There's a particular kind of tiredness that comes with a Highland summer, and we're well into it. The last few weeks have brought Belladrum, the Nairn Show, the Black Isle Show and Moy Fair, one after another, with barely a gap to catch our breath in between — and somehow, life on the croft hasn't paused to make room for any of it.
Belladrum always feels like the season's centrepiece. The main stage draws the biggest crowds of the year, but it's the smaller details that stay with us — willow figures standing quietly among the pines, a giant duck presiding over the burn, the kind of playful, handmade touches that remind you what a festival built on craft and community can look like.
The county shows are a different rhythm altogether — earlier starts, muddier boots, and rather a lot of livestock. The Valais Blacknose sheep are always a highlight for us; there's something wonderfully improbable about them. For the wee man, a turn at the clay shoot is now a fixture of show season, ear defenders on and concentration fierce. And if we're honest, the cutest sighting of the whole summer was at the Nairn Show — a baby Shetland pony curled up in the grass, barely bigger than its own fluffy mane.
Back at home, none of it stops for the shows. We're racing to get the new stables up before winter properly sets in, and the fields needed topping while the weather held. Then there are our own horses, who seem to have taken the general busyness as an invitation — we've a couple of committed escape artists on our hands at the moment, heads together over the fence line, testing every gate we thought was secure.
Somewhere in amongst all of that, we're still making. Pieces for the shop don't stop needing hands just because the diary is full, and if anything, this time of year sharpens the eye for it — the shows and markets are where a lot of our best ideas start, picked up from a stallholder's display, a colour combination we hadn't thought to put together, or simply the texture of a well-worn field gate.
It's a full season, and a good one. Autumn will bring its own quieter pace soon enough — but for now, there's a stable to finish and at least one horse to catch.