Topping and Ploughing

After our week of doing our own thing (mainly home-making) in the absence of Sparks who has been in Dublin working, John is coming back this week to finish off a few little jobs. He gets delayed by a day because his son is poorly so we get another day of bringing stuff in from the Tígín, unpacking, cleaning if needed and finding a home for it in the new house. Some of it will actually end up surplus to requirements as we do not want to clutter up the new house as much as the old one, so we are going to invest in some lidded dry plastic crates in which stuff will stay safe if it is banished to the Tígín or the Utility Room. Meanwhile the chooks prove to be the laziest bunch of gals in Roscommon. In theory they are free range. They have the whole milking shed and calf house to wander about in, and a pop-hole which is open all day leading to a size-able run. In practise they seem to stay sitting on their overnight perch in the calf house which leads to amusing posts on Facebook where Dad adds speech bubbles to his pictures of the girls all in a row on the perch. Dad also gets a chance to expand the veg patch in the 'Secret Garden', planting broad beans, chard and Dwarf French beans. The Onions are getting on well and the first potato leaves are emerging through the soil. On the morning of Wednesday, Sparks turns up but we also have a flurry of excitement around the cattle. We are rapidly wrangled indoors to keep us out of the way as Mike the Cows and a mate show up. They need to round up the cows and bring them a kilometer down the lane to a yard so that they can be TB tested by the Government Vet. They are scatty enough anyway and run in all directions and the theory is that if we were 'helping' they'd be at it all day. Mike and his mate are doing 'quiet and gentle persuasion' rattling buckets of grub and hoping the cows will follow them. Most do. Some take off in the other direction and some, once in the lane, head off along our front fence, the wrong way. Eventually everybody is corralled and set off in the right direction. The gates are all shut and we dogs are allowed out again. While he's here, Mike the Cows makes a proposition to Dad, asking can he have his cows graze the eastern field (1.5 acres) if he agrees to top both fields (mow them off to 3-4 inches including the rushes) and to plough and rotovate the 25' by 125' slice of the western field which Dad is going to use as his allotment. This will save Dad weeks of digging so we all agree and Mike turns up with a variety of kit to top and plough. He will let the ground dry a bit before he tractor-rotovates.