Sonja and Asbjörn

Happy Birthday Deefer, 12 years old on Monday. She's only 7
in this 'memory' picture dredged up by Facebook. Many more years
old lass.

Welcome aboard, then, our 2 latest Help-X volunteers, a German couple in their early 30s, Sonja and Asbjörn, much travelled back-packers with experience of Help-X-ing in Iceland and New Zealand as well as closer to home. He a trained chef and she a pastry chef. Very welcome, in fact, after we'd thought that Help-X was all done with the August blow-out French lad. These two are excellent, capable, workers as well as happy, friendly and relaxed - easy company and a joy to host.

Sonja clears an old spent strawberry bed.

I collected them at 7 pm from the bus stop in Castlerea. Dead easy to find, of course. Castlerea bus stop does not have that many young back packers getting off buses at 7 o'clock on Saturday and I already knew my man (Asbjörn) sported a magnificent gingery beard from their Help-X website "advert". They had been hiking and back packing around and were looking forward to some days based at a single place, where they did not have to pack everything, tent included, each morning and move on.

Asbjörn bones out a pork leg.

We fed them a soup and cold buffet supper and told them tomorrow (Sunday) was a rest day, so they were not to set any alarms or come down stairs suited and booted at silly o'clock. Monday was also going to be a bit weird but time enough to start proper routine work on the Tuesday. Elizabeth and I were off to Sligo on the Monday for me to have another chest X-ray, then dropping down to the pork butcher (Webb's) in Castlerea to collect our pig carcasses. So I showed Sonja the 'livestock rounds' on the Sunday, so that we could leave at 08:30 with the birds safe from Brer Fox, and the Help-X-ers could get up at their leisure and feed and release the birds.

A car full of pig

These guys are both trained cooks but had not, before, had to deal with a whole pig carcass. Sonja was not keen, and opted to go to work in the kitchen garden, clearing an old strawberry bed and weeding a newer one, but Asbjörn fancied a try at the butchery which is way 'upstream' from his normal experience. Brilliant for me, still on 'light duties', and good for the Lady of the House too, as this freed her up to onward process the heads, hearts, livers, tails, ears and so on into excellent brawns, patés, dog-treats and there was even talk of brains soaking in milk (I avert my eyes at that level of offal).

Splitting a pig head for the brawn.

With me 'training' him and his dexterity with knives and the bone saw, we soon had each half carcass reduced to lumps that he would be familiar with, and then there was no stopping him 'running with it' into areas we have not yet explored here. He was soon boning out the 'H' bones (pelvic bits) at the top of my 'Parma' ham legs, completely boning out other legs, rolling and tying them, extracting good looking boneless pork 'steaks' from the shoulder meat and so on. A master-class in food prep. I was just able to take it easy bagging and labelling the cuts for the freezer. I just need to salt down my 'Parma' ham legs and we are all done, all safely gathered in.

Boned, rolled and tied leg.

As I said, while we all played 'pig' indoors, Sonja was working her way down the 5 big 8 x 4 foot railway sleeper beds to brilliant effect, weeding, clearing old, spent, strawberry plants, cropping where appropriate (carrots, spuds, broad-beans-for-seed), teasing out the few volunteer spuds from among the new asparagus "spiders" - a delicate job because of the shallow, horizontal roots on those bad boys.

Cheek meat

Into work proper on the Tuesday and Sonja and Asbjörn prove to be those kind of workers who get stuck in, don't really want to stop for coffee and then carry on after lunch "just to finish off this....." We are delighted. They clean all the pig-poo out of the trailer, and clean the big 1010 litre water butt (IBC) inside and out. Asbjörn then starts chopping a big heap of fencing pales into kindling, while Sonja starts clearing the poly tunnel of volunteer spuds and an enormous fennel plant. The spuds prove to be quite a significant crop with some enormous ones - 600 grammes plus.

600+ gramme spuds. Volunteers from the tunnel.

Other than the work, the couple have settled in well and are much enjoying our food and hospitality. They are proving to be very helpful about the place. They have also introduced us to a fun, 6-dice counting game belovéd of back packers (because the whole game only weighs six dice!), called 'TenThousand'. The scoring rules are good and complicated and the skill is in 'gambling' whether to 'bank' your points or risk rolling some dice again and losing those points. Entertaining.

So, as I write this it is only 10:30 a.m. and I am hunkered down indoors waiting for the worst teeth of Storm Ali to blast their way through. Not the worst ever storm we have had here but plenty of bluster in the trees and some 'apocalyptic' rain squalls. I had delayed letting the birds all out and even held the dogs in for a while, lest they get soaked.

Brawn

Further down in the 'midlands' the biggest agricultural show in the Universe (The Ploughing Championships 2018) is due to start today but it is, like a lot of these shows, really a massive city of tents, gazebos, marquees and other guy-roped canvas. The organisers have taken advice from Met Éireann and postponed the start while the wind dies down (this morning) lest they garrote or bury anyone under airborne tent-age.

Ah well. Enough for this one. Good luck surviving Storm Ali.

Sleeping Through the Night

We are looking good for some fruit types despite the drought

Now there's a subject close to the hearts of all the new parents struggling with sleepless nights and night feeds of the new infant. I have adopted it as a milestone in the slow progress of my recovery from the recent pneumonia. When I first came out of hospital, I had some bad nights with a ticklish, persistent chesty cough which had at me as soon as I laid down to sleep and had me reaching for the trusty Benylin "dry cough" linctus. This may be too much information, but I was also getting up to pee at about 4 a.m. and had the cough all over again when I laid back down.

The only relief then was to sit bolt upright, so I would spend the last 2-3 hours of each night sitting against the head of the bed, usually joined by the cuddle-loving Poppea (dog), until I could realistically give up and get up at 6 o'clock. As the days went by it was encouraging to see these 2 coughing sessions get  better and shorter. I started to be able to get straight to sleep at night and even started to only get the morning one from half past 4, then 5, half 5 and so on. I was looking at being able to sleep right through the night. They were clear improvements on the way to recovery.

A new one for us this year - we may have some damsons.

At the same time, I know that productive cough is good, in that it is the lungs' way of clearing out the muck and dirt of illness. In my case, this silver lining had a small cloud - this new "muck" might be a sign that I was congesting up again. I guess I also have to take on the chin an occasional bad night like last night, where the bedtime coughing just would not stop and still had me sitting upright, sometimes downstairs, till 2 o'clock in the morning. To be fair, I then got to sleep and slept right round to 8 a.m. Swings and roundabouts. No other health news.

Beautifully mowed grass.

That Help-X lad (Rafael) never did show, so we are setting up August accordingly with Elizabeth picking up all the hard work as it comes due and me stuck on 'light duties'. One of these jobs this week was the mowing, her first time using the mower. I'd heard the mower chug into life when I was sitting round the front of the house. She was well away.

By the time I came down from a good nap, the pond garden was like a billiard table. "Good Job!", I said. "It was EASY!" she commented, sounding a bit surprised. I will have to watch that I don't lose these jobs while I'm 'ill'.

The timber arrives for the chicken house roof.

I was more worried about that other big job to which I would have put the missing Help-X-er, that of helping our builder chum K-Dub re-roof the chicken house. I remember from helping K-Dub do his house roof in Sligo, those are some big baulks of timber and , certainly to start with. Charlotte and I had to stand sticking out of the top of the part built house on ladders holding the new ridge-beam up in fresh air where it would ultimately sit, while K-Dub fitted the rafters to it (and nailed them to the wall plates).

K-Dub starts cutting out the 'barge ends'

Looking up at the beam and the sky, with the moving clouds, your eye had no fixed perspective to help balance. You had to keep looking down to the horizon to prevent falling off the ladder. Quickly, K-Dub fixed enough rafters to it that they were taking its weight, and we helpers could let go of it and come down our ladders to safety.

Not to worry. K-Dub turned up today (an EARLY builder!) - he was waiting on a sink for another job, so he had today free and decided to start. He would cut through the concrete 'barge' ends (gables) to free up the rusty old corrugated iron, plus cut all the rafters to shape/length in preparation.

We are looking at a reasonable plum crop.

This roof, he said, would be nothing like as hard as the house, mainly because the ridge beam gets slung between the two gables. There is no wobbling around on ladders. He can fix it in position with battens, while he brings all the rafters to bear. He anticipates being able to do most of the job on Monday - stripping off the old 'tin', demolishing the old timbers with a chainsaw and re-assembling with new wood.

Mum out with 'The Bumbles' in the woods.

If we don't get as far as new 'tin' on Monday, we can sling the good tarpaulin back over the new wood frame overnight to keep the birds dry. Tuesday will be for making good and finishing off the ridge which gets series of 8 foot long 'V' shaped bits overlapping. We had a good day today and got most of it done, till the 110 volt transformer 'died'. Ah well. I had thought we were starting on Monday, so EVERYthing we did today was a bonus.

I found Connie's hidey-hole down behind some scrap plaster
board in the Tígín

Friends of the Blog will recall that we had 2 birds we were calling 'AWOL', rather than dead to fox. I was poking about in the Tígín and happened to pull out some scrap plaster board and I found Connie sitting on 6 (very old) eggs. She was not out in a hedge and vulnerable to the fox after all. That status is now reserved for the female Guinea Fowl.

Snouts down for some apples.

Meanwhile, Brer Fox has changed his tactics again and nailed a couple more birds. He has lately come every day, instead of every 10th day. On Weds morning at about 9, he was spotted by Elizabeth as he first appeared in 'The Woods'. She happened to be looking out of an upstairs window. She shouted, so I let the dogs out of the front door. Unfortunately, months of training told them to turn left and head for the front lawn gate. Mr Fox was to the right, so able to make good his escape.

A nice sturdy cherry tree but no cherries
this year. The drought got them.

At this time of year, 'The Woods' presents a lovely sunny bank in the morning and can be full of birds. Foxy can sneak in up the 5 acre field, nip through the hedge anywhere and ambush a sleepy bird. On Tuesday, I took up position out there with all three dogs and waited all through the 9 o'clock 'slot' thinking I'd deter him. Not that fella. He waited till I went in at 10, gave it half an hour and then bang! He snatched a young poult. He was probably watching all the time and thinking, Matt can't stay here 24/7.

R+R, Roscommon style.

I thought we'd be safe today. This fox has always left us a week or so after a successful raid. I was out there with K-Dub and Elizabeth was about too, setting up to dig the big raised bed. Surely enough human presence to deter a fox? No. He came in at about 9 a.m. and managed to snatch one of the small goslings.

Ah well, enough for this one. Maybe by the time I write again, a completed chicken house roof and no more foxy deaths. Finally, to be fair to Rafael he has apologised for his 'mistake' today in an e-mail. For what it is worth.

Two (webbed) Footsteps Forward and One Back

Hot on the heels of yesterday's post comes a mainly duck-based one to catch us right up to schedule. Regular readers will know that we are running a small campaign to get back into ducks after recent losses to fox (and one of the terriers). We are also converting to some new varieties. The 'old school' Khaki Campbells from 2016/7 are now gone following our cull of the (2) aggressive drakes. That had left us with 3, then 2 youngsters hatched from our own eggs, the final eggs laid before the last female went extinct at the hands of the fox (13th May).

Delphinium

I had bought a Mum and 5 half-grown 'Appleyard' ducklings on 11th June. Readers may recall that these got landed into the long grass of the 'Hubbard Pen' and that although we knew they were settling in well, I had been unable to photograph them for you. They are real 'scaredy cats' and raced for cover as soon as a human appeared. Pictures of baby ducks in grass taller than they are is not really a thing.

"Rambling Rector" does his thing over the barn wall.

We knew they'd grow up eventually and want to come out and explore. We played the waiting game. In mid June, I 'ran out of breath', Elizabeth took over the stock and carried on with the feeding and schmoozing. She'd seen the two surviving Khaki's looking in at the newcomers through the chicken wire. It was looking good. We would let the Appleyards out free ranging when we were both there to supervise.

Mum Appleyard leads a first explore

Yesterday, I was just on a patrol, armed with a camera thinking I might get a pic of the 'Apps' around their new fruit-barrel drinker when I was confused to find a group of 6 ducks at the big pond. They must have squeezed out at the bottom corner of the gate and, by the time I saw them, they'd have met the Khakis and all seemed to be serene.

Pleasingly, there was not a sudden mass panic at the sight of me. The group gathered close round Mumma in that upright, vigilant stance that nervous ducks have. I sneaked a few pics, then quietly retreated to a distance to observe and texted Elizabeth. Not much point causing the big frightened upset rounding them all back up; we decided to bide our time till evening when they might just take themselves all off to bed. That was that for the pm, the joy of watching your new ducks explore the big pond, supervised by Mum and alongside the 2 Khakis.

New 6 meet old 2.

My 'backward step' of the title? Yes. It all went a bit downhill for a while, but not badly except for in the case of one Khaki. Elizabeth was home, I'd gone for a nap. I was getting up again when I may have (can't swear) heard an odd strangled squawk  out the back somewhere but Liz had heard nothing.

The only picture I have of all 8 ducks on the pond

It was a good hour later at the start of evening rounds, when she spotted that there was only one Khaki. The alarm went up and we searched far and wide but of the other bird there was no sign. We guess one more to the fox, returning on a day light raid 6 weeks after the last strike. 

Duck pond and blue sky

The evening was a bit of a mix of being sure that Brer Fox would not come back for a 2nd bird in the same day. This fox has not done that (yet). But at the same time, not wanting to risk him getting in amongst the new ones on their first day of free ranging. Long story short, it all ended well and everybody was safe for the night.

Not much else going on unless you want to hear of our continuing, decidedly non Irish heatwave which is now doing silly 30ºC stuff up in our corner. A friend has amusingly put up on  Twitter a couple of pics of her lane. She got hit by the bad snow when the 'Beast' struck over there in the East so her post has "The worst snow in 72 years and the hottest temps in 42 years, less than 4 months apart!"

Enough for this one. Wish us luck on keeping these ducks safe and enjoy the sunshine.

Fox Watch

Just for a laugh, our biggest snow-drift of the recent cold snap.
It formed in a eddy in our yard and must have been... oooh...
6 cm deep at least! The turkey-hen stepped in for scale. 

Yes, Fox-Watch. This is the new buzz-word name given to our newest and most time-thirsty 'hobby'. It is, exactly as described, time spent watching out for our persistent and so-far uncatchable furry friend. Brer Fox. I might sound upbeat and light hearted about this but inside, both of us are starting to get very annoyed and increasingly ground down and frustrated.

Our cat, 'Soldier' looking very 'Miss
Haversham' in his cobweb fascinator.
Presumably sticking his head into some
dusty rat-hole. 

Previous foxes have come and done their terrible stuff, but then turned stupidly predictable in their raiding or their routes to and from. We have been able to trap and shoot them within days so that we can then relax and forget about foxes for periods of 15 months+. This guy (or gal) nips in at random times in the afternoon (or 11 a.m. once) to just snatch a single bird from the orchard or the bit of land behind the goose-house. These are the places you cannot see from the house and cannot hear very well.

We have an excellent alarm system involving the 4 Guinea Fowl who scream blue murder at the sight of him, which works when they are out in that bit too and we now know to drop everything and race out there at the first shout. We also have the 3 dogs who are now expert at zooming out there, down through the veg garden and out through the hawthorn hedge in hot pursuit. They know by now to ignore all the 'not-prey' species (poultry, lambing sheds etc) and they know what Brer Fox looks and smells like. We let them go when we dare and they vanish for 20 minutes or so. We don't know whether they even get close to the fox, but the fright seems to make him rethink his tactics for at least a few days.

The 'beastly' winds turned the knitter's thoughts to hat and gloves

The trap is now permanently baited with tinned sardines or kippers but has so far caught only a 'foreign' cat, a manky looking grey and white yoke who was very fed up at being caged all night, lucky he didn't get rained on but presumably happy to have a belly full of my tinned fish. My heart missed a beat when I looked across and saw that the trap had been sprung. When I let the cat out he shot off like the proverbial scalded one and I have not seen him since. I was worried that he'd get trap-happy and come back for more fish, safe in the knowledge that he'd come to no harm, which would have made setting the trap for our fox a bit of an issue. I do not even know that the fox has smelled the fish or found the trap, never mind cunningly decided not to go in it. Patience is, as ever, the thing.

Apologies for this terrible (heavily cropped) shot of our
male reed bunting. 

We are left, then, with the need to stand 'Fox Watch' in person out there for all the at risk hours and indoors for all the less risky hours that the birds are out free ranging - about 8 a.m. till 5 p.m. currently. I do the outdoor stint from about 3 pm to lock-up. I am well bundled up and brought cups of coffee periodically by Elizabeth. I take my binoculars out there too, partly to help me scan the far horizons for russetty red, bushy-tailed varmints, but also so I can indulge in a bit of bird watching. When 'The Beast' is not blowing through this is actually quite a pleasant way to spend the 2nd half of the afternoon. I sometimes relieve the boredom by taking the dogs out with me, the better to keep a visible fox-deterring presence out there and scent-marking the boundaries. I just hope I can soon report the capture and despatch of this red bastard and put an end (for a while) to the need for all this nerve-twanging, tense, vigilance.

What else is new? As suggested above, we finally saw the end of our brutal cold-snap, "The Beast From The East" and in fairness we got away with it very lightly compared to some parts of the island and, of course, the UK and other countries. Over in the East and SE friends were reporting being snowed in by 7 foot drifts and I've seen today, pictures of Chinook (helicopter) supply-drops to cut off farms in Cumbria for solid fuel and food. There have been all the usual footage of hard pressed farmers digging out their sheep, alive if they were luckily but frozen to death if not found in time. Even so, the first thing I noticed when I went outside on Monday (5th) was NO WIND. Bliss. By afternoon the smoke from our chimney was pouring away into the NE, no longer at the beck and call of that horrible NE wind. Today we've had proper wet rain. A few chunks of broken ice float on some of the stock drinkers, but mostly we are 100% thawed.

You'd not fit any more sheep pens in that
 shed. Lady in Waiting, Rosie here is
next door to Polly and her twins. 

The ewe, 'Rosie' continues to keep us waiting and makes me feel like a proper beginner "panicking" and dragging her indoors a week early (OK, it's only 4 days so far). We joke that she is conning us to get some nights in the warm, 'bagging up' a little bit (yeah, yeah, show a man a flash of pink booby and he's putty in your hands!) and then holding out for the arrival of our next house-guests. We have the baby-animal-mad Danielle and Cousin Cathy arriving Friday, so Rosie will be able to do her thing to an audience. Ta daaaa! Look what I did!

Sun 3rd saw me at the end of the 13 week Garden Bird Survey
for Birdwatch Ireland. 

The ewes are in the small concrete/stone building we call the Tígín (wee housey) which is a proper man-shed with man-junk and tools stacked and shelved to roof height and some bits hanging from beams that run across the room from wall to wall. I was joking on Twitter that I couldn't tell whether she was really "star-gazing" or just looking up at the dusty, cobwebby, man-shed mess; the former is a sign of labour and imminent parturition, the latter just a natural female horror-reaction to the man-shed scene. Ah well. She'll make up her mind soon enough. Mother Nature knows best. Patience is the thing. 

In with the New, (Not) Out with the Old

Roscommon has the eye of Storm Eleanor
pass overhead at around 6 pm.

Fox! My one word text brings Liz running to join me in the garden but we can hardly hear each other over the cacophony of Guinea Fowl alarm calls. We've not seen one on the property all year, since the November 2016 attack but now, two days into the New Year we are back in the firing line.

A new gin for Liz to try. Blackwater.

It was fairly calm (though we were expecting the latest named storm, Storm Eleanor by evening) but lashing down with rain. I was just wandering about looking for eggs, and had come round the corner of the barn, headed for the orchard when all hell broke loose 30 yards away at the top of the 'allotment'. Guinea fowl were exploding into vertical flight and shouting blue murder about foxes.

...and a weird new beer for me. Loved the
goat logo. Very quaffable. 

I saw the fella straight away, with a bunch of feathers in his mouth (but no bird). He was a fine big adult looking first a bit put out that he'd near-missed the Guinea but then a bit concerned that I was running towards him, flapping my arms and roaring swear words at him like some lunatic. He took off smartly through the hedge and was gone. That's when I got a chance to text Liz.

The Guineas having a fox-free dust bath in the tunnel.

The Fox-Success Gods were on our side this time. The pouring rain had most of the birds hiding in the sheds anyway and it was an easy job for 2 of us to shepherd the rest home - geese and ducks. The Guineas now settling down and chuntering and scolding loudly (as they do) could not wait to go 'home' either, so by 15:15, still broad daylight, we had everybody locked up for the night, safe in case Brer Fox should try again.

A baffled turkey?

Well. For a given value of 'safe'. Eleanor is now roaring around noisier, if anything, than the 'Orange warning' one, Dylan. I fear, as ever, for the tarpaulin roof of the chicken house. (We have just been out for a check round at half past six and so far all seems OK. It's just very very noisy. We mainly feel helpless and powerless.)

Meanwhile, away from Storm Eleanor and her kind, all is chugging along nicely as we chug gently through New Year and welcome 2018 in. The remaining turkey hen seems somewhat baffled but that might just be us anthropomorphising like we shouldn't. We were amused to ponder whether she is thinking that she has nothing in her folk-memory or hard wired into her DNA to tell her what to do with the 25th, 26th, 27th, the New Year and so on.

Baffled Turkey Hen

She is also a bit lost-looking now the Guinea cock-birds have  dropped her like a hot potato when they received their new 'women'. Up to then the boys viewed it as their duty to shepherd all three turkeys around and mind them. Now she wanders about wondering where her 'brothers' and her 'minders' have gone.

New Year's Eve supper.

New Year's Eve went very well for us, and nice and quiet. We ate the celebratory haggis supper and sipped Scotch Whisky (no 'E' because this was Famous Grouse, a gift from Santa). We watched a nice Irish-flavoured 'rom-com' movie ("PS I Love You", based on the Celia Ahern book) to fill the long evening and then did the 'First Footing' thing. We have both decided to try our hand at 'Dry January' - no booze till the 31st EXCEPT that we are taking the Scottish Amendment which allows for a dram of whisky on Burns Night (25th). We are not alone, by all accounts. Cousin 'Win'  and  her Peter are doing the same and bro' Mark is taking a gin-drinkers version in Swindon. There is a pre-booked gin tasting on 15th Jan which it would (obviously) be churlish to refuse, though he's not too bothered about Burns Night and Haggis. I'll keep you all posted on how we all do.

One off design handbag by Con and Santa

I can now, at last, post pics of this Santa delivery which I have been dying to show you but unable to do so lest I spoil the surprise. Friends of the Blog may recall that my good friend and archery coach, Con, is also a fine leather worker. He is the national go-to expert on Medieval footwear, frequently called upon to create repro shoes for museums and 'interactive' exhibitions (i.e. where the museum visitors get to try on the items) and asked to try to make a shoe using the archaeologists/historians' suggested techniques. "Nope, they WOULDN'T have been able to do it that way!"

Con also makes items for sale through the website - archery gear as well as shoes, 'jewelry', bangles and (ta-daaaa!) one-off design hand bags. With Santa's help we conspired to get Liz involved in the design without being allowed to know what the final result might be. She'd 'chosen' a cocktail glass for her 'logo' and Con was able to sneak off and contrive a cocktail-glass-based design for our bag. Liz is over the moon and the new bag is now the bag of choice, filled with all the usual 'clutter' of notebooks, spare tissues, lotions and potions and 'stuff' that keeps herself on the road.

My old favourite billhook may be 100+ years old.

Finally, that line in my title about "Not out with the old". I have in my 'man-shed' a treasured favourite farm implement, my bill hook, bought over 30 years ago 2nd hand in Surrey. It has a forged blade marked with the forger's stamp. "I.H.   J Harrison   Warranted" I was chatting away about favourite tools on the Internet and got talking to a lad who is a bit of an expert on old English toolery.

The stamp on mine told him that it was made by the company 'I Harrison', long since absorbed into Spear and Jackson, and forged by the son of the firm, John Harrison. The chap has all the pattern books from these firms and was able to identify my billhook as being originally from 1916, over a hundred years old! I loved it in an obsessive way before. It was my most precious piece of kit. There will be no stopping me now!

Silvergirl. 

And there you have it. In the time it has taken me to type these last 8 paragraphs the roaring wind of Eleanor has quite died away... unless she is just teasing us as we sit right under that eye. More on all this soon. Happy New Year to all our readers and don't throw away those old tools. They might be historically important!

Possibly taking the love of Prosecco a bit far? Now you can
emerge from the bathroom smelling of it!

Just a couple more pics because I have them.

Final loaf of 2017.