(A Very Polite) Bollox to Brexit?

Season of open fires in the Sitting Room

Good progress on all fronts for this post.

Progressing especially well, this Help-X 'session', 10 days with Judith and Vicky. I have gone in constant fear that they will use up all the jobs and we will have nothing left for them to do, they are so fast and efficient. Having mowed their way round all the nominal 'lawns' and grassy places, I sent them off yesterday to 'top off' all the old nettle patches in the sheep (East) field. One had the mower set to its highest setting (and no grass-box), the other the brush cutter.

Sheep field mowed in stripes

The brush cutter is quite bad for vibrations into your hands and wrists, so we always advise the volunteers to swap over every hour, to avoid anyone getting coal miner's "Vibration White Finger" (OK maybe not that bad).

A bit lost in the acre field. Our 16" cut mower.

As I said, my intent was for them just to buzz off the old nettle flower-stems, but not only did they run both machines out of fuel, they had started to join up the 'dots' running the mower between clumps of nettles till it was easier to just mow the whole thing like a lawn. We have, I suspect, the only sheep field in Roscommon mowed in neat stripes. They have not, in fact, taken much length off the grass, so we hope they have not damaged our supply of winter grazing.

Towser is in the sink here and has both girls "at" him!

The girls have also fallen more and more in love with the dogs and are now always found with a dog on their lap during 'down time', bathing the three on one occasion and now taking them for their daily walks, either down to the bridge or out across the big local bog, 'Kiltybranks' (a favourite walk of mine before I got sick).

Veg lasagne, Medical Student style! Delicious.

We like our volunteers to cook us a meal from their home-place (if they want to). Vicky and Judith went for a superb veggie lasagne and very delicious it was too. They also expressed an interest in trying our goose eggs but NOT in cooking them as we would for breakfast with toast 'soldiers'. They wanted them 'a bit stiffer' than I had described the 'UK Dippy eggs', so a 12-14 minute boil rather than our ten. They like the yolks to be nearly set.

Goose eggs for breakfast, Cheers!

Then for bread, they had a slice of my good sourdough each on-the-side and in Judith's case buttered and smeared with jam so she could swap between egg spooned out of the shell, and mouthfuls of bread/jam but ne'er the twain shall meet. Each to their own, I guess.

Finally on the Help-X-ers for this one, they took today as a day off going touristing to the coastal town of Westport. I dropped them to the railway station for a 10 am train and collected them again at 20 past 7. Elizabeth and I had an easy, free day.

Brushing the dogs out after their shampoo.

But what of my Brexit reference in the header. When I am not just focusing on this, my own blog, I sometimes wander over to the one being written by the brother, Mark.
  http://caretowers.blogspot.com/
Mark is similar to us in having retired early and now 'living a dream' but his dream (as is only right) is very different to ours. He was never a one for the farming. He and his wife (Susan) spend their days travelling all around the world, cruising or rolling their own holidays, walking nearer to home, seeking out good eateries or interesting shopping in cities. They are an amusing read on occasions, especially knowing Mark well and being able to see how he is seeing things.

His most recent post has them headed to London to see an exhibition of "affordable art" but accidentally clashing with a gazillion other people packed like sardines into the train, headed for the "People's March" for a 2nd Brexit Referendum. The 'madding crowd' had them changing travel plans quite a few times as they tried to get to the art and then later to Fortnum and Mason for some shopping and I was chuckling away at his description of the polite, middle-class, 'protesters' obediently leaving their placards with the Fortnum's door man while they nipped out of the march for a little shopping on the side, presumably to collect them later. Nice one Mark.

Judith and Vicky

Help-X-er Judith turns out to be a nimble whizz at the tiny
Origami. Here are 3 crane-birds with normal dice for scale

Busy people. The biggest pieces of news for this post have got to be that we successfully "landed" our two latest Help-X volunteers and saw Auntie Mary (The Nun) off on her final journey. The other jobs have all been a slow chug through that "ever extending task list" detailed in my previous post, none of which are particularly blog-worthy.

Judith gets loved up by Poppea and Towser

The Help-X lasses are Judith and Vicky, 2 Berlin-born medical students just at the end of their 5 years of 'basic training', now completed (successfully, they believe) their final exams and released for a while to party, travel, enjoy themselves and find hospitals to work in where they can do a 4-part 'rotation' round possible speciality areas of medicine for their chosen careers. One fancies radiology, the other "internal medicine" (e.g. surgery).

Vicky with Towser.

They are both, currently at Lübeck University Hospital in far-north Germany. The rotation, 4 chunks of 3 months, does not have to happen in Lübeck, and Judith has plans to do one chunk on the French owned island of Reunion, just off Madagascar. As I've said before, these Help-X-ers get about. Ireland is chicken-feed!

Ah the mowing!

They are very similar in appearance, both being tall and slim, with similar hair styles and colouring, and both wearing glasses, so that I struggled for the first day to tell t'other from which, but I have now sorted them, Judith is slightly fairer of hair than Vicky. They are both delightful and also very keen and hard working. Exhausted when they arrived, they enjoyed a light supper but then retreated to their room where they managed an 11 hour sleep and still got up for my suggested 08:30 breakfast and set to work.

Hidden between the trees, Judith mows the drive banks

Popular first jobs in the dry sunshine were mowing and pulling nettles. Mowing is also a good job to make a rapid visual impact on the tidiness of the place.Even though the grass is not too long anywhere and had been well grazed off by the sheep on the front lawn, it was still looking a bit shaggy. Well, not any more! The girls, in 2 mornings have mowed almost every grass blade we own; front lawn, Primrose Path, drive banks. pond garden orchard and the paths down to the apiary plus along the lane outside (the daffodil verges). Tomorrow they have asked if they might give the dogs hair-washes and shampoos (sorry dogs!). The Lady of the House is never going to turn down an offer like that!

A tidy front lawn.

Welcome aboard, the pair of them. This is working out well and though we will still probably call them our final Help-X volunteers of 2018 (we've run out of jobs!), we will miss them and definitely be doing it again in 2019. Like all these 'travelers' they are fascinating to talk to. One, in this case, is from either side of the Berlin Wall, though they were not even born in 1989 when the wall came down (They are 24), so their 'divided' experience is all parents and grand parents.

A 'Kanzan; flowering cherry tree for the
Auntie Mary Memorial garden

Thursday, then, saw Elizabeth off up to Drogheda and Dundalk, away on the east coast of Ireland, north of Dublin, for the funeral of Auntie Mary, the (Franciscan) Nun (90). She had been asked to source a flowering cherry tree for a memorial garden. Our brilliant local small-business garden centre guy came up with a 'Kanzan' variety tree which nicely fitted the bill. Elizabeth and the various other nieces and nephews are, of course, known to the Nuns from previous visits, who LOVE to be visited by 'outsiders' and her main impression of the day was of being swallowed up by a sea of fluttering little-old-ladies all wanting to make a big welcoming fuss and feed her tea and mountains of good biscuits.

Beech in the Pig Run turning colour.

They were also all invited to stay for a good lunch after the formalities, though they got away with being asked to stay the night (as happened to Mum-in-Law, 'Steak Lady') in voluminous borrowed Nun-nighties which enveloped their bodies from chin to ankle and wrist to wrist. I mentioned 'tea' there - in fact Elizabeth tells that her day was full of cups of tea barely sipped at before she was moved on to be shown the Reading she'd have to do, or to retrieve the cherry tree from the car. She was as thirsty when she got back as if she'd been deprived of tea all day.

Enough, though for this one. In the absence of Mrs C, I must look to livestock and possible supper making. Laters.

The Ever-Extending Task List(s)

One of my favourite pictures of Auntie Mary. It is fairly old at
this stage - Friends of the Blog may recognise the little girl here
as (now) University Student, Emily Jane. 

Just 2 posts ago (9th Oct), I noted that Auntie Mary (The Nun) had been causing a little concern with her health. Just prior to her 90th birthday she was taken quite ill but then had rallied well. Ah well, the rally was not to be and Mary passed away peacefully in her bed this afternoon with Mum-in-Law (Steak Lady), friends and members of staff and co-residents of the home at her bedside. The funeral will be on Thursday up there in Drogheda. Elizabeth (and many other family members) will be there but I regret not myself. RIP Mary. You were a lovely Lady and will be much missed.

Storm Callum clears away so the sheep
get to rest on the good grass in the sunshine

Even without the funeral, this back-end-of-week is turning into one of those whirlwinds where the jobs, events and appointments add themselves to the calendar at a faster rate than we can cross them off, and a lot of them involve some lengthy car journeys, especially for Elizabeth. Even the weekends are no longer free. This workload at present is mainly being picked up by the Woman of the House, so I need to re-iterate my gratitude both to her and to the 'Health Gods' - they laid me low but at least at a time when help is at hand.

Work has gone a bit mad-busy for Elizabeth lately and she already had her Horticultural Course on Thursday and a voluntary work shift on Friday, both of which are now sidelined.

Did I mention that the goose egg season
had started?

Tonight (Tuesday) is the Lisacul Players meeting to read the 2nd possible play. I have no idea what they are reading tonight but I can, at least, update the previous post with what last week's choice was, being "Love Thy Neighbour" by local playwright Jimmy Keary.

The small-batch gin makers are getting
a bit lairy with their branding. The gin is
very nice, says Elizabeth but definitely
pre-lemon'd. 

Our main man, Tommy C knows Jimmy quite well and Jimmy has volunteered to come and sit in on one of the readings or rehearsals. Even better, if our cast man/woman balance cannot be made to fit and we need to have a woman play a man's part, Jimmy may be able to help us with a re-write. Naturally we all hope it will not come to that, but the Players need young men to come and fill the likely vacancy.Thursday evening, of course (funeral mission permitting) is furniture restoration evening class.

'Parma' ham leg now sleeved and air-drying

My contribution to the 'to do' list is definitely easier. I am off to the Doc's tomorrow for a catch up. I need to re-assure myself that "we" (Doc and me) are doing all we can to make this heart surgery happen and to stop my occasional bad nights of coughing and losing sleep. Have we chased paperwork and responded to all contacts between the hospital and the GP? Nothing we've missed? Nothing she is thinking I've covered and me vice-versa? I am 12 weeks out of hospital today and it's all gone worryingly quiet.

Lamb leg (plus a whole bulb of garlic in the wee 'tagine' thingy)

Talking of which (quiet), we were homing in on the arrival of our next pair of Help-X volunteers, Vicky and Judith, German medical students. They had gone very quiet too, such that I was just starting to think we might be victim of another blow-out, like with our French lad for August.

In the down-time, such as it is, Mrs C gets on with some
furniture restoration 'homework'

No need to worry on this occasion; an email and a text had them 'awake' and responding. They were all excited, packing, booked on flights to bring them into Dublin at 12:20 on Wednesday. Collecting them from Castlerea station at either 5-ish or 8-ish is just another task on the list.

Completed piece. Elizabeth always was THE
BEST gloss painter I know.

We will settle them and then Mrs C will head off to 'Sparks' for an overnight much nearer to Drogheda than here, to ease things in the morning. I will look after them that night and for breakfast and then give them some jobs for Thursday, plus feed them round till Elizabeth returns.

I hope that by the time I write again, we will have ticked off a lot of these jobs and be feeling a little less 'buried'.

Few Words, Fewer Pictures

We are in the quiet times between the end of a  busy fortnight of hosting our latest Help-X couple and anything else happening. In line with my policy of "If you've nothing to say, then say nothing", this will be the shortest post in recent weeks, with few words and even fewer pictures.

That turkey-tom got himself plucked and jointed up for the freezer. He was enormous - we didn't weigh him but he must have easily been up at the 10 kg mark. The thighs alone were over 500 g each. The Woman of the House estimated up the portions for each freezer bag and thinks the bird will go 29-30 portions total.

I have mentioned before that turkeys form a very strong pair-bond and the surviving bird, when he/she loses the partner, can go into a decline and pine away, dying of what some would call a 'broken heart'. I'm not so sure about that, but we have had a male bird die in the past for no apparent reason and after some odd symptoms (heat stroke?) when his wife went off to go broody in a hedge off site and never reappeared. Fox attack? We have no idea.

At times like this the catering goes into 'tidy' up mode, using up a rake of small bits of left overs from the Help-X meals (pig kidneys and apple sauce anyone?). We hate food waste here and we are pretty good at the left overs. This form of cooking we call "bottom of the fridge".

An opportunity, perhaps, to give you a health update. I was called in to the GP yesterday for a flu' jab and a pneumonia shot. Elizabeth tells me I may well be in a "high risk" category. Can't imagine why, can you? :-) So, I am now 10 weeks out of hospital and have achieved the planned "stable" state - neither getting particularly better or worse. I am not congesting up with fluid and most nights I sleep soundly from 10 pm through to 7 am, with very little now of that ticklish cough which was killing my sleep. The cough gets me some nights, but usually when I've maybe overdone the day-time napping I'm not as tired as I should be.

I am still very short of breath and any attempt to walk at normal speed or lift/carry anything results rapidly in a tightness of chest and internal 'Whoa' warnings - slow down, lean on that fence and gaze at sheep while you get your breath back. I assume that the leaky heart valve just leaks more when put under stress, so I do not get the expected surge of good, oxygenated blood. I am waiting, then, on the valve replacement surgery which will happen when I am called into Dublin Hospital (St James???). I am relying on this work to give me a good effective heart again and to relieve me of these frustrating and depressing feelings of being, simply, SO BLOODY ILL. In my dreams I will then be able to start IMPROVING again back to normal breathing, normal strength and ability to work.

If I'm not struggling for breath, of course, and if I've been sitting or standing still, my oxygen sats come back up to 96% and I am in the pink of a healthy, smiley, farmery glow. Friends and visitors come expecting me to LOOK ill and relief spreads across their faces..... "You look WELL, Matt.. good to see you back on your feet". They assume I am fixed. It makes me feel almost fraudulent to have to disillusion them with my "Well, not actually....." On the plus side, this reminds me every day that I am a long way from being the worst off heart patient out there.

More news next time, I hope.

Too Many Cooks?

These yellow pokers are flowering away despite the weather
and despite sitting in a 'rescue' bucket awaiting a new
proper position. 

I am just back indoors from dropping our current Help-X couple, Sonja and Asbjörn, to the bus-stop in Ballaghaderreen, for their bus to Sligo. They have earned a weekend off and there is some flavour of "Celtic" music/arts festival on where they will meet up with fellow Help-X-ers who they know from New Zealand and Iceland. They get about, these volunteers! They are away just the one night, then back with us for next week, but off to Dublin ready for Tuesday flights home to, variously, Frankfurt and Berlin.

Bramley tree temporarily propped back
upright after it was lent over by the wind.

They have proved to be brilliant and helpful hard workers, and worked way over the hours we would expect. Every day they have gone back out after lunch and carried on because they "just want to finish this last....." This even with the skirts of Storm Ali blustering slowly through so that on some days they were restricted to under-cover jobs, mucking out bird houses, clearing the poly-tunnel and splitting up kindling in the car port.

Pigs' ears and tails become dog treats.

They have achieved so much and we are delighted with them - it has quite restored our faith in Help-X after that French lad upsettingly blew us out for the whole of August. We have that mountain of kindling sacks, a clear poly-tunnel and 2 full buckets of (volunteer) spuds out of it. The geese and chickens do not know themselves for the pristine state of their houses and the new bedding. The five railway sleeper beds are either cleared or weeded and one has been top dressed with the goose muck.

Starting to prune the living willow tunnel.

Asbjörn helped Elizabeth on a mission to buy feed sacks. When Storm Ali bent a couple of trees over and knocked down all our apples and pears (fruit, not trees!), the volunteers were on hand to stand the trees back up and prop them with old fence posts, pending me being able to buy proper tree stakes and ties.

We were not quite so successful on the rescue of windfall apples, especially of the soft-ish 'James Grieves' which we had intended for frozen purée. By the time we got out there the orchard was full of rather smug looking hens and the ground was clean of all apples! We were reduced to picking what was left off the trees. Most recently we have had S+A pruning and tidying up the living willow tunnel which now puts on metres of growth each year as it tries to achieve 'willow trees' status.

Bread and carrot cake by Sonja.

When not working in the garden, they have shown as very keen to take over the kitchen and cook stuff. Sonja started this off with 2 loaves of bread and 2 carrot cakes. Asbjörn wanted to cook our Thursday supper of a very rich beef in Guinness with a topping of "scones" (not quite the same as a British dumpling or 'cobbler'; a German variant, I guess.

2 left over quarters of that beef in ale topped with scones

The beef-in-ale was made with one of the new 'retro' Guinness types, called "Foreign Extra Stout". At 6.5% this would be stronger than anything I'd choose in a pub, but gave the stew a beautifully rich flavour. The scones were actually made by Sonja, they cook in the steam rising from the stew. There was a lovely Waldorf on the side.

Just for a laugh, and because Asbjörn's most distinctive feature is his magnificent ginger beard, the shoppers had to buy a bottle of an alcoholic ginger beer by an English brewer (Wychwood, of 'Hobgoblin' fame).This beer is called Ginger Beard and the label features, as you'd expect, a man with a ginger beard. It was a good laugh but perhaps not the ideal accompaniment to the beef in ale. It was rather sweet and very gingery, more like a kiddie's 'alco-pop' and the ginger flavour conflicted with the stew's deliciousness. The real 'Hobgoblin' would have been a better choice but hey....

German style carrot-cake. 

Our kitchen is rather small, even though now extended to twice the bought size so by the time we had Asbjörn in there stewing, Sonja scone-ing and the Woman of the House still trying to nail that days lunch and that night's (stir fry) supper, it was getting very busy and there was a fine dance going on for space, movement and available time slots on the oven. Luckily not a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth. Everything worked and was cooked to perfection and at the correct times.

Dry cure salt/sugar mix for pork legs. This mix included cloves,
chillies, garlic, thyme, star anise, coriander seeds and cumin
seeds, cloves and black peppercorns.

I had steered clear during the busy times (4 cooks in there might have been pushing it!) and my main 'cooking' job, applying the dry cure mix to the 'Parma ham' style legs of pork, could be done out in the Utility room where sits the fridge which will protect the legs during the 21 days of dry cure.

All you need for a game of Ten Thousand. 

We have also been enjoying the company of Asbjörn and Sonja during the evenings, when we have been invited to sit down with them for a few games of the dice-rolling, bidding game I described in the last post, "Ten Thousand". We have now got quite used to the intricate rules and scoring system and I can report that last night, with Elizabeth off at her evening class on furniture restoration, I won all three games handsomely. I was on fire for some reason, and neither of the visitors could make any points score 'stick'. All good clean fun.

Hey ho. Well, as I said, the pair are now off to Sligo for some R+R and, as I type this, I am just waiting for the boss to return from her 'Hard Landscaping' course, so that I can go have a lie down. It's bushed, I am.

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.