Ma Nature's Lyrical

Oh, the barnyard is busy, in a regular tizzy,

And the obvious reason is because of the season.

Ma Nature's lyrical, with her yearly miracle,

Spring, Spring, Spring.

All the hen-folk are hatchin' while their men-folk are scratchin'

To ensure the survival of each brand new arrival.

Each nest is twitterin', they're all baby-sitterin',

Spring, Spring, Spring.

It's a beehive of buddin'....(and so on in the words of Johnny Mercer's song in Seven Brides)

Well, the East wind might still be blowing and the heavy frosts have all the bud-break and tulip growth on hold for the minute, but our reliable broody hen, Broody Betty, has decided that it is spring and, even if she only has rubber eggs to sit on, sit on them she will. We had just scratched around ourselves to find half a dozen eggs to give to our 2CV visitors, John and Carol and BB's sisters have not all come into lay yet, so we could only manage 5 eggs to put under a hen who is more than capable of covering a dozen. 

We decided that this might be a nice chance to diversify away from our original Sussex Ponte, mainly-white hens, and contacted Mentor Anne who we knew might have an egg glut. We asked what she thought might be suitable and she has generously provided us with a further 7 eggs. Three are of the well known variety, "Buff Orpington", three more from the big black breed "Jersey Giant" and another is a rather uncertain cross of the Jersey, possibly with the renowned French table bird "La Bresse". These 12 eggs were all slid into BB's nest on Thursday 4th, so now we must wait to see does BB stay the distance, 21 days give or take, and then do the babies survive and do they grow up as hens to bolster up our flock, or boys for the table. Watch this space.

We are both delighted that the Irish language is enjoying something of a resurgence in recent decades. Liz was taught it as a dry and dusty museum piece with little use, by rote and using some dire old books like the infamous 'Peig Sayers', a relentless tale of woe, death and hunger from the almost uninhabited, windswept rocks of the Blaskett Islands off our west coast. Children dreaded being 'sent away' to the Gaelic speaking areas (the "Gaeltacht") to live in cottages with little ol' ladies and forced to speak no English. Irish has been compulsory in schools since the state was founded but is now taught as a modern language with fun reading books, it is promoted by the Gaelic speaking societies in a 10 day event each year and there are Gaelic speaking radio stations and papers, and snatches of Gaelic in everyday life. The modern attitude seems to be use what you can cobble together, enjoy it, and don't get too precious about precise grammar and vocab. Be proud of it! 

So we loved that Irish favourite potato crisp brand 'Tayto' with which everyone grew up in the same way as all my UK peers would know Smiths Ready Salted, now do an Irish Language version of their famous packet. Amusingly, the nutritional details on the back still seem to have to be in English, and the little packet held up by the potato man in the standard logo is in English.

The cat Blue is turning out to be our best ratter. His Brother, Rolo, who started well (and youngest) has not caught anything lately that we know about and looks on enviously as Blue plays with this decent sized young adult which he nailed a couple of days back. This is A GOOD THING especially with our hen gone broody. Rats will happily steal eggs from under hens, and the hens, which will happily peck a mouse to death, just seem to grumble quietly and let the rat get on with it. Rats will also steal baby chicks and drag them off. Well, this fella may have been caught napping by the change of light since we painted the barns (of which more in another post) but his days of nicking chicks are over.

Finally, I enjoyed a genuine 'Irish' day today, down on neighbour John Deere Bob's hot, dusty turf bog. There were 4 of us and in 8 hours we collected 7 good trailer loads of nice dry turf, maybe 17.5 tonnes total creating a massive pile in Bob's barn. I ached and was grimy from the black 'dusht' ; I also ached from laughing at the happy banter between the three local lads. This turf should have been 'winnable' back last September but rain set in in August and quickly made the bog un-driveable. I can't quite believe we were dry enough on 5th April in County Roscommon. This rather poor picture was taken using my phone - I did not have my camera. I picked up some lovely local turns of phrase in the process - "This'll tighten us" (This is going to be hard work). "Ah - Sean-een! He was a one for the Whish-key allright! He certainly shifted plenty. He was a bit-een mad" (Sean-een is like 'Little Shawn'). And on the subject of driving tractors over bog-peat without getting stuck, "The secret is, once you are moving,keep it moving.... You'd want to keep it lit alright!"

It was a brilliant day. That barn painting in the next post.

Goat Management Course

Can I just quickly say that this blog has, today, passed the 20,000 page views stage, running at 20,395 as of today as we hit 1173 posts. Not bad! Thank you for all your interest and support, readers. With plans to try to improve the grazing in the local fields and clear the rushes up, a job which neither sheep nor cattle will do and horses only if very hungry, we have been looking at goats as a possible option. They will eat the rushes when they are new growth (i.e. once topped), they can be used to browse out rubbish like bramble and nettles and, unlike horses they can be used for meat or used to produce milk which is reasonably easy to turn into cheeses, yogurt and then whey for use in baking (e.g. soda bread) or for feeding to chickens. Mum and Dad started to look around on the internet for goats in Roscommon and came across a small holding close by which runs Goat Management courses. The course we chose was a 6 hour one on a Saturday which claimed to include lots of hands-on dairy stuff from milking through cheese making and even eating the meat. Both Mum and Dad have had goat milk before from Tesco which they had found slightly unpleasantly 'goaty' so they were also keen to try some fresh, well produced stuff to see was this flavour a part of the territory. It isn't, incidentally. The farm and the course are run by the delightful family 'Kelemen' including Hungarian Judit and her sister Zsuzsa, Irishman, Pat and various children, primarily young lad Zoli who seems to be chief goat-herd and is definitely a skilled efficient milker. Incidentally, it occurred to Mum that she knows very few Hungarians and the vast majority (OK, 3) of them seemed to be called Zsuzsa. The zs by the way, is pronounced like the French "J" in Rosé d'Anjou. The farm keeps 2 purebred Saanen goats for milking (they are a good dairy breed but scrawny and rangy and not particularly good as meat), Charm and Lucky, and they get these girls into milk each season by siring with either a Saanen (if they want milker females) or the meatier Boer breed if they want meat-goats to either eat or barter with. They also keep a few sheep and lambs, ponies and lots of poultry. The course itself was brilliant and Mum and Dad come home singing its praises. The first half of the day is a classroom session going through legal stuff, the breeds, health, nutrition and feeding, housing, fencing (this is a big one - they are escapists!), managing the grazing (rotation etc), then milking and use of the products. There is a hand-out from the (excellently presented) Powerpoint session. The 2nd part is practical stuff where the gang meet the goats, lead them about, take them to a barn to see and do foot-trimming and be shown how you'd administer wormer doses and medicines. They are shown milking and given a chance to try, along with all the teat-cleaning, strip-cup stuff to check for mastitis and so on. Both Mum and Dad manage to get a good flow of milk going milking by hand so they are happy with that. They move into the kitchen area and get to try starting a cheese batch, a yogurt batch and even getting ricotta to separate from the whey (whey is the clearish liquid left once you've taken the main cheese curds off, but can be boiled and persuaded to produce yet more curds using rennit, and these curds can be made into ricotta cheese.) They also get to try lifting the cheese curd off the original whey for a cheese batch started the day before placing it in the moulds to further drain and dry, and learn to pasteurise milk. All through the day there are frequent breaks for food and coffee, the food being all goat-based products and sometimes Hungarian specialities to show the 'students' what can be done. There is delicious home made rolls and cheese, drinking-yogurt and normal yogurt, pasta parcels with spinach and cheese, rye bread and a variety of cheeses (e.g. with sun dried tomato in oil or with pesto made using wild garlic and salads to try. There were also a few barbecued ribs. It was all delicious and lovely, report Mum and Dad and with none of it showing any unpleasant 'goaty' flavour. There is even a blind trial where milk A and milk B are presented un-labelled to try and only one course member allowed to see the preparation and know which was which. Mum alone of all the group manages to correctly identify the goat's milk. Dad finds them so similar that had Judit said - haha, fooled you, they were both cows'! he'd have not been surprised. Finally there was a beautiful cheesecake made with goat cream cheese. Everyone was sold on the products. Mum and Dad, who took the 2CV to the course (and generated the usual amount of delighted comment and curiosity) drove home buzzing with goat facts and knowledge. They are almost convinced they will go ahead with goats as a plan but need the herd number to come through from the District Vet Office, and some fencing doing, so it may not be any time very soon. They feel they have enough to be going on with at present. More playmates! Deefs