Husband Material

Our latest newcomers, a couple of 4 month old Guinea Fowl

Somewhere in the filing system we have a DVD of an excellent Irish wildlife series, "The Secret Life of the Shannon". Filmed and presented by wildlife camera-man Colin Stafford-Johnson this has some lovely footage of natural history (mainly birds) along the full length of the River Shannon but also includes a variety of pieces to camera, some in the dark in his tent where he comments on what he is seeing and hearing. In one of these, he is hearing the distinctive "crake-crake" call of the corncrake repeated over and over through the night.

A possible husband for 'Min'?

These birds are so rare now in Ireland that one bird calling for a mate is very unlikely to be within sound range of any other birds so that they show up, call through the night, fail to mate and then give up. Colin Stafford Johnson sounds almost heart broken as he says that the (male) bird calls and calls. "He doesn't know there are no females around". We have had our own little version of this tragedy with our Guinea Fowl. You may recall that we originally bought a mating pair (Henry and Min, named after the Goon Show characters) and they did. indeed mate and lay a clutch of 16 eggs in a hedge opposite but then the cock bird was killed by a vehicle in the lane.

4 month old Guineas are an almost perfect size match to
5 week old turkeys. These 4 are 2 and 2. 

Min gave up on the nest (though we rescued the eggs and hatched 13 in the incubator) and came back to join the chicken flock, where she looked like she'd made good friends with our Marans hen, 'Squark', she of the mink attack survival. But she was not happy and obviously missed her man so she has ever since set up our answer to the lonely corn-crake call, the much used and repetitive "buck wheat, buck wheat" shout of a Guinea Hen. She finds herself a nice echo-ey spot; the corner of a wall or the concrete alongside a building and buck-wheats away for literally hours. In the end it tells on your mind and you feel guilty at leaving her "all alone". We tried to sell her and we tried to give her away but it seems nobody wants a love-lorn Guinea hen.

This week we decided to try to find her a new mate. The one thing people learn first about Guinea Fowl is that they are VERY DIFFICULT to sex and pretty much the only way to tell them apart is to wait for the female to start the 'buck-wheat, buck-wheat' thing. The male has no distinctive call, he just "doesn't do" buck-wheat. Step forward our new friends Sue and Rob, who have a huge incubator and a gazillion baby birds of all types. They could spare us an unsexed 4 month old Guinea and, in fact, why don't we take two to improve our chances of one being a cock bird. We could "always eat" the other bird if it was not required.

"I'm getting quite good at this!" says Liz as she turns out another
beautifully plucked pair of Hubbard carcasses

Off we went with car and kitten-basket to collect these two and the problem of where to house them was solved too - by happy coincidence, 4 month old Guineas are almost a perfect size match to 5 week old turkeys. We were able to drop the new Guineas into the turkey run with turkeys #1 and #2 and they quickly got used to each other with no fighting for supremacy or arguing over food rations. They are there in the yard where they can see all the rest of the birds (including prospective wife, 'Min') come and go and say 'Hello' and can get used to our skyline and farm noises, as well as Liz and I. They will get that for a few days before we think about letting them out free range. Min came and had a nose but if she could tell that either were male and a prospective mate, then she "never said a mumbling word" to us. Que Sera.

Always mount your bonnet-mascot so as to avoid interfering
 with the driver's view of the road. Barbara tries out the new car
as a perch.

A couple of days prior to collecting these Guineas, we had actually let the turkeys out of the run and they were doing OK but it quickly became apparent that new cat Soldier saw them as fair game for a hunt/kill and we had to fend off a number of his stalking pounces. Belly to ground he was creeping forward like an African big-cat and when fended off he'd just sneak round to another angle and try again. This may be a problem. For that day, we were happy that it started raining and we had to round up turkeys and secure them back in the (cat proof) run.

Lamb shanks on the menu - not a great deal left for the dogs but
they do enjoy a good lamb bone. 

Meanwhile, we have been chugging through our Hubbard 'harvest' and today 'processed' our biggest cock-bird, who turned out to be 3.1 kg in oven-ready format. 3 more birds to do to finish the job for this year. Liz has been quite enjoying it and is very pleased with her improving skill. She turns out lovely clean neat carcasses. Also in 'meat' we are working our way through the last cuts and bits of the 2014 lambs, the 'Ramones'. We love a good lamb-shank, the meat cooked really slowly till it is falling off the bones and the flavours all meld in with the onions, sweet potatoes, garlic and other veg. Good eating.

Curmudgeonly Aunt Dog

It's Sunday July 22nd and life is currently all about bedding in the new pup and kittens with me, the “curmudgeonly Aunt dog” as I now seem to be called. We are getting there. Tomorrow is the big moment of truth day, when I get let off the lead to go kill small animals or not as takes my fancy. Not today. No, not a Monday. Mum will tell you... "Animals DIE on Mondays". It's a family superstition at this stage, with almost talismanic status. It was a bizarre day weather-wise, always cloudy and always just ever so slightly spitting in the wind but with a hooley of a breeze blowing through all day which was bizarrely warm like a Chinook or a Foehn or something. Mum and Dad are invited round to neighbour Una to pick her black currants. We are welcome to 'jam' them, she says, as she's done enough jam from the bushes and still has plenty growing. We likes Una!

23^rd

Light but persistent rain all day nearly had Dad giving up on plan A and mooping indoors, but decided that, blow it! He was not to be beaten. He will go do Plan A, he decides, get wet and grubby and THEN come back for shower and gorgeous home made soup - the remnant of the "most delicious lamb shanks in the history of the world" a few days back. I can vouch for the shanks having inherited most of the bones to either chew or bury where the pesky pup cannot find them.

Plan A was for Dad to nip round neighbour Una's (she of the blackcurrants) and chainsaw up for her a pile of old timber beams from her former hay barn. Sounds familiar? She is widow and no longer has chain-saw hefting bloke around so Dad is happy to oblige. He got wet but not a bother. You get so warm hefting the said saw (he says) that it's too sweaty inside his coat and hoodie, so he was working in ordinary cotton shirt and hoping his sweaty bod would dry the rain as soon as it landed. Sorry. Hope you're not all still eating your breakfast! Must have been minging!

Dad got an unexpected and warming buzz from realizing afterwards that he had been was sitting on a weather-worn chair, up at a battle-scarred table in a genuine Irish lady's farmhouse kitchen, being fed scones and jam and "a cup o' tay in yer hand", chatting about the weather and stuff. Not "brought there" by Mum but there, welcome and being hosted on my his own account because he’d just done her a neighbourly favour. He was feeling all 'accepted' and welcome. 

In 'train the dog not to kill small animals' we reach the planned final day of training and it does seem to be working. Although 'curmudgeonly Aunt' dog (me) is technically on the lead, in practise the lead is slack and I can go right up to the kittens and pup, lean over them, chase them about and (to a small extent) "play" with them as if I was off the lead. I have made no attempt to bite or damage kittens and seems, Dad says, indeed, to be playing mother-and-daughter games with them. At one point Mum and Dad think I may even have been 'protecting' one kit from the other as they were play-fighting. Rolo was in the small dog-bed and I squeezed in beside her facing out and batting off Blue. Bizarre (as well as exciting and optimism-inducing for tomorrow/today). Wish us luck. My only remaining vice and cause for concern (I am told) is the jealousy thing which comes out in snarling, growling and occasional snaps at pup when he approaches if I am on Dad’s lap. This is saved for the pup and does not apply to kittens. Luckily he (pup) speaks the same language and backs off. Wisdom in one so young! Mum and Dad tell everyone “We never did cure Deefer when it came to new-dog Coco” (or indeed, former matriarch dog Megan and patriarch dog Haggis) where I would try it on and generally get told to get lost.

Lamb Shanks in Beer?

OK - but not deliberately. The beer in question was another of those "take home" beers that nearby pub "The Elephant"...

http://www.beerintheevening.com/pubs/s/22/22167/Elephant/Faversham

...do in 2 pint tetra-packs going by the name of "Inacarton" (www.inacarton.co.uk). In this case it was Dr Okells...

http://www.okells.co.uk/falcon-brewery.html

The pub is near Diamond's house, so John sometimes brings a pint or two (or 4 or 6) round when they come to supper, and in one case the boys had been unable to finish it, so Dad had frozen a spare pint in order to use it in a beef-in-ale pie.

This pint Mum de-frosted today thinking it was stock to use in a lamb-shanks recipe. Dad got home to discover the mistake , and used some of the beer anyway in the stock that went into the shanks.

We don't mind. When the humans have eaten the bulk of the meat off it all, Dad splits off the cartilege-y end of one shank to make three bits and we all get some. We don't care if it's a bit beery, and we can shlurp and grind away happily for ages. Special treat, once we've got the ends off and have the shanks down to a tubular bone-shaft, is when Dad sticks a chop-stick up the end forcing out the marrow. Yummy!

Deefer