Down-Sized Daggin'

After the relatively heavy duty, 'industrial' task of shearing and dagging the sheep, the 'medical team' here takes a marked, factor-of-ten (at least) move down the sizes to deal with a rabbit problem. Our fairly geriatric, ex-Silverwood, rabbit, Ginny, who has always been 100% healthy and fastidiously clean, came out of the wet, cold May with an odd fringe of fluff around her 'seat' and what looked like a dark shadow under her back end as she hopped away from you. It turned out that she was badly dagged up having, we guess, caught a dose of diarrhoea and not been able to keep herself clean.

Strawberry bed looking good and will soon be in need of
protection from the birds - wild and domestic.

She was a candidate for the Medical Wing, but so fine is her fur, so tiny were the actual lumps of 'dag' and so delicate the skin of a rabbit, that this was not a job for clippers or even big scissors. This was a two person job, one holding Ginny to keep her calm (me in this case), the other (Liz) using little 'nibbling' actions with the nail-scissors to cut away the wads of soiled fur. Ginny was as good as gold. If we were given to anthropomorphism we might even suggest that she volunteered for this help, coming to find us and then letting Liz just gather her up without any chase or a fight.

Well, we managed to cut away all the big stuff and decided to leave the last few flecks and her scut a few days while she got over the indignity, planning to give her a rear-end bath, shampoo and conditioner in a few days. We inspected the patient again today and she had done such a good job of cleaning up the rest, we let her off the bath, and just trimmed away that last scut fur. She is as good as new. Having her out of the apiary run gave us an opportunity to swap rabbits around. She is a small rabbit and now on her own, she had not really been keeping on top of the grass growth where as the 'giants', Goldie and Nugget have theirs grazed down "to the clay" almost.

Spuds (British Queen, new) doing well in the tunnel

So we rounded up those two and moved them to the apiary today. They can nibble off all the grass and creeping buttercup, and I will pull the last few stinging nettles. It is important in an apiary not to suddenly change the environment (for example by brush-cutting long stuff) as the bees can get their visual maps of the way home confused and can get lost. There is also an issue with vibration of, for example, chugging lawn mowers, which can cause a gazillion bees to come out of the hive to fend off the 'attack'. Rabbits are the perfect solution -they only change the grass height slowly and they are not a bother at all to bees.

New hive boxes, painted with linseed oil.

That swarm-lure box, meanwhile, still has bees visiting so, this long after the first visit, they can no longer be a swarm scouting for a new place to live. They must, by now, be a swarm which has moved in (Yay! free bonus bees!) all be it, we think from the small numbers, a secondary or 'cast' swarm, rather then a big, 10,000 bee 'prime' swarm. Next job then was to buy boxes for a 2nd hive and to think about getting the new colony down from the tree where I have optimistically lashed the lure box. Regular readers will know that the rule for moving bees is "fewer than 3 feet or more than 3 miles". Bees find their way home using a remembered mental map and if you move the hive more than 3 feet, they cannot adjust this. They just mill about at the old location till they run out of energy and then die. It is OK to move them 2 feet a day, they can cope with that. So to get them down from being tied to a tree ten feet up, I will have to lower them down against the ladder at 2 feet a day, till they are ground level, and then I can open the box and see if we have a colony worth giving a nice new home (hive) to.

A young Scots Pine from the 2014
'Million Trees' batch.

These boxes came from local Alladin's Cave emporium, where the guy has more out-buildings and sheds behind his main shop than anyone really needs - one for fishing tackle and (I saw) crossbows and archery gear, one for the salting operation of pork, one for the bee keeping equipment and so on. While I was ferreting around in there, I also rather nicely got the car washed - there was a gang of jet-wash people cleaning cars in support of the Castlerea Agricultural Show at a fiver a go. It's cleaner now than it has been since we came over here - I never wash our cars. It is a job, surely, for the Sunday Morning, English, striped lawns, semi-detached suburban Mr Jones crowd. One of my 'company' cars used to be so 'agricultural' inside that when a colleague borrowed it (they were owned by the employer so you had to allow them to be used as pool cars while you were on site) to nip out somewhere with another lad, he joked when he got back that he had had to tell the lad off for treading mud all over the carpark from my car. Yeah, yeah, Shane, very funny!

Starting to dig a new flower bed along the front of the house
from what was once lawn. 

Readers may recall that Liz and her gang of internet chat forum chums hold regular weekend meetings in 'real life' to socialise. They are scattered all over the globe, and the person who volunteers to host the weekend invites the friends to their town or city to get a flavour of local food, drink, culture and social life. They either troop round as a gang to chosen restaurants for joint meals or they are welcome to go off exploring (or jogging, walking etc) using the host's place (or recommended hotels and pubs) as a base. Late last year, you may recall. Liz nipped over to the UK to be part of one in Bridport, hosted by our friend 'Airy Fox'.

Vicarious Madrid via i-Phone, laptop, wine, dog and
warm fire. 

This weekend, some of these friends are in Madrid, where a British friend happens to be working and Liz was so recently back from Greece that she opted out, wanting to spend some time here. But these are, after all initially INTERNET friends and you cannot escape them that easily, so Liz has managed to spend the weekend enjoying Madrid vicariously and hearing all about it, regularly supplied with pictures of food, drink, Madrid's terracotta roof-scapes and fancy architecture. She is tongue-in-cheek pretending to be envious,so we sent 'them' this picture of Liz curled up next to an Irish turf fire out of last night's chilly northerly breeze.

Rattle and Hum

Polly a little better shorn than Lily was.

When I signed off for the last post, I left you with the impression that our sheep might never get sheared properly, what with the inept, beginner fumblings of my attempt to shear Lily. This post is by way of a post-script to that one, improving on the  shearing ability as well as the mood. Having struggled more than I thought should be right even for a beginner, I had gone off to re-read the instructions that came with the shears, translated from (possibly) Chinese into English and decided that the lack of smooth sweeping cut ability from the hand-piece, might be down to tension in the blade. When I ran the shears free in my hand and turned up the tension I could hear the change which was described as "muffled", the change from the rattle of a blade-pair vibrating too loosely together, to the hum of the pair pushed closely enough one upon the other. Carloyn had also given me some advice on how to hold the blade (and clean the equipment afterwards). I was sure when I tried this on Polly I might have a whole new result and some smooth sweeping "blows". This did, in fact, prove to be the case.

With 4 inches of mountain-proof, Jacobs
fleece taken off all over, Polly is not much
bigger now than her twin lambs.

As it happened, the Polly job was delayed by the (welcome) interuption of a visit from our new friends, Sue and Rob, but it was a hot, sunny day and the sheep would not be enjoying waiting on the concrete of the cattle race so, having shown the visitors round the place, I let Liz take them indoors for tea and cakes and decided to get on with it alone with Polly. Polly is bigger and tougher than Lily so it was a bit of a wrestling match, but as soon as I turned on the shears I could tell that this was going to be a whole better 'fight' than I had had with Lily. I swooped through the 'brisket' wool and down the belly. out along the hind legs, with the fleece peeling back like orange-peel. Yes, the task still took 45 minutes and there were still two rests for breathers (Polly as well as me), but the fleece was off in 3 pieces instead of the jig-saw puzzle of Lily's fleece and I was back indoors doing a 'happy dance' before the guests had finished their tea and cake.

Polly's fleece. Very little 'shoddy' this time

Now that I have more idea what I'm at, I need to go back and tidy up the too-long stuff I left on Lily, but I have decided that rather than wrestle her onto her rump again, I will train her to accept a halter rope and then tether her to the gate standing upright (which she will much prefer) so that I can do back and sides (where all the long stuff is) without stressing her out too much.

Lupins do really well in our climate.

Meanwhile Carolyn has bought herself a new spinning wheel and put her name down for our fleeces so that she can try out the processes of washing, carding and spinning. Apparently you must wash all the lanolin oil out of the wool but you have to do this in cold or luke-warm water; a hot wash and the agitation of the machine would reduce your lovely fleece to a football sized wad of felt. I saw some of Lily's wool post wash today and it does look nice and white. You could believe in a garment knitted out of it.

Sorry about the poor pic but you may just be able to see 2 bees
at the entrance hole to the swarm box. 

On the bees, big excitement today when I spotted that the swarm lure-box was receiving attention from 30+ bees. These would be, we guess, scout-bees spreading out from someone else's lost swarm, house-hunting. We read that these scouts, if they are impressed enough by the 'cavity' as a possible nest site and new home, zoom back and perform waggle dances over the outside of the swarm-cluster, attracting more scouts to their find and away from competing possible homes. After a day or two the swarm as a whole makes a democratic decision to go with one of the possibles (we hope it is ours) and the whole swarm gets airborne and makes its way to the new site. We think we are mid-point on that process, and hope that we are chosen by this swarm - we would then get that lovely  'gift', a bonus of a free bee colony. Things are looking hopeful.

A stash of 12 eggs including 6 Guinea Fowl eggs (the small,
pointier, spotty ones)

As I said, this is a bit of a PS to the last post. Our decision to build the secure run around the 'Elderberry Buff' has displaced the egg laying of a couple of the other hens, so that we are now finding stashes of eggs in new places under the hedges. Most recently I found a stash of 12 further along the bank which included 6 Guinea Fowl eggs - we had had no idea she was actually laying as she is quite secretive. Meanwhile our fears of the turkeys being brother-sister, seem to be unfounded as Sue has started her hatch and the chicks have all been sound of limb and joint. As we still have the borrowed incubator, we have set another 5 turkey eggs in it, for a second attempt.

Some people should be allowed to keep poultry......

"Elderberry Buff" (see story)

Some days in the smallholder life you really feel like you have got 'it' nailed. The sun shines, the bees buzz (and mercifully do not swarm), seeds germinate all round the 'allotment', birds sing and all the livestock goes about its assigned tasks and stays healthy. Some days are not like that. I suppose I should say that "some people" should be allowed to keep poultry and other people should not be allowed near the group. I should quickly re-assure readers that this is not going to be a self-pitying tale of woe - we all survive in the end.

Turkey chick at Day 3

It is the poultry right now which has me feeling like such an incompetent that I wonder why anyone ever gave me licence. Regular readers may recall that life here has been beset by a few problems in the poultry department before, including in-bred geese and possible rabbits; you might think we'd learn from such 'mistakes' and not repeat them. We have also had issues with not managing to keep birds separated, so that you end up with a nest full of eggs of uncertain age and uncertain parentage. You get dodgy hatches and poor health and survival.

This year we have already had the Buff Orp that went broody in the Tígín next to the chemical toilet, got in a muddle of other chooks laying on top and successfully hatched only one chick. To be fair she is doing very well with it and it is thriving as an only child. We now have another gone broody in the woods and try as we might, we could not move her and the clutch, so we ended up bringing a secure rabbit run to her, cutting back bushes to squeeze it in and re-covering the run with the cut branches so that she is hidden. The geese, despite our best efforts of stealing all the eggs, eventually went broody. The first one, we relented and let her sit on 2 eggs, but she was then nudged aside for a couple of nights by other geese who laid into the nest and then went a little broody. We now have a team of three taking turns to sit (or sometimes 2 or all three at once). Chaos. We have a tentative date pencilled in for the first possible hatch, but after that it's anybody's guess. I really am too soft on them.

Blue and Soldier all loved up now.

Finally along came the turkeys. A "breeding pair" the lady said (just like our goose supplier told us that the three birds were "a good trio"). She even produced for Charlotte, 5 eggs to hatch and these, incubated by Sue and Rob, came really good - 4 healthy chicks from 5 eggs. We have subsequently given Sue half a dozen eggs which really came from Tom and Barbara and we wonder how those did, because the 8 we put in our borrowed incubator did not do at all well, and have us thinking that T+B may well be some aul' left over brother and sister. Three eggs hatched, three more were almost fully developed but dead in shell, one was addled and the other just looked like a 'fresh' egg. Of the three which hatched one had good legs and stood up straight away. One had badly splayed legs but we guessed it would be OK and now, 3 days later it too is up and about. The third had such a bad leg, stiff and jutting out to the rear with its foot clenched like a claw that it could only flop about on the deck trying to shuffle along with the other. We had to cull that one out. These things happen, but if Sue and Rob had similar experiences, we will be convinced that these two adults are no good as breeders and will be looking for another hen.

Taking notes from a You Tube training
video.

So, would you give us a poultry flock number? Ah well, maybe a sheep flock number? Today we took out 'first born' ram lamb, Feste. now aged 5 months, off on his final journey to see Ignatius in town. He was possibly a bit smaller than lambs we have 'finished' in the past, but we had concerns about him getting his own Mum in the family way (she was 'got' last year before we bought her and hence the 6th Jan surprise birth of Feste). He was a sweet little chap but strangely quiet and lazy - you'd never see him frolicking around except for the occasional play head-butt fight with 'auntie' Polly. We put this down to him being the only lamb born then, so not having any playmates. He was a 2 and a half month 'adolescent' by the time the twins came along and Polly would not let him near them to start with. Ah well, he's gone now, our firstborn, ear-tag 00001(F). Tomorrow we nip down to collect the heart, lungs, kidneys and liver, and then next Monday we get the carcass cut up.

Trying to open up a 'blow' in the belly wool

So, with lovely sunny weather, I was determined to get the Mums sheared, all cocky, armed to the teeth with my new shears and full of technique from YouTube training videos on which I had even taken notes. These describe creating great swathes of baldified skin while peeling back a single sheet of fleece "blow by blow", whizz round a few legs, avoid vulnerable tendons, udder, vulva, ears and so on, while wrestling your sheep around while she sits on her bum gripped between your thighs with none of her feet on the ground. Easy peasy! Zoom down the neck and flanks from cheek to 'dock' (tail) working your way up the left side of the sheep till you hit spine, then down the other side, bingo! Sheep shrugs off the fleece like a cardigan and runs off into the feild feeling grateful and cool, and you roll the fleece into a beautiful Swiss-roll for sale to the grateful spinning fraternity. 5 minutes, tops.

Getting started, right front leg up to brisket. 

Maybe not. I struggled. It was VERY HARD. Wrestling the sheep was not as easy as it looked and we all got a bit hot in the sunshine. The shears did not seem to go through the fleece cleanly (I now think I may have not had the tension set up correctly). Also I managed to nick the top of my left index finger on almost the first 'blow' which bled very well and the sheep, even though unhurt, was quickly spotted with (my) blood so she looked like a real train crash.

Not beautiful, but patchy and cooler. 

The wool was very dense and thick (maybe a Southdown thing) and we quickly collapsed from trying to do long 'blows', to sweating through the fleece inch by inch, holding the fleece up away from the skin to avoid nicking the poor sheep's flesh. Some bits came away as decent slabs of wool, but much came away a "shoddy" (the bitty stuff which you can't sell as fleece). Also I struggled to get down deep enough - the sheep is meant to come away almost bald - in my nervousness of cutting her I left some areas a bit long and may have to return for another tidy up.

Poor Lily does not love us this evening. She lost her baby,
her winter coat and her good looks all in the same day!

Then there was a subject which was a definite problem for us but not really shown in the videos - that of 'dags', little dreadlocks of poo-encrusted wool hanging all round the bum, down the back end, underside of legs, round the udder etc, some dried and harmless (we have done dagging before with the sheep upright and dog-clipping scissors to get the worst 'klingons' off, but these were more like just soiled un-usable fleece. They added to the 'shoddy' pile (and detracted from the fleece roll) till we reckon we had more weight of shoddy than of sale-able* wool.

As to "Five minutes".... even with Liz helping and me trying to shear, we were a good hour and a bit doing the one sheep (Lily) and stopped three times for a breather and to let Lily stand up and recover a bit between 'bouts' of wrestling. We postponed Polly till tomorrow and I promised to go re-read the instructions now I would understand them a bit more having used the machine. They are not well translated into English (are they ever?) but the stuff about tension screws and listening for the change of note from rattle to hum makes a bit more sense now, so we may get on a bit better with Polly. We were exhausted (and Lily probably was too!) and adjourned to the shade for a regroup. Liz had a mountain of baking still to do for a craft open-evening tonight, and I wanted to keep an eye on the bees, while also strawing up the strawberries. That was enough chaos for one post. Lily may not be a beauty any more, but she must, at least, be cooler as the ambients in the West come up through 15 towards a very welcome but rare 18ºC. Iss prackly a HEATwave!


*not really sale-able - we were going to give it to Carolyn to play spinning with, but you get the picture.

Greece and Turkey(s)

Annamaria gets the girls mobile.

The eagle has landed. My travelling wife is returned from her mission to tie up those loose ends for our late friend Diane in the Greek island of Poros. Poros was Diane's favourite (and 'only' by the end) holiday destination and she went two or three times a year every year from when Mum took her, aged 27, around 30 years ago. She was well known and loved there by many locals and, indeed, many café owners there now, she bounced on her knee as babies of the café owners 30 years back. Liz went with her around a half dozen times in recent years and was there for the trip when Diane married John out there (remember the famously miss-spelled 'Happy Webbing" cake?). Latterly, Liz would go out on the Spring trip, and Diane took John in the autumn.

Annamaria, Liz's main guide, with her son
Andreas. Thank you Annamaria - we owe you
so much.

In these recent trips they would always use the same hotel, owned by a local lad but run by the two 'old dears' of the family, always affectionately known as the "Yia-Yiás" (pronounce it Ya-ya's, it is an affectionate term in Greek for Grandma). That was an obvious start point but Liz had a mental list of similar haunts - pavement and indoor cafés, restaurants, even a Taverna across the water up in the mountains surrounded by lemon groves. She wanted also to visit all these local contacts and friends to say a kind of 'Goodbye' on Diane's behalf, explain to them, if she can, how Diane died, sympathise with them and somehow share with them that there will be no more visits from their bubbly, happy, English 'regular'. I must hurriedly apologise if I am making a hash of this 'explanation'.

Liz gets a cuddle from superb old gent, Andreas Lazarou

Liz is fortunately helped in this task by there being some among the Greek (or long-term Poros visitor) mutual friends who speak good English, notable a lovely lady Annamaria who even suggested hiring a moped with pillion seat to help them get about. Liz has no Greek and is further hampered by the fact that Diane had the Greek so she used to guide and organise everything, but also used the local names for things which everyone on Poros would know but would not be in any guide book or on road signage. "The Yia-Yiás" is not the real name of the hotel (!) and a café which they all know as "The Bulgarians" because back in the day when there were a lot of Bulgarian economic migrants on Poros, that was the café where they all gathered at lunchtime or of an evening. One favourite haunt (known locally as Thanasis Café) had actually closed down in the intervening time; just a clear pavement and white-washed windows.

Beekeeping burger man.

So Lizzie was not much looking forward to this trip and wished it would go away, but knew that it wouldn't and that she must steel herself and do this last thing for our much missed friend. She knew she must go alone because to take me or any other 'third party' might make it look like she was really on holiday to the Poros folk, and if she went with widower John, there would be raised eyebrows at him, so recently bereaved, "swanning about" with another woman and former best friend of Diane. They are salt of the earth and genuine Greek Orthodox people with a keen eye for old traditional values. They deserve respect and so does Diane's memory and legacy. No, this had to be a single-handed journey, but she was sure she'd cope. She was only away from here 7 nights; time flew. Now it is done, it is done for good. 'We' may return to Poros, maybe in our later years, when we have a bit less livestock and a bit more time.

Burger bee-man's signs

But how to go about these very difficult 'meet and greets'? How do you address an old old mutual friend who (you hope) knows of Diane's passing and that you have come out to the island just to say a kind of goodbye to these valued loved ones? Liz had mentally put together a quick few sentences telling of Diane's last day, including the happy tea party with her London friend Stefan, husband John off on his dogwalk with Diane's request for 'posh cheese' the last words he heard, her quick, clean, painless end from the pulmonary embolism, that she died at home and on her own bed.

Gifts from Greece - brandy. Actually, to be more accurate,
"Greek alcohol drink of natural aromas and distils"

Many of the Greeks would openly weep there on the street where they met and hug Liz tight. One poor lady actually met Liz as she came out of a washroom, recognised Liz, guessed why she was there, burst into floods of tears and had to be ushered back into the washroom by Liz while she got herself back together. Some of the greetings were a bit less harrowing, one (Angelo) they caught up with as he was out on his boat in the harbour and Liz ended up yelling friendly abuse across the water to him about why he never had his phone turned on or charged up, before heading for a café. Two other favourite old boys in Diane's crowd, she met while they were taking their regular walk along the sea front (Captain George (fisherman) and Eleftherios (fishmonger)). To a man/woman, they were very concerned about Husband John, was he coping? Was he eating OK? Greek men apparently will often go to pieces when first bereaved.

Greek sweets - they are (phonetically)
"ah-mee-gda-lo-ta" - don't ask me to
spell that in the Greek alphabet!

The old boy, Andreas (now quite elderly) who owned the Taverna up in the lemon groves was just awake from his nap, being looked after by his lovely carer, was still a bit befuddled from sleep and has no English, but he was happy to sit by Liz patting her knee and smiling - he seemed to know that he'd seen Liz before and that she was here for a good reason, but the carer explained that he had not taken in Diane's death and that she would explain it to him in due course when he was more with it. There, inevitably also one lady who had not heard of Diane's passing, so Liz had to actually break the news, and there other people who over heard Liz talking to the 'ones on the list' and chipped in with "I knew Diana too...." (They all called her Diana out there).

On the right a hard Greek sheep's milk cheese (nice enough)
but on the left, the freshest, most gorgeous feta I ever had
the pleasure of tasting.

In this way Liz worked her way round the town and completed the task. She was very much ably assisted by our good friend Annamaria who scared Liz half to death by suggesting that rather than walk, they hire a moped and zoom around like proper Greeks, dicing with the traffic. Liz took her first pillion ride with eyes tight shut, head down and both hands gripping Annamaria's waist hard enough to bruise the poor girl. By the end, though, she was apparently sitting back, hand by her sides, big silly grin and "I'm on a BIKE" in her head!

Newly hatched turkey chick, still damp from the egg.

With the job done, Annamaria decided they both needed some rest, relaxation and recouperation. Annamaria had taken time off work (in Athens) to shepherd Liz round Poros (we are so so grateful, Annamaria - thank you so much) but now needed to go home so that she could return to work, but she suggested that Liz come with her, stay in her house in Athens and relax till the time came for the flight home. Just what the doctor ordered. We also need to thank the bro-in-law, Sparks, who did the airport and railway station taxi-runs in Dublin and put Liz up overnight at either end of the Poros mission, cooking a nice line in breakfasts. Thank you Sparks.

In one final amusing aside, Liz managed to meet 2 more beekeepers while she was out there and even enjoy some bilingual conversation about bees, where she'd have only minimal vocabulary and the Greek guy maybe a tiny bit more English. One was just a man with a burger van where Annamaria stopped in the car for some light snacks; Liz spotted a pic on the van of the burger seller in a beekeeper-suit and realised that he was also selling honey. The other, a guy named Costas (Annamaria is his daughter's Godmother) had been minding the Annamaria's son (also called Andreas) while Annamaria was looking after Liz on Poros. Liz and Costas were also found showing each other pictures of their and our animals, and letting Liz photo their geese. In Greece, though, honey quality is judged on darkness of colour, with the real burnt-umber colours being the best, so Liz did not show them pics of our straw-coloured product. They would not have been impressed.

Finally a bit of nice, surprise, good news from home - we woke up the the cheepings of just-hatched turkeys. We have 8 eggs in the incubator and were not expecting any hatches till day 28 (June 8th) so these little ones are 2 days early. We have 2 out so far and a third well on the way to cracking the top off the shell, so watch this space for a final score.

Joint Birthdays

The "Pop Star" at 3 years old. 

June 3rd, so that nice coincidental date for 3 of the animals in this blog, formerly 4 but we lost Rolo in an RTA. Puppies Poppea and Towser, and cats Blue and Rolo were all born in 2012 on a busy night for animal midwifery down in Silverwood's Land. The dogs we were expecting and, in fact we were all lined up to be on call as pup midwives, but Mum (Lily) was so efficient at that stage that she slid all that litter of pups out just supervised, but not messed with at all, by Mrs Silverwood. We had our name down for a boy and had already chosen his name.

Towser at 3

The kittens we had tentatively put our names down for but did not know the expected date and, anyway, knew that some Aunt of the family was getting 'first refusal' on that litter so we didn't know for sure any of any litter would be coming our way. It was only when Mrs S phoned her friend round the corner to tell her the good news, that friend replied "Well, THERE's a coincidence! Our cat had 3 kittens too!" The 'chickens' were hatched and count-able. We were suddenly on for the pup and 2 kittens, all born in the night of June 2nd/3rd but after midnight.

Blue at 3 looking as if he doesn't actually want disturbing.

Readers who were with me in 2012 will know that, in fact, we ended up with 2 pups. There had been a bit of a silly health-scare over one of the bitches and Mrs S had held back from selling her till she was all clear, she came up to the 'farm' with the family on a week's holiday and played so well with her already-sold brother, that it seemed fairest to just re-unite them and for us to take the two pups to go with our 2 mad kittens. Poor Deefer, briefly an 'only child' didn't know which way to turn. 3 years later, that all seems a long time ago.

Buff chick at 2 weeks old.

However, with Liz not yet back from Greece and no big updates on the story of that adventure yet, and with me having only posted yesterday but wanting to mark these Birthdays, I have little to write about, so this post will be an unashamed photo album, using up some pics which I have not yet found a home for in the blog.

Tom

Huge thanks to brother Mark for continuing to use up his bank balance in coloured inks for his printer - he prints a hard copy of this blog including the pictures to put in the post to our Mum, (Pud Lady) down in Hastings, stuffing it in the envelope of his own blog. We have not yet persuaded Pud Lady to join that happy band of "grey-surfers", internet-savvy OAPs and get on line with a lap top (and some internet provision to the house, of course!) so that she can see these ramblings on screen and, anyway, I think she quite likes to have the hard copy as it feels a bit like we negligent children have actually written to her (!) - sorry Mum. Mark must rue the days when I do one of these and all his colour ink drains away. I am very very grateful.

Finally some warm weather for the bees to get cracking
pulling in pollen and nectar.

First flag iris in the pond.

Here, then, are just a few pics with captions to catch you up on extra curricular stuff.

No pictures, please! The chick flees the paparazzi

Quince blossom

Min the Hin on a high roost.

Goldie and Nugget out in their run. 

Good bud break and some fruit on the
Brown Turkey fig.

Meanwhile, back at the Ranch....

The only 'Med' pic I have so far - Methana (Greece)

With Liz currently out in "the foreign" on her rather sad mission (see last post) to square away Diane's loose ends but also concurrently suffering 'techie' problems on her Apple i-phone I am a bit short on Mediterranean updates. I have just the two pics so far from the beleaguered phone which she can only occasionally get to find the internet (e.g. while on a modern inter-island ferry with free wi-fi), this one of Methana on the southernmost mainland peninsula and one of a rather disappointing scone she was fed on a ferry. We have been in contact, though, via old fashioned voice telephone (remember those?) so I know she is having a rather emotional time of it but has worked her way round most of the people she needed to meet. More on that when she's back (Friday).

Carolyn finishes assembly on my latest jumper for the reward
of a Lizzie-bake honey, orange and polenta cake.
Thanks you knitters and bakers.

So this post is, of necessity, a "meanwhile, back at the ranch" catch up of the burbling along livestock routine and sundry contact with humans. I have been doing the rounds a bit and receiving some nice welcome visits, plus crossing paths with new friend Sue while we were both out and about, me walking dogs, she trying not to run us over in the big 4x4, with their gorgeous St Bernard in the back. I've been down to Carolyn's to pass over a cake Liz had baked, and collect a jumper.

Pretty as a picture - Vendor Anna's
new pup, Bella at 4 months.

I have today nipped over to Vendor Anna in Carrick to meet her new dog, Bella, a lovely little soft haired shih-tzu pup, 4 months old. Anna was a bit anxious about Bella's eating or lack of it but I think (I hope, Anna!) she's sorted now. Good luck with her, anyway. She is a lovely dog and we've agreed that we should meet up, 3 westies onto one tiny shih-tzu. What could POSSIBLY go wrong? Don't worry, Anna, we will keep a careful control on it; we know what we are at. Actually while we are on that subject, we have now successfully integrated the new cat, Soldier, into the indoor family and even got as far as Soldier being able to sleep, curled up on the chair with one of the Westies, Poppea.

Soldier out and about.

We are delighted. The three together can make up a fearsome attacking pack, as found out by the mink a few weeks back (as can any three dogs no matter what the owner might tell you about them being really gentle and not harming a fly). Soldier is also now able to come and go happily through doors and windows which is excellent news as he can now do his 'business' outside and we can take up the horrible, smelly, cat litter-tray (one of my pet hates). My other inbound visit today was  from the Mum and 2 daughters of the family who used to own this cat, so I was pleased to be able to show off their cat living among us and not torn to pieces.

Poppea and Soldier asleep on a chair.

The girls especially love to see round the 'petting zoo', feed apples to the pigs etc, but we were all amused (except the poor girl herself) by the middle daughter's not coping very well with her first meeting with a full grown turkey. This was Tom, of course, who decided that these intruders needed the full on, red-face, tail up, wings down display and it was all too much for Niamh (who plans to become an RSPCA inspector) who couldn't get away fast enough! We tried to persuade her that Tom was just displaying and does not attack people but she was not convinced. Hope she doesn't meet too many turkey farmers in the vet/RSPCA training!

Feste at 5 months

Our first born lamb, Feste (of the 12th Night, middle of the field, rainy night surprise birth), is now coming up on 5 months and looking splendidly chunky. He's off on his final journey on Tuesday next (9th). We were all wondering how long it is since this 'farm' last produced lambs, and the concensus seems to be "the eighties". Back in the day, most farms would have had a mixture of animals and Michael McG tells me that he can certainly remember his father keeping about 30 which they would shear by hand with those spring-steel "scissors" style shears. JD Bob thinks TK Max would have had sheep here till the eighties, and Vendor Anna (who grew up here) tells us that it was her job as a youngster (early 70's maybe?) to run round first thing before school gathering up any new-borns who needed bringing indoors. She can remember them being dried and warmed up in the bottom 'oven' of the Rayburn, the range which was still there when we moved in. Once she was in her teens, she says, she stopped all that, you couldn't be a 'cool' teenager if you went to school smelling of sheep's wool lanolin and birth-related mess.

A forest of sweet cicely, but what do you do with it?

I did my bust/length pig-weight estimate yesterday (see also the post at http://deefer-dawg.blogspot.ie/2014/07/bust-squared-x-length-x-693.html ) and came up with Isabelle and Mary at 29 and 31 kg respectively at the 15 week mark. This is a slightly slower rate of weight gain than last year's Tamworths but that is fine with us and is deliberate. I am more closely controlling the food intake because we do not want that three quarter inch layer of fat under the skin that the Tams put on, it just gets wasted (or (shhhhh) fed to the birds) and it has all cost money at yay amount per bag of pig nuts.

In safe hands. Broody-Buff steps out with the single chick

In the poultry department, Miss Broody-Buff is doing a fine job of rearing the single chick and the Hubbard poults are steaming ahead in their free range mode. They are close outside the front door, and we find that we can not appear in the front garden without an 11-bird charge towards our feet. We have to be careful if we have the dogs (on leads, obviously) as they will even sprint towards the amazed threesome, veering away only when they realise that there is a definite risk to their being fed. I have to nip out with the chick-crumb first, to focus them on eating, and then squeeze out past with the dogs on a tight rein. The turkey eggs are still just cooking in the incubator but we have good hopes because our friend Sue managed at 4/5 hatch from the batch we gave her.

Bank Holiday Ireland vanishes under the coloured rainbelts
of a powerful 'Low' on this AA Weatherwatch rainfall radar map.

Finally, we are hoping that Liz will bring some 'day-cent' weather back with her from Greece. The wind and rain have battled on through the end of May and joined us for the June Bank Holiday Monday and now, the wind is sharing the Tuesday too. I have been able to get out into the garden off and on but not much is growing outside and all my new seeds seem to be sulking under ground. At least the brassicas get away well when transplanted from the polytunnel, and do not spend that familiar three days lying limply on the new ground before they spring up and get cracking.

Dog watching garb on the Bank Holiday. 

Here, they seem to be able to get vertical by that evening or never sag in the first place. Better weather is forecast, but I guess I will believe that when it arrives.

Blue smoke from a chimney round these parts generally means
a good turf fire against the winter cold.... but on 31st May?