture that they include. The beds and dressers are all pretty much the same - there’s almost a hint of IKEA about it. I always love the little water tanks for keeping fresh fish in by the side of the hearth, although I get cross that the lobster is pink (cooked) and not blue (raw). The passageways between the houses were filled with midden or rubbish, which helped with insulation.

To visit Skara Brae please do try to pick a time to visit when there is not a cruise ship in Kirkwall harbour. The passengers being bussed around the Island rather overwhelm the site.

I hope you can see the likeness between Scapa’s new tasting room - The Noust - and Skara Brae? The Noust is an incredible building and Scapa are having bumper season with people wanting to see and experience a tasting looking out over Scapa Flow. The room is full of memorabilia from WWII, including a diving suit and a morse code station. And the incredible wooden table that you sit round to enjoy the drams, echoes a very calm sea or ripples in the sand. I cannot recommend a visit, to either Skara Brae or Scapa Distillery, highly enough.

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This is as far as the Simnel cake has got. What makes it my favourite cake of the year is the layer of marzipan baked into the centre of the fruit cake. The important thing is to work said marzipan into a round a little smaller than the diameter of your tin which will stop it burning during baking. I’m pretty pleased with how the cake looks - I can’t share a picture of it cut as it won’t be started until Sunday. But this is how it will look once iced and decorated, although hopefully the layer of marzipan won’t be taking a nosedive! Don’t you just love slightly sad (undercooked) fruit cake?!

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The main shops and supermarkets on Orkney are about a twenty-five minute drive from us so we are frequent customers at our village shops, just 3 miles away in St Margaret’s Hope. There are two and, between them, they supply local spirits and beers, a small selection of wines, smoked salmon, local eggs and milk. There’s the Post Office, papers (who still buys papers, apart from the local rag The Orcadian?) magazines and so much more. Flour, sugar, yeast and fruits for baking, fresh meat and then the really unexpected things like crystallised ginger, marzipan and capers as well as a selection of fruit, veg (including fresh hot chillies) and cheeses. One of the shops is part of the refillable Orkney milk bottle scheme which has proved very popular. It also supplies bedding plants from a local nursery, and compost. Neither shop is beautiful from the outside, both are surprising inside. Let’s hope they keep going for many years to come.

St Margaret’s Hope is one of the two ferry terminals for boats arriving to Orkney from the Scottish Mainland. As the Islands became a popular tourist destination the streets in The Hup were too narrow for the ferry traffic and a by-pass was built. I just hope that tourists staying locally on South Ronaldsay or Burray do explore our local emporiums before heading to the supermarkets in Kirkwall - they need the tourist pounds in the summer as much as our year-round local custom. And they do stock a surprising range of ingredients for anyone who loves to cook.

Here are my two must-make-every-Easter recipes.

Simnel Cake

Makes 1 large cake

Having a layer of marzipan baked in the middle of the cake makes it very rich so I use a light, rubbed-in fruit cake recipe which doesn’t need time to mature, unlike a traditional Christmas cake.

- 500g pack golden marzipan + a little icing sugar

- 100g naturally coloured glacé cherries

- 6 large eggs

- 3 tbsp cream sherry, or similar

- 250g butter

- 500g self-raising flour

- 1 tsp ground mixed spice

- 200g Demerara sugar

- 500g mixed cake fruit

- 100-150ml milk

- Icing:

- 250g icing sugar

- 1 lemon

1. Preheat the oven to gas mark 4, 180°C, 350°F. Place the shelf 1 rung below the centre of the oven. Line a 23m deep springform or loose- bottomed tin with baking parchment.

2. Roll out 350g of the marzipan into a circle just a bit smaller than the prepared cake tin – use a little icing sugar to stop the marzipan from sticking as you roll. Wash the cherries under cold water in a sieve, shake dry then cut them in half. Beat the eggs with the sherry and cut the but- ter into small pieces.

3. Mix the flour and spice in a large bowl then add the butter and rub it into the flour, between your fingertips or with a mixer, until it is like bread-crumbs. Stir in the sugar, mixed fruit and cherries.

4. Add the eggs, sherry and 100ml of milk to the dry ingredients. Mix thoroughly then beat for about a minute until creamy, but don’t break up the fruits. Add the remaining milk if the mix is dry and not really creamy – you’ll need more milk if using wholewheat flour as it absorbs more liquid than white and you don’t want a crumbly finished cake.

5. Scrape half the mixture into the prepared tin and level the top. Add the rolled marzipan then cover with the remaining cake mixture. Bake in the centre of the oven for 1 3⁄4- 2 hours until the cake is cooked, or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out cleanly – don’t worry about any stickiness from the marzipan. Another good test is to listen to the cake – a fruit cake will ‘sing’ if it is not cooked through, so a cooked cake is a quiet cake!

6. Remove the cake from the tin and cool on a wire rack.

7. To ice, sieve the icing sugar into a large bowl. Squeeze the juice from the lemon and add sufficient of the liquid to make a stiff, spreadable icing. Spread it over the top of the cake. Roll the remaining marzipan into eleven small balls and arrange them in the wet icing, around the edge of the cake. Leave until set before cutting the cake.

Top Tips:

- Marzipan burns easily if in contact with the cake tin so be sure to roll the circle of it a little smaller than the diameter of the cake tin.

- I use 350-400g white flour and 100-150g Orkney beremeal, a barley flour, for my cake. This grain, unique to Orkney, has a sweet and nutty flavour. You can order online in the UK from the Barony Mill website.

- The 11 marzipan balls on the top of the cake represent the 11 true disci- ples of Christ – there is no ball for Judas, who betrayed Him.

- I could only get white marzipan this year – it will not look quite right but it will taste fine. I don’t make my own marzipan for this as so much of it is baked in the cake.

Sourdough Hot Cross Buns Makes 12

400g strong plain flour

100g beremeal or wholewheat flour

1/2 tsp salt

50g caster sugar

1/2 nutmeg, freshly grated

1tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp mixed spice

75g butter

250g active sourdough starter

225-250ml milk

1 large egg

75g sultanas

50g currants

50g chopped mixed peel

Paste:

50g softened butter

150g ordinary plain flour

100ml warm water

Glaze:

3 tbsp caster sugar

3 tbsp milk

3 tbsp water

1 Mix together the flours, salt, sugar and spices in a large bowl and add the butter, cut into small pieces. Rub the butter in with your fingertips until it is combined and looks like crumbs.

2 Beat the egg into the milk and gently combine it with the sourdough starter in a large bowl. Add the flour etc and start mixing it together then add the dried fruits and combine everything into a manageable dough. If it is too dry it is best to add extra warm water on your hands, not by pouring it into the bowl which makes the dough too sticky.

3 Knead the dough in the bowl by pulling it from the sides into the middle and pushing it down, rotating the bowl as you do this action 12 times. Cover the bowl with a clean damp tea-towel and leave it for 10 minutes. Repeat the kneading and standing process 4 times then leave the dough, covered, for 1 hour.

4 Lightly butter a Swiss Roll tin. Turn the dough out of the bowl onto a lightly floured surface and knead it gently. Divide it into 12 evenly-sized pieces and shape them into round buns, again pulling the dough from the sides into the middle so that the top is smooth. Place them on the baking sheet, cover again with a damp tea-towel or loose cling-film. An oiled plastic bag works well too, but you need a very large one to take the baking sheet and allow space for the buns to grow without sticking to it.

5 Leave until almost doubled in size - this might take 2-4 hours depending on the temperature of your room.

6 Mix the ingredients for the paste together, beating until smooth. Spoon into a large piping bag fitted with a 4mm pipe. Cut crosses with a sharp knife into the tops of the risen buns then pipe the paste into crosses, cutting it off with a sharp knife when necessary.

7 Set the buns in a cold oven, set the temperature to gas mark 6, 200C and bake for 25 minutes or until golden.

8 Prepare the glaze when the buns are almost baked. Heat everything together gently in a small pan until the sugar has melted then boil for 2-3 minutes to a thick syrup. Brush over the buns as soon as they come out of the oven then transfer them to a wire rack to cool.

9 I think the buns are best split and toasted, with butter and marmalade.

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The last photo was yesterday - Day Three of snow on the ground and therefore Day Three of being allowed whisky on my porridge at breakfast. And I had it again this morning - Heaven! It is a house rule: only when snow is lying are we allowed a spirited breakfast and we don’t get that much of the white stuff here in Orkney. Every Whisky Porridge Morning is to be treasured. Whisky is a great passion of mine and, if it is one that you share, do check out my sister Substack blog Rosemary Moon - a Whisky Woman.

Tea is another great love of mine. I remember being amazed on hearing that there was tea being grown in Scotland. I was dumbfounded to learn that Lynne Collinson has established a tea garden on Shapinsay, the closest island to the city of Kirkwall, Orkney’s county town. Not that tea growing is completely unrelated to Orkney as the daughter of an organic smallholder on our island of South Ronaldsay is now growing camellia sinensis, the tea plant, on the west coast of Scotland. But Lynne is doing it here. It is almost unbelievable.

I first visited Lynne in January of 2023 for the Food of the Islands programme on BBC Radio Orkney - it’s on BBC Sounds if you’d like a listen. I loved meeting her and suggested that she might like to meet our new horticultural friend Jill Raggett who recently moved to Orkney and, like me, is a tea enthusiast. Sure enough Jill visited and promised that she and I would head back over to help Lynne prune her bushes. She needed to create the plucking table that all tea growers want. What a responsibility. And so a week ago, at the very beginning of March, with secateurs cleaned and sanitised, Lynne, Jill and I with the help of Patch set about her tea bushes for their first major prune.

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It was a morning well spent and, whilst Patch and I headed home on the lunchtime ferry, it was good to reflect on the courage that gardening with other people gives when important decisions have to be made. Lynne may well get a reduced yield this year - we’ll have to wait and see - but the plants certainly needed attention to encourage as many buds with their accompanying top two leaves as possible. The plants are, like all happy camellias, incredibly vibrant in colour with juicy, thick leaves.

Sure enough Jill came home with some cuttings which are currently in my polytunnel, hopefully establishing themselves. There is a Margaret’s Hope tea garden in Darjeeling producing delicious first and second flush teas. It will be a few years before the St Margaret’s Hope tea garden - well, that’s what we might call the couple of fish boxes full of plants - is fully established. Lynne’s bushes are from a Georgian cultivar, a more cold weather resistant strain of the classic tea bush. She has produced two teas: Norse Noir, 100% Orkney tea, and Norse Ruby. The latter is an interesting blend of her leaves with tea from an artisan tea project in Mayanmar. Both teas are light but fragrantly malty. They are teas for special days - and I have to say that the Norse Noir goes very well indeed with my beremeal shortbread, but make a plain version with neither the spice or ginger in the linked recipe.

These are the cuttings that we hope will be the start of our own little tea garden. How many years will it be before our very own first cuppa?

Patch and I had to leave early (photos waiting for the ferry below) to collect my husband from the airport. When ‘things’ have to be done that cannot be accomplished at our brand new Orkney hospital The Balfour, patients have to be taken down to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary. The NHS flies us down and we are met by a mini-bus for the transfer to the hospital and then taken back to the airport for the flight home. It works well. We were all really pleased to be back together when Nick landed and to enjoy a supper of macaroni cheese with Orkney smoked haddock and mussels in it. A traditional supper after a morning in a tea plantation? Well, it might become one for this Orkney tea enthusiast.

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Being part of the team volunteering at the Marengo Community Garden in St Margaret’s Hope, our nearest village, allows for the indulgence of normal gardening enthusiasms. Instead of being above a windswept beach like at home, the Marengo is snuggled into a very protected site and is a haven for locals and visitors, for those who want to garden and those who simply want to sit.

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When we visited South Ronaldsay in October 2016 and were looking at where we would like to live, we saw a sign to The Marengo and met Lesley and Trish. They had been the mainstays of the garden since it was established over twenty five years ago. Lesley became a close neighbour when we moved here but is sadly no longer with us. Trish however is back gardening after a new hip, with a wealth of knowledge as to what is planted where, what does well in this particular part of Orkney and which walls around the garden are our responsibility to keep upright!

Fuelling much of the renewal at The Marengo is new volunteer Jill, here waiting to be interviewed with Trish by Cameron Stout from BBC Radio Orkney. Jill is a newly retired lecturer in horticulture and landscape design, currently awaiting defences to take hold/be erected for her new hilltop garden, so the Marengo is getting lots of attention from her pruning saw and secateurs. She gave the Garden Association an excellent lecture on The High Line in New York. Community gardens are so important, vital spaces and green lungs in cities and villages alike. I started a Community vegetable garden in Sussex before we moved and Incredible Edible, a guerrilla veg gardening project that began in Yorkshire, has become a world-wide movement. Community Gardens matter.

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The Really Big Marengo Cutback happened at the end of November with the front hebe hedge being pruned hard - we hope it will survive - exposing rich ground for ferns and bulbs. Shrubs around the garden which needed attention had similar treatments and everyone gardening was sustained with a hot lunch: guess who did the cooking? And the results are clear to see in the February gallery below. All the pictures were taken within about 30 minutes of each other. That’s gardening in Orkney. One minute it’s blue skies and the next a hail storm.

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Our local What’sApp group, set up for shopping and any other support required during COVID-19, has almost morphed into an aurora alert system and it was pinging away last evening. The photo above was taken from the kitchen balcony as the show started to develop, and the one below from by the front door. When it’s a good show like last night even the lights of Burray, opposite us across the Fourth Churchill Barrier, can’t diminish the spectacle. The photos were taken with an iPhone, nothing fancy. The lights danced for about an hour.

The start of the year has seen the sad loss of Lynn, a wonderful friend, a true Orcadian, and someone that we would have wished to know for much longer. It emerged at her funeral that she would have loved to have been a dancer - perhaps it was her dancing last night? I have done fund-raising cookery demonstrations for Jo at Just Dance in Kirkwall, a studio that is teaching a wide range of dance styles to everyone from toddlers to adults. Lynn might have made it to the stage professionally had Just Dance existed when she was young.

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We did, however, take to the dance floor ourselves, albeit with very little aplomb, for a ceilidh in Burray Hall just after Christmas. Oh dear!

We both felt gently confused and extremely puffed by the proceedings but have resolved to attend the fortnightly ceilidh dancing classes in the village so that we are not such embarrassments, either to ourselves or our guests, in future. People were very kind - but then they always are, here in Orkney. Dance on…

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It’s too white, too sweet and too messy. Is that fair? I’ve always got some in because it is so good for making quick ice creams, the ones that need no pre-cooking like strawberry (predictable) or pumpkin (less so) as it blends quickly into the other ingredients. I also need it at Christmas time for the almond paste on the cake but when it comes to sieving it for icings it is just such a pain (I wanted to write faff but don’t know how to spell it: should it be pfaf? Or is that a make of sewing machine?). Icing sugar goes everywhere and makes everything sticky. But this year, with Tina coming from Germany for Christmas, I did sieve the icing sugar before adding lemon juice for a refreshing and less sweet icing on our cake. You’d have thought that after all that it would have had the decency to actually stay on the cake, wouldn’t you? Well, cake decorating is one subject that I haven’t written a book on - and yes, that was the finished cake!

Christmas didn’t work out as planned for so many people and I am certainly still battling the chesty cough that accompanied my cold when it started on the Wednesday before Christmas. The best way of clearing the sinuses is a walk on our beach and we’ve had plenty of those over the holidays. Special days like Christmas and New Year generally involve a loosely planned meeting with the neighbours and their dogs, a dram or two and cake. I take mince pies - they don’t need icing!

The big event of Christmas and Hogmanay for Orcadians is the Ba’, a free-for-all, no rules, rugby-type game played through the streets of the city of Kirkwall with the hand-made (and very beautiful) leather ball being thrown into the waiting pack outside the Cathedral. It’s the Uppies v the Doonies and there is a boys game (up to 16yo) and a mens game each time. All the shops are barricaded - interesting when Christmas shopping - the boards providing useful sitting opportunities whilst waiting for the start. The Council take an ad in the paper to state that they have no responsibility for any of it - well, apart from putting up and removing the defences.

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Whichever side people were rooting for, it was a glorious day of weather for sure.

Whilst the Ba’ has been played for centuries, one of Orkney’s newest events is the Farmers Tractor Run raising money for local charities. This year, the second time it has happened, and even with people feeling the financial pinch, it has raised almost £25K for the Orkney Blide Trust, the only dedicated mental health charity in Orkney, and the Orkney Heart Support Group. And it was a spectacular sight. With 178 tractors it was thought to be the biggest run in the UK. Here’s a few pictures, one recognisable and two abstract.

There’s a brief catch-up of the Festive Season in Orkney this year. Now I’m off to try to get creative with left-overs (we had our festive roast three days ago) but I think I need a cuppa and a slice of that cake first before Nick eats it all. Fingers crossed for 2023.

Yes, that’s tangles (kelp) on the beach - masses of it which the birds are enjoying very much.

The ducks call with quite a low, almost animal sound, reminding me of seals calling which brings me to the two that have been keeping an eye on us and our dogs as we walk along the beach at higher tides. We are having a patch of very stormy south eastearly winds which is bad news for the survival of the seal pups bred on the beaches near us. Unfortunately I spotted a dead one this morning. Nature usually works breeding seasons out well but, I have to say, seals pupping in October and November is an exception to that observation. Here’s the beach before the wind really got up.

Now for some Orkney food. Brussels sprouts grow well here and we have a few plants in our kale yard which is built from stone from a farm just a mile or so away. Here’s the veg patch on a calmer day and in its first summer. In years to come people might marvel at the stonework as they do when visiting the Ness of Brodgar!

We love warm Brussels in salads. I just cut them in half after trimming, boil for 3-4 minutes until just tender and then add whatever is appropriate in the fridge. Yesterday we had carrot simmered with the sprouts then tossed in some humus, on toast and it was delicious. Various friends have been Very Rude about that combo.

This salad with chopped apple, rocket and landcress from the Keder, the local Burnside cheese, chopped walnuts and broken breadsticks, tossed in vinaigrette, may appeal more?

Just two stalks of sprouts won’t last us for long - I love the tops of the plants, cooked like cabbage, and wonder why they are not offered for sale commercially? I am thankful that there are market gardeners on the Islands who will satisfy our sprout habit for the next few months. Which leads me to a Young Farmers bale art installation which gladdens our journey into Kirkwall at the moment: again thanks to Anne for the use of her photo.

Tomorrow looks very wild and so, having secured some local eggs, I shall set to and bake our Christmas cake. It has to be done. Will the Barriers be closed again? It’s all part of Island Life.

An Orkney bere bannock. Photo Orkney.com

Louise was one of the first people that I met when we moved to Orkney five years ago. She was working at the incredible Orkney Library (you really, really, really need to be following them on Twitter, for as long as we all keep using the platform) and we met when I had to step in to do a cookery dem during Book Week Scotland, just six weeks after we moved here. My colleague Liz Ashworth was due to present some recipes from her then newly published The Book of Bere but was ill and asked me to take over. That was fine, but she wanted me to cook a bere bannock which I had scarcely heard of yet alone cooked. It’s a griddle-baked quick bread made with Orkney’s ancient grain bere, a strain of barley thought to date back to the Neolithic. One lady said to me after the dem that the minute I started it was obvious that I had done cookery dems before - she kindly didn’t add that they probably all knew much more about bere than I did! Anyway, Louise and I became close friends immediately and her husband Eddie is one of my whisky drinking pals.

Sitting at my desk now, feeling so content as I look out over a stormy autumn sea with the waves rolling onto the beach, it’s hard for me to imagine just how excited I was to be heading to New York in 2000. I had started in Toronto on a tour to promote both my High Fibre and Onions cookbooks which had recently been published in North America by Firefly. Looking back through my notes the NY promotional activity was mainly on two or three of the many cable TV networks. I stayed just back from Central Park, as Louise is going to do, and quite close to Carnegie Hall. Andrew Carnegie, the Dunfermline-born Scots-American steel industrialist and philanthropist, not only endowed the arts with concert halls but he was also a leading advocate of books for all, funding local libraries in many countries. The beautiful Old Library building in Laing Street, Kirkwall was made possible by him. Now you can start to see a link developing: libraries, New York and Orkney, Andrew Carnegie…

The Carnegie-funded Old Library in Laing Street, Kirkwall

Apart from promoting my books, visiting delis (Zabar’s bagels were the only ones that I have ever enjoyed), eating pizza (and more) and, of course, the obligatory trip to Williams Sonoma the kitchen shop, I had two wonderful Occasions

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. Firstly, the sublime experience of Turandot at The Met: a stalls seat, champagne in the interval, new outfit, the works. I’ll never forget it. Secondly, the rare privilege of visiting Gourmet magazine in the Conde Nast building, as it was then known, at 4 Times Square. Through a friend I had met a Senior Manager at Gourmet and arranged to meet her in New York at the offices of the magazine, to see their Test Kitchens and get a peek at their restaurant which had caused quite a stir in the press for its lavishness. It was a great visit, ending with a cuppa in her office. Not being the brightest business cookie I was utterly unprepared for when she looked at me and said “Now, what would you like to do for us?”. I think I said “Nothing - I just wanted to see around!”. Talk about a missed opportunity! I was busy enough, but writing for Gourmet would have been brilliant.

Now, back to the pizza. Of course I had to go to Little Italy and I chose to eat at Lombardi’s, proclaimed as America’s first pizzeria. I loved it but my notes say you need to go with a friend as I simply couldn’t eat all my pizza by myself. I noted down coal-fired ovens - would they be wood-fired now? Maybe Louise will find out.

I’m excited for my friend and her weekend adventure. I was in New York when the Twin Towers still dominated the skyline and before my photography had gone digital. From there I went on to Boston and Nick joined me for a long weekend which included visiting Ocean Spray to see the cranberry bogs, their Test Kitchens and team. But now, well, I’ll just sit in Orkney, look at the sea and wait for Louise’s What’sApp messages telling me of her adventures - and asking about Strictly Come Dancing. I shall be perfectly happy on these wind-swept islands, looking forward to my friend coming home to talk NY, book shops like Barnes & Noble, food and more.

It started out like this. I received a sample of the Rebel 10yo single cask Bourbon well in advance of the day for uploading blogs/vlogs about it. Useful, as sometimes my samples don’t arrive on time. We had neighbour Chris coming in for supper as the rest of his family were away. Chris likes a dram, has a good palette and knows the US quite well. I think he’s probably tasted a few Bourbons out there in his travels. I’d made a Mexican meal, a chilli with a difference and a fruity almond olive oil cake for pudding. It all tickled our tastebuds for what was to come.

Chris is probably drawn to less challenging styles of whisky than I am, although he does profess a weakness for Highland Park’s Full Volume. Well, we live in Orkney! What we did both agree on was that we felt we had never tasted as satisfying a Bourbon as this gorgeous dram from Rebel. I’ve made a vlog about it. I won’t repeat it all here in words. Pour yourself a dram of whatever (preferably American oak aged) whisky you have and give Rebel Bourbon, The Whisky Wire and I ten minutes of your time. I guess I’ve spoiled the suspense of ‘does she/does she not like it’ as I’ve already confessed that I really do think this is rather special. Enjoy!

It takes quite a lot to close the Barriers and sometimes we wonder whether they should be shut when they remain open. Like this time when we did drive over!

I tried to post a video here but couldn’t - I’ll learn how one day but imagine how it was when the car was literally covered in water and we couldn’t see out at all… You just stay in the middle of the road with your lights on and keep going. And you wait for anything coming the other way to reach land before you set off. Or the sensible drivers do…

The POW’s also left us the remarkable Italian Chapel on Lamb’s Holm, on the site of their camp. It is the most wonderful place, especially if you get there without a coach load (or two) of cruise ship tourists. It is an astonishing transformation of two Nissan huts. I always love to tell our guests that the main lanterns are made out of bully beef tins - you can just see one in front of the ‘stained glass’ window. It is literally all made from salvaged materials, concrete and paint.

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Amazing trompe l’oeil decoration on the walls

With a storm raging - and we have had more since the Friday storm that inspired this piece as it is the season for them - I settled into a day in the kitchen. Years ago I wrote a cookbook all about aubergines: it was one of the most difficult that I have written. Partly because of the challenge of originality and partly because people were less keen to come to supper to eat up all the recipe tests! I had an easy source of ingredients as there was a brilliant local grower with three glasshouses full of the mysterious pendular foodstuffs. I say foodstuffs as they are, apparently, technically a fruit but usually classed as vegetables. Who knew?

My local source now is my friend Louise, a green-fingered newbie to fruit and/or veg growing, who has a huge Polycrub. It’s a storm-resistant polytunnel conceived in Shetland with part of the structure originally made from recycled salmon pens. There are so many Polycrubs around Orkney now - the black struts hold the heat and make them more suitable for exotics like aubergines and peppers than my Keders, much as I love them for leafy veg and fruit - that I wonder if all the black pipes can still be recycled? Anyway, Louise’s aubergines are far too precious for pickles, but I wanted to make the point that even aubergines can be grown in Orkney. But if you build a Polycrub to grow them it does make them rather expensive per kilo.

This chutney is just as good with mango instead of pineapple. In fact, in its original version it was Aubergine and Mango. I now use frozen chopped fruit, either a 500g or 600g bag depending on where you shop. This is so delicious that I always make a double quantity but that does extend the cooking time in order to sufficiently reduce the preserve. It’s brilliant with curries, or with a quick grain, veg and egg dish like today’s lunch.

Sweet Aubergine & Pineapple Chutney Makes about 4 x 500g jars

• 500-600g frozen chopped pineapple

• 2 large aubergines

• 1 large piece fresh root ginger - about 8-10cm

• 2 red chillies

• 2-3 cloves garlic

• 1 tbsp chilli powder

• 1 tbsp sea salt

• 568ml bottle distilled malt vinegar

• 1 kg unrefined Demerara sugar

1. Thoroughly wash some jars  with lids and scrub off any old labels. Rinse well and place upside down on an oven shelf at gas mark 3, 160C, 325F.

2. You can use the pineapple from frozen or defrosted. Cut the aubergines into 2cm chunks. Peel the ginger, de-seed the chillies then finely chop them together with the garlic.

3. Place all the ingredients together in a preserving or very large pan and bring slowly to the boil. Simmer for 45-60 minutes until well reduced but still moist.

4. Pour into the warm jars and seal with painted metal lids. Label the jars when cold. Store in a cool dark place and try to keep for at least a fortnight before eating. This will allow the flavour to start maturing.

Leaving party No 1: Nick with our neighbour Sue and an Orkney flag made for us

We had to buy a lot of furniture for our new home - having previously lived in a tiny cottage our worldly goods only filled a third of a van for the journey north. Each time we ordered something new, a few weeks later the shop would phone and say “Your sofa has come home” or “the bed has come home”. A very Orkney expression and one that we love. And now, just five short years later, it is hard to imagine that anywhere else could ever be home. Perhaps we are still in the honeymoon period? They say you have to do two winters to be a Stayer, so we’ve passed that test for sure.

A polytunnel is an essential for growing anything other than root veg and tatties at home.

Are you a fan of Simon Reeve’s travel shows on TV? We are, and also of his books. We have recently been most taken with his account of a meeting at a death hotel in India, where he was asked if he had yet decided where he wanted to die? It’s a good question indeed and, even as such island newbies, we both acknowledge that when one of us does die the other will still want to be here. That, without doubt, makes this home.

We have been off-island twice together this year. Returning, my heart almost skips a beat as we arrive at Gill’s Bay for the ferry and there, laid out before us just a few miles away, is Orkney. I point and, ET-like (well, maybe not quite as wizened) say “Home!” These islands have come to mean so much to us.

Home is where your sofa is. He’s not spoilt!

Orkney is famous for its incredible folk music, but there is music here of every genre. We are singing in two ‘serious’ community choirs (thankfully no auditions required): the Winter Choir and the St Magnus Festival Chorus. With the latter we’d been due to perform Brahms German Requiem in the Cathedral in June - but half of us went down with COVID the week of the concert. That half included us. A re-run was arranged for September 11th, which turned out to be the day of the proclamation of the Queen’s death and the King’s accession here in Orkney. Twenty-four hours was deemed to be the length of time that the news would have taken to get to us from London. Pre smart phones and the constant pinging of ‘breaking news’. The original proclamation was made by the Garter King of Arms from the Friary Balcony of St James’s Palace, dressed in heraldic costume so rich and colourful, a day earlier. We had a couple of pikemen guarding the Lord Lieutenant and Council Officials, but it looked good. And the Salvation Army band to play the National Anthem - our first time with the ‘new’ words.

A packed audience came for the second performance of the Requiem in four months. Our tribute, our comfort. And this time, unlike in the June festival when professional singers, pianists and soloists were brought in, this time it was all Orkney performers. And it was good. Very good.

Comfort Food. What do you crave, to eat and to drink, when something sad happens? For some bread is comfort, not just the eating but the making and kneading as well. We’ve been using beremeal from Barony Mill in our loaves since moving to Orkney, but more of that another time.

Then there’s cheese and specifically cheese on toast. Melting comfort as the cheese changes texture. It’s always good but this spiced version that I created for Orkney Cheese’s new website is especially reassuring. Maybe add a sliced tomato too?

A whisky for comfort? It has to be something Big - more challenging than easy in flavour, a whisky to unpack as it is savoured. OMG - I was just looking at my YouTube channel to try to link to a whisky video: it is all so out of date! That’s something I can work on here, and need to do. But that’s also for another day and maybe I should start with my comfort dram, Ardgowan’s latest release Sailmaker? I promise to tell you more about it very soon.

The real comfort food of these Islands is Stovies. Check out this recipe that I wrote for Orkney.com: it’s a traditional Scottish dish but, of course, I added a few twists of my own. We make it with either Orkney beef or lamb and usually serve it with oatcakes. Whilst lots of bakeries make fabulous oatcakes on the Islands you’ll probably be able to get Stockan’s wherever you are if in the UK. If a farmshop or deli shopper look out for their new traditional range.

I have struggled to justify buying lots of whisky since moving here. My husband is not a fan so it is just for me and, occasionally, a few whisky-loving friends. In Chichester I ran a whisky dining club for women and that meant that I was buying at least five bottles every two months. They were to sip and share as we nibbled our way through tasters after a responsible, tummy-lining main course, mixing and matching - or not - the foods to the selected drams. So I have been very bad at posting whisky reviews regularly on my YouTube channel in the last five years. I also feel at a disadvantage as ‘the younger guys’ are into the tech with microphones and gizmos and I am a woman who has given cookery dems and talks for 45 years, just sharing my love of the stuff. But I am making excuses now and not telling my story of a double-booked Wednesday evening on Orkney.

This year I entered some veg and preserves for the first time in the local show. The South Ronaldsay & Burray Agricultural Show is, I believe, the oldest on the Islands. The week of local shows culminates in the County Show, a very important day for a largely agricultural community. I was delighted, locally, to win two firsts, four seconds and two thirds: my pointed cabbage and my marmalade with the local Vara gin reign supreme. I was a bit disappointed that my Florence fennel came second to my neighbours French beans in the Any Other Veg class, but I was amazed and delighted that my Cos lettuce got a second. You win some and come second in others. A weekend cookery course with me at the WI Denman College was once the second prize in a competition in BBC Good Food Magazine. It took me a while to come to terms with that. I am OK with second prizes now.

I then heard that there was Prize Money for my homemaking efforts but that it was to be collected a few weeks hence on a Wednesday evening. Prior to this I had signed up for a whisky tasting on Twitter of some drams from Whyte & Mackay. Run by Steve Rush @TheWhiskyWire, it’s a great way for me to stay whisky-connected. Sign up and, if selected, you get samples mailed to you and, cometh the day and the hour, you set to and taste, swapping comments on-line on Twitter. Excellent. Except when you double book and it’s Whisky or Winnings as both are scheduled for 7pm on the same Wednesday evening. How much would my winnings be? And would my whiskies arrive in the middle of a postal strike? There was no sign of them when Wednesday dawned, a non-delivery day.

Then Streamline arrived and there were my whisky samples, just in time. Was I to trust collecting my winnings to my friend Edwina who was also due to be In The Money? (More than me, I imagine, but then she had entered the Show before.) No, my non-whisky-loving husband said that he would go and collect the money for me and so I now have a wages-style envelope with £5.60 inside it in my purse, waiting for a rainy day - and we have lots of those on Orkney. And I have a bottle of Whyte & Mackay’s Whisky Works Quartermaster on my Whisky Wish List. At just under £75, half my original Lucky Wednesday Winnings, it makes me Out Of Pocket. Again.

Peedie David and Rosie from the farm up the lane took part in this years celebrations for the first time. Rosie’s costume was made by her Great Granny Scott and many of the outfits stored from year to year and generation to generation in family attics are over 100 years old. There are still Clydesdale horses on South Ronaldsay and the idea, as you can see from the shoes, is to celebrate the much loved breed and its adorned festival harnesses. Rosie got second place for her costume’s decoration.

Peedie David, watched by Dad David, was well pleased with his second prize for best kept wooden plough, 3rd for ploughing and second for best finish. I’m not sure that I understand the technicalities of all that but it was a great day in Grimness.

Not that I saw the ploughing mind, as I was on ‘provide a crumble and washing up’ duty by then in the Cromarty Hall for Ploughing Match lunches. I tweaked a recipe for a summer fruits crumble with an oaty topping that was really a runny flapjack. Not my recipe - a real throw back to a former life - but a super end of summer pud. I added cinnamon to the fruit and used runny honey instead of golden syrup. Just to be different.