Flying the Flag(s)

Deefer at 11

Happy Birthday, then Deefer, this blog's eponymous dog. She made it to 11 along with her sister, Ellie-Bezz back home in Kent. Sadly, her brother (Archie) did not make it and had to be put down back in February (bone cancer) but we send our condolences as well as our good wishes to Deef's Mother, Mollie who is still with us. Another year, perhaps, everybody?

The very last of the 2016 pork bits get cleared out of the freezer for
use as raw ribs (Doggie Birthday Cake) and then a Medieval meat
feast for us coated in peanut sauce. Finger licking good.

That was Sunday 17th but ask anyone here what that date was all about and they will swoop on by Deef's celebration without so much as a sideways glance, and land firmly on one answer, "The All Ireland". This the GAA Irish-rules football final played at 'National' stadium Croke Park (you Brits think 'Wembley'), this year between Mayo and Dublin again for, I think, the 3rd year running.

This 'Dub' always puts out a good display, all be it the "wrong"
colours. 

One of the first cultural things a Brit notices on moving here is the huge keenness for flying flags; be it the National tri-colour, or more commonly your sports team colours or county colours. Perhaps a quick 'Heath Warning' here for those who don't know me and need telling that I was born without the 'sport' genes in my DNA - I was always rubbish at football and had no interest in it despite working all by life with hundreds of soccer-mad warehouse-men forever teasing each other over the triumphs and crashes of Chelsea, The 'Ammers, Man-U, Liverpool and Spurs. I have brought this appalling ignorance with me and am only very slowly learning how to chat 'knowledgeably' about "The Rossies", Mayo and the Dubs. If I have gone wrong here, please do feel free to comment.

If you don't have a flag pole then a wheel
barrow be-decked with red and green shirts
and watering cans will do. This guy even
managed a turf-stack topped with a Rossies
scarf!

So a month or so back we were driving through a sea of 'primrose' and blue as our team, Roscommon (Go the Rossies!) battled their way through the Provincial stages of the competition to end up Champions of Connaught. I think this is a league type competition where everyone plays everyone else within Connaught (Rossies, Mayo, Galway, Sligo etc), so 'we' may have beaten Mayo back then, but maybe not; it might have been a 'play off' thing.

Someone hung a Mayo shirt on the new
Memorial stone. One of the Guards named
here was a former Mayo GAA star.

Either way, I felt quite cheated when I learned that winning Connaught did not automatically get us a place in the All Ireland semis. Each Province enters 2 teams, with a 'back door' route for one of the teams so suddenly Mayo were back in it and, because the final 8 is a random draw, we were picked against them and they knocked us out. I know. Unreasonable!

Bobtail brings her 4 new babies off the nest.

Ah well, all the yellow and blue Rossie flags came down and most of the local support switched to Mayo being the nearest county to us still 'in it' (green and red). The die-hard 'Dubs' of course would not be seen dead with green and red flags outside their houses and created some impressive showings of the dark and pale blue colours of the Capital. Pubs tend to try to stay neutral, so will often fly both flags AND an Irish Tri-Colour just for the look of it. Many people also fly those little side-roof-gutter flags on their cars. It all makes for a lovely, happy, party atmosphere and very pretty countryside.

Onion harvest. Small bulbs but very pretty.

Ah well. The day came and went and history will record that Dublin won again, this time by just one point in the last seconds of a very tense exciting match, breaking all the local hearts again. Maybe next year, lads. Liz (a Dub, obviously) just sent me a very restrained, jokey text saying "Tanks Be". A few days on I see most of the flags are down now, though that Dub with all the flags at the far end of Lough Glynn village still has his out in celebration. The trophy they are all chasing is called the Sam Maguire Cup, or "Sam" for short. I am always amused by the Dub's adopted slogan, "Dubs for Sam, Mayo for sandwiches!" But enough of the All Ireland. Enough, I say!

Bullace plums and sloes

So, what have we been up to when not glued to the telly watching sport (Yeah, right!). One nice task was to tour the local hedgerows picking nature's bounty - black berries, sloes and just down the lane from here a couple of trees of the small wild blue-black plums we are fairly sure are known as 'bullace'. They are ripe, soft and sweet like greengages. They are not, as someone suggested, 'damsons'. We KNOW damsons and we have a tree in or orchard and these are not they.

She made a very dark sticky puddle! Bullace 'cheese'. 

The sloes have not yet had the necessary first frost but we have picked them anyway and they will get a night or two in our freezer before being converted into sloe gin. The bullace plums got a whole new treatment - being used for 'cheese' and also for 'leather'. I'd heard of the former but not the latter. 'Cheese' in this sense is a clear, very firm, super-concentrated jelly. It is intensely flavoured and you cut the set slab into small rectangles which then get sliced at the table to have with your cheese-board. Nom nometty nom!

Our James Grieves apples and blackberries from local hedges

The 'leather' is a fun confection mainly for the kids. You smear smaller amounts of the hot (cheese) jelly onto grease-proof paper as thin as (you guessed it) leather. When the smear is set you peel the paper off the back and cut the thin jelly into strips so that the kids (or adults of course) can eat them like liquorice shoe-laces. The blackberries and apples became a rather lovely tart. It's all very 'mellow fruitfulness' round here at the moment.

A very sleepy bumble bee on Sedum spectabile

I think that'll do us for this one. Good Luck now.

Mum looks a bit weary about the eyes. 4 kids under a week old.

Road Trip(s)

'Golden Hornet' crab apples ripe for the picking. 

We do very little driving around for its own sake but since the last post I have found myself on two very different but equally remarkable road trips, one in an olde tractor and one in the 'normal' car. The tractor ride came about because a good friend of ours was having his little old 2 wheel drive John Deere fixed at a workshop down beyond Castlerea - only 28 km but that's a decent tarmac drive for a tractor, likely to take an hour and a half at least. He didn't fancy the job so when I volunteered he looked at me as if I must be mad but readily accepted.

A few more weeks and the pears will also be ripe.

All the serious farmers round here and the contractors have, by now, much bigger machines - big 4 wheel drive 100 hp+ with fancy sprung, air-con, sound proofed cabs, very comfortable seats, all automatic drive and gearing and assorted bells and whistles. It is only the old boys on the tiny farms who retain the smaller, simpler tractors which I would know; which I would have driven back in my farming days 40 years ago. Or the restoration/vintage enthusiasts, of course. This was one such - I was going to be bounced around and deafened all the way home but I have a kind of masochistic nostalgic delight in these rattle-buckets.

A '365' pic of the road down to the old graveyard.

I ran the route on Google Maps and wrote down the following figures, just for interest. The journey was only 28.3 km (17.6 miles) but took 1 hour and 50 minutes so I was able to average only 15.43 km/hr (9.58 mph). Total hearing loss was about 70% (Wha'...? Pardon?) and I was delighted to finally get the tractor home, 'strangle' the engine and park the hydraulics. For some of the route I was following the road markings painted down for the half marathon a few weeks back - 5m, 6m and so on. I actually FELT like a marathon man slowly creeping towards his finish and anticipating the cheers of the crowds.

Kilrooan old graveyard

The other road trip was a very different affair, my 2nd down to Co. Tipperary (I was down there for my pig training course 2+ years ago  http://deefer-dawg.blogspot.ie/2014/04/its-long-way-pig-school.html ) and our first to Cashel (as in "The Rock of.."). As the song goes - it is, indeed, a long way and we planned a 3 hour run down to the funeral (brother of friend) to be in time for the midday Funeral Mass. We made it and did the honours at church and then at the graveyard but ended up with no time at all to look round what looks like a beautiful town and the castle/rock itself.

The 'posh' shoes don't get many outings. I had to brush the
dust off for the funeral. 

The journey home was a little longer but we broke it with a small diversion into Mum's place for soup, tea and cake. That was a long old day. It was also the day of the 'All Ireland' GAA football final between Mayo and 'the Dubs' (they drew) so Liz (outbound driver) picked up some traffic reminiscent of our Kent days on what are normally empty roads, with all the Mayo lads heading up to the capital.

Nice harvest moon - this would be a 'Hopping Moon' in Kent
(from the hop-picking)

In other news, young Deefer, our oldest dog made her 10th birthday (17th Sept) and the Guinea hen (Min) may have gone broody. She went AWOL Sunday and Monday nights and was not there at lock-up. We had a quick patrol but not with any hope of success as it was getting dark. We reckoned that as we have seen no mating behaviour or eggs for months, she might be doing a sneaky stash somewhere and on Monday we kept a bead on the 'boys'.

An early breakfast for the ewes on Funeral Day. 

When they were both loitering with intent, looking guilty. next day between the caravan and the 'Mad Max' vehicle, we deduced that she might well be among the old rafters slid under the caravan, where she might be quite safe as it would be a tight squeeze for Mr Fox (if not the mink) and, anyway, we'd not be able to extract her. Subsequently she has been off the eggs and wandering round with the boys enough to make us doubt her commitment to this broody thing but we keep and open mind since so many hens we have doubted have, in the event, produced the goods. Tonight, though, she is back roosting in the coop up in the rafters with her beau, so that might be that. I will keep you posted.

Existing tiny 8' square kitchen, looking at
the window which will  soon be a bigger
opening.

Finally a start soon on a house project which has been on the cards for a while, the kitchen extension. We have put up with the old floor plan since our rebuild. This includes a 50's "council style" extension to the back of the house which holds the kitchen downstairs and a flat-roof bathroom upstairs. The kitchen is only 8 feet square which dictates that a lot of stuff (fridge, freezers, crockery and cutlery) end up in other parts of the house and pretty much fixes the design options (path up the middle, oven one side, sink the other)

The 'Pottery' and that window from the
outside

Ours, however, came with a tempting opportunity to expand with a lean-to or conservatory style (ish) extension. The west facing window looks out over a bit of concrete 'path' between the exterior house wall and the out-building we call the Tígín (wee housey), an area we optimistically named the 'Pottery'. It was going to be a garden for pots, planters and tubs but hey, the best laid plans etc. It never happened and it exists merely as a pad of concrete where the chickens come to scrounge cat food through the open window. It is an 8 feet wide and 11 feet long blank bit of wasted space inches away from the poor over-crowded chef who is crying out for more elbow room and storage area. Well, not for much longer. More on this soon.

Lake View

We are having a bit of a pleasant surprise mini heat-wave to go with our autumn Equinox, blue skies, temperatures up to 25 degrees C (very warm for us here!) and a warm gentle breeze. We sweat real sweat when working and I was even perspiring a bit when just walking the dogs down the lane. Definitely not complaining.

Well, the 'All Ireland' is now come and gone and Liz, Sparks and K-Dub are all happy because Dublin won the famous 'Sam Maguire' trophy by just a point. It wasn't a particularly good game, low scoring but close enough. Of course Tony, in the local Post Office, is not happy but today he was waxing philosophical saying that "for all their crowing, they only bate us by a point!" At the far end of the village (Lough Glynn) is a small group of houses lived in by Dublin-born families and these guys have great fun putting out all the pale/dark blue Dublin flags and bunting like a small blue island in a sea of green and red Mayo flags.

One of the Dads is a really nice, funny bloke and he was straight on the phone to Tony this morning asking if the post office would be open, or closed for mourning. Tony assured him it would, indeed, be open, so the guy nipped along the main street in his normal clothes but with a big bag under his arm. Tony says that when he got to the PO he hid round the corner and changed into a huge array of Dublin gear - silly hats, huge gloves ("He looked like bloomin' Jeronimo!") - so that he could burst in on Tony and tease him for a while. Then he nipped back round the corner, changed back and went home wearing his 'civvies'. Crazy dude!

Goldie the Rabbit has now got a full time job. She is our mower for the path round the pond, so we are thinking of renaming her house 'Lake View'. As she eats each box of grass we pull her round to the next bit. She particularly seems to like the plantains and clovers - these always vanish first. She grazes off the grass when there is nothing else left. Amusingly there is a real house just down the lane called Lake View because, presumably, when it was built it had a good view down to Lough Feigh, our local lake. Like so many other houses here it was built in a corner of one of the fields of the family farm, and Mum moved in. Now the farm has prospered and they have built a huge new cattle shed and feed-silo opposite Mum's house, completely blocking any view of the Lake from her windows or garden. I bet that went down well!

Accidental crop

Picture here is an accidental crop. In 2012 we grew, deliberately, some decorative gourds but then forgot that we had and tried to eat one of the two-colour, light-bulb-shaped "squashes" in a casserole. Luckily for us the chunks of squash in the stew were so bitter that we quickly realised that these were not edible and have since found out that they are actually quite poisonous.

This year I have tried to stick to courgettes, pumpkins and custard squash but I have somehow mixed up some growing plants and planted (or transplanted) another of these lightbulb gourds into one of the kitchen garden beds where it has done very well. We left it be, and have now cut these weird looking gourds, now big enough to have sprouted warty lumps all over, for purely decorative reasons and they are attracting much comment from visitors, drying as they are on the front windowsill.

Liz has bravely gone off and found a very good, new (to us) hair dresser in Balla-D, this one a lady called Noelle in a shop called Halo. Liz had been getting quite shaggy having not had a decent haircut yet in Ireland and was getting fed up with it. She was looking longingly at a photo we have of her from 10-15 years back, framed in the spare room. She took the picture out of its frame and carried it along with her to Halo where they were happy to oblige and Liz is delighted with the restoration of an earlier look. I like it very much. I like it too, especially because there was talk at one stage of me having to have a go with my scissors. I can't think I'd have been able to produce anything as nice as this!

Out in the allotment I am mad into some autumn tidying. I had grown some marigolds and nasturtiums this year intending them as a companion plant to a row of new raspberry canes, to attract in a few insects and help with pollination. In the event they went completely mad burying the poor raspberries under a forest of 2 foot tall marigolds and rampaging nasturtium stems, covering the ridge and flooding sideways and down into the trenches either side. While they were in full flower they were quite a picture, blazing with the hot oranges and yellows or the marigolds and the deeper red of the nasturtium which was a stated variety I have now forgotten.

 Now, though, they are an over blown mess which needs tidying up, so I have been in there yesterday and today clearing the trenches and finally being able to scythe off the shaggy grass of the edge-path and then mow right to the edge. I know it is only mid September and very warm, but I am hoping that the grass will soon start to slow down a bit and this will be nearly the final mow for some of these areas; that they are now tidied and 'put to bed' for autumn. I doubt it somehow. We are pleased with the artichokes pictured. These plants were grown from seed only this spring so we were not really hoping for any crop this year, but these guys have obliged us with a couple of small tennis-ball sized heads which will go nicely with supper tonight.

We took a nice phone call today, from Mentor Anne. She and Simon are, rather excitingly, going to build a straw-bale building as a broody house for their quail. They have done this before using the technology to create a real actual human house in which they lived in one of their previous Irish small holdings. They end up being quite a sophisticated building perfectly habitable for modern families with all the mod cons. For this one, Simon needs a lend of our cement mixer which we bought during our own build. I will  check with Anne whether she is happy for me to provide links to her own blog where the build is described and depicted in pictures, or possibly if I might borrow some images. It will be nice for the mixer to get some use. It did very well for us during our own works but has since sat in the shed gathering dust.

Post Match Punditry

As a quick rider to my 'GAA' story yesterday, we were both amused by the contrast in the post-match analysis depending on who you supported and how you saw the match. To Sparks, dyed in the wool Dub it had been a massive conspiracy of unfair refereeing which Dublin were lucky to prevail against. "All Ireland?", mocked Sparks - "More like 31 counties against one!" (Dublin, obviously). To our good friend Tony in the local Post Office it was the exact opposite. Not only had they deliberately selected a ref who was from the next county to Dublin (Meath) so that he'd be biased. He was allegedly very easy on the 'dirty' Dublin players, giving them yellow cards instead of reds (i.e. cautioning them instead of sending them off), but he let "two bucks who should have been sent off away Scot-free!" Tony is also convinced that the Dubs were 'on something'. The fierce mad intensity of them! It wasn't water they were drinking!

The above conversation was me talking to Tony while Liz, who I am sure Tony knows is also a Dub, stood quietly smiling, so it may well be that Tony was teasing and trying to goad a reaction out of her but if so, she wasn't buying. In the 'unfair reffing' at least, some things never change. Fans have always blamed the Ref when decisions didn't always go their team's way. I can remember friends at work in Kent when their team had been beaten by Manchester United saying, tongue in cheek, that the linesman's Man United scarf had blown up into his eyes, so he didn't see the foul. I can also remember Rugby-fan, Welsh comedian Max Boyce singing a song (The Incredible Plan) in which the punchline had gate-crashing fans trying to get into the match "dressed as Refs with dark glasses, Alsatians, white sticks and tin cans".

The Green and Red of Mayo.

Oh the Green and Red of Mayo
I can see it still
Its soft and craggy bog-land
Its tall majestic hills
Where the ocean kisses Ireland
And the waves caress its shore
Oh the feeling it came over me
To stay forever more
Forever more

The lyrics there from one of our favourite songs by local boys, The Sawdoctors, "The Green and Red of Mayo" to celebrate the fact that our lambs are all from Irishtown County Mayo and therefore entitled, (Nay! Expected! Compelled!) to support Co. Mayo in the 2013 All Ireland GAA football competition. This is the nearest Ireland comes to an FA cup final, although half the country would say that actually the GAA All Ireland 'Hurling' competition is WAY more important. As well as being split into counties, Ireland seems to be split into hurling supporters and Gaelic football supporters and ne'er the twain shall meet. In the football side, Mayo are doing rather well, having creamed the defending 2012 champs, Co. Donegal a couple of weekends ago in the quarter finals, to make the final four.

However, readers who really know me will be smiling that I am even trying to write about sport when what I know about UK football after 56 years could be easily written on the back of a postage stamp. Once when Liz was extolling the virtues of Ryan Giggs, I said "If he's THAT good, why doesn't he play for England, then?" (It's because he's Welsh, apparently!). However, the locals round here LOVE their footie and hurling and flying your county flag is a big thing. Ours is the Roscommon flag, Blue and Yellow, but the 'Rossies' get knocked out in the early stages and most people have taken down their Roscommon flags. Mayo is now the thing and the roads are bright with green and red flags, bunting and even big elabourate windmill things with green and red 'sails'. We thought it would be a bit of fun to let our Mayo-born lambs join in the display.

We bid a fond farewell today to our visitors this week, Dave and Julie B, friends from Kent and my old barge-related life. We've had a real blast with them and they have been superb, ideal guests. They seemed to quite fall in love with the place and enjoyed the house, the 'farm', the livestock, the pets, our hospitality and the area. Julie was particularly taken with the pups and (eventually, when she deigned to approach Julie for a fuss), Deefer. Dave is more of a cat-man and made a great fuss of Blue, but also had a soft spot for our silly, one-ear-up-one-ear-down bunny in Padfoot's litter.

We've had some excellent times together and we are now sad to see them go as we dropped them to Knock Airport for their 3 pm flight home. I have since had a text from Dave saying they are safe as far as the M23 and thanking us for it all. Not a bother, Dave and Julie, it was lovely having you and you are welcome back when ever you like. I will be catching up with them soon when I visit UK and stay on board SB Cambria in Saint Katharine Docks as part of the Classic Boats Festival.

We counted the dogs, cats and rabbits after they had gone to make sure none had been smuggled out. We know what these Westie fans are like!