Sleeping Through the Night

We are looking good for some fruit types despite the drought

Now there's a subject close to the hearts of all the new parents struggling with sleepless nights and night feeds of the new infant. I have adopted it as a milestone in the slow progress of my recovery from the recent pneumonia. When I first came out of hospital, I had some bad nights with a ticklish, persistent chesty cough which had at me as soon as I laid down to sleep and had me reaching for the trusty Benylin "dry cough" linctus. This may be too much information, but I was also getting up to pee at about 4 a.m. and had the cough all over again when I laid back down.

The only relief then was to sit bolt upright, so I would spend the last 2-3 hours of each night sitting against the head of the bed, usually joined by the cuddle-loving Poppea (dog), until I could realistically give up and get up at 6 o'clock. As the days went by it was encouraging to see these 2 coughing sessions get  better and shorter. I started to be able to get straight to sleep at night and even started to only get the morning one from half past 4, then 5, half 5 and so on. I was looking at being able to sleep right through the night. They were clear improvements on the way to recovery.

A new one for us this year - we may have some damsons.

At the same time, I know that productive cough is good, in that it is the lungs' way of clearing out the muck and dirt of illness. In my case, this silver lining had a small cloud - this new "muck" might be a sign that I was congesting up again. I guess I also have to take on the chin an occasional bad night like last night, where the bedtime coughing just would not stop and still had me sitting upright, sometimes downstairs, till 2 o'clock in the morning. To be fair, I then got to sleep and slept right round to 8 a.m. Swings and roundabouts. No other health news.

Beautifully mowed grass.

That Help-X lad (Rafael) never did show, so we are setting up August accordingly with Elizabeth picking up all the hard work as it comes due and me stuck on 'light duties'. One of these jobs this week was the mowing, her first time using the mower. I'd heard the mower chug into life when I was sitting round the front of the house. She was well away.

By the time I came down from a good nap, the pond garden was like a billiard table. "Good Job!", I said. "It was EASY!" she commented, sounding a bit surprised. I will have to watch that I don't lose these jobs while I'm 'ill'.

The timber arrives for the chicken house roof.

I was more worried about that other big job to which I would have put the missing Help-X-er, that of helping our builder chum K-Dub re-roof the chicken house. I remember from helping K-Dub do his house roof in Sligo, those are some big baulks of timber and , certainly to start with. Charlotte and I had to stand sticking out of the top of the part built house on ladders holding the new ridge-beam up in fresh air where it would ultimately sit, while K-Dub fitted the rafters to it (and nailed them to the wall plates).

K-Dub starts cutting out the 'barge ends'

Looking up at the beam and the sky, with the moving clouds, your eye had no fixed perspective to help balance. You had to keep looking down to the horizon to prevent falling off the ladder. Quickly, K-Dub fixed enough rafters to it that they were taking its weight, and we helpers could let go of it and come down our ladders to safety.

Not to worry. K-Dub turned up today (an EARLY builder!) - he was waiting on a sink for another job, so he had today free and decided to start. He would cut through the concrete 'barge' ends (gables) to free up the rusty old corrugated iron, plus cut all the rafters to shape/length in preparation.

We are looking at a reasonable plum crop.

This roof, he said, would be nothing like as hard as the house, mainly because the ridge beam gets slung between the two gables. There is no wobbling around on ladders. He can fix it in position with battens, while he brings all the rafters to bear. He anticipates being able to do most of the job on Monday - stripping off the old 'tin', demolishing the old timbers with a chainsaw and re-assembling with new wood.

Mum out with 'The Bumbles' in the woods.

If we don't get as far as new 'tin' on Monday, we can sling the good tarpaulin back over the new wood frame overnight to keep the birds dry. Tuesday will be for making good and finishing off the ridge which gets series of 8 foot long 'V' shaped bits overlapping. We had a good day today and got most of it done, till the 110 volt transformer 'died'. Ah well. I had thought we were starting on Monday, so EVERYthing we did today was a bonus.

I found Connie's hidey-hole down behind some scrap plaster
board in the Tígín

Friends of the Blog will recall that we had 2 birds we were calling 'AWOL', rather than dead to fox. I was poking about in the Tígín and happened to pull out some scrap plaster board and I found Connie sitting on 6 (very old) eggs. She was not out in a hedge and vulnerable to the fox after all. That status is now reserved for the female Guinea Fowl.

Snouts down for some apples.

Meanwhile, Brer Fox has changed his tactics again and nailed a couple more birds. He has lately come every day, instead of every 10th day. On Weds morning at about 9, he was spotted by Elizabeth as he first appeared in 'The Woods'. She happened to be looking out of an upstairs window. She shouted, so I let the dogs out of the front door. Unfortunately, months of training told them to turn left and head for the front lawn gate. Mr Fox was to the right, so able to make good his escape.

A nice sturdy cherry tree but no cherries
this year. The drought got them.

At this time of year, 'The Woods' presents a lovely sunny bank in the morning and can be full of birds. Foxy can sneak in up the 5 acre field, nip through the hedge anywhere and ambush a sleepy bird. On Tuesday, I took up position out there with all three dogs and waited all through the 9 o'clock 'slot' thinking I'd deter him. Not that fella. He waited till I went in at 10, gave it half an hour and then bang! He snatched a young poult. He was probably watching all the time and thinking, Matt can't stay here 24/7.

R+R, Roscommon style.

I thought we'd be safe today. This fox has always left us a week or so after a successful raid. I was out there with K-Dub and Elizabeth was about too, setting up to dig the big raised bed. Surely enough human presence to deter a fox? No. He came in at about 9 a.m. and managed to snatch one of the small goslings.

Ah well, enough for this one. Maybe by the time I write again, a completed chicken house roof and no more foxy deaths. Finally, to be fair to Rafael he has apologised for his 'mistake' today in an e-mail. For what it is worth.

A Help-X No Show

A superb cheese souffle cooked by the girls on their last night.
They also did profiteroles. 

Regular readers will know that up till now we have had nothing but success, co-operation, hard work and pleasure from our involvement with the Help-X (Help Exchange) volunteer system. As at the last post, we were about to bid farewell to our latest pair, Emma and Flora and then collect our 'August booking', a 17 year old French lad called Rafael.

Borage

This weekend was a Bank Holiday,so the girls had an issue with their next posting. They requested the extra night (Saturday night) which we were happy to give them and, out of gratitude, they cooked that night's supper for us, a rather superb cheese soufflé followed by profiteroles filled, unusually, with ice cream. Nom nommetty nom! This move also landed them trying to reach Sligo town on a B/H timetable - no trains or buses except for one via Dublin. Elizabeth generously offered to taxi them. After all the hospital runs, she said the car practically knows its own way by now.

The finest cauli we have yet grown in Ireland

So that was that for the girls, but through these closing stages I had been expecting some contact from the next lad, Rafael. His silence and lack of responses to our emails etc had me worried he might have blown us out. Back in May he'd been asking for "the whole summer", had taken a 2 weeker and then enthusiastically added a 3rd week as that became available, but now he was gone all quiet. The girls had suggested that maybe he had no broadband and might show up anyway, but he would have had no full address or phone numbers yet.

This enormous fennel attracts hundreds of bumble bees despite
being in the poly-tunnel. They all seem to get out OK.

Ah well, we waited expectantly through the whole weekend and through today but still no contact, so we now assume that he has just let us down without word. This is a real pain. He was going to be key to our plan to re-roof the chicken house, helping K-Dub with the lifting which is currently outside my range, plus in digging over that big raised flower bed cleared by the girls. He is also needed for jobs like mowing which is now coming due (and will again), and some log-splitting.

We do still have all 4 goslings. One must be hiding in this pic
behind a grown up bird.

There is little we can do to 'get back' at the inconsiderate, unhelpful behaviour except mark him as a no-show in the bit of the Help-X website reserved for volunteer references. If anyone reads that, they will at least know not to book him and get let down as were we. I have also changed our host 'advert' to read "Help Urgently Needed for August". We may just get a replacement volunteer in time but most people seem to only go in in Spring, when they are planning their Summer's work.

Splitting the ram lamb. Sorry poor pic due to
taken on the phone.

Meanwhile the other main job this week was to get those lambs back from the butcher and into the freezer. Forgetting that Monday was the B/Hol, I shot down to Castlerea in the morning, also intending to order my woodwork for the new Chicken House roof (ker-ching €360). Of course. all the roads were lined with no parking cones for the Castlerea Agricultural Show, all the shops (looked) closed, lights off and nobody about. I turned round and came home again. My butcher lads had said "next Monday" but I guessed they'd just forgotten the B/hol. Apparently not. They were in the shop, out back, feeding some horses, fully expecting me to turn up. When I went down today they were asking why I failed to keep "our date". Easy mistake to make, we all agreed. They were happy to 'do' me today.

Half a ram lamb carcass

They were also very impressed by the lamb carcasses which they described as "just right". The big ram lamb made a carcass weight of 24 kg (50 lbs), the ewe-lamb a lighter 19 kg (40 lbs). These guys do the butchering on lambs for us (we do our own pigs as you know). We just have to specify the cuts (individual chops or racks? whole shoulder or gigot chops? legs as half-legs? etc).

Bagged, labelled and ready for the freezer. 2 lamb carcasses

They are a pleasure to watch at work. They even bag the individual joints and label them as if the shop was selling them (with name of cut, date, cost per kg, weight and price). This saves us a lot of messing about, reassembling the animal back home so that we can correctly bag and label it here. They are, as the saying goes "a great bunch of lads".

Lamb labelling

Which about sums it up for this one. I am still clinging to a faint hope that French Help-X-er Rafael is out there somewhere, lost, looking at closed railway stations, bus depots and Internet cafés. trying in his 17-year old inexperienced traveller way, to make contact, but that hope is fading. Maybe by the next post someone will have turned up and I will be able to report progress on some of these jobs.

Good luck now.

Daisy Cutters

Cat Basket Lady with 3 of her 4 chicks

Friends of the Blog may recall that we are now down to our last broody birds at what will probably be the end of this year's breeding season. The last indoor bird, Cat Basket Lady, came off the nest this week with her 4 successful hatches, 3 yellow and one black. She is now well into the "teaching them to be chickens" phase and we see her all around the site, the yard and the grass.

A lovely vegetarian Mex spread for one
 of the suppers

That leaves us with just 2 birds AWOL who we hope are out there somewhere, hidden up in the hedges, sitting on eggs and trying not to be eaten by the fox. One is the Guinea hen who went "off piste" 5 days before I came out of hospital. If she's still out there, that makes her due in a week and a half. Just maybe she will shepherd any successful babies ("keets") home to us and delight us (and her 3 patient 'husbands') one day.

We passed our NCT (= MOT) and I was delighted to be reminded
that this car is still not 10 years old, so NCTs are only every OTHER
year. Expires 2020.

Also out there but not quite so promising is a white hen we call Connie. As of now she has been out there way too long, her eggs will be well past it and we also have a mini-tragedy in her motherhood career.

2 nice steaks made a change to the diet of vegetarian food.

Last week, one morning, when I was the only one up, a commotion of geese in the yard called me running, thinking we had a fox. The Guineas were screaming and I let the dogs go to do their thing. Well, there was no fox, but as the geese moved off I saw a sad, lemon-yellow fluff-ball lying in the yard where they'd been. I also noticed that Connie the hen, AWOL for 3 weeks or so, was back in the yard and chuntering in an upset way.

Daisy the Pig as back seat passenger.

The fluff turned out to be a very new, but dead hen-chick, so my best guess at what had happened was this. Connie had come off her AWOL nest with a single successful chick, but then led it into the yard and way too close to the goslings. The geese would not have tolerated that and quickly killed it. Poor Connie. She stuck around for the morning, chuntering, and then disappeared AWOL again. She may have gone back to the nest to try some more, but the eggs will have been badly chilled in the interim, and she will almost certainly fail, get bored and return to us. If the fox does not find her first.

Have new OSB apron. I'm going in!

The Help-X lasses have gone a-touristing, a train journey to Westport yesterday and then a bus trip out to very popular tourist destination Achill Island, to stay overnight and return tonight (Fri). One of them is a vegetarian and we have been exploring the veggie repertoire out of solidarity with her but, 2-3 weeks in we were starting to crave meat. With the girls off site, it was the perfect opportunity to have steak and chips. Also, by happy chance, it was also the day we collected the pig carcass from town, so we would have a chance to butcher that up without inadvertently upsetting anyone, and squirrel it away in the freezer, out of sight.

The new pork-butcher extricates a sheet of ribs

We had a thoroughly enjoyable time at the cutting. With me being still restricted to 'light duties', we did this one on a 50/50 basis, Elizabeth doing her sawing and knife work while I took a breather and advised her. This was her first pig. It was great teamwork and we had the whole pig (Daisy) cut up in about an hour and a half. That is now wrapped, bagged, labelled and in the freezer. All except for a huge 'ham' joint which we will brine up and keep for Christmas.

Hubble bubble boil and....... The split head gets boiled down.

We also got back the heart, liver, the head (split) for brawn, and a bonus couple of trays of sausage rolls. This morning The Woman of the House took on the boiled head and has produced some rather lovely looking brawn (low salt, by all accounts, for the sake of the 'heart patient'), a rillette made from a pot of neck meat so tender and light looking it might be crab meat, and a stock so rich it sets as jelly when cool. The dogs will get the ears and tail roasted and chopped up as treats, the chickens get a few gribbly bits and we only threw away the skull bones.

A good size ham joint waiting for its fancy spiced brine to cool.

We are now coming to then end of our little time with these Help-X-ers, Emma and Flora. They are home again tonight from Achill, then around for Saturday (we will not make them work!) but on to a train or bus on Sunday morning bound for Sligo and their next 'placement'. On the Monday we take delivery of our next Help-X, a lad this time, Rafael, another Frenchman.

Cuts of Daisy the Pig

He is with us for 3 weeks and by another happy coincidence we may be replacing that chicken house roof. Builder friend K-Dub has us booked in for the 13th and has come to measure up and given me a list of timber and materials to buy in the interim. With me 'Tom-Dick', I was worried I'd not be able to help, passing timbers and sheets of corrugated up to K-Dub up his ladder, but with new guy Rafael here we should be well manned up. That poor 'house' has been under its "temporary" tarpaulin roof for 18 months now and I'd be very worried asking the tarp to survive another winter.

Butcher's bonus. A gift of sausage rolls.

Enough for this one. Good luck now.

Ahhhhhh...Middlin'

Ireland missed the 'blood moon' lunar eclipse due
to cloud/rain but I've been waking early lately and seen some
lovely sunrises. A bit misty, this one.

SPOILER ALERT: Self pitying aul' git on a minor rant. Fans of the healthy, happy blogger might like to skip the first few paragraphs.

The heatwave officially ended when
the 'Mighty Coat' came back out of the
cupboard.

Health update: Readers of the posts about the hospital stay might like a progress on the recovery. A few days ago, when I was planning this post, this section was going to be  a right old 'woe is me' whinge. I was not happy and the recovery seemed to be going all to Hell. Now I find myself in a much better frame of mind and waxing pragmatic and realistic.

The mountain ashes think it's Autumn already.

You'll know that I am in a 4 week 'stabilising' phase now, taking great care on the fluid intake, taking the tapered end of the steroids course (3 more days till I'm off them), weighing myself every day and watching anxiously for weight gains of 1-2 kg per day, taking it easy, letting my lungs recover. I came out of hospital thinking that'd be easy, buoyed up by my famous recovery in there, clearing my lungs and losing 14 kg of fluid in 14 days, surrounded by cheering nurses, delighted, enthusiastic medics and a blizzard of well wishers.

Our lovely current Help-X volunteers,
Emma (l) and Flora.

I am now back home and down with a bump into a more realistic rate of recovery. The limited fluids began as a real pain; I was craving water, wet food and juicy fruit, eking out my ration, scoring every sip I took with pills on my sheet and enviously watching Elizabeth and the guests sloshing generous slugs of supper time water into their glasses of elderflower cordial. Despite all that "hardship" I was still putting on weight at about half a kilo a day. A worrying trend which had me looking down the barrel of more congestion, re-swollen ankles, no breathing and a return to hospital.

That lost raised bed which the girls have been clearing.

Anyone else putting on lots of weight (what would you even eat if you WANTED to put on half a kilo a day?) might be thinking "Who ate all the pies?" but in my current state it is a water retention and 'water-works' control issue. Obviously I am back in touch with the doctors (well, trying to be. They not that easy to reach!) and keeping a careful eye on the figures. We even started putting a tape measure round my ankles to spot swelling.

Self seeded mullein (Verbascum) at last.

A couple of frustrated, scared, upset, wobbly days then but we have now put the water thing on a much more manageable method. I am allowed a (250 ml) coffee with each of he three main meals and the remaining 750 ml I take as a 750 ml bottle of water which I keep in the fridge (out of sight and.....) and sip away at. I have got used to this and find myself not only not craving water all day, but actually being left with some, un-drunk.

"Kuku", Iranian spinach tortilla. Beautifully light and
fresh-tasting after the spud-based Spanish one.

If ever I fancy something else (a tiny beer, for example), I decant the equivalent amount of water into the sink. There may also have been an alleged problem with me 'horsing' the carbs on my return to civvie street (Hey, I was ill, weak, needing to build my strength up!) but the catering dept is on that one and carefully watching my portion control!

The girls helped make the meringue for this black currant
Pavlova. They also picked the currants.

In these parts they have a lovely expression for if you are not good but not bad. In that superbly understated Irish way, where you'd not want to 'put yourself forward' by claiming to be either very healthy or very ill, they reply to 'How are you?', with "Ahhh middlin' ". I am going to adopt this now and give that reply to anyone who asks. I am streets ahead of where I was 3 weeks ago, but not quite yet fixed, so 'middling' nails it.

Falafels and banana bread.

But enough of this  medical malarkey. How about the rest of the place? I am now back in the groove here (all be it on light duties, no heavy lifting) assisted by our lovely current Help X volunteers, Emma and Flora. I have had them doing all manner of gardening and tidying jobs including mowing and brush cutter-ing, cleaning out a duck house, clearing the big raised bed and rescuing all the plants.

Emma scratching some piggy backs.

One of them, Flora, turned out to be a closet vegetarian. She'd not told us in advance (we told her off for that, silly girl!) and had been trying not to give the game away to Liz in that first week, taking the plates of food but quietly pushing the meat bits to one side. Once she was 'out', Elizabeth was able to adjust the menu to suit and happy to join her in 3 weeks of exploring the vegetarian repertoire and we have all enjoyed some real delights and revelations. It has become an evening job for the Woman of the House, pulling out the little used cook-books and choosing what to cook for tomorrow.

We have had a delightful range of baking (cheese and onion pie, anyone?), some lovely soups (butternut and coconut?), an Iranian spinach tortilla (kuku), desserts like pavlova and, yesterday, a gorgeous Mexican spread of wraps, nachos, tomato and pepper hot-stuff, sweetcorn salad, salsas, cheeses and so on. The girls are also keen students in the kitchen and we have had them learning and helping in the baking and food prep. Most recently this was a banana bread and the falafels for lunch.

All aboard! Familiarising the pigs with
the trailer-of-doom.

We have also "harvested" 2 lambs and the biggest pig. The sheep we can round up ourselves at this stage but it was good to have some help from the Help X lasses on my campaign to train the pigs to go into the trailer. This, you may recall, we do by showing them the trailer with tempting food inside for a couple of days before the 'off' so that, on the morning, they will scurry up the ramp quite innocent of our betrayal. This time pushing the trailer around on my own is a bit outside my "light duties" remit, so the girls have been a real God-send. The pigs flew up the ramp at the first try, and we ended up having fun trying to ensure that only the pig we needed (Daisy) was in there (not all three) so that we could close the gate on her.

Soapwort.

Off to the butchers then on Monday morning with the two lambs (including the big ram lamb) and on Tuesday morning with that pig. We will now get all that meat back for the freezer. The lamb offal we collected yesterday. The half-pigs will be collected on Thursday. We will butcher those ourselves, The lamb we will collect next Monday.

Buff-tip moth caterpillar.

A little entomological mini-drama this week when Flora spotted a caterpillar on my '60th Birthday present' white-barked birch tree. When I went back to the tree with the camera I saw that there were actually dozens of them and that they nearly had the tree defoliated. Still, we are following organic principles here, so caterpillars are grist to the mill, Elizabeth posted a few pics up on Facebook to see if we could get an ID.

Clockwise from top left, lamb hearts, livers and kidneys
(still in their suet "jackets")

A UK friend was on to us saying we might have a problem. It might be buff-tip moth but it MIGHT be something called the "Oak processional moth". The latter is a frightening invasive species, notifiable to the Ministry, able to devastate broad leaved forests. It has not made Ireland yet, but the Ministry ask us all to keep a careful eye. Elizabeth fired off pics and an email just in case. Don't panic, came back the Ministry, 'That is just a buff tip moth, but thank you for the notification". There's a relief.

That is enough for this one. When I next post we will be nearing the last days of the girls' stay with us and we will have the pork back from Webb's. I will also, I hope, have had the car re-tested and passed its NCT. Myself, I will almost certainly still be middlin'.