A Good Sign?

You may be able just to make out 2 sheep shouting for their
breakfast through the snow. Another dire morning.

We may be finally seeing signs of coming out of the long, cold and dark Winter. In the last post, I alluded to some data suggesting that most of Northern Europe had experienced the darkest (least sunshine) winter on record. Today we saw confirmation that Ireland had been soaked by the wettest January since 1885 (yes, I DID say Eighteen Eighty Five!). Come on Met Éireann... enough's enough. We can all take a joke but.... I can hear the faint laughter of all those Kent friends muttering "Well, you DID move to Ireland"

Kato assists with the St Brigid's cross
assembly. 

Ah well, now that we are through the 1st of February, St Brigid's Day, Celtic / pre-Christian first day of Spring (Imbolc which translates as "in the belly" and refers, obviously, to all the new birth and fecundity). I promise you that today, in bright sunshine and no wind, I got a strong feeling that we might be drying out a little. The puddles have all but drained away, the concrete paths are that pale grey of dryness, not the shiny dark of wet or icy concrete. The mud underfoot, where we have mud, is now sticky, rather than sloppy. A good sign? There are people everywhere touching any wood they can lay their hands on and steeling themselves not to speak too soon.

Way more elabourate than mine, this St Brigid Cross was a gift
from our good friends Con and Niamh.

The output of eggs is definitely rising as the 2017 birds realise that there is (as they say here) a "grand old stretch in the evenings". They are now not taking themselves off to roost till half past five.

Last year's cross now all dried out and the new one. There
are various traditions regarding what to do with the old ones.

Today I collected 3 duck eggs (which is a 100% hit rate for them - we only have 3 females) and 13 hen eggs, which is a new site record. This is definitely enough hens for us - we don't want to be over-run with eggs. Still no action from the geese, though. In previous years they have come back in to lay in November but not this winter.

Spring busting out all over, at least in
the tubs dept. 

My good friend Miles (in Kent) says he goes with Valentine's Day but one of his geese started early this year, presenting him with an egg today. Like with all these things, we are in the lap of Mother Nature and we will have to preserve our souls in patience and wait and see.

Snowdrops down by the gate. 

In the plants dept, we have plenty of bulbs pushing up, especially in the pots and tubs. You expect these to be early because the tubs cool down quicker than the ground, so get frost-treated early, and then warm up faster to start the new season's growth. We have a good collection of daffs and tulips looking very promising this week and the snowdrops down by the gate are almost there.

That much heralded Blue Moon. This pic off the Internet.
We saw nothing of it due to cloud cover.

We had to smile ruefully at one 'casualty' of the wet. We alone in all the world seem to have been denied a view of the much talked-about and heralded full moon on 31st Jan which was going to be Blue and Super and even Blood in some parts of the globe. I was amused to see respected newspapers putting the 'blood' thing on their websites, possibly unaware that it was only going to be 'bloody' (eclipsed) in other parts of the globe, nowhere in UK or Ireland.

"Our" piglets at 18 days

Social Media was also chock-full of rather daft photo-shopped or double-exposed made up pics of the moon unfeasibly huge - filling half the frame as it rose through a city sky-line straddling several sky-scrapers or the whole width of rivers. What ever the case, we were not to see it at all on the 31st, due to the cloud cover. We saw it 24 hours prior and 24 hours post, though, so we will be happy with that.

The piglets look quite big till you see
them dwarfed by Mum's rump.  

Over in Boyle, half an hour's drive away, "our" piglets continue to thrive and grow on plentiful supplies of Mum's milk. Breeder, Adrian. generously sends me pics every now and then when ever we are in touch confirming quantities required and any friends we might have who also want them. The babies in these pics (which may end up being ours) were born on 15th Jan so, all being well, we can collect them on 12th March. Watch this space.

A pretty risotto under construction. 

I think that is probably about it for this one.

Rolled and tied shoulder cut.

I will talk to you again on Tuesday.

Taken on Liz's phone. I am joined by 3 dogs and
Soldier the cat as I read my book.

Have a good 'Imbolc' one and all.

Twin Ewe Lambs for Lily

Twins Rosie (l) and Lucy (r) only an hour or so old. 

After the worrying dog-related events of the last post I am hugely relieved and delighted to be able to bring you, in this one, some happy news; being the birth of twin ewe lambs to our 5-year old ewe, Lily on Valentine's Day (yesterday). Regular readers will know we had been anticipating a happy event for a few days now and my timings were based on the almost immediate "bond" (this is a family show!) between our loaned ram, 'Rambo' and ewe Lily on his arrival back last year.

Brought indoors against a frosty night.

We had been getting plenty of clues in the days prior - Lily sitting in far corner of the field well away from her 'sisters', looking uncomfortable and even 'star-gazing'. This is when they must feel the stirrings and get uncomfortable so they tip their head all the way back till their nose is pointing straight up. Then on Sunday morning the crunch-clue, no interest in breakfast. This is unheard of for Lily except on lambing day. The girl likes her grub. We were into hourly checks by now and the binoculars LIVE on the dining room table, so that we can sneak quick peeks in between the proper, up close, checks. I walked the dogs early as a relief from pacing and returned just as my normal dog-walk alarm went off at 11:45. It was at that Lily-check that I noticed the first signs of action - membrane and dribbly fluids.

Lizzie does 'shepherdess'

She had no problems passing the enormous ram-lamb Feste last year, so I was not expecting any this time and pretty much left her to it and kept a close eye. The first lamb slipped out fast and efficiently at around 13:00 - as I walked down the drive to get the gate for Liz nipping to town in the car, I could see Lily now licking intently at something on the ground. I sprinted back over there and could see lamb #1 getting a vigorous licking but already on its feet and trying to find some udder. This was a very dark lamb and looked like a ewe from my carefully distant viewpoint.

It was quickly clear that the show was not over. Lily continued to pace about with her back arched very uncomfortably, turning round and round to get at all sides of the new lamb, and soon passed another big 'balloon' of amniotic sac full of fluid; surely the 'waters' for a 2nd birth. Liz arrived home and quickly spotted that the 2nd lamb had now arrived (14:30), this one another ewe but beautifully spotted, blotched and streaked with black and white. Now we could see that this was the lot - Lily relaxed back into a normal spine-curve and started to shed the bloody, gloopy, membrane-y afterbirth(s). Well done Lily (and Rambo, we guess!) - 2 beautifully healthy ewe lambs and no problems all done and dusted in just 2 and 3/4 hours.

We'll call that a strikingly beautiful looking sauce -
Black Spring's Nan's Pork Hock

With the forecast giving a hard frosty night and our 2 resident hooded crows hopping about the East Field, plus the risk of foxes who will happily carry off a new born lamb we had decided to move the family indoors to the safety of the (now) turkey house. This is easy enough - I pick up the lambs while Mum looks on a bit curiously, and then walk slowly 'home' across the field with Mum following her anxiously-bleating babies and Liz managing gates to stop she-goats and curious other-ewes  from wandering. The new family are now safely penned into my sheep-hurdle rectangle on a nice dry bed of clean straw, warm out of the frost and safe from crows and foxes (and dogs!). They survived their first night and today we did the necessary iodine-spray of navels and (dock) banding of tails. The babies have already been visited and admired by 3 people.

Black Spring's Nan's Pork Hock with simple rice and cabbage

With good timing, the happy event and the should-be-celebratory weekend of Valentine's Day has coincided with the stock-control department here lifting the embargo on using 'new' food from the freezers. The freezers had become a bit over-run with tinfoil trays, 1 litre yogurt tubs and old plastic milk bottles full of portions of left overs from former meals, sauces and stocks. These all needed using up so we'd done a month of lovely but long forgotten curries, cold roast meats, risottos, stir fries and veg plus starting a goodly batch of "hedgerow" wine and creating a few fruit desserts. I also unearthed some brawns and patés.

Mucking out the nanny goat.

The end of this very enjoyable campaign happily coincided too with the Chief Chef having done a weird work-week on a First Aid course Mon-Weds, so that she got Thursday right round to Tuesday 'off' and was keen to get back into the kitchen and at the 'new' meat in the freezers. 2 superb cakes were followed by lovely bread, multiple pots of paté, roast lamb (which then yielded several follow-up meals), a salt-cured leg of 2014 Tamworth (bacon and cabbage plus a lovely Tuscan 'bean and bacon' soup). Crowning glory of this burst of Domestic Goddess-ery was probably a family favourite which I have mentioned before, 'Black Spring's Nan's Pork Hock' but this time enhanced.

An army marches on its sticky toffee pudding?

The recipe calls for "chilli bean paste/sauce" which is something we had never managed to find in Ireland so Liz had been trying to substitute in any kind of chilli 'stuff'; the dish had been delicious but we had no way of knowing if it was delicious 'enough'. Then at the last trip to Macknades Deli in Kent, Liz had found some of the real McCoy, so this try got the right amount of the correct ingredients and the sauce was blow-yer-socks-off gorgeous! A real lip tingling winter-warmer, which only needed simple white rice and steamed savoy cabbage to accompany it. The sauce also LOOKED rather spectacular bubbling away in the pan. Add to all that a heroic dessert of sticky toffee pudding (with ice cream or cream and extra toffee-sauce) and I will happily recommend this restaurant to any prospective customers. Bring your loosest waist-band trousers. No pressure on the sous-chef then, when the boss goes back to grafting and relinquishes the saucepans and the hob.

Freeze Dried

Neither of us have seen anything quite like this bizarre weather. We are not complaining that it is unseasonably dry after last summer's sogginess but we are amazed by the weeks of relentless NE cold wind. We used to get NE winds in North Kent, of course, but generally only for a few days. I think I am correct in saying that we had our much trumpeted drought from Valentine's Day round to early March (19 days) and then just a few days of wet before this NE wind arrived on 9th March. That has now blown almost continuously for the 3 weeks since, bringing plenty of clear skies, bitter, frosty nights and just very occasional dust-like frozen snow.

The soil is dry enough to raise dust and what small amount of water there is in the soil is frozen, so unavailable to plants. The poor things are suffering frost/wind-burn like you would not believe, even the known drought-tolerant Mediterranean herbs like Rosemary and some hardy species like Verbena bonariensis (Purple verbena) and perennial wallflower. All the new growth, encouraged into motion by the warmth of our false spring is frazzled, curled and dead like the worst drought. It is one of those things - we assume the plants will recover and produce some new growth from still-dormant axial buds when a proper, more honest spring comes along, thawing the small amount of water that is here already and supplying a top-up.

So, yesterday we completed out dutiful paying of respects to the late James Harrinton. We were off down to the big, drafty, unheated church in Loughglynn for the service, which turned out to be a full Mass (I gather this is unusual for Holy Saturday). The church was packed with maybe 300 folk. We saw John Deere Bob in there sitting away to one side at the back, and we were joined in our pew by neighbour, Una C. I have my first Irish cold bug so I feel very bunged up and moopy, and sitting at the back of this church for an hour had me chilled down to the kidneys. Liz got on OK in a woolen suit and the vintage mink coat (those two thicknesses of 'cloth' even made the pew feel comfortable!) but we were both relieved when it was over and we could shuffle outside into the thin sunshine.

In matters of etiquette I take my cue from JD Bob here, and he had his black woolly 'Thinsulate' hat back on his head within seconds of stepping out into the car-park, so I did too. Also, he was not going out to the grave yard with the hearse and procession, so we took that as permission to also depart and get back into the warm, light the range, walk dogs, do shopping and, in Liz's case get into 'Domestic Goddess' mode baking and food prepping for our guests the next day, now today of course.

Today we are hosts to 2CV acquaintances John and Carol Mellor. I vaguely recognise John from 2CV events gone by, from his pictures in Facebook, but do not know them in any real sense. However, John is organising and fronting up a holiday tour 2CV convoy (They call them 'Raids' in 2CV land) for his Bristol-based 2CV club local group (The Bath Tub Club) in Summer all up and down the West of Ireland and is over here this Easter weekend to 'recce' the route. We saw his notices in the club magazine and, as their route is passing through Connemara, an hour or so away, we decided to offer our house and grounds as a port-in-the-storm, respite from bad weather if they get it, warm dry place to recover, fix broken cars etc. John is delighted with this and, although he agrees the official route is a way off here, has accepted the offer to call by on his recce to get fed and possibly stay overnight. We are doing him slow roasted lamb and assorted other bakery etc. Should be fun and nice to meet some new friends.

Catching up

The usual collection of pics to catch you up on the stuff which doesn't really wrangle into a good blog story.
1) Mum attacks some loose plaster with the mini-Kango
2) Mum and Dad took advantage of the absence of Sparks on Monday night, after the anti-woodworm spraying job, to celebrate St Valentine's Day with this steak (half each!), chips, Prosecco 'fizz'. Maybe the strong chemical whiff of dieselly stuff coming off the spray added to the romantic sensory delights.
3) Sparks living up to his name, angle-grinding a big metal strap out of the new, bigger, kitchen window orifice.
4) Last thing Friday saw the boys putting back the stud walls which separate the landing and stair well from either bedroom.
5) Big brother to the "Paslode" nail gun which you have already seen. This one is nominally for firing masonry type pins into metal, concrete or masonry. In fact, however, this house goes in for very hard, brittle stone and modern concrete. For the geologically minded these are hard Lower (i.e. older) Carboniferous Sandstones and Limestones which come out of the soil in these parts, including some which are known as 'blue-stone' like the ones used in Stonehenge. There! What an educational blog this is! Stamp Man, former Geography Teacher, would be proud of us! This gun, which carries the brand "SPIT" gun, fires its masonry pins into this stuff and the tips tend to explode ripping out a small crater in the surface of the stone (and/or lintel)half an inch deep and an inch or so across, the stone shards buzzing round the room like ricochetting bullets. Safety goggles are a must. Unfortunately you don't end up with the thing successfully nailed up, so we've been reverting to good old fashioned wooden battens, drilled holes and screws.

Deefs

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