Mists and Mellow Fruitfulness

At last - some Autumn Fruiting Raspberries which are edible

I'm not so sure about the fruitfulness, but the past week has been solidly high-pressure, clear skies, warm and blue sky sunny afternoons. In Roscommon in late September, though, that means chill nights and usually waking up to a good mist, if not actual fog. The fog does not quickly 'burn off' like it used to in Kent, so it has been well into 2 o'clock or 3 before we got the sunshine. Never mind, we will take what bits of Keats's "bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core" we can take at this stage.

'Golden Hornet' crabs light up in the evening sun

This year that has amounted to a few very late raspberries now coming ready and edible and one or two apples, plus a decent show of crab apples. Through August and September the raspberries had been coming so slowly, at about one a day, that the blackbirds were stealing them and looking at me as if to say, "Is that it?" Finally I am getting enough that if the birds are getting them, then they are retiring sated and leaving me some.

Crab apple tree.

Most fruit trees were stripped of their crop by poor weather or magpies, but I am looking to go and pick the tail end of that tomorrow. The one exception is a Golden Hornet crab apple tree which is looking very good now for a young one. I am not familiar with this variety, so I am sneaking a well coloured fruit off every now and then and cutting it in half to look for dark colour on the seed-skin which denotes ripeness. So far the pips remain pale blond, so we are holding off picking the crop just yet. They look lovely in the golden setting sun. 'Mellow' is not really a good attribute of apples, but these will get used for cooking, so a bit of extra sweetness and softness will not hurt.

Festoons of hundreds of spider webs on these gorse.

The mists have given me some lovely sights in the mornings. When I am down about my cattle feeding business on the far side of the village, there is one particular gorse hedge which has picked up hundreds, if not thousands, of swags of spider web giving it an almost 'Christmas Tree' look when the fog and dew get on it in the morning. This morning I was booked to trim a goat's feet (I know... rock and roll lifestyle!) so I'd taken the camera. In fact I took no goat pics - too busy concentrating on those spiralling horns - but was able to snap a couple of gorse pics.

New shoes!

You may be familiar with the brand of footwear 'Crocs', a light, rubbery type of clog or sandal. I 'found' these when we first came over - I think Lidl supermarket had them on 'special offer' and they have become a firm favourite as knock-about small holdering footwear. They are reasonably waterproof and don't get wet like the suede 'desert boots' I used to wear, and you can easily slip then on or off while both hands are full of dog leads, eggs, the post or what ever.

At last - these flowered on 30th Sept!

They have two disadvantages - they are no good as a safety shoe for rough work being full of holes and very soft-soled, so blackthorn thorns and stray nails will happily some up through the sole and into your foot. Second, because they are just rubber with no lining, any wet, mud or (gasp) other agri products that get into them stay there as a film between skin and Croc, never drying out and giving you very dirty feet, so socks are a must. All well and good, you might think. Crocs, though, seem to be like Marmite in the public mindset, you either love them or you hate them and if you are a hater, then you cannot resist long tirades and scornful outbursts on social media like Facebook. "Crocs and SOCKS?!!!!!" They seem to be a sartorial mis-step way too far. I'll leave that one up to you. My other problem with them is more general - the Irish as a nation do not seem to have size 12 feet, so when Crocs appear in shops they are usually only up to size 11, so I have to order these new ones on line where a pair with postage, sets you back €42.

The wood store almost there. The pale wedgy stuff is the
big fallen black-spruce. 

I am on my own again, as Liz has hot-footed it away on another UK run, this time to the wedding of an internet chum on the Isle of Wight. She is joining forces with our good friend Mazy in Kent and they are running down together tonight, the nuptials are tomorrow. My role was to drop her to Knock Airport at lunchtime with case, passport, sandwiches and bag of Tayto crisps without which no flight would be complete. I am now general cook and bottle washer for a few days but I have plenty to do so I will not be mooping around bored and pining.

Spider web festoons on the gorse

Main task at the moment is filling the log store with the chopped up slices of the big fallen black spruce tree. Some of this splits nice and easily but some is quite knotty and is hard work. Also, despite falling in November, it has not dried out and seasoned much. The lower trunk is still quite sappy and tends to flex out of the way of the axe blade rather than split down the grain. Still, I am nearly there on the full store, so any big discs of tree than remain will be brought up to the yard and can carry on drying out stacked lying on their sides till I get some space in the log store. All good clean fun.

In Sickness and in Health

Brian 'Sparks' on this week's visit

We seem to be 'enjoying' a succession of minor ailments moving through the 'farm' recently. You'll know about the limping Guinea Fowl (now fixed) but tonight's post is a bit of an animal health round up. I am going to start with the humans - me in fact. Monday into Tuesday saw us playing host to Sparks, Mrs Sparks and their lad, Brian all down for a meal and an overnight. They came equipped with B's new telescope, a present from Santa, which I wanted to try out too, so we were hoping that our pollution-free and light-pollution-free skies would be clear. No such luck on that bit - 10/10 cloud and for B, none of the usual baby animals to look at and cuddle, plus sloppy mud preventing him from charging about like usual, but it all went OK.

Buff Orpington rooster needs the sick bay.

For me though, almost on the last mouthful of Liz's delicious roast chicken dinner, a resounding crack as I accidentally bit down on a bone, told me a tale of a broken tooth or filling and a trip to the dentist. As I type this I am just back from there with one tooth fewer and a jaw as numb as numb can be, miserably waiting for the numbness to wear off and the pain to kick in. The tooth proved to be cracked neatly in half along the jaw line and the dentist, (a very nice bloke despite his trade!) is involved in writing exam questions for trainee dentists. He asked if I'd mind him photo-ing my tooth for use in one which he thought would really make the trainees sweat. So I may have a famous tooth. He is emailing me the pic, but I will put it up here as an optional link - not everybody wants to see a manky, much-filled, 56 year old tooth, no matter how clean and impressive the crack.

The offending picture is now on

http://www.flickr.com/photos/116190456@N08/12678492943/

but don't go there unless you are strong of constitution!

Lieutenant-Colonel, Sir Bufton Tufton 

Next up in our tale of woe came our Buff Orpington rooster who announced his sickness first thing Tuesday morning with a rather odd gurgling version of Cock-a-doodle-doo and then spent that day mooping around in the hedge banks, standing still with his head sagged down looking decidedly miserable. First port of call on any chicken problems is Mentor Anne, of course and she was quickly able to put me on to a couple of very experienced experts (Thanks Anne, Thanks Ray, Thanks Steve). The current thinking is that this came on too fast to be worms (everyone's first suspicion) and is probably just a chill infection due to the cold wet long horrible winter. The treatment is therefore isolation but in the warm and dry, tempting food, water plus dribbling sugar-water into his beak, or a few mill of cod liver oil. Anne also gave me a fun suggestion which they have used successfully while living in Spain, and that is to smear a little Marmite onto the beak which gets the bird licking its 'lips' and can stimulate the appetite. The first part worked - he was slurping away at the Marmite like a good 'un with evident pleasure, but just not willing to translate this into pecking up the food. Well, he made it through the night and looks no worse. He has now had some broad-spectrum antibiotics (Tylosin) and is settled down to roost in the spare room / sick bay.

Goldie pinned down by all four feet!

So, we move on to rabbits. If Anne is our go-to adviser for the chooks, then Charlotte of the mini horses, down the road, is our rabbit expert. Our male meat-breed only-remaining-son-of-Goldie is currently down with Charlotte, doing his duty as stud. Charlotte had noticed that he had some grot in his ears, possibly as a result of fighting with his other young male chum, or maybe ear mites. Rabbits are terrible for ear problems deep down in the ear, because the skin, once broken or damaged comes back as a soft, orange-peel type layer which itches the rabbit, who then scratches some more to try to relieve the itch.

Caught early it can be treated. Left, it covers the whole ear and starts to move down to the neck etc and you have a sorry situation especially if your bunny is a 'spare' living-larder rather than a belovéd pet. If it's mites, it is also highly contagious and you need to race round all your rabbits checking deep inside both ears of every one. Luckily for us, we have Charlotte now in full-on Vet-Nurse training mode doing her work experience fortnight with Aoife-rhymes-with-Deefer (our vet) and passing by our gate each evening already clothed in wet+cold weather gear and wellies. It was like 'Animal Hospital' that day as we grabbed up each rabbit in turn and shone torches down their ears. Ginny and Padfoot were clear but poor Goldie, our big female had some signs.

Ear mites and/or general 'mank' in Goldie's ears

We brought Goldie indoors - she's a big docile softy, so she doesn't mind being wrangled in and laid on the 'operating table' but no rabbit likes it when you wrap a finger in a cotton wool pad and poke it right in to the ear canal down deep, so I hung onto all four legs while Charlotte cleaned her out. We also now have, from Aoife, some anti-mite, anti-infection, anti-itch, anti-inflammatory jollop called 'Surolan' so Goldie has a 5 day programme of being jolloped and cleaned out to look forward to. Poor Golds.

Probable double yolker from one of the Hubbard hens

Continuing on our rove around the other animals, it's all a bit healthier and less of a worry. Cody is awaiting his gelding operation which we have to squeeze into the narrow window between the risk of frost (which interferes with blood clotting in the open wound) and the re-awakening of the horrible flies which might 'blow' the wound with their maggots. Goocie is now showing signs of having been mated by George (feathers missing from the back of her head) so we are letting her now start to build up a clutch of eggs and maybe go broody. She lays one every other day but we have been stealing them for cooking. On pigs, Paul-the-Fencing showed up today out of nowhere, with no warning, keen to do a bit of fencing for Vendor Anna and I asked him to come and have a look at my pig-fencing plans. He was happy to do this and is now going to give me a price for a day of helping (or leading) me. He has all the proper gear for making holes, straining the wires and so on, plus the know-how and experience. I could probably have done a passable job but I'd rather have a Paul-job done.

So, there you go. We live in interesting times. I will update you on all these patients in the next post.

All loved up

Ah well, we can't all be sensible..... Valentine's Day and the postie wasn't exactly struggling and giving himself a hernia bringing me all the cards from my suitors.

But Dad is grinning like an eejit over this prezzie from Mum (and thanks also to the one and only "Diamond" who may have a hand in it). In case you can't read the small print, it reads "with a touch of" (Champagne). Tonight the menu seems to be steak and pink Moet.

So all is happiness and silliness in our house and I don't even mind not being included. One day, when I'm older, a nice young man-dog will fall for me and sweep me off my feet. You wait and see

Mum and Dad, we dogs and Mississippi love you both

Deefer