Nature Notes.

Bog cotton at Kiltybranks

All done with guests and sheep shearing for the moment we have "time to stop and stare" for a while, so I thought I'd catch you up on some of our surrounding flora and fauna. I have been able to get back into some proper dog-walking and that has included the favourite cut-over (turf) bog, Kiltybranks.

Mountain everlasting (Antennaria dioica)

We are in early summer mode at present, so not much colour down there yet but the recovering tracts are white with bog cotton. The verges of the hard tracks are busy with one of my favourite bog plants, Mountain Everlasting (Antennaria dioica) which is fascinating because it is "dioecious", or separately sexed. There are male and female plants, with separate plants carrying the pollen/anthers and the stamens/style. Helpfully, in the case of Antennaria, the males and females are different colours, pink and white. There! "Some well-known Dioecious Plants include holly, asparagus, dates, mulberry, ginkgo, persmimmons, currant bushes, juniper bushes, sago, and spinach" (says that fount of all knowledge, Wikipedia). It was worth getting up this morning, wasn't it?

Sand martin and nest holes in turf bank

I may have mentioned before how excited I was to discover a colony of sand martins down there, digging nest burrows into what I guessed was a very vulnerable 'cliff'. With no sandy river-banks to go at, these birds are reduced to using the sheer, 2-3 metre cliffs left by the big cutting excavators which harvest that year's fuel-turf, biting further and further back into the layer of turf each season.

This shot gives you some idea of how the
turf cliff rises out of the water-filled pit

In this case the 'cliff' is at the back of a 'bay' and the turf, having been cut is run through the extruding hopper and squeezed out in its rows all over the floor of the bay. This leaves no room for the digger to get back in at the cliff and no-where to spread more turf even if he wanted to, so I assume that once the cliff is cut, the birds can then use it undisturbed.

Sand martin alights on bank below nest holes.

When I went back to get these pictures an old boy was down there 'footing' the turf (stacking into air-drying stacks) and fascinated to learn about the martins. He'd obviously been going there for decades and they have never made any impression on him. If he is typical, then the birds are safe from turf-gatherers too!

An oak from a Tara acorn.

The birds have now been there long enough to be nearly at the stage where the young can fly, the dodgy looking banks have not collapsed and I guess no fox or other predator would be able to climb up/down the soft turf and get at the holes, so good luck you "turf martins" and I'll keep an eye on you, wish you well on your autumn migration and look forward to you coming back next year. I have, of course, reported them to the National Bio-Diversity Database.

We now have a thriving population of Smooth Newt
(Lissotriton vulgaris), Ireland's only newt, in our pond.

Closer to home we are pleased to see that some of "our acorns" have now germinated and are showing above ground.

Another newt.

These acorns were collected by our good friends (and fellow archers), Con and Niamh, out at the Hill of Tara (Ancient site and historic Seat of Kings) in County Meath. They had a bit of a rough start although I spoiled them with little hand painted labels. There are 16 of them across 4 pots, all of which were quickly tipped over by the then turkeys (this is prior to the Nov 2016 fox attack; we still HAD turkeys back then). I gathered them up but was not at all sure all 16 went back into the pots. Well, at least 3 have survived and there could well be more.

The twice-rescued peach is now thriving. Towser gets a look
in, or maybe OUT of the cat flap. 

In our pond we have now a thriving population of at least 11 newts. These will be the smooth newt as that is Ireland's only one, so no problem with the ID. We have seen 11 at one sitting and we can currently only see down about 3 inches into the water. It always brews up a bit in really hot weather and then heavy rain brings in muddy water from the 'catchment' which takes a while to settle out. If we can see 11 in the top layer of water, then there could be dozens down through the depths. We are delighted.

Sunset through the new kitchen windows.

Less 'wildly' a peach tree rescued my Mum-in-Law from the "sick, lame and lazy" racks of her local garden centre and re-potted but then nearly killed by us, is now doing well and on the mend. I left it outdoors through some unexpected frosty autumn nights and it lost all its leaves. In the poly tunnel it started to recover and even blossomed this spring, so it now has tiny pea-sized peaches coming on it. Liz has rescued it from my neglect. It has pride of place on a south facing wall just outside her new kitchen door and she assures me it will be rescued inside the kitchen as soon as frost is spoken of by the weather man. Poor tree. It deserves a break for sure.

New kitchen tiles all grouted up and
just needing skirting boards.

That is pretty much it, so I will just leave you with a couple more pictures. One of the new kitchen floor now all grouted up and then cleaned of residues and, last but not least, those Brexit-vote-day kittens Kato and Chivers.

Yes Sir, Yes Sir, Three Bags Full

Three bags of fleece ready for Sue. 

When I last went to 'press', I was 2 days into a dry spell and praying for a third so that we could get into the sheep shearing. I need not have worried. The pressure climbed and presented us with another mini heat wave. It stayed dry through Wednesday for us to shear our lot and then Thursday and Friday (today) too, so that I could snatch Sue and Rob's sheep too.

Visitor John claims the "holder" job this year with Liz happy
to step across to photographer and caterer.

Shearing is probably my most looked-forward-to tasks about the livestock. It is hard physically and difficult technically, so a proper challenge. One that you can be very happy about and proud of when you are doing it OK. Now I'm no pro and definitely nowhere near as fast as the champions/demonstrators who can strip a ewe naked in 45 seconds without chopping any vital bits off, but we chug away and they come out reasonably clean, undamaged and stress-free. Rob and I took 90 minutes to do his four, so about 22 minutes per sheep and some of these first time "shearlings" who tend to hop about a bit.

Peeling it off from spine down to sides and legs, finishing with a
bit of nip and tuck swooping under belly, round legs and face.

Friends of the blog will know that I do mine standing upright. I tried that upside down wrestling thing you see the pro's doing but I could not get the timing down much below an hour and the poor sheep were definitely not enjoying being inverted for that long. They would be panting, start foaming at the mouth and sometimes just collapse on their sides as if they had given up the fight; good for the big long body-length "blows" with the shears but not ideal from a welfare point of view.

Not bad for a learner. Certainly cooler.

I guess if you wanted to get good at that style, you'd just go on a course and practise, practise, practise on someone else's gazillion sheep, supervised by an expert. However I decided to try mine upright last year and it worked well, so we swapped over to upright shearing as you'd do a dog (and indeed. so do I).

Very pleased with this one of Sue's girls. My cleanest yet.

We slip a big dog-collar over the sheep's neck and catch a turn of dog-lead round the gate of the cattle race. This solves most of the problems (mobility, escape etc) but does generate a couple more. Wool under the collar can get missed and the belly and armpits are trickily out of sight! Not the 'vulva' though - that's looking right at you under the tail, not down at the "far end" when you'd have the sheep's head between your thighs.

Not normal for Ireland. A hot forecast from Met Éireann

It is all those final nips and tucks which cause me the problems and the bulk of the time. The 'comb' bit of a dog clipper is made of tiny teeth less than a mm apart, so there is no chance of any bits of sheep (folds of skin, wrinkles, teats, ears, etc) sliding down betwixt and getting nicked by the reciprocating cutter above. Not so the sheep shears, which are a much more industrial weapon. Here the comb teeth are a couple of mm apart, so plenty of opportunity to nick your victim as well as your own fingers if you are not careful.

I go in fear, then of cutting the poor sheep in these sensitive places and ease off the throttle too soon around legs and neck and face (ears, Achilles tendon etc). I tend to miss bits under the collar and on fronts and backs of legs (I am OK on the big, broad, flat 'sides' of the limb) so my sheep have trademark "frilly knickers" (as Sue says) and sometimes a "goat-beard" under their throat.

In Sue's barn

Never mind. They have had 3 inches thick of "duvet" removed from back, sides, rump and neck and a good bit pared away from the belly so they seem to straight away feel more comfortable, especially in this heat. They sprint back to their fields and dance around like new lambs. They seem very tiny, goat-like and thin compared to the almost spherical full-fleece versions they left behind in the shed. Not for them any worries about frills and dewlaps.

While I'm on shearing, a couple of amusing asides. We did Sue and Rob's in their barn with the sheep held to a solid work-bench which would only move a tiny bit even with a sheep bucking around it. When the shed is not a shearing-pen, it is used by all manner of other livestock including poultry and is currently home to at least 3 broodies one of which is on top of the workbench and no doubt cursing us for invading their quiet confinement with our noisy sheep, clattering shears and our own chat and banter.

Rosa rugosa

At one stage we paused the shears to let the latest victim have a breather and could hear, instead of annoyed broody-hen scolding clucks, the thin cheeping of a baby turkey! This hen had turkey eggs under her and one had hatched - whether it was us rocking and rolling her 'Mum' about, we will never know.

The ever reliable Dublin Bay comes into flower.

Then mid sheep on about the third, I flicked out a small wad of wool near my open mouth and promptly breathed it in. It hit the back of my throat and set off such a spasm of choking and gasping that I had to stop, drop the shears and try to make a very concerned Rob understand that I need water fast.

The first of our huge poppies opens with
plenty more buds on the clump.

I was in some trouble for a while there but got it back together leaning over a pile of tyres trying not to be sick, then glugging and gargling Rob's water. We were joking about how we'd explain to the ladies that the sheep were now all sheared but....um....... there is a bit of a problem with Matt. You might want to come and collect him. It was one of those like where you swallow a fly - you just see it flash by your face but with no chance to shut your mouth before it is in there. Farm Safety.

So that is it for this year unless some of these friends who pop up on Facebook asking if anyone can shear a couple rams needs me. They generally get sorted/claimed by someone else before I get a chance to contact them but you never know. The last few days also saw the end of the John visit. He left for Rosslare yesterday morning, headed for an 8pm sailing and texted me this afternoon to say he was back safe in Kent and off to collect his own dog, Ragworth.

Next in the news? Our expectant Mums. 

Next into the spotlight for this blog, may well be our geese, who have been sitting on eggs for 32 days now and may well have a happy event or two over the next few days. Watch this space.

The Admin System Creaked....

Another egg from 'Laundry-Pile' hen

John's weapon of choice, my Old Father Time scythe. 'Cigar'
whet-stone in his pocket, these nettles don't stand a chance

A shorter post this time as befits the fact that I should be spending more time with our guest, good friend from Kent, John W. He is with us till Thursday and shows every sign of loving the slow-paced rhythm of life here, the 'plod' of gardening and the chances to relax, walk the dogs, eat good food and quaff a few beers or sip on a nip of Kilbeggan.

We finally open up some lovely clean ground
and get a load of long overdue seedlings in.
Here kale, chard and calabrese.

Some of the time I have been working with him but some I am off in another part of the site doing something else and we just cross paths then on coffee breaks or at lunch. Then we'd be off on an errand or a mission, shopping or whatever and he was happy to come along and get a look at the local area.

John contemplates a meal of duck in Guinness sauce

On Monday this ended up being more than once, as we are currently trying to get a replacement driving licence sorted for Liz. The local licencing office may be good at many things but it is not firing on all cylinders when it comes to the unusual request by a returning Irish citizen who has lost an English licence while in Belfast and now needs an Irish licence. Add to that the fact that this lady has changed her name on marriage from her maiden name to mine but VIA, on some forms, using a double-barrelled combination of both.

The admin system creaked mightily as we tried to prove that UK-Liz and Roscommon-Liz are one and the same even though both looked identical in their pictures and had identical signatures. At one stage the clerk even asked if it would help if she took a copy of a cervical smear appointment letter (?). In the end, after 3 runs to Roscommon (an hour round trip each time) that day we sorted it with a Marriage Certificate but even that the girl had a long reluctant look at "from corner to corner", as Liz said. Now we just have a 12-week wait (!) for the document/card to appear in the post. Don't hold your breath.

If anyone is reading this blog and dreaming of making the move out here, like we did, then I would offer the following short list of advice 'bullet' points.

New tiles for the kitchen. The mark on the
middle one is just tile-dust we'd not yet
swept off. 

• Don't change your name on marriage (taking your husband's name) and certainly not via a hyphenated combination of both names.
• File in a special file examples of utility bills in your chosen surname for both your old address and your new - don't let your husband pay all the bills or do all the admin and leave you with no inbound letters bearing your name. 
• Keep your passport and book all flights, car hire etc in your 'old' name. Also sign onto doctors, dentists and anything else in that name. 
• If you have to attend any interview like this then take your passport, PPSN card, any other 'smart card' with photo ID, marriage cert etc but probably NOT your letter of appointment for a cervical smear test.
• Don't lose your driving licence in Belfast. 
• Drink plenty of tea or maybe some gin.
• Be prepared for a 12 week wait anyway.  

In the middle of all this, our heroic builder-man, K-Dub, rocked up, first to cement in the step from one kitchen to the other, covering in the dish-washer waste and then to tile the kitchen floor.  He also created the step down from new kitchen to garden out of doors. The latter new cement was immediately walked on by chickens and kittens and I was thinking about painting in these prints to show them up, but heavy rain came and obliterated the prints. We (mainly K-Dub) did a really good job on this and it now really only needs grouting, skirting, 2nd-fix electrics and paint to finish the room.

Duck in Guinness sauce. 

So what else is new? The only real notable event was today nipping across to Sue and Rob's place so that they could meet John  and so that I could help/show them how to butcher up the carcass of their 'failed' ram lamb, Silas.

Silas gets reduced to kit form.

Friends of the Blog will know that that lad, orphaned and bottle fed from birth never made the size and stature of a ram capable of getting anyone's ewes pregnant and scored a big fat zero in our flock as well as in Sue's, where he has lived as 'man and wives' for his whole life excluding Nov and Dec 2016 when we borrowed him.

The amateur butchers cut out a shoulder joint

Well, it's a rough, tough world in smallholdering, Silas, and having blotted your copy-book with a nil score you then turned aggressive towards Sue and started butting her hard when ever she went into the field. Well, long story short, he went on that short trailer ride to Webb's in town and came home today in kit form. Most of him is now in the freezer but they kept a shoulder joint out for tomorrow's roast. Happy to help, Sue and Rob, and thanks for the sausage rolls and fresh (poly-tunnel) strawberry gateaux.

Nice tall fox gloves in our woods.

Well, now we sit this evening looking a bit anxiously at the sky. The ewes here have now enjoyed 2 days without rain and if we stay dry we can shear them tomorrow. John will be able to help, which he is quite looking forward to. But it has gone quite 'close' and some grey clouds are cruising through, so this plan may founder. Wish us luck.

Sausage and apple pie.

A Bunch of Weirdoes

Troughing but in a strange order. 

This season we seem to have accumulated, by chance, an odd bunch of weirdoes for livestock. Friends of the Blog will recall that I was mildly worried about the pigs' lack of enthusiasm for food. Well, they are hungry enough now and wake up and trot out to receive their breakfast or supper and they leave none in the bowl by the next meal but I am amazed by the order in which they take their 'courses'.

Pride sniffs a slice of galia melon

I give these snufflers mainly a commercial pig ration which is a grey/brown pellet looking a bit like the Layers' Pellets, poultry keepers would be familiar with. Worried that this looks just plain boring, I shake the ration up with a handful of flaked barley and throw in on top any cut up fruit I can get really cheap in the supermarket 'reduced' racks. It makes a nice varied meal for them while still giving them all the nutrients they need.

Empress checks out the breakfast potential.

All the pigs I have known or owned so far have taken one look and piled straight into the choicest items first, squabbling over the tomatoes and apple, and only eating the boring old ration when there was nothing else left. Not these two cherubs. They are first at the pig-nuts, shoving the lovely cooked new-potatoes and chunks of melons to the side of their bowl with their snouts the better to avoid accidentally biting the "dessert" course.

Kitchen progress. We pick out some floor tiles.

I have got bored and left by the time they must eat the fruit - it is certainly all gone by the time I return with the next meal but I have never seen more than a tentative exploratory chew on it. Never any enthusiastic schhhhlurrrping and dribbly, juice-leak, chewing like with previous piggies. Ah well, happy enough that they are eating and thriving, I guess. There is no rule that says pigs must eat melon.

These chooks have taken themselves off to 'bed' on this
perch 5 feet off the ground. The rabbit is on the bunny
'Maternity Unit' roof next to them.

Next up on weird-world, those rabbits. Having escaped their apiary pen they are now free range but if you expect them to run for it and end up eaten by Mr Fox somewhere 'out there' then worry not. These guys seem to naturally gravitate towards the house and yard and the out-buildings and prefer the grain thrown down for chickens to the 2.5 acres of good green natural grass and herbs (plus precious flowers and young trees!).

At 'bed time' for chickens as it gets dark, the chooks all take themselves off to their coops and their perching ladders in the out buildings. The rabbits go with them and one even climbs up somehow onto the former rabbit Maternity Unit roof, 4-5 feet off the ground so that he can "perch" alongside the chooks. They get locked in safe from the fox and are always sat just inside the doors when I go to let the birds out in the morning. They chase out to be first at the chicken feed and then go back to being grass-eaters once they've had their fill of breakfast. See? Weirdoes (or should that be "Weirdos"; I guess as it's only a made-up word I can do which ever plural I like).

Egg laid in the laundry pile.

Then there is the chicken who has taken to laying eggs in the 'waiting' laundry pile in the Utility Room. That room has a split door "stable door" style and in summer I generally leave it with the top half hooked open. One rainy day I was in and out of there and left the door fully open and returned to find all 5 of the new hens and their rooster (Herme) sheltering in there from the rain. Not wanting chicken poop on the 'dirty' clothes, I hooshed them out and shut the door and only later found an egg had been laid down in there on an old towel in the corner.

That scary looking Spanish goat cheese in the previous post
was nothing like as alarming inside and proved to be a lovely
strong flavoured crumbly-soft, pale cream coloured (slight pink
tinge) delight. "You know you've had cheese!" said our visitor

Well, it seems that the egg laying bird has now locked onto that site as a GOOD THING and goes back in each day to lay her daily egg even if I have the bottom half of the stable-door closed and she must have to fly up over that to get in. Determined lass, that. I will just have to be careful when sorting through my laundry for the machine - coloured, whites, delicates, woollens, eggs...oops!

The bugle from Charie Moss gets planted into the side of the
driveway. Pick-axe gardening. 

That's it for mad in this post. What else have we been up to? We have started into planting the various goodies from our trip to C Moss Perennials. This has meant getting the pick-axe out again; the bee-friendly plant, bugle (Ajuga reptans) is going in at the side of the drive to do ground-cover but needed a start-hole "drilled" into the compacted gravel there. That should get away nicely.

Waiting for planting. Pick axe at the ready.

This week we play host to the last in the current series of house guests, this one being our most excellent friend John, husband of the late Diane (Diamond, to this blog), who lives in our previous town, Faversham in Kent. If there are guests who are "difficult" and those who are less so, the John is definitely at the 'easy' and 'low maintenance' end of the spectrum.

Gifts from "home" - Micro-brewery beers and some Deep-South
Cajun flavourings from our old favourite world-deli and farm shop
 'Macknades Fine Foods' plus some new Kent gin flavours for Lizzie

Not only does he call to check whether there is anything from home we might be pining for (Gentleman's relish, Marmite etc), he arrives bearing gifts and there is nothing he likes better than a chance to help me in MY garden with the weeding, planting veg and other allotment-type work because he'd be away from his own plot for a whole week. He also loves a craft-beer and would regularly nip round for some of the 'take-away' (Tetra-pack 2 pint style) guest beers from local pub 'The Elephant' when ever we were round to Diane's for supper.

That gives me a chance to indulge here - Ireland is seeing a real flowering of the craft-beer, micro-brewery market and even the standard supermarkets like SuperValu stock a huge range with great long racks of display showing them all off. John and I headed for the SV in Balla-D and came out with 9 different beers to try (not all in one night!).

In the interest of research, you understand. 

I was intrigued to find that they even had a little promo-display for a new supplier, Sligo-based "Lough Gill Brewing Co" who seemed to be doing cans rather than bottles. A fun aspect of this trend is some of the funky funny names they dream up to make the beer more memorable and eye-catching; in the UK we are well used to the Hobgoblins, Old Speckled Hens and 'Waggle Dance'. One of Lough Gill's beers is called "Thieving Bastards" Pale Ale. How could you NOT pick one of those up? Blimey, we nearly have as many different beers in the house as Lizzie has types of gin! Sláinte!

Breakfast in Bed

Baking for the next guests - choc, pear and nut dessert

This post brings a nice sense of tidying up on a couple of issues; of "stuff" being sorted out and squared away. No longer an issue. Move on, as they say. First up, Friends of the Blog may recall that I was anxious about these new pigs - that they did not seem to be eating with appropriate gusto and were also very wary of me and shy of approaching.

Square miles of Ballymoe burned off in the recent fires

Well a few more days in that is all changed. They are now sprinting out to meet me and the breakfast or supper bowls and if I sit quietly they will eventually amble over and start chewing on my boots to find out what I taste like. Sprinting, that is, except for on Saturday when the morning brought lashing rain. That day the pigs were on their feet but standing just inside the ark doorway looking at the rain and at me, approaching, dripping in my big yellow hi-viz coat. They had cleared a small area of floor just inside the door, moving just enough bedding for me to land the food bowl INSIDE the ark, out of the rain. Breakfast in Bed for piggies that day. Spoiled!

The cats have pretty much wiped out the local rats. The very
occasional one we get now seems to be brought in from away
across the fields in a neighbour's turf barns.

The poorly tractor belonging to our friend and neighbour down the lane is also fixed and back home. He phoned me on the morning when I knew we had guests arriving so I thought I might be in trouble - his calls for a 'taxi' (Ah. you might just run me into town...) have a habit of suffering "mission creep" and turning into multi-stop mini-epics.

Liz with visitors Angie (left) and Liz (snr). Chicken Savoyard

When I was working in warehouse distribution, the salaried lorry drivers used to always try to get nice clean one-stop missions - load, drive to the supermarket in town X, unload, drive home arriving with not enough 'tacho-hours' to be given a 2nd run. They hated any mission with lots of stops and drops, rudely referring to them as "milk rounds".

Could be the least desirable cheese you ever saw? Espadán
(I think) is a soft-rind, extra mature goat cheese brought back
from Valencia by Mum-in-Law. It mingeth.

That is exactly how I am with these one-stop taxi runs which, once the 'customer' is in the car, gain extra stops at an alarming rate and grow extra miles and hours faster than I can 'deliver' the legs - can we stop at the bank, or the Mart, or the Railway Station? Can we just "stand" (pause) at this cemetery because I need to see can an extra name be added to a gravestone. Ooh, and we better stop for a bit-een to eat too. It's not worth getting to x-point before 2pm as they'll be closed for lunch. And so it goes on. Somehow we managed to check on the man's cattle and do all this rake of jobs, drop him to his tractor repair and get home still before the guests arrived.

The 'Parma' style ham in its posh new stand

The visitors this time were distant cousin Angie (Great great grandpa in common with Liz (jnr), all very complicated.). This lady is a 'find' from the Internet (Facebook, I think). This family have a very rare and unusual surname which most people conclude is Italian but is actually Corsican. In Corsica way back they were Baron-level land owners but backed the wrong king in some fight (Napoleon?) and found themselves dis-possessed. As Liz puts it, "we were Huguenots, thrown out of more European countries than you can shake a stick at" before some ended up in Ireland and, in Angie's case, Bristol (UK). The rare name means that they can nowadays find unknown pockets of family through Google and the Internet.

Fancy new ham cradle. 

Angie was over in Ireland on a round up meeting all the distant rels she has found during these searches and was here for the 2nd time, taxi'd up in this case by Liz Snr. We had the usual fun doing hospitality. Liz arrived fresh back from a break in Valencia and with a 2nd Parma-ham related gift. Last time she brought the proper purpose-designed ham slicing knife. This time, even more generously (Thanks, Mum!) she had bought one of those special wooden support cradles which hold the leg at a jaunty angle while you carve. It was flat-packed but dead easy to assemble.

'Charlie' Moss rummaging around for suitable plants for all
 four of we customers. 

One of the attractions for this visit, enticing the ladies all the way from Co. Laois was that I have finally made contact with a plant nursery specialising in perennial plants. I have been chatting to the owner of this business (Charlotte Moss) on Twitter for a while as part of the normal banter between small holders on that network but it had only recently dawned that her name on Twitter (@CMossPerennials) could well indicate that 'she' was actually a specialist nursery business.

We finally got round to her beautiful, scenically placed, rambling house/walls/buildings/steps place nestling under the Curlew Mountains overlooking Lough Gara today. We loved them all at first sight and 'Charlie' (she asked to be called) is a brilliant, very knowledge-able plantswoman with a superb collection of potted plants which must surely be the result of endless hours of hard and good work. Over the course of a very enjoyable hour or so we filled the car boot to bursting and made no visible dent in her stocks! We were even invited in for tea and then taken on the tour of the lower fields, the fruit trees and the lovely dry-stone, Sligo style walls. It was all gorgeous and thank you so so much, Charlie, for having us and treating us so well. We now have many hours ahead finding the right homes for all these pollinator-friendly goodies.