Cull a Cock Curry

Skinny light-weights. These roosters we are
culling are not even 21 weeks old yet, so
they are only making weights of 1.5-1.7 kg
in oven-ready form.

A genuinely short post this time as very little is currently happening. Even the one positive 'story' we had planned for today was postponed for 2 weeks. That was the arrival of our two new Guinea hens. The friend who was going to arrive with them was not, for various reasons, able to identify 2 females for us and then isolate them. Sexing Guinea Fowl is notoriously hard and usually based upon the females calling "buckwheat buckwheat" and the males not. If you are looking at a pen full of birds who are not calling, you are a bit stumped, as you can imagine. Better luck in the next fortnight, Billy.

What's in YOUR freezer? Although ours (plural) are well set
up, organized and everything labelled we do sometimes get nice
surprises, like this goodly rack of venison chops.

We have started the process of culling out these spare roosters. I killed 2 last night after lock-up. Going in there in the dark with just the head torch is the quietest way we have found. Nobody panics around flapping. The bird just allows himself to be "grabbed" enfolding his wings and carried out. Our normal system here is for me to rear and then kill the birds, which are then presented to Liz who processes them through the plucking and cleaning out stages. She loves that job and gets herself set up with a Radio 4 "In Our Time" pod or an Agatha Christie play on the laptop.

4 litres of goat's milk for the next cheese.
Thanks Sue and Rob.

The roosters here are being culled out to remove a 'too many men' problem, rather than because they are ready to eat. They are less than 21 weeks old so quite light-weight and, when plucked out look very rangy and skinny. They weigh in, oven-ready, at 1.5 to 1.7 kg which looks and feels very little when you are used to meaty Hubbard carcasses which go 3.5 kg at 80 days.

Ginger Wine (also from S+R). Sweet and
a bit 'viscous', more like a liqueur.

We don't mind that at all though. The Hubbards we always joint up prior to freezing because the two of us cannot manage more than a few bits (a thigh each or maybe 2 drumsticks). These little fellas do not need any of that - we will roast (or curry, or 'au vin', or spatch-cock or whatever) the whole bird and eat half each like you would with a poussin.

Cream cheese under construction. 

We took our fertile (we hope) duck eggs over to Sue and Rob's to go in their incubator, this being our plan to up the number of ducks on site. I took, as well, a load of empty plastic 2 and 3 litre milk bottles, which they use for the goat milking. I also took a small incubator part (con-rod for the egg rocker servo) which I had repaired, plus got a chance to admire their newly borrowed Suffolk ram. This guy has come from a nearby farm and was the lad we were also going to use but we then decided to keep bought-in ram lamb 'Pedro'. He is 4 years old, big and magnificent. He has already been 'at work', Rob told me, so they are hoping for lambs in April.

"Play" Station? Liz is inputting the entire text of the Drama
Group's chosen play into a word document.

When you go to S+R's bearing gifts, you never seem to come away empty handed. I came away with 4 litres of goat's milk, a bottle of ginger wine to try and a stack of old egg boxes, useful for when we next in 'glut' mode. Thanks Sue and Rob. You guys are the salt of the earth.

That's about it. Just a couple more pics because I have them. This one is of me sitting down to enjoy a farming 'pod' and quickly being invaded by dog 'Towser' and cat 'Chivers'. It was taken by Liz but I was very amused by the state of my feet which look about 2" too long and pointy at the ends. My socks must have ridden down when I was last in my wellies and I have not noticed. Ah well.

Then we found in the fridge, in need of using up by Stir-up Sunday, one of last year's Christmas puds - it frees up the silver thru'pences and the basin, you understand. In this house we go with the Hastings tradition of making the recipient of the slice choose whether the server cut to their left or right, so that they cannot see the coinage sticking out and 'cheat'. Here the coin is arrowed in yellow. And , no, I am not going to wish anyone a 'Merry Christmas' just yet - it's still early November.

Weather Bomb?

A nice seasonal ale from Wychwood, the
makers of Hobgoblin.

We had our forecast first big storm of the winter, with strong winds  from Tuesday afternoon, through Wednesday and into Thursday morning. There were some impressive weather maps on line, particularly one of wave energy or 'swell energy' which is a factor beloved of the surfers who try to ride the big Atlantic waves up on our NW coasts. This had a dramatic black patch in our corner of the Ocean (black being for wave energies of over 25,000 KJ per metre of wave height per wave) surrounded by vivid red rings fading through orange to the calmer colours. There were, too, some impressive graphs of wave height, with double deck buses on for comparison; they got 21 metre waves off Donegal. Possibly for these dramatic reasons, the media seemed to adopt this storm system keenly and christened it a "Weather Bomb!" and naming the bad day Black Wednesday to allow for eye catching dramatic headlines. I wonder what me aul' Dad, a lifelong teacher of geography and lover of meteorology would have made of all that. What's wrong with 'significant anticyclone' or 'deep depression' I can hear him asking, or even big storm or gale force winds.

We may only have a small kitchen but Liz
was always going to find room for one of
these bad boys - the new dish washer.

Anyway, we got our 'Yellow Warning' from Met Éireann so we battened down the hatches and listened nervously to the wind roaring through our big trees and the rain splattering against the windows, watching nervously in case the out-building roof(s) might move about but we survived both nights and I could report back to Liz after my first-thing patrol and dog-walk that everyone and everything were still where they should be. We had survived the 'Weather Bomb(!)' and Black Wednesday. Windswept and interesting. These systems then tend to move off across the Scotland, or nip round Ireland's SE coast and hit Wales and England and we feel sorry for our friends in those places who are reporting their own storm damage a day after we've been in the thick of it.

A light freeze after the 'Weather Bomb', proper ice on the
 pond for the first time this winter and some rime on the
grass.

Temporary disappointment in the sheep department; I must preserve my soul in patience a while longer. I was hoping to collect the girls this weekend and therefore be able to report some sheep on site in this year's census. But these things do not always go to plan, and my friend Mayo-Liz has been called to do some extra shifts and 'the boys' who need to help separate my ewes from the flock and move them up from the lower fields are not available either, so the ewes get to spend a few more days in Mayo. They are reported in good health, though and almost certainly 'with child' plus they have been given their Heptavac P jabs ( "For the active immunisation of sheep as an aid in the control of lamb dysentery, pulpy kidney, struck, tetanus, braxy, blackleg, black disease and clostridial metritis caused by (assorted Clostridia types)". So says MSD Health, the maker of this widely used sheep medicine. When Mayo-Liz gets a chance she will do the separation and bring my ewes up to her barn, then phone me to come and get them. These things can't be helped especially around Christmas and with livestock

The bees have not been seen outside the hive since December began, so we hope they are nice and safe in their football sized winter cluster. There was white rime on the hive roof this morning but deep inside they will be maintaining the temperature of the small amount of live brood which they keep going through the winter, buzzing their flight muscles to generate heat, or fanning their wings to get more air flow. They may still fly on warm days (over about ten degrees)  but one of the adaptations of the local subspecies to the local conditions is a higher than average ability to retain 'poo' in the gut. They need to fly to get rid of this to keep the hive hygienic and so that they do not suffer from dysentery, so they do better if Met Éireann give them a warmer day every couple of weeks so that they can do a few "cleansing" flights, but they can go months without if need be.

The electricity pole is finally swapped over
and the old one felled.

In the poultry department we may have some light at the end of the egg-less tunnel. Last week was our worst ever with just one egg from 9 hens, but today I got 2 eggs AND the Guinea Hen has re-started her annoying and incessant 'buck-wheat buck-wheat' mating calls. This is a relief - we have been buying eggs and Lidl's Connell Farm Organic eggs may be "freshly laid by hens with freedom to roam freely on organic pastures" but they are, to us, spoiled as we are by our own eggs, insipid and pale yolked things.

ESB (the Electricity Supply Board) finally showed up to swap our power lines across to the new pole and to delicately drop the old pole into our garden, neatly missing all my young trees. I enjoyed watching them - they do not use ladders, it seems, to shinny up these poles, but strap-on leg irons which hook round the pole and grip it, but then give each foot a cantilevered platform to stand on. The man then has a strap round his waist and round the pole and by shuffling his weight from foot to foot to waist he was up and down and round and round the pole doing up all his cables and iron work with the ease and grace of a monkey up a tree, with both hands free to use the tools hooked to his belt. He takes up with him a block and tackle to  so that his man on the ground can hoist bigger tools up and down to him without him having to come down for them. Very efficient. Power was only off for 2 hours and we slotted our shopping into that gap so that we now have our Christmas tree and a batch of white wine ready for our house guest, plus the almonds for the marzipan for the cake.

Black Feather's Day 31.

Hunting for Guinea Fowl eggs. 

Monday the 12th May and day 31 for the Black Feather goose incubation, so we are hovering around all expectantly and keep poking our noses into the girl's private bedroom to see if we can see or hear any evidence of fluffy gosling heads poking up from between the sitter's pristine white feathers. If solid and consistent sitting is anything to go by then Black Feather should be an A1 brooder - she has stuck to the job with first rate professionalism for the whole period, only coming off the eggs for her 'allowed' 20-30 minutes each day to eat, bathe in the big pond and presumably to do her toilet. As I type this, though, at 14:30 on the first likely day we have no movement so far, but that would be normal. These things go at their own pace and the poultry-man must go by the 'watched pot never boils' school of patience.

Guinea Fowl nest with 16 eggs

Sadly, we have a tragic event to include today, the 'loss' of our Guinea Fowl cock-bird Henry, he of the frequent hanging about in the lane and on the verge  keeping watch while the hen bird (Min) laid her daily egg in the bushes. My top photo shows Liz at the nest site which we eventually found. It was with a grim inevitability that we found Henry's sorry, flattened body on the tarmac on Friday afternoon. We quickly checked that Min was 'home' and realised that we might have the same noisy grieving process from Min as we have recently described for the rescue Guinea 'Blondie'. This is a definite failure on our part but would be part of keeping your birds completely free range. We could only have prevented it by caging the Guineas in some kind of tall-sided aviary and that is not how we do things here - we would sooner not keep birds, but it is still an unhappy 'first' for us a bird killed on the road.

Guinea Fowl eggs.

Mercifully (for us and for her!) Min does not seem to be suffering the loss as much as Blondie did hers, so we are not getting long periods of loud, strident, carrying, heart-rending, 'Buckwheat buckwheat' calls; we just get a short burst morning and another in the evening. We put this down to the Guineas having been well integrated into our flock as a whole, so Min is nothing like as lonely as Blondie and in between the calling she hangs out with the hens moving about with them, feeding, sheltering from showers and so on. Also Mercifully, she has completely given up on the nest across the lane and does not go out of the gate any more, not even to look for Henry. This observation had Mentor Anne asking "so who was leading who astray, then?"

Setting the Guinea eggs in the incubator.

We decided that we might as well gather up the eggs from Min's possible nest and see if we might hatch any; we'd keep Henry's DNA going even if we'd lost Henry himself. A quick rummage through the hedge had Liz discovering Min's little stash among the ground elder and snowberry close by the abandoned cottage opposite us; 16 eggs down in a neat mossy bowl. Charlotte of the mini-horses has leant us her incubator for the 28 days and the eggs are now sitting in this being turned twice a day.

Incubator

Anne and Simon have managed to hatch Guinea eggs before but under a broody bantam, they are notoriously hard-shelled and you can have problems at the end with the little 'keets' unable to escape the eggs. G-Day 28 will be Friday 6th June, the day after, all being well, we collect our pigs. I have to smile. We were never going to get into all this - hand rearing, brooder boxes, Infra Red lights, incubators. We were just going to keep a few hens for the eggs, and if anyone went broody than that was a bonus. Now we suddenly have an incubator set, the Hubbards in their brood box* and a feeling that this poultry 'thang' has crept up on us and is taking over!

Scrubbed up for M's Communion 'do'

Back on the 'humans' though for our main event yesterday, a visit down to the Silverwoods for the First Holy Communion of No. 2 nephew, M who is now 8. For my non-Irish readers, this is major Rite of Passage - almost all Irish school children will have their First Holy Communion aged around 8 and then, still organised by the school, their Confirmation at age around 12. The event becomes a big Family Event with all the relations and friends gathering, suited and booted, new outfits, bouncy castles, outings and restaurant meals. Lately, this being modern 'austerity' Ireland, there has been some controversy around the amount of money being spent on these 'do's (the little girls' dresses can be as elabourate and expensive as wedding dresses and some families go a bit mad with stretched limos hired to get to the church and so on). There are questions asked about why this is still part of school life (Despite appearances to the contrary the Catholic church is NOT an 'established' church in Ireland, there is officially NO established church) and why there are even Government grants available to help you pay for the bouncy castle and the dress if you if you have fallen on hard times, lest your child feel excluded from the bulk of society.

Family catering. Liz is on the flapjack job.

I have to quickly say here that the Silverwoods do no such excessive thing, there are no stretched limos prowling their streets and they do not avail themselves of government aid but Mr S. says it is still "a bit like paying for a wedding" - they do have to budget for it. Be all that as it may, it was a lovely day for everyone and we did little M proud, He looked superbly dapper and handsome in his light sandstone linen suit, the church service was dignified and genuine (this class of 20-odd boys slotted in to a normal 12 o'clock Mass well attended by the normal parishioners). We adjourned to a small local hall for the 'party' which had a hot food caterer but baking done by family and friends, there was a puppet show and magician for the little ones and a bit of a 'disco' with no end of balloons flying about to burn off some party calories. Some of the grown ups sneaked off into the kitchen area and set up a laptop to watch the Liverpool game, this being the final day of the footie season and crucial to decide whether the Silverwoods' beloved 'Pool' might pip Man City to top spot in the Premiership. (No such luck). Thank you all the Silverwoods for inviting us down. It was a pleasure to be part of it all and we thoroughly enjoyed the day and the superb spread of food. Thank you, too, Charlotte, for 'dog-sitting' to give us a bit of extra time at the event.

Sheep's Liver and garlic about to become paté

Probably enough for this one. Just a quick Kitchen note - Liz gave a try to a recipe idea you may not have thought of. Liver paté with whiskey is common enough but we have a bottle of home made Cassis knocking about. This makes for an interesting paté with a novel sweet twang. Beautiful on your toast or on a bagel. Signing off now, must go check on that Black Feather goose again. I will let you know as soon as we have news.

12 day old Hubbards get to walk on the grass. 

*These guys actually had a little look at the outside world today as we had some lovely warm sunshine. We snuck them down in the cat basket and let them have a scratch of the good green grass and a little sun on their backs. They are well feathered on the wings but still only 12 days old, though, so not really allowed out yet and we rounded them all back up to their box before they got a chance to get cold.

Blondie

If you could see what I can see.....

As I sit and type this in on a beautifully sunny, blue sky Easter Monday (only the chilly stiff NE breeze stops it being perfect!), our newest recruit, the pale coloured, widowed Guinea fowl 'Blondie' is sitting on the dining room window sill not 4 feet from where Liz is working at the laptop. She (Blondie, not Liz) is standing erect, surveying the front lawn and uttering her repetitive 'Buckwheat buckwheat buckwheat' call which we think is her trying to call up her late 'husband', sadly killed in a car accident a few days ago.

Readers of my earlier posts will know that we agreed to re-home this poor tragic figure thinking that she might get over her grief and fall in love with our cock bird Henry, making up a neat trio, and that we took delivery of her on Good Friday. We have been bimbling through a kind of integration process but she has given us a bit of an emotional roller-coaster.

Our style here is generally one of minimal intervention. The birds (except our orchard-confined geese) are fully free range and not wing-clipped, they are almost 'guests' here by choice although we do try to keep them rounded up off the lane outside and try to stop any fights; we try to adhere to that high welfare mantra of allowing them to exhibit natural behaviour. We tend to contain any new bird for only a short while so that they can identify this place with its noises, skyline, smells and we humans, as home, and to ensure that none of the existing birds see red and try to attack the newcomer. Previously this has always worked. We then release them over a couple of days into bigger and bigger chunks of the place, till they have it all. You'll know from earlier posts that this did not go so well.

Blondie gets a dust bath in

Blondie, released from her rabbit run on day 2 wandered around for long enough for us to relax and then suddenly hit the road eastwards towards Una's place, threading her way across fields and through hedges with Liz tracking her and trying to keep up. Blondie proved to have a full set of wing feathers and is well able to fly like a pheasant. She will 'explode' up 8-12 feet into the air and then choose a direction and whirr away for tens of yards in a fast-flapping shallow glide, hit the ground running and zoom off in an ostrich-like, skirts up sprint across the grass. You'd never catch her. The genie was out of the bottle on this one and we were going to have to persuade her home rather than force her.

She loves high places like this gate pier.

That day we rounded her up and persuaded her home half a dozen times; we were exhausted from hopping over the eastern gate and nipping up the lane and then invading the gardens of the empty house next door and Una's, trying to shepherd her back. Steered in the right direction she had no problem flying over fences and hedges but we had to open the horse's gate a couple of times and drive her through. But last thing at night (9 pm) Henry, who had been trying to dominate and mount her had one last go and she whirred away east into the dusk. We looked but had no idea where she'd gone to roost, so our hearts sank. Had we failed to keep this bird safe for even the first 30-odd hours? We had even failed to show her that we feed you if you stay around. She had no reason to think we were a nice place to stay

Easter Monday's male Emperor Moth

Relief then, on day 3 (Easter Sunday) to be woken up by the sound of her 'buckwheat' shouts from the direction of Una's, loud enough that we worried she might be disturbing our very good friend and neighbour. I nipped round to shepherd her home. This time she sprinted down the lane and back in through the front gate, which was reassuring to see.

She spent the lion's share of Sunday on site, exploring, getting fed grain, bonding with the chickens, dust bathing with them and occasionally interacting with the Guineas Henry and Min. Min basically ignores her but H will at least run at her and try to mount. His technique, though, is hopeless. She willingly squats low with wings spread. He hops on but then seems to just slide off without doing anything. Or he chases her around clinging to her rump feathers with his beak. You'd not call it tender love or even passionate sex. Just once she wandered back round to Una's as if she thinks her late mate might be there. We had hopes that she'd find the pop hole and the chicken house and roost with us at last, This was not to be, and at dusk she once again whirred away across the East Field. We decided to leave her to it.

George likes to share a bath with Smudge

Today has been similar. She woke us with her 'buckwheat buckwheat' at 0600 over in the hedge and when I'd done my 0730 feed and release rounds I went to collect her. Spotting me from her nice high perch, she took off and whirred across the eats field towards home. I nipped back and into the East Field thinking I might have to show her the gate. Not a bit of it. She sensed that I was trying to move her towards the boundary and took off again, flew over the chicken house and landed in a group of hens in the cattle race.

Asparagus spear.

She has been around all day since then, with no more eastward exploring, staying round the house and, as I said, often sitting on window sills preening and looking in at us. She seems un-bothered by you being a few feet away as long as you are inside the glass. She has done plenty more exploring and running rings round the house but neither of us has actually seen her go in through the pop hole. We suspect that tonight she will do her eastward nip and find that reassuringly high perch in the hedge at our east boundary; it's a well overgrown hedge which includes mature ash and sycamore. She was about ten feet up this morning, so nice and fox/mink proof, we hope. Tomorrow, I may try leaving her to come 'home' by herself, rather than going over and rounding her up.

Damsel fly nymph case from the pond today. 

When I feed the chooks here I give a distinctive two-tone whistle and also tap the plastic beaker (I use as a feed measure) on a handy post. She has had this a few times now and immediately stops 'buckwheat-ing' and takes notice, coming running with the other chickens if she is hungry, so I may be able to bring her home from here. Wish me luck.

Ultimately we wish she'd get friendly properly with Henry and Min and also start to roost in our chicken house. We hope too that the grief which has her 'buckwheat-ing' so often dulls. It is a heart rending noise and one you can do nothing to relieve. Poor old Blondie.