Henry and Min Re-United

In a recent post I might have worried you by finishing with a story that one of Henry or Min had gone AWOL at 'bed time' and we'd been out hunting with torches. Well, next morning  the pair were happily and noisily reunited. The missing bird had run for cover into the collection of bikes, cement mixer and other junk in the goose end of that building and kept his/her head down and kept quiet. That explains why the other bird was so contented to be up on the perch alone and also stayed quiet - he/she was presumably well aware of where the hidden bird was keeping quiet. In the morning they just had to each find their separate way to the yard and give each other a load of telling off. Not so silly after all.

Haggis mixture

In the kitchen we wind steadily on towards Christmas and even beyond. Liz converts a huge quantity of lamb "trimmings" (bits like the breast meat which the butcher would normally cut away and discard) and offal (including this year the lung which we specifically asked Ignatius to keep for us for this purpose), into home made haggis mixture. We love our haggis in this family and last year Liz found a recipe where you bake the mix in a baking tray instead of stuffing it into a piece of gut or sheep's stomach, or some kind of plastic 'cover' and it was easily the best haggis we had ever eaten. This probably because it was made with real ingredients instead of 'commercial' heaven knows what, so it is bagless haggis for us in 2014 too.

Hubbard hen at 19 weeks

Our two remaining 'Hubbard' chickens have amazed us over the last month by filling out from the rangey, gangly, big-legged adolescent shaped birds of October, to squared off, filled out, solid chicken-shaped birds now. They are 19 weeks old at this stage so they are approaching the standard 'Point of Lay' age where you'd normally buy them if you wanted them as laying birds, but these ladies are of a fast growing meat breed which the commercial boys would normally be 'finishing' at 100 days or so. Mentor Anne is keeping 2 of hers round to a fully mature age and is going to try a bit of breeding with a La Bresse rooster.

White Hubbard hen

Ours are still here for looser and more "happy chance" reasons. We had gone through a phase of 'harvesting' them, especially the roosters which were getting troublesome, and were finding them dead easy to catch because of their habit of gathering round my feet as I scooped feed from the feed bins, especially if it was raining outside. With just 2 to go, I wanted to 'do' these on the same day so that neither would be left lonely. I never got that chance and then the weather dried up and they stopped doing the under-foot thing. Also, we now had 4 birds in the freezer and needed the space for the lambs, so these two got a stay of execution and are still with us. A living larder, maybe, or perhaps we will see how they do as egg laying birds.

We've now done the run down to Silverwoods, so the lamb is all distributed to its final users. The Silverwoods have pronounced it excellent and, being as loopy as we are, found this lovely piece of lamb based 'tat' during their recent holiday in Bulgaria and thought of us. Fine, elegant tableware, I think you will agree, fit to grace the most elegant Christmas table. We have no idea why the lambs depicted are cuddling tiny teddy bears. Our lambs never had them. Perhaps it is an animal welfare thing?

Castlerea prize draw sign

We finally came to the point here where there was no longer any escaping a job which I'd been putting off and rather dreading, that of slaughtering the young geese for the Christmas table. These geese are now 6 months old and full adult size. Well, we girded our loins and got on with the job this morning with Liz, for her first time, actually getting involved and in (watching) at the kill. It went well, better than I had feared, and the boys (we are sure both these are ganders) met their end quickly, cleanly and with as much respect and as little distress as we like to ensure and they are now hanging in the Tígín awaiting the plucking and dressing job tomorrow. The relief is immense - we are now pretty much through the autumn slaughtering 'campaign' which we appreciate we have to do but cannot claim to enjoy.

There is just the one more goose to 'go', but this is our current parent bird 'Gander', he of the genetic wry-tail abnormality which he is sadly too able to pass on to his sons and daughters, so the plan is to swap him out with an unrelated gander called George who currently lives down the lane with Carolyn of the mini-horses. We get George and we deliver Gander to them but we are currently not sure whether we need to deliver him alive or whether he will be collected and despatched by K-Dub.

Finally today, we loved this Prize Draw sign seen in Castlerea (picture above) where 1st Prize is a Charolais heifer. She looks a lovely big girl from the pictures we have seen and is worth about €1000. You have the option of taking her home if you win, or immediately selling her at the Mart and going home with your money. We were laughing about what we'd do if suddenly presented with a strapping young female beef-cow. We'd have to give it to John Deere Bob to look after. We are not set up for cows' we don't even have a cattle herd number.

Mists and Mellow Fruitfulness

(Apologies to John Keats, I guess). All the people round here that I know of who were interested in the blackberries have long since taken their fill from the hedgerows, made their wine, jam, cassis, desserts and pies and moved on. There are still many many left in the hedges for the birds and these are now being joined by equally bountiful crops of elder berries and hawthorn haws. The birds and small mammals are going to go into this winter very well fed and good luck to them.

Let's hope they don't need it too badly - so far we are enjoying another 2013 warm spell. Our first two complete years in Ireland really have shown us the extremes of what is possible for the warmer seasons - from the absolute unrelenting drenching of 2012 when we always seemed to have puddles and standing water, to the droughts of 2013 starting with our 19 rain-less days in February. We can't believe that it can do either wetter or drier and we are assuming that all our remaining years will be in between; we think we will be always saying "Ah well, it's wet alright, but do you remember 2012?" Never say never, of course.

The season too for gentle slowing down, die-back, decay and mushrooms. I've been enjoying these guys who come up in their delicate dozens where ever I have spread calf muck about. They are a real early riser of a fungus. At only about an inch across and 3 tall, they stand proud with their new white caps at 07:00 as I do my early morning feed and release rounds, but by 09:00 or so the caps have auto-digested to a blob of black ink atop the stem, presumably dribbling their spores away, their job done. By the time the sun touches them they have collapsed and shriveled back to nothing.

I have no idea of the name but they are a lovely thing to find on these misty moisty mornings. For a while we were also getting edible field mushrooms in the lawn but these now seem to have finished and the bigger mushrooms are all now centred around a long-since sawn off tree stump.

These look a bit parasol-ish so might be edible but I know enough about mushrooms to know that their identification can be tricky to the non expert, sometimes involving detail of cap colour, gill shape and colour, detail of whether there is any kind of skin-collar left around the stem and even the colour of a spore-print left overnight to form on white paper by the spores falling from the cap laid on the paper. Pud Lady used to be very good at it and knowledge-able and we all survived her cookery experiments but we tend to leave them be.

It is also the season when we can start 'harvesting' our meat products so we have been enjoying some meals of young rabbit and also of this La Bresse rooster who was starting to be a problem for William the Conqueror and some of the ladies. He was 22 weeks old and a hefty lad, so that he came out oven-ready as this fine 2.475 kg carcass, at the time, the biggest poultry lump we'd produced. Liz actually jointed him up and just cooked the legs and wings on the day but even that was more than we needed so Liz left a drumstick and me the wing on the side of our plates for cold left overs.

I said the biggest "we'd produced" meaning up to then. We have since had another young goose unexpectedly up and die on us for no obvious reason (possibly another victim of the in-breeding problem we already know about). This one cleaned out at 3.605 kg, not huge for a goose, but not bad for one at still only 4 months old.

On other news, our lambs continue to thrive and we are sure they must be approaching the target 50 kg weight but we have not heard a whisper from sheep mentor, Kenny about coming to weigh them and decide on their dates. Here they are joined at the feed trough, rather cheekily, by some of the Hubbard chicks, our other thriving babies who are 60 days old today. They are reckoned, in a commercial set up, to need only 90 days but we are looking at their huge feet and thinking they might go a bit longer than that and get huge. We should probably take advice from Anne on that one - huge and late may not be good attributes in terms of tenderness or flavour.

Finally we have one of the mini-horses, Falabella 'Cody' back with us for a while. You will remember that we had him and the other two amigos here in the spring time, keeping our grass short and doing a favour for Charlotte and Carolyn when fodder was hard to come by. Cody is the stallion of the gang, being the only one who is still 'entire'. Not for long, it seems. He has been making a nuisance of himself escaping and going in search of mares. The market for miniature foals, along with most other Irish markets has collapsed so that nobody needs the boy at stud at present and his fate is sealed.

He can't have his 'op' just now because the current hot spell has brought the horse flies (locally 'creabhars' or 'craws') out again en masse and it is not fair to create an open, healing wound on a horse with those about, so he is waiting till mid October for his visit from Aoife (Rhymes with Deefer). Our field is secure though, he loves it here because we fuss and spoil him, there is loads of grass despite the 5 sheep, and he is, we are told, OK with sheep. He likes the company, apparently. So he's back among us for now.

That is about it. We are ambling along happily doing lots of tidying, weeding and some planting as well as all the muck spreading in this lovely warm dry weather.

Sheep Tracks and Milestones

Growing up in Sussex with regular access to the chalk Downs and being able to watch a bit of sheep farming in action, I was always taken by the fact that sheep will all use very definite regular paths from A to B across a field, not wander willy-nilly. They soon wear definite tracks across the fields which are clearly visible on the short-grazed turf of the steep scarp slopes where they are actually a lot easier to walk on as a human as they are like a leveled out ledge along the hillside. I was amused to note that our 5 are now doing exactly that in our small, one and a half acre sheep field, so that we now have a series of definite worn tracks radiating out from the feeding station and gate area. If they are way away in a corner of the field when you whistle them up for supper, they will canter across to you but in line-astern within one of these tracks (or two, in the case of this picture). Curious things, sheep.

I recently posted on the subject of Liz's recent 'milestone' Birthday. There's a lot of it about at the moment, this mile-stone, significant age thing. Ginny's and Padfoot's baby bunnies hit the 3 month stage on 2nd September. Not a one of them has sold for pets, so I am afraid the freezer beckons for these guys but because they are only 'pet' rabbits, rather than any meat breed, they are still tiny. You'd need one each to make a decent meal, so there are no plans to do anything with them yet except let them keep on mowing the lawn, which they are doing very nicely at present. This did, though, steer us into a definite decision NOT to do any more pet x pet breeding. We may put G and/or P to a meaty buck, as we did in 2012, which gave us very nice carcasses at 3 months in that year, but other than that they will just get to live as pets seeing out their natural, as it were.

La Bresse cross cockerel at 21 weeks

On the 11th, Goldie's remaining babies (2 bucks) hit the 3 month stage and these, being meat breed, are doing a lot better, but regular readers will know that these keep on popping their clogs for no obvious reason, possibly a developmental issue to do with blockages in their urinary tracts. One is albino white, the other a dark wild-rabbit style brown. If either one survives, we may actually keep him as our breeding buck and try crossing him with the pet does but they, too, are currently doing a good job as lawn mowers.

The '8-Ball' chicks, hatched at Easter under Broody Betty, are now (today, 19th Sept) at a very significant milestone. They are 21 weeks old, the date by which even the difficult-to-sex breeds should traditionally make their minds up and either lay an egg or shout cock-a-doodle-do! We were expecting to get to today and have to cull out the roosters from the group because there might start to be fights between William the Conqueror and any young pretenders, or between the boys themselves and the 8-Ball roosters might start to harass the ladies. Certainly we might be going deaf from the amount of crowing. In fact we have only had to 'off' one, a Sussex Ponte 'roo'. Only the La Bresse cross has done any crowing and his is a rather yodeling comic shout. He has tried treading a few hens but he generally gets chased off by one of the Sussex girls. Most of them are now bigger than the Sussex anyway. with only the Mini-Buffs being smaller. 

Deefer at 7 years old.

These boys will probably get a stay of execution all the time they do not cause us problems, until such time as we have no meat in the freezer.

On 17th Sept was Deefer's 7th Birthday, so Happy Birthday Deefer. In this land of no raw pork ribs, where 99% of pig meat seems to get salted into bacon before the public can get anywhere near it, her 'Birthday Cake' came in the form of a pork and leek sausage. Happy Birthday, too, to her brother Archie and sister Ellie-Bez back in Kent. 

The Hubbard chicks at 50 days

The Hubbard chicks, meanwhile, them of the Operation Fowl-Switch of an earlier post, made 50 days today. They are doing well and growing fast but give a definite impression that they will get HUGE, that they need to grow into their legs which seem out of proportion to their bodies. These guys, in any commercial system, are reckoned to be 'ready' at 84 days. I think ours, fully free-range, are possibly going a bit slower than that and may take longer. We will try to weigh them at day 84 (23rd October) just for the sake of getting live weights to compare with Mentor Anne's 8 organic, outdoor-penned birds, but these guys will also not hit the freezer any time soon. 

It's all go.

Of Poorly Goslings and Vitamin B3

Carolyn of the Mini-horses phones seeking our help. 2 of her (4) 6-week old goslings over successive days have suddenly gone lame, unable to stand and then quickly died within the next day or so and a third is going the same way. Will I post a query onto the poultry discussion forum which I moderate, to see has anyone met this before and knows a solution? Meanwhile she rescues the poorly third goose to an indoor pen under her heat-lamp. My poultry 'lot', as usual, quickly come back with helpful suggestions. Sudden lameness in water fowl can be the result of waterfowl not being able to extract Vitamin B3 (Niacin) very well from cereals. As most poultry feed is either cereals or is cereal-based , feed for water fowl can be supplemented with Brewer's Yeast (tablets or powder) or with "Abidec" baby-vitamins in their drinking water. Apparently you do not use niacin itself, as this can caused liver damage. Thank you, if you should ever read this, 'Landkeeper' and 'Rho-B' for those suggestions, which I passed back to Carolyn.

Well, Carolyn's sick gosling is back on his feet and the healthy fourth one is still healthy after a night under the heat lamp and never got as far as being given Brewer's Yeast but, blow me if we didn't wake up this morning and only 6 of my geese came paddling out of the goose house when I opened the door. Our small, backward fella, Fotherington Thomas had gone lame over night and was suddenly unable to lift himself off the bedding. I carried him, protesting, out to the orchard to be with his family but he just sat down on the grass while they fussed and honked around him. I wondered whether he might just be a bit stiff or pins-and-needles-y and had slept badly on the leg and might recover.

Well, he was still there at 8 am. He seemed to have the same symptoms as described by Carolyn - his body, wings, neck and head all fine and bright, alert and still with an appetite. One leg also, apparently, still OK but his other (his right leg) being useless and limp so that he could not stand or walk. Thanking my stars for having done that enquiry on the poultry forum, I headed for Balla-D to obtain Brewer's Yeast powder (and got lucky when the pharmacist turned out to be an experienced and knowledge-able keeper of chickens and rabbits, all be it with no knowledge of geese lameness specifically).

Foth' was rescued back to the goose house where I set him up in one of the cattle feeding-bays on a bed of wood shavings and hay into which I put a hot water bottle wrapped in dog-towels and within reach of him I put a pot of water with the yeast powder suspended in it, and a bowl of various foods including chopped grass, sprinkled with more yeast powder. He settled down to quietly get on with it and, I noticed, took some of the water and the feed.

In the afternoon he was still nice and bright, so we decided to try him out on a bit of physiotherapy, swimming on the clear water of the big pond, where we could see if he was using the right leg at all and where the family could see him and know that he was not yet in the freezer (!). He was using the leg a bit but not a lot, but he seemed to enjoy the bath, a chance to duck his head under, preen, eat some of my aquatic plants and swim about. The other geese, we fancy, were looking on through the orchard fence a bit enviously; they are not allowed anywhere NEAR the big pond now.

One of my 'things' is that I hate to use or hear used the expression 'runt of the litter' It always strikes me that people who use the word, or the expression 'there is always a runt of the litter' go about expecting a runt and quickly latch onto the smallest baby and mentally set him aside for lower expectations, or a cheaper price if he's a puppy, or for some kind of Class 2 treatment. Runts also seem to get culled out first by anyone trying to be 'hard nosed' about their small holdering or farming. Well 'Foth' would definitely have been 'down there' if we were so inclined (and maybe hadn't had the real poor do-ers, Lucky and Dip). He has always been about 2/3 the size of his thriving siblings, day dreaming while they scoffed food, a bit bullied and pushed aside, left behind when they all tear about the orchard. We don't have 'runts', though. We may have babies who are a bit smaller than the rest but they are grand and they will catch up. We have fallen in love a bit with Fotherington Thomas and actually suspect that if he recovers from this one, he may be a 'keeper' if the grown ups will have him. Don't get your hopes up, mind. If his leg will not mend he will have to go down that route.

Meanwhile, the La Bresse from the '8-Ball' woke up and crowed to match William. Bad decision, La Bresse. Should have gone down the egg-laying route. It can be better news all round.

The 8-Ball

Sussex Ponte young rooster

Cast your mind back, if you would, to my post of 28th April this year (http://deefer-dawg.blogspot.ie/2013/04/of-hatching-chicks-and-flying-geese.html) and those little multi-coloured fluffy chicks hatched out under Broody Betty on her first sitting of the year. Those little mites are 'all growed up' now and most of them are bigger than the existing hens including BB herself. They are 16 weeks old now and approaching that significant poultry keeper's milestone 'Point of Lay'. Here even the ones which are very difficult to sex like the white Silkies we had back in Kent, and the black Jersey Giants we have here now, should either lay an egg or shout "Cock-a-Doodle-Dooo!" and give the game away.

La Bresse cross with a Buff Orp (head obscured)

There are 8 of them all still surviving and they have formed a tight-knit group who range around the 'farm' quite independently of the 'grown ups', always together. We call them "The 8-Ball" because they remind us of a group of golfers wandering round a golf course bantering with each other about who is playing with Top Flite balls because there's one here in the rough, who's sneaked onto the green, who's just played a blinding wood shot and inventing spurious scores to "card" (a well known 'verb' known only to golfers and sports commentators).

Jersey Giant (black) and Mini-Buff

The 8-Ball were hatched from eggs which came 5 from our own (Sussex Ponte) birds and 7 as a generous donation from Mentor Anne and Simon; a mixed bag of the main breeds they stock - Buff Orpingtons, Jersey Giants and a La Bresse cross. As luck would have it, only one of our 5 eggs hatched but all 7 of Anne's managed to. The 8-Ball now comprises one SP, 2 Buffs, 2 JGs, a La Bresse cross and 2 of a cross between Buffs and something smaller and possibly bantamised; these two are way smaller than their siblings and a lovely dark golden colour - we call them the 'Mini-Buffs'.

Buffs, the Sussex rooster and the La Bresse cross

As I said, some chicken varieties are hard to sex till they are at point of lay. Anne and Simon who are way more expert than us are not even prepared to take a punt on the Jerseys. Others start to show shape differences much sooner, so that we have known that the Sussex was a boy for weeks - bigger legs and feet, sticky-up tails, more developed wattle and combs and so on. They also seem to start behaving like roosters or being treated like hens by our existing rooster, William. He tries to mount them and we say "Ah ha! She might be a girl then!" Two of the youngsters start squaring up to one another as if to fight, and we suspect they are boys (though Simon tells us that sometimes 2 hens will do this as part of the pecking order process).

The 8 Ball gather round (and on) the keyhole bed.

Taking all this into account we think we have a male SP and a male La Bresse. We think the big pale pure Buffs are one of each. Both the mini-buffs may be hens and we have no idea on the Jerseys. I do not need to tell you that this can be bad new for the boys. You can only have one rooster in this set up and William the Conqueror is filling that slot, though the main rooster can tolerate and become quite matey with a 'buddy'. We quite fancy starting a Buff Orpington group, so we are hoping that William will get on with the Buff we think is a male. All the other boys may have shorter careers, possibly in the catering line. All the girls we hope will join our laying flock.

In other news we have been out this evening observing the Perseids Meteor shower. It was, to start with, a gorgeously clear night of the sort we have only ever experienced in Ireland, clear skies and no light pollution. There was a small amount of cloud low down on the NE horizon, just where we were expecting the Perseus constellation to rise. Liz was on an ironing marathon today and still going strong at 11 pm, so I went out to see what I could see. I took the bat-detector with me and very quickly started to hear the patter and squelch of either lots of bats or one bat lots of times. This was at 45-50 MHz, so we guess pipistrelle.

Sure enough, I saw a quick burst of 6 meteor streaks tracking from North across the Great Bear. Brilliant exciting stuff and I was keen to get Liz out there too, so that she could see some. When a hazy cloud came across from the west I feared she might miss the show, so I interrupted the ironing and called her out but sadly, too late - that was it. The bats kept whizzing around, one so close to my face I could feel the draught from his wingtips, but the haze grew thicker and we saw no more meteors. At 11:45 we called it a night and Liz came in to finish the ironing. There's dedication! Never mind, the Perseids are 'on' for a few days yet and we might get another clear sky tomorrow or the next day.

G-Day?

Today, the 22nd of May is our 'G-Day', the first day that any goslings were likely to hatch. So far no sign of any activity but I am told that, as happened with the chickens, they can have hatched but be kept a secret by their Mum for a couple of days - you might see and hear nothing. I have crept in and sat very quietly and listened but there are no new noises. Ah well, we are nothing if not patient, so we are leaving them well alone and allowing Nature to take its chosen course. Our friend Carolyn, just down the road, has had 6 goslings from 6 eggs 2 days ago, so we are a bit envious. We are also told that our problem of failing to separate the girls and allowing the egg 'borrowing' to occur might evolve into arguments over the new babies. This can go badly wrong for the babies, as you can imagine, but we are clinging to the belief that it's a bit late to separate anybody now, and that these two sisters have been nothing but amiable and nice to each other for the 4 weeks of sitting, so might just carry that into Auntie-hood.

Meanwhile our suspected barren hen, 'Baldy' gets a reprieve. The stock pot is back in the cupboard. She laid an egg! Fair play to her. She laid another this morning, so we hope she is back on line. Mind you we have not yet had that 3-egg (100% productivity) day  as one of the other girls took a break. You should always listen to your known experts - Mentor Anne said all along that William would not be 'treading' Baldy (and making her bald) if she was infertile.

The chicks are now at 4 weeks and have that amusing, half feathered, 'threadbare' look where you can see their reptilian ancestry shining through. Looking and strutting about like mini velociraptors and having all the experts having a punt on sexing them, which is notoriously difficult. Are tails up or straight backward? Is that a bit of a comb forming above the beak? Mentor Anne is going for 4 and 4, 2 roosters, 2 pullets among the buffs, my Sussex a pullet, The La Bresse cross a rooster and one of each in the Jersey Giants. Place your bets, ladies and gents.... the wheel is in spin!

In the orchard the apple blossom is just now starting to open so it is at that dark pink stage where only the backs of petals are visible. These are only young trees so we are pleased to have any blossom and we are not expecting any fruit. When the wind is less fierce we are getting a fair few bumble bees coming through now and the odd hover fly. I have not seen any honey bees and Anne tells me that Irish Bee Keepers are reporting 76% hive loss this winter on account of the hard weather. We'll see this year as the year in which the new trees got established and hope for a sensible season in 2014.

Diversifying our orchard a wee bit, we found in a local Garden Centre, and planted a hazel nut tree. The fruit tree layout was originally going to by 4 rows of 5 trees but we found that there was room for a 6th row at the north end, still giving clearance to the hedge line. I will do a line of nuts and other non top-fruit along here where their bushy shape will not detract from the plan to be able to look down avenues of blossom across the neat goose-grazed grass. Everything in its place? We had intended to get some hazel and nut trees from the 'Million Trees' project but it all seems to have gone a bit quiet in that department and the latest email update had them including escape clauses like 'trees will be made available as funds are obtained'. Reading between the lines it seems to have stalled and run out of money and trees. Ah well, the 27 we planted here are now breaking bud. We gather 'they' managed about 100,000 on the day which is, at least, 100,000 trees in the Irish landscape which would not be there but for the programme.

In the 'allotment' things are looking pleasingly weed free. We have decided to attack the enormous task of weeding in the same way I do pond digging - trying to achieve an hour every day, which translates into 2 big 'Curver' buckets onto the compost. Nearest to you in the picture is last year's rainbow chard which has amazed us by not bolting away to flower and is continuing to give us good yields. I have now got peas, broad beans, 2 kinds of artichoke and 3 of potatoes breaking the surface plus lines of smaller seedlings which I need to protect from the hens dust-bathing games.

Finally, with the grass growing like billy-oh and us not yet ready with multiple-gosling lawn mowers I have had to fire up the lawn mower to stop it all getting away. Carolyn has now sold the 4th horse (a 'big' ( i.e. normal sized) Irish Cob called Sam) so she was able to drop by yesterday with a third lunge rein, one each for 'our' three miniature horses. I was therefore able to 'deploy' my three mini-horse mowers today on the three reins , 2 in the Primrose Path and one on the front lawn under the trees where I daren't mow for fear of cutting into tree roots. We needed 3 reins because the three horses fret if they can't see one another and mess about trying to gallop up and down rather than settling down to eat the grass as intended. You can't just take 2 out mowing and leave the 3rd in the field. It was fun and games this morning in Liz's absence, trying to get 3 head collars onto 3 horses and then get them all tethered. I am not an experienced horse-manager and I think they spotted that!

Ma Nature's Lyrical

Oh, the barnyard is busy, in a regular tizzy,

And the obvious reason is because of the season.

Ma Nature's lyrical, with her yearly miracle,

Spring, Spring, Spring.

All the hen-folk are hatchin' while their men-folk are scratchin'

To ensure the survival of each brand new arrival.

Each nest is twitterin', they're all baby-sitterin',

Spring, Spring, Spring.

It's a beehive of buddin'....(and so on in the words of Johnny Mercer's song in Seven Brides)

Well, the East wind might still be blowing and the heavy frosts have all the bud-break and tulip growth on hold for the minute, but our reliable broody hen, Broody Betty, has decided that it is spring and, even if she only has rubber eggs to sit on, sit on them she will. We had just scratched around ourselves to find half a dozen eggs to give to our 2CV visitors, John and Carol and BB's sisters have not all come into lay yet, so we could only manage 5 eggs to put under a hen who is more than capable of covering a dozen. 

We decided that this might be a nice chance to diversify away from our original Sussex Ponte, mainly-white hens, and contacted Mentor Anne who we knew might have an egg glut. We asked what she thought might be suitable and she has generously provided us with a further 7 eggs. Three are of the well known variety, "Buff Orpington", three more from the big black breed "Jersey Giant" and another is a rather uncertain cross of the Jersey, possibly with the renowned French table bird "La Bresse". These 12 eggs were all slid into BB's nest on Thursday 4th, so now we must wait to see does BB stay the distance, 21 days give or take, and then do the babies survive and do they grow up as hens to bolster up our flock, or boys for the table. Watch this space.

We are both delighted that the Irish language is enjoying something of a resurgence in recent decades. Liz was taught it as a dry and dusty museum piece with little use, by rote and using some dire old books like the infamous 'Peig Sayers', a relentless tale of woe, death and hunger from the almost uninhabited, windswept rocks of the Blaskett Islands off our west coast. Children dreaded being 'sent away' to the Gaelic speaking areas (the "Gaeltacht") to live in cottages with little ol' ladies and forced to speak no English. Irish has been compulsory in schools since the state was founded but is now taught as a modern language with fun reading books, it is promoted by the Gaelic speaking societies in a 10 day event each year and there are Gaelic speaking radio stations and papers, and snatches of Gaelic in everyday life. The modern attitude seems to be use what you can cobble together, enjoy it, and don't get too precious about precise grammar and vocab. Be proud of it! 

So we loved that Irish favourite potato crisp brand 'Tayto' with which everyone grew up in the same way as all my UK peers would know Smiths Ready Salted, now do an Irish Language version of their famous packet. Amusingly, the nutritional details on the back still seem to have to be in English, and the little packet held up by the potato man in the standard logo is in English.

The cat Blue is turning out to be our best ratter. His Brother, Rolo, who started well (and youngest) has not caught anything lately that we know about and looks on enviously as Blue plays with this decent sized young adult which he nailed a couple of days back. This is A GOOD THING especially with our hen gone broody. Rats will happily steal eggs from under hens, and the hens, which will happily peck a mouse to death, just seem to grumble quietly and let the rat get on with it. Rats will also steal baby chicks and drag them off. Well, this fella may have been caught napping by the change of light since we painted the barns (of which more in another post) but his days of nicking chicks are over.

Finally, I enjoyed a genuine 'Irish' day today, down on neighbour John Deere Bob's hot, dusty turf bog. There were 4 of us and in 8 hours we collected 7 good trailer loads of nice dry turf, maybe 17.5 tonnes total creating a massive pile in Bob's barn. I ached and was grimy from the black 'dusht' ; I also ached from laughing at the happy banter between the three local lads. This turf should have been 'winnable' back last September but rain set in in August and quickly made the bog un-driveable. I can't quite believe we were dry enough on 5th April in County Roscommon. This rather poor picture was taken using my phone - I did not have my camera. I picked up some lovely local turns of phrase in the process - "This'll tighten us" (This is going to be hard work). "Ah - Sean-een! He was a one for the Whish-key allright! He certainly shifted plenty. He was a bit-een mad" (Sean-een is like 'Little Shawn'). And on the subject of driving tractors over bog-peat without getting stuck, "The secret is, once you are moving,keep it moving.... You'd want to keep it lit alright!"

It was a brilliant day. That barn painting in the next post.

Making New Friends

We have made some new friends locally; a small-holder couple called Anne and Simon. They live quite close. They are just a few kilometers south of the local village of Lough Glynn as we are a few kms north. Dad first 'found' Anne on an internet poultry discussion forum website and when they got chatting they realised how close they were each to Castlerea. It was Anne who suggested Mum and Dad go to Castlerea Agricultural Show where they had such an enjoyable day. Dad and Anne had swapped mobile phone numbers with a plan to text each other at the Show and maybe meet up for a burger or a coffee. In the event they nearly missed each other and met up for a quick chat and a chance to meet and put faces to names in the car-park as they were all headed home. Mum and Dad and Anne and Simon promised to invite each to look round the two small holdings.

Anne and Simon are a bit older than 'us' and have been at the small holder game far longer. This one is their 4th or 5th; they have 'done' a couple here in Ireland and then one in Galicia and one Catalonia and have now moved back to Co Roscommon, even though they are both, actually, Brits. They are both mad keen 'organic' farmers who were in at the start when the organic movement first kicked off in Ireland and Anne was a lecturer on poultry management in the Organic Centre at Rossinver, Co. Lietrim and they do a lot of the 'permaculture' stuff and sustainability techniques as well as playing with African-Aid style "Keyhole beds". They are pleasantly 'old hippy'-ish. They keep the place going despite not being in the first flush of youth or the pink of health and they have dozens of chickens in 3 main breeds (including Buffs and La Bresse) as well as 2 donkeys (just to keep the grass down!), many ducks and huge meat-rabbits. Successfully burgeoning fruit and veg are everywhere and there is a well stocked poly tunnel. They also have 9 cats and 2 aged dogs all of which they brought back from Spain with them through all the hassles of rabies control and import vetting.

Mum and Dad were invited down for a visit and a look round on Thursday 16th, arrived with a jar of our blackcurrant jam, and came away with a jar of lemon curd and 4 blackcurrant plants. They returned the visit on Thursday 23rd arriving with 6 big duck eggs for Mum and Dad. They fell in love with all we dogs and puppies and, especially, Anne loved the kittens. We were all a tiny bit anxious, as if we were going to be 'inspected' but we needn't have worried. They were delighted with the place and impressed by the amount of work which has been done to get it to where we are now, all be it we are miles 'behind' Anne and Simon in the getting-established stakes. On both visits the chatting was fascinating and Mum and Dad learned so much. We are now all firm friends and the 'cultural exchange' visits are likely to continue into the future. Next stop is for Dad to take our lady rabbits, Ginny and Padfoot down to 'meet' their meat-breed Californian White buck, Peter. (Don't worry, Rogers is still here and his turn will come but for now he is still a bit small to be taking on the chunky girls). We hope that nature will take its course - that will happen on about the 6th September and 28-34 days later we may be in the baby bunny game.