A Genuinely Short Post (Honest)

A welcome cold snap

OK, I know I have many times recently started a post with comments along the lines of "not much to say, so this is going to only be a few paragraphs" and then gone on at normal length. Well, this time, I genuinely have little to say, so I might be for real here. Added to that, one major 'thread' of narrative is under that embargo to which I have already alluded; the main characters in those episodes do not like to be spoken of 'on here' and there is no arguing with that.

Frosty East Field

Main event for this post was the 'Little Christmas' or 'Ladies' Christmas', (Nollaig na mBan or, if you prefer, simply Epiphany) when the men take over the reins of the household and try to treat their women-folk to a complete day of rest.

When you can only find 4 ducks it is a sure sign that #5 is off
hidden up somewhere laying a surreptitious late egg. When
she returns it is then a race against the magpies to find the egg
before they do. 

It is nothing that heroic, so does not generate me much Blog text but it is fun to do and much appreciated by Lizzie. I have to do all the kitchen and dish-washer duties, provide tea on demand and cook the main meals. Also, on this occasion, carve a good snack's worth of thin slices off the 'Parma'-style whole leg of ham mid afternoon and pass in the gorgeous chocolates we were gifted by our French visitors at Christmas (Thank you, Marion, Clara and Augustin). It all went very well.

Frosty early morning view from the new kitchen windows

I have also tried to progress from knowing that we have "around 30 chickens" to doing some kind of census to get an exact list. This is mainly so that we can report egg production, health and progress more accurately and to identify whether we have any 'passengers' who are contributing nothing and need weeding out. Tough old, cut-throat world?

We both wish the cats would not catch these cuties and we are
always amazed how tiny they are in the hand. A goldcrest, of
course. 

Obviously, with the birds free-ranging this is not that easy - you walk one way round the site with your notepad and pencil and try to record who is where but by the time you have nearly finished, are you double counting hens who have gone widdershins round the house and come to meet you again? I scratched down a list of 28 hens by name if they have names, and by a rough description if not. I now have a list that says such arcane things as "Stumpy", "Big Red", "Grey / Dark cape" and "Flat black / big crest" and is peppered with codes like 'A-head' and 'A cheeks'.

Poor little mite. At least we have a strong population of goldcrests
here, so this one will not really be missed.

The 'A' thing stands for Araucana, which is a weird 'fancy fowl' beloved of show folk which has tufts of feathers sticking out of the top of its head and sideways from its cheeks. The latter give it a strange hamster-like look from the front. Pure bred A's lay blue eggs which are quite nice, but we only have crosses between A's and other types, so we only get white eggs and we get hens which are mainly hen-shaped but have some bizarre A-tufts on their heads.

I now need to take my list into the coop at lock-up and double check. I better not bore you with a complete list of all the birds as a fancy tabular addendum. You might think I was trying to flesh out a slow news day. As if.

The half moon goes down into that big patch
of new morning sky where Storm Eleanor
decapitated our larch. 

Finally, we are now at Day 9 of the two major New Year's resolutions. First that #DryJanuary - we are both sticking to this as per the agreed rules; one 'day off' allowed. Mine is going to be Burns Night, Liz went for Nollaig na mBan and brother Mark has a gin tasting he has booked in on 15th. So far so good.

Knitting project gets finishing touches.

Second, Liz was determined to get out all the unfinished major knitting projects and finish them. She loves knitting up the pieces of a garment but hates the stage where you sew all the bits together, so as at NYD, I had a lovely Aran pullover which was all there but for the assembly and Liz had a blue cardigan and a green woolly in similar states. Well, true to her resolution, my Aran is finished, the cardy just needs buttons (and even has a neck-warmer / 'snood' in the same wool, to go with it.) and the green thing is very nearly completed.

Publicity shot for the Men's Shed. The lads were doing a 'bucket'
collection at the check outs in local SuperValu, "Duffy's". 

And that, genuinely, is it. Till next time.

Joyeux Noël, Wren-girls and Ducklings

Messin' with the guests (1). Left to right here, Liz, Augustin,
Mum/Marion (top) and Clara

Best behaviour for the cameras obviously.

When I left you last time we were on the 'ground-rush' phase of Christmas prep, mixing stuffing, glazing ham, trussing turkey, doing last minute shops and counting down the hours to the arrival of our French guests, only one of whom we had ever met. Augustin, of course, called AB while he was here (September) but whose name I can now confidently pronounce as "August-an". That now seems like a lifetime ago.

We have enjoyed one of our best Christmasses of recent years, we all got on like a house on fire and had the break full of happy, jokey banter and chat, sometimes in full French with Liz working hard to dig up all the old vocab' and grammar of her fluent 'au-pair-in-Toulouse' days and massively impressing the Parisians (I am winging it!), sometimes with me stumbling along in 'schoolboy' mode making them laugh (The English are so charming with their mistakes) and sometimes with the visitors equally keen to practice their English. 'They' were AB, his Mum (Marion) and his younger sister, Clara. 

My most noticeable charming mistake was probably mis-remembering ' (table) knife' as 'canif' This had AB and Clara almost wetting themselves as they dreamed up movie scenes while setting out the 'family silver'. A 'canif' is in fact a gang -criminal weapon - a flick knife or a stiletto. They had visions of no-one having a knife to hand and having to whip deadly daggers out of their socks to stab the turkey.

Oeufs de Noël?

The turned out to be the perfect guests. They were dead easy to keep entertained, they loved the food and were hugely impressed by Liz's cooking and well intrigued by the idea of a Christmas pud and later the cake, neither of which they would have been familiar with. Especially they were entertained by the idea of putting the silver thru'pences in the pud and then having the diners choose left or right at the serving so that they could not cheat, gain a thru'pence and thereby become rich... well OK. Clara found the only coin, so she will be the only rich one.

We know AB, of course, and his dreams of travel. Mum (Marion) turns out to be both a former classical singer, now singing teacher, and to be involved in some way with the medical drug/substance abuse support that was Liz's line in Kent. She was quite taken with my voice and wondered if she could do anything with it as a singing teacher. Everyone is different, she says, and your voice is strong and basso-profundo. Clara has picked up 'Grandma Pierette's' DNA (she of the 'Beouf carrottes' recipe AB fed to us in September - see earlier post).

Cutting the Christmas Cake.

Grandma P worked as a nuclear physics scientist in the Marie Curie Institute (we think) and Clara has a real dream of getting in to astro-physics. It was a clear sky on the night of 25th, so we were able to show her our beautiful, unpolluted sky star-field. the "Night of a Million Stars" as we call it. Being from Paris, hazy skies and light-pollution none of them had ever seen anything like it.

AB is a mad keen Chelsea fan. Liz knitted him this CFC hat. 

Marion also fell in love with the livestock and the idea of 'farming' (she was even, at one stage, talking of selling up in Paris and moving to Ireland) and was particularly taken with the new female Guinea Fowl and their 'Buckwheat buckwheat' repetitive calling. I think that was what woke her up, not the 'Cock-a-doodle-doo' of the roosters. We ended up having quite a laugh combining the language hic-cups, the singing lessons and the 'buckwheat' calls into a tongue-in-cheek song-writing session where we tried to include all the in-jokes in the song lyric. ...there goes Elizabet'.... with a cigarette (buck wheat buck wheat)... and it was very funny (buck wheat)... when Clara found the money (buck wheat etc). Ah well. Maybe you had to be there.

Good French people arrive bearing gifts - this massive array of
good trad, strong cheeses, wine, chocs, tea and coffee

All good things must come to an end, though, and our guests were due to head back to Dublin for an explore of the James Joyce sites this morning, the 26th, a Bank Holiday of course. AB had 'found' a bus from Castlerea leaving at 09:00, the only one of the day, he said. We had a rather early alarm call to get everyone through tea and coffee and into the car by 08:30. Liz had done them a 'picnic' of left overs to save everyone having to cram a breakfast.

Possibly the best 'hang' we have ever done.
Succulent and delicious.

But the bus never arrived; AB had mis-read the Internet and found a train that only runs tomorrow. Liz saved the day, going back in on the end of a phone and found our guests a bus from Balla-D at 10:30, so a quick hurried car-shuttle got them to their transport and we did not have to creep back indoors praying that Liz had not stripped the beds. We have since heard from them that they safely made the bus. 

That ham, sliced. Our own pig, of course

That was us, then, back on our lonesome and it now 'Wren Day' or 'St Stephens's Day'.... Boxing Day in the UK. We were determined to have a relaxing time and not achieve too much. There was a bit of pottering but we were both so full of food, that we have not really looked at any food till now - half past 6 at night! The fridge and many other places are stuffed with food - most of the ham is still with us and over half of that beautiful turkey.

All organised. There are lists on the fridge. 

We did not even broach the gifts of fancy cheese, chocs or wine that the guests arrived with. Neither did we 'open' the 'Parma' style ham. There was a menu list, of course, magnetted to the fridge but we were so well fed by the main meal, that the supper just faded like Scotch mist and never got 'deployed' to the table. We all managed a single slice of cake but then collapsed back into our food coma. There was one more customer - a near neighbour - whom we did a 'Meals on Wheels' dinner for but the 'cupboard' is by no means bare yet.

One job we did have to attend to is to give poor crippled, sick-bay hen 'Doris' a good old clean up round the feet. She was badly beaten up by our November 2016 fox and has not been able to walk well since but we felt sorry for her and did not have the heart to cull her out. She has laid a few eggs and comes out of the 'bedroom' part of her run to talk to her number #1 fan, Herme the rooster or to hoover up proffered food but we daren't let her out as she would not be able for the weighty and enthusiastic attentions of a cockerel.

Duckling visible under our broody on the 26th

The only other story today is a good-news tale of our very late-season broody hen, Connie. Friends of the Blog will know that we slipped 5 duck eggs under her back in late November, 'aiming' to have her hatch them while the French visitors were here. 5 other eggs we set in an incubator scored zero. The broody went all through the 24th and 25th with no action, and off went our visitors this morning, unrewarded. The ducklings (les canetons) were not co-operating. No sooner were the French off the premises though, than Connie ejected 2-3 half shells from the nest, empty, dry and hatched out. We lifted her (grumbling) to check and can see at least one healthy duckling. The guests missed the birth by hours.

Finally a fine Irish tradition of which I have spoken previously - Wren Day, when (on the 26th) gangs of local lads in 'Mummers' costumes would parade a captive wren (or a fake one) around the village, calling at houses and extracting treats or money with 'menaces' or they might kill the wren. This all to pay for their knees-up, of course. It was a tradition which died out in the 50s but which now is being revived like 'Trick or Treat' at Hallowe'en. We were happy to be 'mugged' today by a couple of young lasses leppin' in and out of Dad's VW Golf to go door knocking, armed with penny whistles and quite some skill in playing them.

It has been a cracking Christmas, the guests were superb and would be welcome back at any time.

Preparations

With the Dans out of the way, we are now on the run-in to 'proper' Christmas, killing our own turkey, doing the big food-shop and any other acquisitive missions which become necessary, doing any food prep that can be done before the day, and generally getting the place ready for our Seasonal visitors. It is an exciting one, this one, as we are happily welcoming into our home at this important time, 3 people only one of whom we have ever met before. How brave is that? What could possibly go wrong? :-)

A very generous gift of this yule log table
centre decoration comes from a good
village friend, along with a bag of red beet
which he knows we love.

Yep. These people are our French Help-X volunteer from September, Augustin (a.k.a. 'AB') and his mother and younger sister. When AB was here helping, it was just a month out of his 5-month tour of Ireland and we worked out that he'd therefore be still in Ireland over Christmas. We wondered whether he'd be a bit lost in a strange city or might be going home to family for the holiday.

The car gets a jet-wash at the local valet place. It's not been so
clean since we've had it. 

We ended up inviting him back here for the 24th-26th and then, when he found that his Mum and Sister would be coming over to see him, we asked him to bring them too. Liz loves doing this 'hospitality' as you know and will love the chance to practise her French and reminisce about Paris and it will be great fun to see AB again. We will both thoroughly enjoy showing these French folk how Christmas is done in Ireland. Not sure what they'll make of it. We know that they are all really looking forward to it. I will tell you all how it went in the next post. Joyeux Noël!

Bringing the big turkey in for Liz to 'process'.
One dog, at least, is interested. 

Because of all this, we are in a frantic 'prep' mode but as the guests do not arrive until a Christmas Eve afternoon train from Dublin, we can do it all in safety and privacy - no-one to see our frantic chasing about. I dinged the 2nd turkey-stag (the one for here) on the 20th. I like to do all my 'killing' prior to the Solstice. It might just be a silly foible, but prior to the shortest day we are on a down-slope and it is OK to finish a few birds, but after 21st, when we are climbing back up out, it feels wrong to be ending anyone's time on earth.

Fast handiwork in the de-feathering dept. 

This fella looked nearly as big as the one Liz took down to the In-Laws last week. He continued to look that big as he was plucked out and 'dressed' (euphemism for disemboweling and removing extraneous lower legs, head and "giblets" (another euphemism)).

The trussed, short-fuselage version. 

Because they get a night dead, hanging up, head down, by their feet, they come into the kitchen with their legs straight out behind them. This guy, oven ready, gave us quite a scare, being "too big for the oven". We had visions of having to joint him up and cook him in bits - the 'crown' (bone-in both breasts), wings and legs.

Resting in the afternoon

I knew I could do better with a bit of amateur trussing, so I brought him back in from the fridge and heaved his legs into a squat-bend. He is a muscly chap but I prevailed. I lashed his ankle joints together and down to his 'parson's nose' and then ran my twine round under his armpits, shortening his profile by a good 6 inches. Liz always cooks these whole turkeys 'empty' with the 'stuffing' in a separate tray, to let the heat straight into the body cavity, so we can also push the front opening closed without any stuffing bulge. Even shorter. He now fits on the roasting tray, and therefore in the oven. He weighs 8.7 kg and we are very proud of him. He is survived by our hen bird who is only about 4 kg and will now be a keeper till spring. She may give us some eggs.

More left-overs. This one a burger risotto. 

What else have we done? The big 6 kg Christmas ham we brined and froze back in the Autumn had to come out of the freezer to thaw for 24 hours. That big joint gets boiled briefly and then simmered for 6 hours in (cheap, fake) coca-cola. It is the only time we buy 'coke' all year, not being fans of fizzy pop at all. The big lump of meat then gets cooled down and, before the Big Day, has its skin removed and then that fancy diamond design cut into into the sub-cutaneous fat. We stick a clove into each diamond and glaze with some combination of the coke-liquor and mustard to give the lovely golden colour to the baked ham.

Extracting venison marrow using a corkscrew for the dogs,
We did clean the corkscrew afterwards!

Liz has also been whizzing up stuffing mixes, soaking chick-peas for hummus and worrying about other Christmas specials like fancy custard, mince pies, red cabbage, cocktail sausages, pomegranates and so on. Liz went present-shopping to Sligo today, so she's now all over me for having 'finished hers' when I still have a mini-mission to do tomorrow. All good clean fun.

By the time I talk to you again, it will all be over.

Hey! Those are MY Legs!

2 Calendars from the OSB Facebook groups. Pork on the left and
whole pigs on the right. 

As well as the Village Calendar, which I have already described in this blog, we get involved in a number of others. For the Village one, Liz is the main 'mover and shaker' and my contribution is in the photography and sometimes, collecting the box of printed ones from the printers (DS Signs of Ballaghaderreen, in that case).

Those are my whole legs on the left, being cured for the 'Parma'
style hams and bottom left on the right hand calendar is me
serving this year's pair their Guinness for their 6 month 'Birthday'.
Both these pics have appeared in this blog.

2 others come out of the Facebook groups for the breed of pig we have kept for the last 2 years, being 'Oxford Sandy and Black' or OSB for short. One group is for the pig keepers and breeders, so tends to go in for proud pics of people's lovely healthy pigs or cute piglets. The other is for the meat-production and charcuterie side so attracts the butchers, sausage makers, bakers and chefs. A lot of people are in both groups though I guess there are those who like their pigs as pets and friends and draw a veil over the original purpose of keeping OSBs. I have no problem with that. Each to their own.

All quiet in the Autumn sunshine. Pig Paddock.

I am in both groups and enjoy posting nice pics of our pig activities throughout the year and I was delighted when the lady in charge (Kim Brook) posted that she was assembling these calendars for 2018 and had liked some of my pics. She wanted clearance to use them which, of course, I gave.

Blue has been up on the chicken house roof. 

Both these calendars follow the same format, with not one big picture per month, but little montages of 5 or 6 images. They are very reasonably priced, so I bought one of each and, leafing through them I was delighted to find 3 of my pics, all of which have appeared already in this blog (and in my Facebook feed, of course).

Bobtail with three of her 4 ever-bigger chicks. We love the little
'Mini-Me' on the left, almost certainly a pure-bred Buff Orpington.

My pic of the pair of whole legs being cured for the 'Parma' style ham is there and the one of me crouched down with this year's pigs, serving them their Guinness at 6 months old. Both these are on their respective May page. Then on the December page for the 'meat' calendar is our old chum, Help-X Frenchman, Augustin. That neatly solves any problem we might have finding a small Christmas Present should we need one but shhhhhhh. Secret Santa! He may still be reading this.

This tiny rooster has avoided the cull by charming the Lady
of the House with his lovely iridescent green tail and red cape.
Green and red, so obviously he picked up the name 'Mayo'. 

Not much else going on as we cruise gently in towards Winter. I have already covered that the village drama group have settled on a play (Anyone Could Rob a Bank) which sounds like a real hoot of a hilarious farce. All parts have been cast and all other main jobs handed out. We'll say no more at this stage as I don't want to be stealing anyone's thunder or letting any theatrical cats out of bags.

Horse chestnut buds.

The cull of spare roosters has been parked up for now. We finished the biggest and most troublesome 6 and it has now gone very quiet and calm. The remaining young pretenders are keeping a wise low profile and not challenging our status quo or, indeed, trying to seduce any of the original ladies. If they keep that up, then they can stay for now. No more Death Warrants will be issued.

Always the last to go to bed. The ducks would hang about in the yard waiting for Mr Fox if we let them but they are happy to be shepherded home to the safety of the barn by about 5 pm. Everyone else is away and perched up long since. On that note I will also wish you readers good night too.

Au Revoir to AB

AB rocking the mesh visor. 

Farewell then, Augustin (AB), our Help-X volunteer of the last 4 weeks, who I dropped to the railway station this morning for his journey onward to Dublin. It nearly didn't work; as is commonly the case, Castlerea station was all locked up and gone away, unmanned and the ticket machine out on the platform was crashed and inoperable.

Nailing the docks (Rumex)

He and 2 other passengers decided to get on the train anyway and throw money at the first railway official they saw. A text later told me that they had all arrived safely in Dublin and had not been arrested for 'hobo-ing'. AB had done a month in Belfast prior to his month here and is now planning a month in the capital and one in Galway before, apparently, heading for Sweden. Yes. Sweden. It's a French thing, he tells me. They all want to see Ireland and Sweden. Works for me.

The pig paddock has never been so clear

Regular readers will know we've had a great time with the lad and we have done LOADS of work, mainly around Autumn-tidying, clearing nettle patches and pulling out of them, big heaps of old prunings and tree branches (incl. the Christmas tree from 2016!). If this was me doing the volunteer side, my mission would be to leave every place in a far better state than when I arrived. If that is also theirs, then AB should be very proud of himself. We are transformed.

Heavy rain stops play on what was to be
our last task.

His last working day was going to be yesterday and we were going to strip away all the grass growing from cracks in the concrete on the back "terrace" and then mix some cement and fill the cracks. Well, lashing rain in advance of the next named storm (Brian) put a stop to that and we both took a day off after having got up at the crack of dawn to nip down and help a friend move some cattle. AB's last job was on Wednesday, then, when he had a good session at bashing docks with the brush-cutter. We'd translated the stinging nettles as "ortie" but could find no such common name for French docks, so we called them 'Rumex' which amused AB ("It sounds like it should be an insurance company!").

My current favourite evening snack. Goat's cheese and strips of
our bullace-plum "fruit-cheese". 

All good things must come to an end, though, and although we loved having AB, we are home birds, a bit set in our ways and enjoying of our own company, so we were both looking forward to un-shipping the 'help' and getting our house and our routines back. No offence, we hope, in either direction.

One of the cats supervises the wine racking.
(pic by Liz)

One amusing side-line to this is that although AB was the easiest bloke in the world to feed (he ate everything we cooked for him and came back for seconds every time. Liz jokes that her worries were only about whether she'd "manage to fill him". He has a bullet-proof appetite) there were 2 minor mis-matches to his preferences. He does not like fish (he's OK with shellfish and prawns) or cooked cheese, so out of solidarity we avoided fish and cheese for 4 weeks. No pizza, then, and certainly no cheesy fish-pie. We are so going to make up for this, now that AB has gone!

I'll leave the last word to our friend and Archery Coach, 'Con'. We were over to his on Wednesday to help whacking in some tree stakes, to clear the shooting field of its 3D target "animals" (into dry store) and to fold Con's 2 enormous cone-shaped tent canvases. Con obviously likes AB and loved teaching him to shoot for those 4 weeks so in my little 'farewell' to AB on Facebook, Con replied,

"(He is) a big man with a big smile and willing hands - may he enjoy every step of his Path."

A dog on your lap is no protection
when this cat wants to come aboard.
Not NOW Kato!

Meanwhile, as we wait through the gap between Ex-Hurricane Ophelia and Storm Brian (how can you take those two names seriously in the same sentence?), our only other entertainment seems to have been racking off the wine. This was meant to be a 3 week kit but has taken us more like 2 months, possibly because we'd let the kit get old and maybe the temperature. yeast or the stabilizer were not up to much. We thought it had nearly done so we "killed" it with the stabilizer and it just took on a new lease of life, fermenting madly for 5-6 weeks before it finally calmed down enough to be 'racked' (bottled). It is surprisingly good and we find we prefer it to the shop-bought Ozzie Shiraz we had been drinking on the non-gin and non-beer evenings. Bottoms up!

As Easy as AB, See?

Venison on the menu.

The cupboard is bare! The sales of eggs from the 'Honesty Box' have just this week started to motor and when I looked in this morning there was not an egg to be seen. Instead, of course, a good handful of coins in the Tupperware box. We were sold out. I have had to re-stock with the reserves indoors. It is a good feeling but I might have to go have a word with the girls to see if we can up the production a wee bit. The hens, of course. The poor ducks are already going at 100%, putting the chooks to shame. 3 eggs from 3 ducks EVERY DAY.

Augustin gets an archery 'taster' session. His hand is on his
first ever bull's eye. 

Welcome aboard the Blog, though, our new Help-X lad. Augustin, 18 from the Eastern suburbs of Paris, joined us on Friday 22nd. A lovely bloke - big and strong (handy around here!) he is also very happy and relaxed, always ready with a witticism, very easy to get along with and very appreciative of our food and hospitality. No farming experience but very willing to try anything and already ticking off the new skills. He is settling in well. He is enjoying trying to improve his English (with added Irish expressions)  and Liz is enjoying being able to use her French again.

Taster session at the archery.

For the purposes of this blog, Augustin is actually "AB". It's a bit complicated. I had just about got the hang of nailing the correct pronunciation (too many options on all 3 syllables! Ow/Awww/Agg followed by Gus or Goose (or one in between) and then tan/tin/teen. I kept 'landing' the feminine versions (tin/teen).

Our man tried to put me out of my misery by suggesting "Call me Gus" but we can't use Gus at the moment - a TV series we are glued to in boxed set (Breaking Bad) has the worst bad guy named Gus. So we've gone with 'AB' (Augustin's initials) and he is delighted. Our other options from his long list of childhood nick-names are 'Doctor' (for his regular clever witticisms "like a Professor") or 'Ancien' (the old guy, after his love of wearing old fashion hats (flat caps, berets) and having a beard. Anyway, AB it is.

AB winds some pressure onto the cider press
while K-Dub holds it all down.

AB, then, was straight into things even though his first days were weekend. Archery coach, Con, had put out a call for volunteers to come and dismantle the club's big marquee / party tent. It was a bit windy to be messing with canvas but AB and I are 'substantial' lads and did not think we'd get blown away. Con was very grateful for our efforts and invited AB to come and have a taster session at the archery the next day (Sunday), where he was already due to start the latest Beginners' course. It all went well and AB even signed up for the next few Sundays. 

Home made cider press. 

The Monday saw us at the cider making. K-Dub announced that the cider press was now ready and we should bring all the apples over, so we raced round the orchard picking all we could see. When we got to K-Dub's place we also found that he had built a home made shredder - a wooden hopper with a plastic pipe slotted in at the bottom into which had been part-screwed, dozens of screws and into the end of which slotted a handle to turn this 'drum'.

I take a turn at the winding. We later graduated
to fitting a steel tube to the handle to give us
more leverage. It worked well. 

The apples fall to the bottom of the hopper where the exposed screw-heads rip them to bits. The shredded apple then goes in a 'pillowcase' assembled in minutes by Carolyn (she of the mini-horses) from a tea towel and some muslin-like fabric and gets pressed by the mighty press. K-Dub was well impressed by his own welding, with the new welder.

AB turns pig farmer as we train the pigs
to climb, fearlessly, into the trailer. 

The top of the press is a 12 mm thick chunk of sheet steel but the winding action was able to slightly bow this; a considerable pressure exerted on the apple pulp but nothing broke. Long story short, we extracted 3 and a half litres of juice from our (not many) apples but K-Dub tells me today that they have since sourced more apples and extracted another 7 litres. The juice is with Carolyn for the next stage. She knows a bit about brewing! Hopes are high for some delicious scrumpy.

All loaded. 

Our other main activity with the Help-X assistance has been that the pigs have 'come ready' and needed taking on their final journey today (Tuesday). AB helped me over the Sunday/Monday to train them to the trailer. Even though he has no experience of farming, he happily joined me among them, in the pen, with the pigs snuffling around this 'new' person, sniffing his legs and boots, nudging him out of the way. He stayed relaxed and calm (as instructed) so that Empress and Pride quickly climbed the ramp and we were sure we'd have a problem free 'loading day'.

Sunrise through the trees

I am happy to say that that worst-of-all small-holdering days is now done. We all managed to get up early, the pigs loaded as if they couldn't wait to get at their breakfasts (thin portion sizes today - they need to go to the butcher "fasted") , we had problem free haulage and drop off. Obviously we all hate to have to do this and we wish we didn't but that is a discussion for elsewhere. The pigs are, presumably by now, 'late' and the carcasses get 48 hours to cool and 'set'. We collect them on Thursday and AB can then see the next stage in the process. He likes his pork, we are told. It will have been an interesting experience for him. And he has not yet run away screaming!