Where there is Livestock there is Dead Stock

Gandalf's end. The stock pot.

My title this week is that hackneyed old trope much used by we smallholders as a form of tough, fatalistic sympathy (not good to show too much emotion - these are not pets after all!) when we or colleagues lose an animal. We'd love to be able to keep them all alive and healthy for ever but, no, as Shakespeare would (nearly) have it,

"All the farm’s a stage,
And all the birds and animals merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances......."

New Sheriff in town..... "Lucky"

So on Monday 3rd Dec our lovely 'alpha' rooster, pure-bred Marans "Gandalf the Grey" died for no discernible reason. He was in the coop and fell off his perch in the afternoon, found stiff and flat on the ground (but not fully cold) by Elizabeth at 'supper' time. He'd be about 2 years old, hatched in July 2016 from eggs we bought from Mayo-Liz's farrier and has been a fine rooster, beautiful looking and an excellent minder of his ladies. He was also very fertile and his DNA is in most of this year's hatch babies.

This made us smile - a gift of 6 cushions depicting cats on bikes.

Ah well, he ended up in the stock pot and his replacement, as far as we can tell (for now anyway) is a honey-coloured 6 month old youngster whom we are calling 'Lucky". Now THERE is bird who deserves his name and has had a very interesting life. He is lucky to be still with us. We are fairly sure "it was him" anyway. Back in May (22nd or so) he hatched under the hen we were then calling 'Cat Basket Lady' but got left out of the nest one 'nap time' and could not hop over the lip back to Mum's warmth. We found him 9/10 dead and cold on the concrete. I cupped him in my hands to get some warmth back into him and over 10-15 minutes he slowly came to, kicking and wriggling with increasing strength till I thought he was back with us. I slipped him back in under Mum and he lived to fight another day.

Plenty fruit in the diet now.

Weeks later he managed to hop up into a bucket, half filled with water and then jumped down in. The water was too deep for him to touch bottom, so he couldn't jump out again and was doomed to tread water, squeaking pitifully till he got waterlogged and sank. When you have tiny chicks, never leave them able to access water deeper than about 2 inches. Luckily I happened to go into the yard and heard him so was able to save his little life again and put him back with Mum. Since then he has survived all the fox attacks and also our culls of excess roosters. So, here he is now, promoted to the New Sheriff. Big boots to fill, Lucky. No pressure. He may only be 6 months old but I saw him 'nail' a hen this morning so at least he understands that part of the job description.

The fruit for the Christmas cake sits overnight steeping in an odd
mix of booze. Mum-in-Law had had a de-clutter of the dog-ends
from her drinks cabinet from last year.

What else is new as we bimble gently in towards Christmas like ski-ers on the gentlest blue run? Stir-up Sunday finally arrived on the Tuesday and all those part-mixed bowls of goodness were moved on to become cooked pud or cake. The cake is sitting a few days to mature before I will get amongst it with marzipan and icing. I have a good idea for the design but I'm keeping that under my hat for now.

Village Christmas Party

There was a very successful Christmas Party for the villagers down at the Village 'Centre' (Memorial Hall). Everyone works really hard to make these happen. The hall is laid out magnificently with all the festive napkins and what-not and the ladies all bring along great bowls of the various foods. You pay for the food and (if you like) bring along your own booze and something to drink it out of. The place was satisfyingly packed and everybody was very happy with the evening. A good success.

Lisacul 2019 Calendar.

The 2019 Lisacul Village Calendar has also been designed and printed and is now being sold. Once again it is mainly based on photographs taken for the '365' project but this year has a nice refreshing theme running through it. Each month has a village scene but also an inset picture of some local refreshments - tea, cake, soup etc and the front cover says "Will you have a cup of tea while you're here?" It is a lovely thing to have. If you, dear reader(s) got one from us last year then, do not worry, you will get another this year. They are nearly in the post. If you would like one, the the Village website is the place.

https://www.facebook.com/pg/lisacultoday/posts/?ref=notif

Getting back into the sourdough making.

Meanwhile, lest anyone forget that I am still soldiering on, a martyr to my suffering (OK I'm basically OK and pain-free but bear with me while I indulge myself in a couple of amusing 'sick' stories). Fluid retention. It's gone decidedly weird on me. This, you will recall is due to the general inefficiency of the current version of my heart (leaky valve) which is failing to move fluids properly around my body. When I was in hospital back in July, this was all about swollen ankles and we all watched with interest as they swelled or deflated day by day. Then a few weeks later this problem went away and it was all about knees. Now that version is also no longer in fashion and I have a taut band of 'swollen' around my gut but very high up; liver/diaphragm level. I have always had a bit of a 'beer belly' down in the standard place, bulging gently over my trouser waist-band, but this is like a high-up 10-pints a night thing. It seems most unfair given that I have not touched beer for months and am eating precious little. I offer up a fervent prayer that the heart surgery, once complete will sort all this out and move all this fluid (if such is what it is) on and out.

We are both impressed by this tin that
came around latest gin. We think that,
with the (plastic) lid off, it will make a nice
Christmas candle holder.

Finally I am mercifully nearly through my month of iron supplement tablets. I hate those things with a passion. They upset my system in too many ways. Everyone gets the unpleasant black sticky poo, I think, but I also suffer a month of farting, belching and feeling a continuous, low level nausea. It is just on the edge, there, of nearly but not quite starting to feel sick. I never have (vomited, I mean) though I've had a few episodes of dry-retching. It's all very unsettling and depressing of appetite. I approach every meal wondering whether it is wise to eat it. Ah well, only 5 more days to go on that one. I will then keep a low profile and hope that the GP does not remember she put me on it and needs to see whether it worked! :-). Not really - I will, of course follow all the medical advice as best I can.

Enough for this one. Till the next time. Good luck now.

Not Now, Kato!

Kittens with a 'thing' about shoulders

All my readers except one will probably be familiar with the Pink Panther films with Peter Sellers playing the bumbling Inspector Clouseau (and don't worry, Mum, I will explain all!). You will also then, recall the character 'Kato' (now 'Cato' for some reason) played by Warrington born, Singapore raised 'Burt' Kwouk, Clouseau's manservant.

The 365 project is going a bit Christmas as lit up trees and
house fronts start to appear in the 'patch'

The running gag through all the films was that Kato was ordered to attack Clouseau when he least expected it to keep him alert, usually resulting in Clouseau's flat being wrecked. Amid the chaos, the phone would ring and Kato would calmly answer it with "Inspector/Chief Inspector Clouseau's residence", before dutifully handing the phone to his employer and being thumped by Clouseau. (Wikipedia)

All good fun but we now have 2 little 'Kato's of our own. The kittens seem to have a thing about shoulders and getting up onto them and they do this at unexpected moments, creeping up on you from behind with cat-like (yeah, well) stealth and leaping up as far as they can before scrambling the rest of the way up by gripping with their claws. They do this whether you are seated or standing, whether you are empty-handed, or using a sharp knife or holding a boiling kettle and, more importantly, whether you are clothed in nice thick coat and hat or just a spaghetti-strap 'vest' top.

Blue doesn't give a fig for Christmas but he does like a
'shopping' box.

I have even been leapt at from a window-sill after seeing what was about to happen and retreating backwards across 6 feet of kitchen thinking (you fool!) that that kitten would 'bottle' jumping across to land on my polo-shirted chest. Ouch. Right on the 'farmer's tan. Both of us have multiple lacerations about the shoulders, Liz probably worse than me, but then, I don't do the 'spaghetti strap vests' quite as often as she does. They are no longer little feather-weight kittens, but adolescent, half grown lumps of cats, so they pack quite a punch. This is a habit we need to break them of.

Nice local gin and Irish chocs, but will they last till the 25th?

As for most people by now, Christmas has started happening for us - lights, shopping, planning and lists. For the 365 project this has meant a bit of light relief and inspiration in the long run of 'nothing happening' Autumn days. I can nip out of an evening and 'get' a few nicely lit house fronts and trees. It's not easy because the twinkly new LED lights are as likely to be in their 'off' phase when you fire the shutter, as 'on' and the automatic mode on the camera reacts to all the black surrounding night by washing out the colour from lights, but we chug along and always seem to have something to submit to the project.

Mrs Blackbird will be a 'Collie Bird' for the 4th day of Christmas

Today was one of those days where we were both free and we needed to do some shopping but for Christmassy reasons this needed to be separate and a bit covert, so I took the car south in the morning and Liz took it north in the afternoon. When ever we leave the normal 'patch' we latch on all sorts of extra jobs and purchases which we can not do in the two local towns. Don't get me wrong - 'local' is best and we always support local small businesses and traders if we can but there are things you need to go to the 'big town' and the bigger shops for.

2 cats just can not get comfy in a Spanish lemon box

For example, Liz had heard of  a new brand of gin made in Ireland (in Co. Waterford) which was winning awards, and thought to be the best Irish made gin at a reasonable price (€25). This is Boyle's and only available locally in Aldi supermarket, the nearest one to us being Roscommon Town. One of my friends from archery had latched onto a conversation we'd had at a meet where I had told him that we managed to get poitín locally (no names, no pack drill, obviously!). He asked me to get a couple of bottles for his Mum (I kid you not!), so that became an add-on mission. We met, 2 cars in the car park outside Aldi, him dressed in a hoodie, passing anonymous wrapped parcels over in exchange for cash. I wonder what their CCTV crew made of us.

Liz and a kitten enjoy the 'new' reclining settee.

Liz is dreaming up a rather nice add-on project for the '365' thing around the 12 days of Christmas, No details yet as I don't want to spoil the surprise but we are trying to 'translate' the 12 gifts (pear trees, calling birds, drummers drumming etc) into the village 'patch' and the 18 townlands that make it up. There are some lovely ideas there and I have been sent off to try to photograph certain things in time for the 12 days. The plan is to put the 'gifts' up on their correct days (the 'pear tree one' on day 1, turtle doves on day 2 etc). More on this when it has all happened.

Marans Rooster

On the Dec 26th week I am having another turn at 'curator' of the @SmallHolderIRL Twitter account. I was the 2nd ever curator almost a year ago and the Twitter account, led by Margaret Griffin (@FoodBorn) has gone from strength to strength with now 2500 followers and a regular supply of new volunteers willing to tweet for a week from their holdings. We have had all manner of Irish smallholders as well as some from the UK and all have had their own distinct slant on the activity - organic growers who run veg-box schemes, bee keepers, Dexter beef growers, potager veg growers, shepherds, you name it.

A big chunk of 'hang' comes out of the freezer and into sweet
cure for 'bacon and cabbage' on St Stephen's Day

I am quite excited about this as I love doing it and I have picked up the post-Christmas "turkey sandwiches" shift plus, I am delighted to realise, St Stephen's Day (Boxing day to you Brexitters) which is, of course, the day for the 'Wren Boys'. There is a lovely Irish tradition of which more on the day. We are especially excited that we will have Steak Lady here over Christmas and she will just be blown away if (as last year) some real costumed 'Wren Boys' do show up on the 26th.

The 2 well known local edible seaweeds, Carrageen and Dillisk.
Now we just need recipes!

Well, that's enough for this one - I'll just post a few more pictures in the 'tail' as I have them. Have a good run in to the Festive Season, all, and don't go anywhere near Sligo where Liz texted me today from her shopping trip that she didn't realise "It is National Drive Like a Gobshite Day".

My little cubby hole where I write this blog under the stairs
can get a bit gloomy. Not any more. Liz found this little string
of fairy lights at €2.50. Now I can see the keyboard.

Hope I don't need to explain that one.

Slow News Day

365 this week has focused on local colour
in the form of gardens, planters and
hanging baskets. 

On the very few occasions where friends, knowing I have this blog running, and are thinking of starting one up, ask me for tips and suggestions, my main advice is always this. Make sure you have something to say - a story you need to tell or an opinion you are burning to express. The other side of that coin is, of course - if you have nothing to say then shut up. There is nothing worse to read than a blog post which says "I'm bored" or "Nothing much happened". I know how much easier it was to write a 'good' post while we were building the house than when I was in Kent working, walking the dogs, eating and sleeping.

This advice might also be followed up with instruction to stay within what ever rules you have set for yourself. Some of what I do is really part of someone else's story and it would feel wrong to go into any detail on stuff which they should be describing themselves or want to post in Facebook or Twitter or some other favoured medium. Or it involves friends who, for perfectly good reasons, do not want their picture or any details of their comings and goings put up on the internet for "everyone to see". It is not everyone's cup of tea.

Orange montbretia - grows like a weed in all the hedgerows
around here. 

Following my own advice, then, most of what I have done since the last post is out of bounds or, unless you want to hear about a dog needing ear drops or a cat needing wormer, is not exciting enough to make a post out of. Even my pictures this time are just 365 pics. So, I will keep this one nice and short and hope for a bit more inspiration by my next 'due date', Tuesday.

A lovely old tumble-down barn.

Good Luck Now

These pink-wrapped silage bales are done by farmers as part of
a campaign to raise awareness of breast cancer. They pay extra
for the wrap and the difference goes to the charity. You do not see
many round here but I spotted these tucked into the back of a
farm yard. Fair play that farmer. Proud of you. 

Blink and You'd Miss It

My pathetic best silaging picture so far. 

I am, as you'd know, always on the look out for new subjects for the 365 photographic project. A year in the life of our village and its townlands (sub-parishes). Silage making time was upon us; surely a crucial, can't miss, event in the year of a farming community. The weather forecast predicted a violent end to our lovely run of hot days so you'd KNOW the silage contractors would be biting on the bit, raring to go. On Wednesday evening I heard my first mowing machine roaring away a few fields out so I expected to be able to photograph the cutting stages followed by the baling and wrapping.

Last of the blue skies for now. Our next
door field with the suckler herd. We call it
(Vendor) Anna's 5-Acres. It probably has a
(better) real name.

Not on your life! So fast were these crews working that I saw a couple of fields mown and in their drying/wilting rows (I'd missed the mowing) but by the time I could get out again with the camera the grass was baled, carted and wrapped. I was left looking at a tightly shorn, rather surprised looking field. These boys do not hang about. The nearest I could get to a picture for '365' was a long-lens shot across the valley, of some baled silage awaiting the carting stage. All we had here was the to-ing and fro-ing of the contractor's bale-trailers gathering the harvest in to the local farm yards rumbling up and down the lane setting the dogs off barking.

A lovely stand of Aconites still going strong in the garden
 of a long-abandoned dilapidated cottage.  

In theory the hot spell has currently ended and we are returning to "normal" weather for June in the 'Wesht' of Ireland. I have to say that I had not noticed it getting much cooler. The clouds have returned and, mercifully, the little grey midges have departed so that I was able to clear a ditch and hedge for a neighbour without being driven to distraction. I don't have a problem with the 'bitey' ones - the real mozzies and midges - they don't seem to find me tasty. My beef is with the tiny grey ones who land in your sweat and then just walk about on your face. I hate them.

Dublin Bay rose always does well for us.

It seems we may have the daftest bunch of ducks in the land. These are our six 'Khaki Campbell' youngsters hatched at the beginning of March and now fully feathered and, you'd guess, as waterproof and buoyant as any duck could hope to be. For some reason they are frightened of going into the big pond. They love a splash about in their paddling pool and even though it is quite a big one, the 6 of them in there together leave very little room for any of them to move about.

Liz's pic of the ducks as close as they ever get to the water.
Feet on dry land and tips of bills in the water.

These guys are fully free-range and can walk pretty much anywhere on the 'farm' in their amusing waddling 'crocodile' of single file ducks. They have been all around the pond and seen it from all (dry land) angles but the nearest they ever get to getting in is when they all line up on the bank, feet on Terra Firma, to dip their beaks in and dabble at the marginal plants.

Interior of our local (RC) church for the
365 project.

I should quickly say that I am more than happy. Regular readers will know that I was always against having ducks because I think/thought that they destroy ponds leaving you with a stagnant, shitty mess with no pond life in it. Your standard village duck-pond in effect, an ecological desert, ringed by bare, brown, eroded bank mud. So to be able to have ducks and not get your pond wrecked seems too good to be true and I am leaving these ducks well alone. If they want to wash and brush up in the paddling pool and touch my lovely pond only with their bill-tips, then I am not going to argue with them. Neither of us can actually see this lasting and we are both quietly hoping to be the one out there with a camera when our little file of 6 ducks set off serenely across the pond leaving just a V of wake and their little feet under the water going like a train, out of sight.

Maternity Chaos

Hubbard chick at 2 days

The little list of birds currently keeping us waiting grows ever longer. There is turkey hen Barbara, of course, possibly still AWOL, out there in the fields sitting on eggs or possibly hatchlings and maybe, just maybe, planning to walk them all back up here to the farmstead at some stage. At the other end of the 'hope' scale, of course, there is no Barbara and the bones of the former Barbara are drying out in the midden heap outside some fox's lair. We can only wait and see but turkeys are famously mainly grass-grazers, so if she is out there somewhere in the lush Roscommon grass, dodging the hooves of clumsy cattle and teaching the young 'uns to eat grass, we could be waiting a while.

The broody geese, sharing the manger 'trough' and swapping eggs between the two nests each day are also devoid of fluffy goslings. Day 28 for the first eggs we knew about, was 16th May, so we are fast running out of 'late hatching' but regular readers will know that our goose 'breeding' is fairly chaotic and the sister birds have been happily dropping new eggs into the trough for the last few months. There will be eggs in there coming due every day from now till Heaven knows when.

Class of 2016. 18 Hubbard chicks.

We have three separate broody chickens on the go at the moment. One is a-top a 4-bale high pile of straw, wedged up into the door lintel. I suspected when she started that she was sitting on nothing and today she hopped off and confirmed this for me. She has sat for 28 days on fresh air and straw. Might be time to move her on and break the habit. I was toying with the idea if she even hatched ONE egg, of sneaking a few 'ringers' in there (of which more soon).

Gone broody in an old dustbin

One is, rather daftly, in an empty feed bin, 2 feet tall and only containing a few bits of rubbish plus any straw that has fallen in. I was using it as the shed dustbin. This nest has also been plagued by all manner of other poultry hopping in there, squeezing the 'clocker' aside and laying 'cuckoo' eggs in there for her to brood. She had 11 including some Guinea Fowl eggs last time I looked. But think it through, hen! Once they hatch, how do you get them out into the world? I can see me having to do some surreptitious tipping over of the bin at some stage. The 3rd broody hen is the only one doing it sensibly in an actual nest box in the actual coop. Yes, it happens occasionally.

Holding up the beekeeping jobs. Blue asleep in a commercial
'super' box. 

The antidote to all this failed Maternity Suite malarkey is, of course, the annual purchase of our day-old 'Hubbard' meat birds. Hubbards are our most delicious and fast growing (free range) meat bird of choice and we are generously included in the run made by friends Anne and Simon up to an industrial scale hatchery up by the N. Ireland border where they know the team and are allowed to buy small quantities of day-olds (as opposed to the 10,000 bird batches the 'factory' would normally supply to commercial growers.) We 'ordered' 18 this year and these arrived on Wednesday. We had the brooder box set up ready and the 'electric hen' heater plate running. The babies quickly settled in while we fed tea, cake and home-cured 'serrano/palma' style ham to Anne and Simon and chatted. as usual, poultry, gardening and small holdering in general.

Neat and tidy now with a 'super' box (dark
green) added to the top of the stack and
the roof straightened out. 

Meanwhile, outside of poultry and broody birds, I have been settling in the new bees - after a few days of just sitting, getting to know the area, we tidied up the new hive removing the straps and gaffer tape that we'd secured it with, adding an empty super to give them more space (trying to discourage swarming) and settling the roof straight. In the dark we'd not lowered it on quite right and it was a bit drunken looking.

Although I know of no proper 'bluebell
 woods' within our 365 patch, once you
get your eye in, there are plenty of small
patches in hedge bases etc. 

This manipulation also gave us a chance to see if any more work was needed to set it up for summer, and we found, as T McC had said, that the upper brood box (painted white in my pic, above the silver gaffer tape) had some dummy blank frames in it. These will need replacing with proper frames and wax foundation for honey comb next time we are delving around in there.

Lough Adreen, in Cloonargid (Silver Field)

I have been out and about some more on the 365 project photography and as this week is 'Bio-Diversity' week I have been asked to go get pics of flora, fauna and 'natural' stuff. I found myself exploring one of the local cutting bogs down south of Lisacul, in 'Cloonargid' (Silver Field) and found this lovely little lough - I'd known it was there from the map; it is called Lough Adreen (there's no real translation unless the "dreen" is one of those transliteration jobs from 'small oak' like for Ballaghadereen (Bealach an Doirín)). I am convinced that even after 366 days of photography, I will still not have seen the whole patch. Which is good.

Enda Vaneera

Way, way back I posted that we in Ireland had had a General Election. I *think* it was actually 70 days ago. Nobody won (which is no surprise here in this land of coalition governments) and the various factions have been negotiating (or failing to talk) ever since so that even the political journo's have started to sound weary and impatient. Would the 2 main parties (Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil) actually get together after 100 years of the main differences being what they thought about Partition (Ireland split into the Republic and 'The North')? Would we need some kind of Rainbow coalition of Fine Gael plus assorted minor parties and some Independent Members (TDs)? Well, they finally came up with a solution today and re-elected the previous "Taoiseach" (=Prime Minister, say it 'Tea-shuck'), Enda Kenny, though for how long this fragile peace can stick is anybody's guess. It got me to thinking about our various milestones and anniversaries here.

Looking decidedly nervous in this 4 year old pic, releasing
our first Irish chickens

Facebook has to take a lot of the 'blame' for my train of thought. They have got into a 'thing' now where they ping you pictures which you posted exactly 2, 3, 4 or 5 years ago and ask you if you want to share them back onto FB and comment on them. They dug up this 4 year old one of me releasing our first ever Irish chooks from their carry-box. I look very nervous. Nowadays I'd just tip the box on its side and let them walk out. They were our "Lovely Girls"; 6 (quickly reduced to 5) Sussex Ponte Hybrids. We were so green I'd even bought the "wrong" chooks - I'd intended to buy proper pure bred While/Light Sussex (Hadn't heard of Sussex Ponte). 4 years on we are evolving over to Buff Orpingtons and Cuckoo Marans and we have only one of these original birds left - we call her Enda (as in Enda Vaneera....geddit?.... and, yes, I do know Enda is a boy's name).

Meanwhile the piglets come up towards their 14th week and the ducklings and poults are going on 6 weeks. We are charmed by the ducklings now starting to change from the 'peep peep' noise of new hatched ducklings to some proper throaty quacking. Their voices are breaking, Bless 'Em! Both these clutches are now let out all day as long as it is sunny and one of us will be around. They tend to stay in the main yard, though the chickens have wandered as far as the front lawn before 'zooming' back to safety in that amusing wings-flapping sprint young poults have.

Buff Orp poults at 6 weeks

Today we decided to try to herd the ducklings as far as the big pond. They were not that keen and very perturbed at being hooshed out of the familiar yard. I wondered whether the sight of that big body of water might kick some instinct in and they'd happily dive in and play. Not a bit of it. We let them go at the water's edge and all 6 sprinted back towards the cattle-race and the familiar safety of their tiny cat litter tray 'pond'. That can fit only one or two at once now and then only paddling up to their ankles. We may need an interim "kiddies' paddly pool" solution in the yard so that they can experience water where their feets do not touch bottom.

Brooding in stereo. 

Our long-term brooders (the geese and Barbara the turkey) are still playing the waiting game. The geese, we know, are sitting on at least 12 eggs but we can not know how long these eggs have been in there. 3 have been in from the start. We may have the usual goosey chaos as the two Mums (Aunts?) hop on and off the nest and steal each others eggs for safe-keeping while the other female is out grazing. We hope that they will also do the 'aunt' thing once hatching starts. I'll take these 2 day old out to the orchard if you could just sit on those other eggs in case we get any stragglers hatching. Madness.

Not a happy bunny. Tom the turkey misses his woman.

Tom, is feeling very woe-begone with his 'wife' away in the fields (we hope). He mopes around all day and does not display even to us when we are seated by the pond. Hang in there, Tom. The 16th or so might see herself re-appear with babies. We'll give it a fortnight more and then possibly, try to find you a new love.

Damsel fly pupal case

I am still plugging on with the '365' project and trying to ring the changes to give the village website a good variety from which to choose. It is going well. Liz has upwards of half a dozen contributors now (and is trying to encourage more) so we have pics of children, ride on mowers, vegetable seedlings, the hand-ball courts, sunsets, pictures done by the pre-school (and flags by the National School). I am still here as 'back stop' to make sure we have no blank days. The end of April had us all a quarter of the way through the project. Fair way to go yet.

New log stack in the making.

I have managed to blag a couple of old pallets locally, so  the project for the end of this week has been to create yet another log stack against the barn wall up in the "Rose Walk". K-Dub would be proud of me. I am trying to build this with near vertical faces and even binding in the corners with log versions of "coin stones" like a bit of stone work. The plan is to roof this stack with my curved corrugated iron sheeting from the hay barn (you can see this in the photo, centre left).

Hornwort in the big pond.

This stack will be a good 4 cubic metres so should represent years 3-4 (maybe 5) of my store. It is a good feeling to be in May 2016 and to know that we probably have wood stored now round to Winter 2021/2. It will certainly have a chance to season (dry out) well and would also be a good hidey-hole for plenty of mice and voles safe from our cats.

Big boys' toys? Wide-track turf-cutting machinery

Ah well. That's probably enough for this one.