Nearly 60, You Know!

Liz is currently enjoying knitting with some pure wool. 

Regular readers will remember fondly with us, the late Diane Walsh (formerly Riches), a very good friend from our Faversham days. Diane used to regularly amuse us with stories of her friends and relatives from 'up North' - Stockton on Tees - from where she hailed. One of these was an elderly friend of her Mother. This lady, 'Ellie' was forever proudly telling all and sundry how old she was and how she managed with it.

2 Brown (Irish) Hares check us out from a safe distance after
we'd met them in a narrow lane. 

Her regular was "I'm nearly 84, you know!" which lasted from just after her 83rd Birthday and as quick as you like became "I'm nearly 85, you know!" within days of her year clicking over to the next year. Then she'd assure you that she "doesn't get out any more..... oh, except for Bingo...oh and when (Diane's Mum) takes her shopping.... and the Post Office to collect her pension... oh and the occasional car outing... etc etc" Bless her. She is still with us as far as we know, and must be way over 90 by now (Nearly 91, you know?).

All the logs in the front garden split and the machine lowered
into travelling position. I towed it round to the yard with the car.

I am cruising in towards my 59th Birthday in a few days and wondering if the day afterwards, I might get away with an "I'm nearly 60, you know....and I don't get out any more". I suspect that those who know me will tell me that this is because I love this place so much you have to pry me free with a crow-bar and, anyway, neither of us feel at all like we are either "nearly 60" or much much younger (depends on which of us you are talking about, he said carefully). Liz can't quite believe she is married to a bloke who is nearly 60, and I certainly don't feel that old, or see someone that old in the mirror. I find I have no reference point. I don't know anyone who was particularly 60 while I was watching.

Squawk, our 9-10 year old Cuckoo Marans, still laying those
dark brown spotted eggs.

Ah well. These things happen anyway and need celebrating, so as I write this I am a bit stuffed up with food and rather awash with the good Guinness. Not to a dangerous degree, I hasten to add. It was also very recently K-Dub's Birthday, so we adjourned to his local pub close to the Sligo house for a few (Liz drove us there and collected us later, nipping off to spend an evening knitting at Carolyn and putting the world to rights in the meantime). Then today a nice family tradition - the Birthday boy/girl gets to choose the menu and/or the restaurant and here I am happy to be a "cheap date".

Gorgeous George, the Gander

I do not need fancy restaurants or expensively 'foodie' fare - my idea of Heaven just now is the "bacon and cabbage" option at The Golden Eagle (Hester's) in Castlerea and 2 pints of Guinness. We had a nice salad starter and Liz had a pot of tea afterwards, but that was it. Nothing finer. I am stuffed with the food and a tiny bit squiffy from the beer. I will need no proper supper, but there is a lovely rhubarb cake sitting on the sideboard there and I have ice cream in the freezer. There is also some good cheese knocking about somewhere, so while Liz is off at knitting club I will not be starving.

The dog micro-chip certs are quite posh, serious affairs
on heavy paper. Impressed.

What else is a-foot? Our dog micro-chip certs came back from the database people at Fido.IE (Yes, I know!) and were impressive heavy-weight paper. I was expecting some aul' print out slip torn off at the perforations. I am not sure why you'd need such a posh certificate - I can't imagine anyone framing it for the office wall, for example. Impressive, none the less.

Baba and Marta (Myfanwy's lambs) enjoy the climbing pile

I have finally ploughed my way through the stack of tree slices  using the borrowed log splitter. I rescued a few rounds and built a mini pyramid in the East Field for the lambs and kid to play on, having seen how much they enjoy the grassy knoll further down the field. The youngsters have quickly adopted this and we can see them enjoying leaping on and off, playing 'King of the Castle' from the Kitchen window. I have seen mum-goat Nanny Óg up on it too with her baby. The baby goat tends to sprong up there on all four feet, boinging about like Tigger.

Guinea cock 'Apollo'. What a handsome fella!

The weather has taken a turn for the worse, reverting to freezing rain and bitter raw winds just when we were getting used to March's (false) spring. This has stalled the bumble bee surveying for the moment, killed all thoughts of opening our honey-bee hive to check for brood and stopped all outdoor gardening. Everything around field entrances is, once more, a soggy mess into which I am firing quantities of the shredded wood to try to mop up the sloppy wet. Back indoors, then, to light a fire and think about writing this blog. Have to look after myself and keep myself warm and dry. I'm nearly 59 you know!

That's all (S)he Wrote

Done with the bee exam, a restorative Guinness

Huge relief at this end today as we make another milestone on our chug through these busy months; I survived my big beekeeping exam this morning over in Longford. This was a 'proper' exam like I can remember them from A levels and University; 3 hours of tough fast writing and rapidly compiling all the material you have revised and forced into your skull in the course of our "bee school" study groups, book reading and internet training videos. 5 questions to answer (Answer question 1 and any 4 from the remaining 7 (some of which were two part either/or style). A proper exam 'hall' with the official invigilator seated at one end, the time-set clock running and dead silence.

Those lambs take shelter from the rain.

Well, we all survived and everyone seemed to be writing a good few reams - I covered 13 sides of A4 but we had all agreed that we would do no post-mortems. Our main comment was that we were all 'of a certain age' and had not written anything like that amount on paper with an actual pen for about 30 years or more, so the hand cramps were killing on occasion and I saw everybody putting down pens and flexing and unflexing fingers to try to get some mobility back into the digits.

Who's the cutest? Probably not the one in the middle, anyway!

As I was going to be in Longford for at least 3 hours, Liz had taken the opportunity to  come with me to the town and try out the shopping potential - Longford is an hour's drive, so we have not really explored it much,though I was much impressed by the Christmas lights up the main street. So we parted in the Tesco car park at 09:00 and off Liz went to suss out Birthday presents for brother and Mum and may also have accidentally bought a replacement laptop for our ancient, ex-work, over-heating problem machine.

Replacement brain-food, Hester's of Castlerea do
a most excellent bacon and cabbage. 

She was then outside at 12:30 to gather a rather shell-shocked husband up and take him off for a restorative lunch and a couple of pints of the black stuff. This being a treat for me, I got to choose the place and my current favourite 'pub lunch' is the bacon and cabbage at Hester's "Golden Eagle" in Castlerea and a pint or two of their beautiful Guinness. I will not find out whether I have passed for months if FIBKA's speed on the preliminary exam marking is anything to go by but I find I don't mind that much. I have given it my best shot and the 13 pages, well, that's all he wrote, it's done now and too late to worry about it.

A nose smeared with Mum's milk and decorated with a long strand
of her wool. Perhaps we'll use those to tell them apart?

Although this was a serious exam, nothing hangs on it, I can keep bees anyway and I am not using the qualification to try to get a job in the commercial honey industry, it was just for fun. It is also just one third of the three you must take to achieve full intermediate status. There is another more science and biology based paper (anatomy, development, physiology, pheromone chemistry and the like as compared to this paper which was on bee-keeping and hive management) and then there is a hive session where the examiners visit you at your own apiary and make you jump through hoops to prove you know what you are doing. I am not sure whether the Longford BKA will be volunteering for either of these, which they would presumably do in 2016 and 2017 respectively. We will cross that bridge when we come to it.

Early pollen for the bees. Willow.

For now I can put all the books, mags and printed notes away back in their proper shelves and swap over to reading something easy and light instead of the learnéd tomes by Ted Hooper, David Cramp and Claire and Adrian Waring, enjoyable though they were. My lovely relieved feeling joins the flood already established of relief at the lambing which as well as going amazingly well, managed to avoid the bee exam - I was eye-ing that Polly up a little nervously and pleading with her not to do it to me on exam morning. That might have been too much distraction.

Pulmonaria putting on a good show.

Those two things have been a real focus and we can now mentally move on to this weekend's celebrations in Silverwood of the two family birthdays, then Easter. Then we have a stint of Liz being away again (back in Silverwood) supporting one parent while the other takes a break in the sun, possibly my own birthday if it doesn't get lost in the scrum (!), the arrival soon of pigs and all other spring into summer 'ground-rush' events. Possibly even some first 2015 bee hive inspections (I might know what we're at now). It's all go.

A good use for cold roast lamb and the left over suet - mini pies

Meanwhile the baby lambs are thriving on their mother's ample milk and have had a few visiting admirers - even Bob. They are starting to explore their field now as they follow Polly at her grazing and you see them bouncing around on all four tip-toes (it's called "pronking" in deer, but I'm not sure if that applies to lambs). They seem to retreat to the field shelter at night or to get out of the rain. I have had to start feeding the families a distance apart, or the babies mill around the troughs and the grown-ups feel the need to head-butt them away from the food, even though they are not trying to get any. Onwards and upwards.

The Run Around

John Deere 5310 Tractor clutch

With John Deere Bob still tractor-less due to the clutch problem, I am by now, pretty much his own private driver. He needs to get down to check on his cattle each day and get to the shops and Post Office, the old boy, and he is also a fiercely independent type of bloke and must be going stir-crazy without his usual transport, so I am happy to help.  When Bob phones for a 'taxi' these runs normally go as advertised - "Could you take me to Lisacul?" and off we go to Lisacul. It's quick and of minimal inconvenience. But not yesterday. Yesterday a simple run turned into a Somerville and Ross style, farcical adventure worthy of a blog post, so I thought I would share it with you.

2 day old Hubbard Chick

Bob had taken a call from his repair man, Jim B which he understood to say that his tractor was fixed and he could come and collect it. I was half way through assembling my lunchtime sandwich but thought it would be so quick I'd take Bob to Jim's and leave the sandwich to complete on my return. Off we went, with Bob even saying that we needn't go 'lookering' first because he'd be able to do that in the repaired tractor. Something made me decide to stay with Bob till he had the keys in his hands and the tractor running, rather than just drop him and flee - he has no mobile, so would have been left stuck at Jim's if the tractor proved not to be ready.

The "Dirty Dozen" our new Hubbard chicks.

We could both see, as we walked in, that the tractor was still in bits, the front and rear halves separated and the 'guts' hanging out. No, said Jim, I didn't say the tractor was ready, only the clutch is ready and you can collect it from Brogan's in Ballintober, about 10 km beyond our nearby town of Castlerea. Now, a tractor clutch is not your simple disk and springs like you'd have in a car. It is a massive heavy assembly of casings, discs and sprung levers about 15 inches across, 6 inches 'deep' and weighing 30 kg or so. I could barely lift it. I am not sure how Jim thought Bob (70) was going to manage it, but that was now our mission. Oh, and it was going to cost €700 just for the part. Brogan's and Jim's labour would be on top of that, so we were going to need to find a bank.

As we approached Brogan's, Bob started looking nervously at his watch. Most garages, trades shops and the like have a genuine lunch hour in these places, shutting up shop from 1 pm to 2 pm. It was 13:03 as we pulled in to Brogan's yard and overalled mechanics were leaving in droves. We were looking at having to wait an hour in the road outside. BUT as we only needed to collect our bit and hand over €700, Mr Brogan was more than happy to do that before he closed. That was one plus-point in this tale. I lugged the cardboard box containing this mighty part to the car.

Heading back to Castlerea Bob voiced the need to find a bank and also said that the bank's lunch hour was 12:30 to 13:30, so we'd need to kill 20 minutes or so. He offered to treat me to lunch. Hester's, he suggested. This happens to be my favourite restaurant locally for my ideal Irish meal, 'bacon and cabbage'. 2nd plus point. We sprinted through a downpour from car to the Hotel and ate gratefully and hungrily - Bob has a hearty appetite too, and piled into his turkey and ham. Next to the bank where Bob drew out the extra money needed.

A first glimpse of Goldie's (rabbit) kittens at 3 days old.

From there 'home' to Jim's where we handed over the clutch only for Jim to heft it out of its box and declare, "You need to go back above, the PTO disc is not here!" (The local idiom is a bewildering mixture of 'over yonder', 'away above', 'beyond below' and other direction and elevation phrases which bear no relation to the longitude or altitude of destinations). Bob was a bit irritated by this and made the mistake, in his own calm, patient, quiet spoken way of suggesting that if he'd known he was going to get this much hassle he'd have had the job done in Brogan's. Unbeknownst to me he had already told Jim that our mutual friend 'Mike the Cows' had helpfully told Bob he could have done the job for €500. Jim had a melt down shouting and swearing, kicking cardboard boxes across the floor and letting fly a stream of invective which was mostly too fast and in such a powerful accent that I missed all bar the last three words which were "....so Fuck yeh!" as he stomped off from the garage and went round to his house. He was not happy. Bob tells me he is not generally like this and was "cross" because he must be having a bad day.

New 2 m 'tan' birch trees.

There was nothing for it but to head back to Ballintober and try to collect the part, both of us having fits of laughter at the theatrical anger of Jim. Bob kept referring to it in the car, rubbing his hands together and chuckling in his wheezy hissed laugh. We also had to go via Bob's so that he could change out of his wellies and into normal shoes. Oh, and could we also go check on the cows as he'd now need to do that from the car. From the cows then, to Bob's and back to Ballintober where Mr Brogan quickly found the missing part, the PTO disc (this one thankfully light and much smaller than the clutch itself). Mr B also had a laugh about Jim's meltdown, saying "He's a mean man today... It's thankful that he never grew up to be a big fella!" Back next towards Jim's but now Bob got cold feet about facing Jim's wrath and suggested that I drop him off at home and then drop the PTO disc to Jim's on my own. He even mischievously suggested that I stir Jim up by passing on Mr Brogan's message. No thank you, Bob. Well, Jim's beef had not been with me, so I guessed he'd be calmed down and, anyway, OK with me. So it proved. Jim tried a theatrical scowl as our Fiat pulled in to the yard again but his face split into a grin when he saw it was only me in the car. "Bob too scared to come back then?" he guessed.

So that was that. Jim had his part and had calmed down enough to laugh heartily at the fit he'd thrown. "He vexes me so!" said Jim, "He's on the phone every half an hour!" Ah well. No harm done. I had a nice chat with Jim telling him all about our rebuild of TK-Min's place and asking him about his garage and his work. He mainly does 4 wheel drive transmissions and big stuff like engine changes. We parted on the best of terms and it only remained for me to report back to Bob to let him know everybody was best friends again. Bob was still chuckling about the adventure today when we went out on today's mercifully short 'lookering' run.

Other than the clutch pic at the top of this post, the pictures today have nothing to do with Bob or his tractor parts. They are a quick way of saying that we have started another batch of Hubbard chicks, with big thanks to Anne and Simon for their pilgrimage up to the Border to collect ours as well as batches for other 'customers'. Secondly we have now seen a first glimpse of Goldie the rabbit's 'kittens' and thirdly we have now received from Carolyn and K-Dub a delivery of 'tan' birch trees which we have planted in the small copses we are starting around the pond garden.