Like a Duck to Water.

Shearing the first ewe, helped by Charlotte

The main story today (certainly the freshest) was the shearing of the sheep. We were coming round to that time of year and the forecast spoke of a heatwave held back only by a Northerly air-stream which had been keeping our temperatures down in the 14ºC area. Sheep-folk begin to worry about heat and the dreaded fly-strike but we need 3 rainless days to make sure the sheep are dry.

Charlotte tackles Polly, our grey Jacob cross ewe.

Waterlogged fleeces and electric hand held clippers are not a good mixture even for we smallholders; the commercial boys worry more about the wet fleeces not being sale-able to the buyers as they are 'dishonestly' heavy. Our wool all ends up on the compost heap so that side of things does not worry us. This year I have ace sheep-wrangler and stock-person, Charlotte (of the mini-horses) back down from Dublin, working locally and keen to help with any shearing I do on her days off. Elizabeth is happy to step aside and we all benefit from the "shearer's chocolate cakes" which get baked while we shear.

Self conscious 'naked' sheep?

So, there we were, all organised from Tuesday and delighted at the lack of rain come this morning, so I raced out to Sligo to collect Charlotte and then we were all go. I love working with Charlotte and even now, 6 years in, I still learn from her. My shearing technique is to zoom up the sheep from dock to neck in long "blows" which can be fast but can leave the sheep striped like larch-lap fencing. Charlotte tends to scoop little blows out, rolling the cutting edge away from the sheep almost as soon as she has 'delved' into the fleece. It's a bit slower but very neat. The whole sheep has maybe a few mm more 'pile' left but there are none of my 'almost pink' patches or any stripes.

All done here. Charlotte is just practising her 'upside down'
technique on one of the lambs. 

We are both impressed by how much heat 'comes out' when we open up that fleece with the first 'blow' up the spine. On a sunny, windless day, the girls are living inside a 3" to 4" pile woolly overcoat and I am sure their skin temperature must be up there at blood heat. When you first glide the shears up the spine and 'unzip' the fleece, the sheep's skin is way, way hotter than your hand - probably 10-15ºC hotter.

Nobody wants the old fleeces so they
go on the compost. 

Healthy sheep have temperatures of around 38.5ºC. By the time you finish shearing, 30 minutes later, the whole animal has cooled down and the skin is more like human skin temperature. They get a whole new lease of life and go scampering round the field with relieved expressions.

The gang spent some time in the orchard prior to shearing.

The other thing we all love is the sudden change from spherical, broad-in-the-beam shaped sheep to tiny, thin, angular, goat-bony light-weights who look not that much bigger than their lambs. They were possibly rounder than normal this year because we'd been struggling to get some good grass into them to get some condition on after them lambing in the hard Winter, and we'd moved them into the orchard for a couple of days. My hope was that when we called them into the cattle race to be 'done' they'd not be so starving that the small amount of 'crunch' they'd get wouldn't leave them bleating piteously. That went OK.

The oak (left) before the ash? You decide. 

Friends of the Blog may also recall that the biggest ewe, Myfanwy, had not (yet) lambed, and I do not actually know whether she is pregnant. Back in February when we 'offed' the ram, Pedro, one of the reasons was that he had started attacking Myfanwy and I did not know whether this was just sex fore-play or annoyance at her rejecting him. In theory, as he was with us till Feb 5th, she might still lamb till 5th July. I was keen to get Charlotte's assessment once the ewe was sheared and we could all get a look at her shape and her udder. The consensus is that she's just big, having not needed to feed a lamb (or two). Ah well.

Hen with ridiculous hair (Donaldina (Trump)) goes broody
in the duck box.

Meanwhile, I am amused to note that our drakes, newly bereft of their last lady-duck have suddenly taken to going on the pond. For 2 years they have showed no interest and I have been delighted that they've left the pond alone with it's gin-clear water and healthy plants (and fauna). Back on Wednesday I may have been witness to the tiny, short, insignificant-looking event which changed all this. I had gone out to sit by the pond with the dogs all milling around harmlessly at my feet. A Guinea Fowl was calling from the 5 acre field behind me and then came zooming over to land on the grass nearby.

A new sight here - ducks on the pond. 

The dogs, excited by this flurry of movement took off at a run towards the Guinea which set one of the drakes off also flying about 2 feet from the grass. Quite by accident, I am sure, it touched down right near a dog and opted for a bounce and sidestep which pitched it into the pond for possible the first time in it's life. I watched with amusement at it's change of body language and facial expression as it went from "Oh crap! Now I'm in the pond!" via "Coo... I seem to be floating....perhaps this is not so bad after all" to finally "Mmmm... I LIKE this... look... I can paddle my feet and swim!".

Our 3 young lime trees are suddenly
covered in leaves.

There has been no holding that drake back since and he has now taken his brother on to the water to share the joy. The pair go every morning for a dabble, a swim and a water-borne preen and splash about. It remains to be seen how much damage they do and how long their welcome lasts.

Another wishbone for the car. €170 supplied and fitted
(incl. wheel alignment)

There have been just 3 other stories brewing. The car has had to go back to the garage (ker-ching €€€€€) to have to 'other' side wishbone changed and the steering re-aligned once more, for uneven tyre wear. "State of the roads round here," said the man, "I'd recommend to anyone to get alignments checked every 6 months" Never heard of that before in the UK, but there are many potholes here, plus savage 'sleeping policemen' and just general yumpy-bumpy bog roads.

In with the new, out with the old. Lidl's at Castlerea.

Our local and much loved Lidl supermarket is temporarily erased from the face of the earth. The new shop has been under construction 'next door' for a while but for 3 weeks the old has been shut while they make final changes and move all the trading across. I was impressed by how fast 'they' cleared the site. I had shopped in there on Tuesday 8th May. By the time I tried to shop again (Tuesday 15th) it was shut, demolished and cleared away as if it had never been. Impressive feat.

The pigs look great under the now fully in-leaf beech.

Finally, we are now expecting the arrival of our next Help-X volunteer, Laura D, our first try at having a helper of the female persuasion. She was booked in for Monday but has since asked if she might arrive on Saturday (tomorrow). We have no problem with that except that Elizabeth has the car down at Steak Lady's place (There's a Royal Wedding on, apparently and the Ladies are going to do it justice in their own Living room, sat around the TV with the fancy hats, party food and drinkies). I would not be able to nip and collect her from the railway/bus stations. So Laura, not to be put off, is going to try her 'travelling' skills out against the trains, buses, taxis and possibly hitch-hiker picker uppers and try to get here anyway. Good luck, Laura. Safe journey. See you soon. Just don't know HOW soon.

Kick Boxing in the Snow

More snow.

I may have been making too many references lately to Spring-like warmth and things drying out, tempting providence to too high a degree. The Roscommon Weather Gods decided to teach me a lesson and we got another wintry front come through with appropriate weather warnings for the wind and the white stuff.

View across the pond to the new willow 'arbour'

In the event the mornings we woke up to were pretty and picturesque but not disabling - plenty of beautiful white stuck to trees and fences, but only about an inch on the ground. Elizabeth has been heard complaining that the weather keeps "messing about" and she wishes that we got some "proper snow", indicating a depth of about 2 feet with her hand. Careful what you wish for, there.

"Not a lot of drying in that!" Possibly should have rescued these
tee-shirts before the rain came at lunchtime. They are as stiff
as boards this morning. 

I was worried (at the warnings) that I might not get to town to collect our lamb meat; Pedro's carcass. I drove over compacted snow and ice most of the way, only coming onto cleared (salted) tarmac when I was almost there. The slaughter-man was there at the (butcher's) shop on his lonesome that morning so he was a busy lad. However he had no new animals to 'off' that day, so he was relaxed and chatting as he worked away speedily, breaking down our carcass into the various cuts as we specified - racks of chops, full shoulders instead of gigot chops, half legs and so on.

The Kentish souvenir fallow-buck antlers
get a dusting of Irish snow.

We know him well, by now, of course, having used 'them' 5 years running, but it was nice that he remembered Liz's love of the more unusual cuts and found us an ox-tongue to throw into our bag. As usual, I brought the bag home and we spread it out on the dining table - it was bagged into thin bags but not labelled. I like to 're-assemble' the animal so that I can label it shoulder, leg (upper/lower), shanks, loin chops, rib chops etc.

I also wanted to write 'Pedro' as he was both male and the oldest 'lamb' we had killed, so potentially the nearest to 'mutton' flavour. That's now all in the freezer.

Turkeys kick-boxing, battling for Gloria's hand in marriage?

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, our two new turkeys are increasingly convinced they are both male, even though we selected a big one and a small from the group. This morning, when I was only just up, I could hear some seriously loud 'gobble-gobble' male turkey noise from just outside the front door. I mean, maybe INCHes beyond the door. I looked out and could see both the dark new turkeys strutting that tail-up display they do and circling each other. The 'old' turkey, 'Gloria' was looking on with interest.

Pedro in kit form.

The dark ones were looking like males and one is 30% bigger again than the other. Any fight was not going to be well matched. If it was going to go on for more than a few seconds, I would have to intervene. Well, it didn't. There were a couple of very quick bouts of kick-boxing and the smaller lad retreated sensibly. Game over. Gloria wandered off with the bigger lad.

I have been very impressed by, and very much enjoying a book by one Louise Gray, feature writer on 'The Environment' for big papers like the Scotsman and the Telegraph. There she specialises in food, farming and climate change. Louise decided that for a year (which became 2) she was only going to eat meat (including fish) she had killed and for which she knew the history. She had to also know the growing conditions of the specific animal and for that industry she also to have researched the welfare statistics, environmental impact and so on. She also writes a blog.

As you'd expect, this limited her meat consumption to start with, never having killed an animal thus far, so she wryly comments that she was "mainly vegetarian". But she then takes us with her as she shoots her first rabbit, visits her first abattoir, goes deer stalking or fly fishing, goes out on a commercial fishing boat, learns about control of edible 'vermin' (like grey squirrels where the conservationists do not want them driving out the reds), and the use of roadkill.

An enormous vat of lamb ragu under construction.

She is a brilliant writer and I take my hat off to her - you can feel the nerves as she goes for that first rabbit and the upset when the rabbit runs off despite being shot and the shooters cannot confirm that it is dead. You feel her revulsion and horror at the first slaughter-house visit but she is fair, balanced and thorough through-out.

The new incubator. Same model as the borrowed one you may
have seen in posts from previous years. 

If you are not on social media for these subjects (farming groups, smallholders, animal welfare people) you will not be aware that there is currently a fierce and heated debate raging about the rights and wrongs of meat eating, going vegetarian, the activities of vegan 'activists' (think the bad old days of animal libbers). There is a lot of passion getting aired and no end of ill-informed and even bigoted anger flying back and forth often with bad language.

Louise's book is easily the best written, most thoroughly researched, fair and balanced contribution to this debate that I have ever seen. I try my best on this blog, but if I could write anything half as good as "The Ethical Carnivore" I would be a happy writer.

Duck eggs set in the incubator. 28-35 days should see them
cooked.

Finally, Friends of the Blog will know that Mr Fox is gradually nibbling away at our laying duck numbers, and that our fight-back is taking the form of finally buying our own incubator and setting some duck eggs this spring, so that we can hear, once again, the splatter of tiny webbed feet. This week the exciting big parcel arrived and I have been stock piling the eggs since I placed the order, so I was able to start the batch this morning with 9. I will add any laid overnight tonight - the 16 hour head start for the 9 will make precious little difference. So, wish us luck and wait on my reports from around the 13th March. Peep peep. Quack quack.

Original Features

Newly cleaned out roadside ditch. The white
in the bottom of there is snow.

Yes, we currently have a light dusting of snow on the ground and yes, we still have light snow falling but overall we are definitely drying out. All the puddles are gone or nearly so, and the mud under foot is now sticky, rather than wellies-sloppy. The tarmac lanes are dry and the ditches either side of the road are mainly empty. Long may this process continue.

Original feature? A lot of the road-side culverts are still these
tunnels with stones for the 'walls' and a big flat stone across
the top. 

We have had a couple of contractor lads with a lorry and a mini digger, working along the road digging out the ditches and re-instating the drains and culverts where they pass under people's drive-ways, if necessary. They have even cut across the lane if they need water to flow from north side to south side and laid big new plastic pipes under the road.

Spot the heron.

A lot of the culverts along these lanes are still what an optimistic estate agent would call "original features". They were made by building in the bottom of your ditch a series of arches like mini-Stonehenge arches (dolmens?) with tall stones as the walls and big flat ones across the top. We have a similar structure buried down just outside our yard wall where would have run the right of way for all the locals using the main lane, to access their turf-cutting bog.

I wish the cats wouldn't kill the 'cute' and unusual ones. This
female bullfinch got it in the neck this morning. 

We are told that back then, anyone who had a chimney in their house would have 'Turbary' rights - the rights to cut turf for home fuel. They would have brought their donkey and cart down what is now our land to get to their 'stake'. When we bought the house, the Estate Agent told us that as no-one had used this right of way in 27 years, the route was now redundant and we did not need to allow any donkey carts down there!

Nobody's favourite livestock task - getting a wormer
tablet down the throat of each of your 4 cats. Liz's hands
are shredded!

Be that as it may, the contractor lads were obviously not re-instating these ancient structures as they went along, just burying modern concertina style water pipes and back filling with the stone and clay in what ever order it came available. They were also building up the immediate verges with the dirt and stone from the ditches. They have made quite a neat job of it and the new water-flows are obviously working. The ditches are empty.

The ewe (Lily) and lamb are still brought indoors each night
as the weather is still too cold for a baby to be outdoors. 

Meanwhile, after much deliberation I decided to cull out our bought-in ram, Pedro. It was not an easy decision. I never want to get into killing animals just because they are no longer convenient - if I ever do this then it will be a sign that we should not have bought in, or bred the animal in the first place. This lad was bought in, as regular readers may recall, last Summer, because we had produced no lambs of our own in 2017 and the freezers were almost empty of lamb-meat. He came as one of a pair, his sister being 'Oveja'.

When the time came to send Oveja on her final trailer ride, I decided to keep the brother (Pedro) as our 'stud' ram to save me having to borrow in a ram. I knew that we could always send him to the butchers later if the new set-up did not work out or if he became human-aggressive. This "sort of" worked and we think that all four ewes may well be pregnant, though I only saw him mounting Lily and Polly. Time will tell on that one.

Pedro offal. Oh, and a couple of nice
steaks! Well, I was in a butcher's shop.

As to the aggressive thing, I did take a couple of 'pucks' from him but I think these may have just been argy-bargy trying to be first to any food I was taking to the food trough. I'd get a thump from behind at thigh-height but not really know if he'd squared up on my derriere and done an adolescent head-down charge, or had just run clumsily into the group following me and my feed-bucket. Whenever he squared up facing me, I was always able to deter him by swishing a stick back and forth in front of his nose. It's the lack of trust that decided me. I could no longer enjoy communing with the gentle ewes if I had to keep one eye on Pedro.

The peach tree, housed indoors for the Winter
needed a tree-guard when the cats started
using its main trunk as a scratching post.

I did, though, see him banging the ewe 'Myfanwy' about. Whether she is pregnant or not, nobody likes to see our gentle ladies getting T-boned in the midriff. He was also a bit feisty with Lily and the new lamb when they first met but we put that down to him reminding them who was boss in case they'd forgotten while they were in 'confinement'.

So, the decision was made and Pedro was taken on his final trailer journey on Monday (yesterday). That gave me another interesting reversing task - the butcher's back way was part blocked by a big trailer one side and a shiny 4 x 4 on the other. I could not get to the 'lairage' pens (holding pens)  so the slaughterman (Joe) had me back in the shorter distance to the slaughterhouse door. Elizabeth tells me that the lad was 'offed' almost before his feet hit the concrete - she'd heard the 'pock' of the humane-killer and had seen the main butcher nip in there straight after with the big knife, while I was closing up the trailer and pulling out. He (Pedro) certainly spent no time in the unfamiliar lairage pens wondering what was going on or stressing about this new turn of events.

That was that. I collected the offal (liver, kidneys, heart and tongue, this time) today and picked up a couple of lovely (beef) steaks as I was in a butcher's shop. He hangs the carcass for a week before cutting to allow the meat to "set" so we go down on Monday morning to collect the main meat. I feel as though I have been given my sheep back. I can go into their field and speak to them, tickle their noses and under their chins, pull bits of twig and bramble out of their wool and generally enjoy contact with them. There is no ram there bashing them away from the breakfast food trough or trying to get between me and the girls. A whole new relaxed, calm, stress-free atmosphere has returned. It was the correct decision. This year we will borrow a ram just for the 'tupping' season AND nothing like as early as August - more like December or January. Lambing in January is just daft.

Slow News Day

Horse Chestnut bud still firm closed

Another short and sweet post, I'm afraid. We are in an event gap between the funeral which took up most of the last weekend, the piggy movements which followed it and the coming weekend for which the calendar is also blank. It has been raining too much for anything but cursory tidying outside and a bit of photography of signs of spring. 

Burns Night came along on Thursday giving us a minor excuse for a wee celebration. I had kept a bit of Scotch back from Christmas (Elizabeth had won it in a raffle) for the day and we had made, as usual, our own haggis from our own lambs.

This gets done as a tray-bake, sitting in the oven with a butter paper covering the top so that it does not dry out, rather than trying to obtain some natural gut to stuff. 

Another named storm tracked through - Storm Georgina - but this one came with only 'Yellow' status warnings and did us no damage - it just re-filled all the puddles. That has been the way of recent weather - we get a dry day when most of the surface water drains away but then it rains like mad at night and we are back to sloppy surface mud again. All yard and livestock jobs are done in wellies.

Rosie and Polly keeping me waiting. 

The new lamb (Tigger) continues to thrive and we are now in a daily rhythm of shepherding the family out of the shed mid morning, once Lily has had her breakfast, and round to the front lawn.

By mid afternoon, Lily has done with wandering round on the damp, almost non-existent grass and is back at the gate, baa-ing her pleas to be allowed back into the warm, dry straw of the shed. I grab a bucket of 'grub' and lead her home, with Tigger running along close at heel.

My first 'Irish' lapwings. 59 birds in this pic but I think around
75 in the flock down by the local lough.  

Lily's sisters are keeping me waiting on the lambing progress. Polly, we know, was tupped on 5th October, so she is not due till 5th March, but the other two (Myfanwy and Rosie) did not give me any such clues.

A tiny self-seed holly from Mum in Law.

I am reduced to checking their nethers every day and looking for any signs of bagging up. It is perfectly possible, of course, that they are not pregnant at all, but they do have that look, matching Lily (as was) and Polly in girth and shape. Either way, Ram 'Pedro' will not be around long. His days are numbered. I have had no interest from my attempt to sell him via Done Deal, so he is booked in for his final journey in 2 weeks. His aggressive butting of the ewe Myfanwy, has sealed his fate.

That's about it on this slow news day.

Pussy Willow.

Rent a Reverser (?)

A first look for Tigger, at the soggy, puddle-strewn front lawn

At just a week old, newest lamb 'Tigger' is thriving. I have been getting him out of the Tígín (along with his Mum, Lily, of course) each day for a run around on the front lawn. He seems to love this, following his Mum around as she grazes but often charging away from her a few yards in a mad, bouncy 'pronking' tip-toes gait of a deer, and then zooming back to her side.

Staying close to Mum

I am 'doing' them alone on the front lawn for the moment because I am not 100% sure of the ram Pedro leaving him alone and because it makes the process of letting him out and getting him back in of an afternoon, a whole lot less complicated. Trying to extract them from the East Field while not letting the rest out to play is more risky a prospect than I need.

I am not sure about Pedro anyway - I have seen him chasing the big ewe Myfanwy about and butting her a bit too aggressively for my liking so, even though he has not had a go at me, we may part company soon one way or another. At the moment I have him up for sale on the Irish 'classified ads' website (DoneDeal.ie) but I have not even had a 'tickle' so he may end up in the freezer. We'll see. If his chasing of 'Myf' is due to her not being pregnant yet and now coming on heat, then that might see him forgiven, but nobody needs a ram trying to 'T-bone' their in-lamb ewes in the midriff.

A house favourite use for a sheet of belly-pork. Mini porchetta.

Talking of animals going to the butcher's, I was involved over the last 24 hours in our good friends Sue and Rob finally getting their 2017 pigs off to Webb's in Castlerea. Friends of the blog may recall that Sue and Rob came with us over to the breeder's place near Boyle on the day we went out to collect our own pigs, 10 week olds Pride and Empress. They chose much younger babies, maybe 6 weeks old, so they were already a month behind us on schedules.

Thanks very much 'Steak-Lady' for this framed print, latest
Paris-themed picture in our collection. 

Their pair came ready about a month after ours (end of October) but Sue and Rob had little space in their freezers, so decided to keep the pigs on till after Christmas. It was very wet and now the time came, they asked me for help extracting the pigs from their 'swamp' and getting them into their trailer. Also, Sue, by her own admission "cannot reverse the trailer for a toffee" (and Rob can't drive anyway) , so could I help out at the other end of the journey, reversing her 4x4 and the trailer into the tiny narrow 'slot' between buildings which is the butcher's answer to a "loading bay".

Paris scene

That all went swimmingly in the event. Rob had constructed a really good, pig-proof 'race' up from the swamp to the hard standing and those pigs had been kept hungry so that they would be suckers for the bribe of a rattled food bucket. Pigs never explore anywhere new fast - they just amble along with their noses to the ground, taking an occasional step. They will not be hurried and you are a fool if you try. If you did spook them and made them bolt, you are not going to stop 80 kg of charging pig, so the best bet is to let them amble along and just gently (but firmly) close the ground behind them by nudging up against their bums with a big board. By this method, Sue guided them up the 'race', and Rob and I nudged up behind them till they eventually went up the ramp and we could close the trailer on them.

Pig haulier's breakfast.

In the morning, I'd set the alarm for 7 so that I could meet Sue with the 'load' at the butcher's nice and early while there was not much traffic about for us to upset. It is a known bad manouvre - the narrow gap is at 90º to a narrow but busy main street in the town. The gap is only about 6 feet wide, so as you slot your trailer neatly and professionally in (ahh shucks!), don't go in past the kerb with the truck or you will not be able to open the doors and get out! We managed that OK with Sue seeing me back and then, with the pigs unloaded and safely into the lairage, Sue finished all the paperwork, I bought a pack of Webb's superb dry-cure rashers and we adjourned to local Deli, Benny's for a celebratory coffee. Job well done. I even grabbed some croissants and Danish pastries 'to go' so that Liz and I could have a nice breakfast back at the ranch.

My new favourite Irish author, currently filling the gap left in my
reading due to running out of Maeve Binchy books.

In other news, we have been quite deeply involved in a local funeral. No names, no pack drill for the usual reasons. I think if you ask any Brit who has moved over here, what is the biggest single difference in local village or community life that they noticed compared to the UK, it will be the Irish way of death. In 55 years in the UK I probably went to half a dozen funerals at most and all of them small, quiet affairs which involved you to attend for only a short time.

Comparatively, the Irish funeral is massive, especially in rural areas where everybody would know the family of the deceased especially if they have lived in the community for all their life. Hundreds of people will attend and the proceedings can easily take up the evening prior and all of the day of the actual burial. Family and friends who have long since left Ireland in search of work or what-ever will make the trip home to be part of it. The deceased may even be one of the 'diaspora' wishing to be laid to rest in the family plot back in the village of their birth.

I apologise hugely in advance if I have any of this wrong - please do comment and I will make corrections. The last thing I want to do is cause any offence to anyone involved in 'this' or any other funeral. The proceedings follow a sequence something like this, with every bit attended by a good many of the mourners. First is the 'reposing' where the deceased is laid in the coffin at the Funeral Parlour  - you queue outside for yards down the pavement to get in one door and you slowly process, shuffling forward to view the departed and then shake hands with the immediate family . It is good to have something to say to each - I have taken to using popular local expression "Sorry for your trouble". You then shuffle down the out-corridor to the exit, passing the book of condolences on the way. This stage takes a couple of hours to get everyone through. It is common for the coffin to be open at this stage, so that you see the deceased - I have not got used to that bit yet.

Next is the 'Removal', where the coffin is taken by hearse to the church, commonly followed by all those mourners in dozens of cars - an impressive cortege threading its way down the country lanes. The hearse may pause at the house where the deceased lived, or was born, letting the 'late' soul know that he is really home, I guess. This is followed by the Mass itself. Mass going is way more popular here than (taking Communion) in the UK and churches are packed every Sunday, so it is no surprise that all our mourners pack the church for this bit, likely to be the most familiar to mourners in the UK.

Next we move to the graveyard. Depending on distance this might be all back in the cars or walking. This is the 'Burial' and can involve, again, a big group of mourners gathered round while more prayers are said and the coffin lowered into the grave. Some of these graveyards can be on quite bleak, windy hilltops, so the wise mourner equips with a warm coat, hat and gloves. We then adjourn, if invited, to a suitable location for 'Refreshments' - in the case of my Father in Law (Theo), this was a nearby pub for drinks (obviously), welcome hot soup and bread, with sandwiches or even a full 3-course meal, maybe stew and veg and a dessert. This stage can go on as long as you want - there will often be live music and happy chatter as family members and friends who may not have seen each other since the last funeral catch up on gossip and each others lives.

You Brits can see that this all adds up to quite a day, an impressive event. More amazing (to us) is that this all happens generally within days of the passing away of the person, the whole 'machine' fires up and all the stages are organised and slotted into place. In the UK, that is normally the work of weeks - we hear that person X has died and maybe 3 weeks later we find out the arrangements for the funeral. They KNOW that this is all a bit special here and there have been some excellent (including funny in some cases) books written and TV programmes made explaining the process. I hesitate to compete with those, but thought my UK friends might like a small flavour of what it means when someone here says "There was a funeral".

Additional reading - Try the book "How to be Irish" by David Slattery

https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Irish-Uncovering-Curiosities-Behaviour/dp/1871305241