Staying Healthy

That crab apple and blackberry jelly. 

We, jointly, are not great fans of the medical profession and try to spend our days staying healthy and avoiding doctors, dentists, hospitals, opticians and the like. We try to eat and drink healthily and avoid breaking things or damaging ourselves. Liz has been doing Yoga for ages and I have just started. But, hey, neither of us are getting any younger and when the above plan meets the combined forces of the medical profession it tends, like us, to creak.

A well weathered chunk of elder.

Recently those medics have got all their ducks in a row and lined up a synchronised assault on our health fortress; we have just had to cave in. Between us we have received demands for breast exams, overdue eye-tests and, most pressingly, Liz has been going through her own private Dentist Hell. No more detail on any of this specifically (patient confidentiality etc) but we have lately been involved in runs to Sligo, Roscommon and local centres armed with forms and appointment cards etc. One of Liz's 'experts' is not even as lowly as a mere 'dentist'. No no. He is an Advanced Dental Aestheticist. Now!

The Hubbards at Day 55 look a lot more like chickens now.

This is all well and good and is no doubt "vital" and "advisable" but we do not love it and we wish they would all just do what they need to do and then return our dusty files to the shelf marked "OK. Leave these people alone for another 5 years...They have suffered enough". We are happy to return the favour by being healthy at these lads and not pestering them for more expertise.

It is National Potato Day (apparently) so here is a spud
flower and a fly. It is growing in our Keyhole Bed as a volunteer
and does not seem to know it is October.

Meanwhile livestock does not stop growing while we take time out to get our acts together and the pigs, in particular are "finishing" (that farmer euphemism for 'they are big enough now to be booked into the butchers for their final journey'). They are booked in to Webb's in town and I just need to train them to go easily into the trailer so that they will do this for me with not a bother on them on the day.

Another session on the kitchen gave us
a roof frame.

Regular readers will know that we have previously constructed a "race" of fences running up from their pen to a place where I can "plug in" the trailer. I just need to show them that this race is OK and that the trailer holds no fears which I do by feeding them all their meals  on the 3 days leading up to departure, IN the trailer. It is horribly cynical and feels like an evil betrayal but in this way, by the morning, they trot up into the trailer for their breakfast and barely notice as you click the ramp shut behind them. Obviously it hurts and wrenches a bit but if you can't do this stage, then you shouldn't really be in pigs. We know that the butcher we choose is also going to treat them with respect.

Very few clouds for a proper lit up sky, but I quite liked this
sunset shot today. 

Very little else to report today. The Hubbard chickens are at Day 55 and looking much more chicken like (as opposed to dinosaur). The ducks are all in full flow egg-wise so we are actually getting more duck eggs than chicken eggs, despite the opposite disparity in numbers. The kitchen extension chugs along.

Sunset cattle. 

We had a session at it this week where we laid the mini-wall of 4" blocks (top left in my picture) to fill in the triangle between Tígín and old kitchen extension and we built as much roof frame as we could (on account of the wet cement in the mini-wall). We also had to engage the "customer" to start planning where worktops and white goods would go, shelves, power, doors opening in or out and hinged left or right. Decisions decisions.