A Lucky Rooster

Puff balls

"At last!", I hear you cry, "A post devoid of Doctors, health, hospitals and medical stuff...... well except for here in this first sentence, anyway". September now, season of mists and mellow fruitfulness and all thoughts turn to small-holder-ing, harvests and preparing for the Winter. Here that means a variety of meats - duck, chicken and pigs at the moment, plenty of fruit (mainly plums and apples), veg obviously and then. always taking us a bit by surprise, the puffball "pop-up-crop" out on the old muck heap behind the goose house.

Lamb shoulder cooked over a bed of veg which included
our puff balls. 

I spotted 2 nice new puff balls this time around and their delicious mushroominess has enhanced a number of dishes. Elizabeth included them in a lovely mushroom tortilla. I had a try at just cutting one into chips, and frying-pan frying them as part of breakfast, which was delicious, but the Main Chef used them as part of the bed of veg's under a roast lamb shoulder. This made for some delicious 'veg' to accompany the meat first time round, but then enhanced a superb shepherd's pie made with the left overs. Obviously you need to catch them young - don't wait till they are just a thin-skinned bag of dark green 'puffy' spores!

Plum jam. Needs another boil to improve the 'set'.

It has been a very good year for plums. All the heat wave weather ensured a good blossom and fruit set and the plums seemed to all survive the drought, unlike the cherries, quinces and pears which suffered a serious "June Drop". We picked a good 6 kg yesterday and I made 3 kg into plum jam.

Only a few figs this year but it is a very small and young tree.

This morning, though, I am not impressed by the set. I am never very good at setting jam; I never seem to boil it long or hard enough. This batch will go back into the big saucepan when I get the chance, for another good hour of rolling boil and reduction. It has also been a good year for apples but we are not so mad keen for apples in this house, so the pigs have been enjoying the lion's share of our Katy and Red Windsor bounty. Other varieties are more interesting but, this year, a lot lower cropping - 'Irish Peach', Egremont Russet, Braeburn, James Grieves and Bramley, plus cider apples Camelot, Dunkerton Early and Dabinet.

The 'bonhams' enjoying a water melon treat. There is nothing like
water melon for  shlurpy, juice-flying-everywhere, pig-saliva,
lip-smacking show of deliciousness. Happy pigs.

In the Meat Department we have now declared the two boy-pigs (bonhams) "ready". They have caught up well on the late Sister. I have booked them in to the butcher in town for Weds week (12th). That means we just have to do all that trailer-familiarisation malarkey on the Monday and Tuesday, but these guys already know the trailer from when we were doing it with their 'big sister' (Daisy - see earlier post). We will collect the carcasses on the following Monday (19th) to give them a chance to 'set' in Webb's cold store.

A nice clean drake carcass.

Meanwhile, our new ducks have now made their decisions on whether to be ducks or drakes and, unfortunately for them, the 5 babies proved to be 3 drakes and 2 females. This gave us a way out of balance ratio in the 'flock' (do ducks have 'flocks'?) of 4 males to 3 females. We need to 'off' all three of the new drakes to restore the balance, especially as any matings would almost certainly be brother x sister in-breedings. We will then be left with the Khaki Campbell as our drake. He is definitely NOT related to the ladies - he is a different variety.

Let a wet dog on your lap and they will autograph your knee.

The original Mum and 2 daughters will be our egg layers come next Spring. It's a shame that in Appleyards, as in the original mallards, the boys are the pretty and colourful ones. The females tend to be brown and flecked, well camouflaged, but can have a bit of white on their chests. So it goes.

The chickens, of course, have the same problem. Regular readers will know that we run here with a hen to rooster ratio of between 7:1 and 12:1 which gives us good cover (fertility) in the eggs but avoids any unwelcome harassment and rape. Sadly, like most species, baby chicks hatch as roosters and hens on a 50/50 basis; way too many boys. The day someone develops a chicken variety that yields 1:7 someone will make a lot of money.

This 'spare' rooster got lucky

We are, as you know, over-run with 2018 hatch birds, a lot of which hatched around May, so they will be coming to "point of lay" (or not!) between now and Chri***as. We start to see the signs as young poults start to square up to one another, flaring their little baby 'capes' and bowing their heads. This can be from very young ages - 6 weeks even. There is no market for them as roosters, especially the mongrel cross breeds we produce.

The ducks playing on the pond. Much quacking, zooming about
swimming under water like penguins and splashing. 

Normally these guys get 'offed' before they start to cause a problem, but one here at the moment has got lucky. Our archery friends, Con and Niamh have just had their rooster and a couple of hens taken by the fox. The rooster was taken right outside the kitchen window - Niamh saw him bite through the poor fella's neck and then carry him off, limp, before she could get out there.

Sad slew of feathers. All you get to tell
you Brer Fox has been.

We thought our own fox might be leaving us alone - he'd not been (as far as we knew) for several weeks. But 2 days ago, he came by just before 9 o'clock in the morning to invite a Buff Orpington hen to breakfast. My bad. I was downstairs and had just shut the dogs up for yapping at a magpie, lest they wake up Elizabeth. When they started yapping again I assumed it was just more magpie and did not respond properly. The fox had come onto the front lawn in bright sunshine and snatched a hen from the flock out there. Elizabeth spotted the sad slew of feathers on the lawn and a couple more where Foxy had adjusted his grip on his way out through fences etc.

Leaf fall.

Meanwhile, we are now set up for a few visits. The first, today, was by Mum-in-Law (Steak Lady on here) accompanied by her friend/neighbour/minder/factotum, Michelle. MiL had recently broken her wrist and had had it in plaster, so no driving for her. The plaster cast is now off but this would be a first chance for MiL to show off our place (largely built by her son, 'Sparks', of course!) to Michelle and also for them to check up on my recovery. We would catch up on the chat over tea, enjoy a bit of lunch, and then the ladies were off for an afternoon at the lovely Strokestown House (The house, the National Famine Museum and a lovely old walled garden).

Lovely poster from Michelle.

They came (as they say) bearing gifts including a very thoughtful and generous present from Michelle. She has a friend in the printing business and she had had him make up a couple of posters from the newspaper article which featured our garden back in December 2017. See also my previous post on

https://deefer-dawg.blogspot.com/2017/12/too-much-bio-diversity.html

The poster had the article in the middle, surrounded by some more recent pictures extracted from this blog. We are very grateful and delighted. The ladies even brought a poster-frame for the item. We are spoiled.

Geese and their reflections

Tomorrow, it is the turn of  'The Dans' (Dan and Danielle), long term Friends of the Blog. Cousin Danielle, in particular, was deeply distressed (well... OK) that I had sneakily gone sick without very quickly calling on them to come and help, and they have been meaning to get over and support us ever since. We really have the best and most generous friends.  More of that visit in the next post.

All for now. Good Luck.