A Genuinely Short Post (Honest)

A welcome cold snap

OK, I know I have many times recently started a post with comments along the lines of "not much to say, so this is going to only be a few paragraphs" and then gone on at normal length. Well, this time, I genuinely have little to say, so I might be for real here. Added to that, one major 'thread' of narrative is under that embargo to which I have already alluded; the main characters in those episodes do not like to be spoken of 'on here' and there is no arguing with that.

Frosty East Field

Main event for this post was the 'Little Christmas' or 'Ladies' Christmas', (Nollaig na mBan or, if you prefer, simply Epiphany) when the men take over the reins of the household and try to treat their women-folk to a complete day of rest.

When you can only find 4 ducks it is a sure sign that #5 is off
hidden up somewhere laying a surreptitious late egg. When
she returns it is then a race against the magpies to find the egg
before they do. 

It is nothing that heroic, so does not generate me much Blog text but it is fun to do and much appreciated by Lizzie. I have to do all the kitchen and dish-washer duties, provide tea on demand and cook the main meals. Also, on this occasion, carve a good snack's worth of thin slices off the 'Parma'-style whole leg of ham mid afternoon and pass in the gorgeous chocolates we were gifted by our French visitors at Christmas (Thank you, Marion, Clara and Augustin). It all went very well.

Frosty early morning view from the new kitchen windows

I have also tried to progress from knowing that we have "around 30 chickens" to doing some kind of census to get an exact list. This is mainly so that we can report egg production, health and progress more accurately and to identify whether we have any 'passengers' who are contributing nothing and need weeding out. Tough old, cut-throat world?

We both wish the cats would not catch these cuties and we are
always amazed how tiny they are in the hand. A goldcrest, of
course. 

Obviously, with the birds free-ranging this is not that easy - you walk one way round the site with your notepad and pencil and try to record who is where but by the time you have nearly finished, are you double counting hens who have gone widdershins round the house and come to meet you again? I scratched down a list of 28 hens by name if they have names, and by a rough description if not. I now have a list that says such arcane things as "Stumpy", "Big Red", "Grey / Dark cape" and "Flat black / big crest" and is peppered with codes like 'A-head' and 'A cheeks'.

Poor little mite. At least we have a strong population of goldcrests
here, so this one will not really be missed.

The 'A' thing stands for Araucana, which is a weird 'fancy fowl' beloved of show folk which has tufts of feathers sticking out of the top of its head and sideways from its cheeks. The latter give it a strange hamster-like look from the front. Pure bred A's lay blue eggs which are quite nice, but we only have crosses between A's and other types, so we only get white eggs and we get hens which are mainly hen-shaped but have some bizarre A-tufts on their heads.

I now need to take my list into the coop at lock-up and double check. I better not bore you with a complete list of all the birds as a fancy tabular addendum. You might think I was trying to flesh out a slow news day. As if.

The half moon goes down into that big patch
of new morning sky where Storm Eleanor
decapitated our larch. 

Finally, we are now at Day 9 of the two major New Year's resolutions. First that #DryJanuary - we are both sticking to this as per the agreed rules; one 'day off' allowed. Mine is going to be Burns Night, Liz went for Nollaig na mBan and brother Mark has a gin tasting he has booked in on 15th. So far so good.

Knitting project gets finishing touches.

Second, Liz was determined to get out all the unfinished major knitting projects and finish them. She loves knitting up the pieces of a garment but hates the stage where you sew all the bits together, so as at NYD, I had a lovely Aran pullover which was all there but for the assembly and Liz had a blue cardigan and a green woolly in similar states. Well, true to her resolution, my Aran is finished, the cardy just needs buttons (and even has a neck-warmer / 'snood' in the same wool, to go with it.) and the green thing is very nearly completed.

Publicity shot for the Men's Shed. The lads were doing a 'bucket'
collection at the check outs in local SuperValu, "Duffy's". 

And that, genuinely, is it. Till next time.

Connie, Big Red, Beebs and Stumpy makes 19

Beeblebrox with her 7 chicks

We are suddenly tripping over baby chicks everywhere. Awash, we are. Readers of recent blog posts will already know about our first two broodies, the white Sussex, 'Connie' who is now confidently marching around with her three and Big Red who has four. Big Red has taken to hanging about the yard with hers waiting to pounce on either Liz or I hoping for the next hand out of my hard-boiled egg mixture. She does not need to be doing that for too long - the babies only get egg in their commercial crumb for the first week.

When the 'Parma' ham runs out, boil up
the bones for bacon and bean soup. 

Next up we were expecting our chicken-with-a-gammy-foot, 'Stumpy' who was sitting on five eggs in the proper official nest boxes in the main coop. She was coming up to Day 21 today (7th). Before she could get there, though, Connie wandered off with hers one evening intent on bedding down in the mint patch on our kitchen garden. "Oh no you don't", we said, "Mr Fox will get you!"

Not very common... a DUCK double yolker. 

We went to rescue her (and chicks) into a kitten basket and found to our surprise that she had nestled in alongside our black Araucana-cross hen, Beeblebrox. But what was SHE doing there?

Empress and Pride at 4 months

Beebs, incidentally, is named for the two-headed man character in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Being part Araucana she has that weird feathery top-knot on her head, looking like a 2nd head, hence the name. Anyway, what she was doing was demonstrating to us very neatly and shamingly that we are not the close, detailed protectors of our flock that we probably should be.

She was sitting on about a dozen eggs and may have been broody out there for days. I had been shutting "all" the birds up each night without spotting that she was absent. No roll call. Just a quick visual check of lots of full perches and rafters. Ooops. But then, we now have a bird sitting on 12 eggs who is "out there" vulnerable to foxes etc. Do we try to move her plus the nest indoors? Do we try to build a fox-proof cage around her? Either would have been OK but may have caused her to get upset and desert the nest. We have moved nests before and the chicken just frets to get back out to where the eggs WERE. It is heartbreaking.

Empress nailing a chunk of yellow melon. 2 for €2 in SuperValu
at present. We can afford that!

Rather recklessly (irresponsibly?) we decided to risk her out there. It is a quiet little corner surrounded by a thicket of mint, tight against the wall of the Tígín deep inside the kitchen garden where I can not imagine a randomly patrolling fox would bother to go. We worried about this decision long and hard. We then stressed about this each night and especially on Wednesday when we were both woken at 03:00 by a vixen screaming very close - possibly in the lane out front. When it started raining we propped 2 long sheets of corrugated over her like a lean-to.

Well, long story short, we have, so far, got away with it. 2 days ago Liz was taking the air out in the kitchen garden when she heard loud cheeping from the mint patch. We had a hatch, only TEN days after we found the nest. The quick-witted among you will spot that this means she had been 'missing' at night and broody for 11 days before we knew anything about it. Embarrassing. She now had 7 little balls of fluff shadowing her about. There was, briefly, an 8th. I found one egg part-open with a struggling wet baby still part inside, but later this poor mite was stiff, cold and still wet. There had actually been 15 eggs and only one proved to be infertile, so Rooster Gandalf is obviously doing a good job even if we aren't!

Then yesterday, right on schedule, our 4th and final broody, 'Stumpy' nailed it with loud cheeping coming from under her skirts. What I always do for these new mums is try them on a bit of chick feed. They lean down to peck it and make that bass-y "Food kids!" clucking and if there are any mobile babies under there, these will generally pop their heads out and start learning to peck. I could see Stumpy was sitting on at least 3.

Back on that digger yesterday. This is that mini-mountain of
good topsoil we needed to barrow away to the new raised beds.

Today she came off the nest, job done and I was delighted to see she had hatched all five eggs. 100%. Go Stumpy! So we have 3+4+7+5=19 babies at the moment, more babies than we had birds a month or so ago!

Focaccia loaf, first knock-back

What else is new? I have been back out to Sligo at the diggering. The pressure is on. 'We' need to move that pile of topsoil to make way for the '804' gravel sub-base which will then need laying and 'whacking' in time for the 3 concrete lorries to arrive, scheduled Saturday week to pour those shed-bases. It's all go over there.

Sourdough loaf.

I have been messing around in the absence of Lizzie (she's down in Laois minding Auntie Mary) with some more sour dough stuff. My 5th attempt at a standard loaf came out quite well - no scorching, no excess flour on top, no 'scars' where I had let the dough stick to the tea-towel.

For relaxation I broke out the 'self sufficiency' book on bread we have (James and Dick Strawbridge) and had a go at their 'focaccia' recipe with sea salt and rosemary. I added 35 g of my sourdough starter to the dried yeast in the recipe and got a really good rise out of it.

Final prove, then bake to a golden brown and brush lightly
with olive oil for a gloss finish. 

You stick a mini-forest of rosemary sprigs into the top of this for aroma and aesthetic reasons. It was a thing of beauty. I will post a pic in the next blog. Was delicious too with a rather 'fusion food' Lancashire Hotpot main course.

The Three Amigos

The 3 Amigos. Top to bottom, Billie-no-Mates, Little Orphan
Annie and Beeblebrox

I find chickens a constant source of amusement. I could watch them for hours. What fascinates me most is their very different personalities and how the dynamics between them work. Who is the boss and does he have any challengers? How many hens does each rooster 'mind' and how loyal are they to their man? Are they serene, calm and 'decent' to one another or are some a little bit mean and spiteful? Are they fully hand-tame or quite skittish and nervous? How are the youngsters trying to integrate with the main flock? How do they react to the dog(s) or fox? Are any self-proclaimed guard-dogs?

I may be getting my sense of humour back!

Recently I have been able to watch as the group dynamic all re-adjusts following the removal of several key players by the fox. This included the #2 rooster (Corporal), the male "black-baby" (Araucana) and the mother rearing the 4 newest chicks, plus 3 of the chicks. This event left us with three lonely females who have since coalesced, rather nicely, into a tight little gang whom I call "The Three Amigos". These are, in no particular order:-

• The female Araucana who lost her brother/main man. These guys had that Araucana "top knot" of feathers on their heads so looked like they had two heads and were named "Zaphod (and) Beeblebrox" after the character in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. She is Beeblebrox.
• The abandoned poult from down the lane, left behind when the fox took all of our friends' birds except this one. Billie-no-Mates is on long loan to us while our chum decides whether to go back into chickens.
• Little Orphan Annie, the one young Buff-Orp not eaten by our fox when he took her Mum and 3 siblings. 

The Three Amigos spend most of their time together but not with the rest of the flock, but are loosely affiliated to our old original #1 Buff Orp rooster, the Lieutenant Colonel.

Meanwhile, our Christmas progresses and we have the tree up, lit and 'decked'. It turned out to be a good one. I had been worried that a lot of the foliage on one side arose from a single branch growing from so low down the stem that, to get it into my stand, I would need to cut this branch off leaving a well-stood but lopsided tree. We worked it by cutting tight into the bottom of the joint so that the stand would go on and the branch stay attached. We have it in a new position this year as the old slot is now taken by the reclining settee.

We spent a happy hour decorating it while the 'kattens' ran around like children given a new climbing frame and toy. Is this ALL for US? You are SO KIND! Luckily, after an initial flurry of fun, patting low-hanging baubles till they fell of and skittered across the ground, the pair have become bored with this toy and moved on. We made sure to only hang the cheap simple silver balls down there. The more expensive, more unusual decs and those with good memories and stories attached (We bought this in New Orleans or 'Do you remember our friend x gave us this one?).

"We got this in New Orleans!" (see text)

The tree-dec thing is one of our family traditions - anyone who stays to visit at Christmas is bullied into buying a dec for our tree (and they, of course, get one back for theirs).

Lidl's rather good Glühwein

We have started a new 'family tradition' this year, teed off by our visitors Dan and Dan (see earlier post). Dan (the Man) spent a lot of his growing-up time living in Germany, so is quite fond of that German speciality, warmed mulled wine or "Glühwein". Dan told us that the pre-mix currently being traded by Lidl is a rather good one and to prove it, he turned up with a bottle and had us warm it up and try it. We have since bought a couple as part of the weekly shop, so we had one on the shelf as we finished the tree and decided that it would be a very pleasant way of celebrating the tree-wrangling. It was indeed. It is beginning to taste a lot like Christmas.

Up till today, we have had a very nice
rainless and almost windless December

I was amused enough by 2 things this morning to have remembered them long enough to include them here. The first came on the radio when the announcer, interviewing a sports pundit, spoke of a vox-pop competition for the "Best Sporting Moment" of 2016. I'd forgotten all about this but the winning 'moment' involved two Irish rowers (Gary and Paul O'Donovan) from Skibereen competing at the Olympics in Rio. The Irish entry into the Olympics got quickly mired in bad news, controversy and alleged criminal conspiracies - the boxers all under-performed disastrously, there were failed drug tests which got certain big names sent home in disgrace and one of the Team Managers got embroiled in a ticket sales ring.

Blue. You have a good Christmas... or else!

Then, under the 'radar' and emerging from all this, two unknown Irish lads in a "mens' lightweight coxless scull" who no-one had paid any attention to before, started winning.

Even better, when interviewed, they proved to be so down to earth and lacking in airs, graces and sports celeb' nonsense that the journalists  had a field day with their 'blokish' sound-bites and we all fell in love with them. When asked about special diets to maintain fitness they said that as they were in Rio "you could have steak and spuds for breakfast lunch and dinner if you like" and when asked about their strategy for victory, Paul said ""It isn't too complex really, A to B as fast as you can go and hope for the best. Close the eyes and pull like a dog." 'Steak and Spuds' and the 'pull like a dog' quickly became the tee-shirt slogans.

Finally, we were both delighted and amazed to find that the Irish had a word all along for that thing where you have put down the object and you know it is safe but you can't remember where. In our family it was always "It's just on the surface somewhere". My British readers should pronounce it, approximately as "Kyle tash-ka" for that authentic Gaelic effect.

Not 100% Convinced.....

On the left our pure-bred Cuckoo-Marans hen. On the right a
'possible' youngster. 

Followers of this blog will know that we are slowly trying to 'evolve' our chicken flock to one of pure bred Buff Orpingtons and Marans. This from our starting point of Sussex Pontes and via our current motley collection of weirdos which include some bizarre Araucana x Game birds and some hybrid, bantamised Buffs with odd, clumsy, short legs but who were/are, none the less, prolific egg layers. Those we called our 'Mini-Buffs'. The 'evolution' is being done mainly by natural wastage, just not bothering to replace the unwanted types and trying to hatch probable Buff or Marans eggs. Please draw a veil over the fact that we slid the 2 blue Araucana eggs under a Buff broody this spring to keep her sweet and then let her hatch 2 'black babies' - see earlier post.

Those young 'Marans' at 3 months.

For the Marans breed, we had only had our geriatric Cuckoo-colour hen, 'Squawk' and no Rooster, so we purchased 12 of the dark brown, speckledy eggs from the farrier who looks after the horses of our friend and sheep supplier 'Mayo-Liz'. We put them in the incubator we were 'keeping' for Charlotte while she moved house. With permission, of course. The farrier had said that he could not promise that these would be Cuckoo colour Marans, but they were definitely Marans, possibly of his other three colour options - Copper, Blue or Golden.

One of the geese fires up the new season
with this 179 g whopper.

Well, those babies are now 3 months old and we are not 100% convinced that they are pure-bred Marans. We do not claim to be experts, never having reared the breed before, but they seem so long in the leg and so upright that we worry that they will never fill out to the Orpington-style, rounded, Mumsie shape of Squawk. I even texted Mayo-Liz to check that Mr Farrier does not keep a few game cocks running around his place who might have been sowing wild oats but she assured me that he doesn't. In their favour is that the eggs were definitely Marans, so at least the Mum must have been. We have 3 grey-ish birds who I could believe could be the 'Blues' and the 3 darker birds are all starting to get a coppery hue to their cape-feathers, so they might be the 'Copper' Marans. Ah well, they will get the benefit of the doubt for now and we will try to ignore their upright, tail-erect, Tottenham Hotspur badge, fighting cock looks.

The Corporal's dark-tailed lacy lady. 

Meanwhile we also have a possible issue with one of the three hens from the 'Corporal's group. Although she is a perfect pure-bred (pb) Buff-Orp shape, she has a few dark tail feathers (with brown edges) and the feathers on her back each individually have a pale edge. This 'lacing' (as they say in poultry circles) and the dark tail are, I think, not allowed in the breed standard for Buff-Orps and may indicate that Mum was one of the mini-buffs or possibly our old Sussex Ponte, 'Enda' (both of whom lay the buff-coloured eggs).

Our young Golden Hornet crab apple tree
gave us almost 3 kg of good fruit and a few
splits for the piggies.

Outside of chickens we are more certain that we are on track. We have re-started our goose egg season with 2 found on the same day, and Liz has already had one of these as her breakfast 'dippy egg' - it weighed 179 g. I cleared the rest of the standing crop from the polytunnel and was delighted by some huge Sarpo Mira red potatoes. I struggle to get enough water into that part of the garden and generally expect light crops on the spuds, but these guys must have been growing near enough to the edges that they pushed some roots out to where the rain runs off the sides.

'Baker' sized Sarpo Mira from the poly tunnel.

We have been enjoying these as beautiful baking potatoes with stews etc or as mashed potato. The are a fairly resistant variety Blight-wise, anyway but growing them early or late in the tunnel helps you miss the worst blight weather. These were as clean as a whistle.

Soldier the Cat checks out the jelly bag.

Our little, young crab apple tree pleased us with a yield of 2.994 kg of good fruit plus a few splits and bruised one for the piggies. Liz combined this with an equal weight of our nice local blackberries and gave it all a good boil up. I then strained it through the 'jelly bag', added sugar and boiled it to set point. I say that as if it is easy - I have NEVER been good at getting jams and marmalades to set.

Crab Apple and Blackberry Jelly cooling.

The recipes say boil for 10 minutes, test for set point and, oh if it is not set, try another 5 minutes. I just assume it is going to be more like 30-45 minutes. This time I even didn't bother putting the Kilner jars into the dish washer for their 36 minute wash/sterilise till I'd started the brew. Happily I did eventually get a set point and the crab+BB jelly is cooling and setting nicely out in the kitchen on the worktop even as I write.

Log Rat nailed from 30 yards away

Finally in the archery department I am happy to report that in our (most likely) final outdoor shoot of this year I finally nailed that elusive sneaky target 'Log Rat'. That after 5 months of trying. Those arrows on the ground in the picture are NOT all my misses, by the way, they are arrows I have retrieved for other archers (we helpfully do that for each other). Mine are the ones fletched in a rather fetching (fetching fletchings?) bright orange and green. It was good to finally 'get' that pesky rodent. Now we move indoors and go back to target practise in the big Badminton hall at Castlerea's "The Hub" sports complex. The poor, much-pierced animals get a holiday through the winter.

Four by Four (or Twos and Fives)

I made it 45 swallows on the wires this afternoon, 46 if you
include the one just left of the pole. 

As our very wet August does its drippy 'segue' into soggy September (and I have my usual debate with myself whether that should be pronounced 'segway' or 'seeg') we start to give up on Summer and look down the barrel of Autumn. Today is a particularly wet example - it is doing that rain which I have only ever experienced here in Ireland. It is 'heavy' in the sense that there is a lot coming down but the drops are like big drizzle falling slowly and landing without drama. There is no roar of hammering raindrops bouncing off the tarmac but you get wet very fast because of the density of the drops. It is surely this kind of rain that was first described as a 'soft' day.

The half-feathered 2nd batch of Hubbard chickens at 4 weeks
looking at their most "velociraptor"

I feel a bit like 'Lady Muck' going round the village distributing cakes to the poor peasants when I am doing my livestock rounds. The sheep and pigs are fine and probably sheltering in their lean-to or ark but the birds are all either young, so I like to give them food under cover, or holed up in various places around the farm sheltering from the rain - under the trailer, in the car-port, in the sheds and coops, under the bottom shelf of the log store and so on.

This hedgehog called by one evening and I came upon
him unsuspecting with dogs, hence he is curled up in a ball.

I take the appropriate feed for the groups round in 1 litre yogurt tubs and slide a portion in onto their dry ground without worrying them into getting to their feet and sprinting out into the rain to avoid me. The geese and ducks, of course, have no problem and show every sign of loving the warm shower. They will happily hoover up wet food from the rain soaked ground. The chickens, Guineas and (now) turkeys (of which more later) all hate to get their feet wet and will not eat wet food.

Mr/Mrs Tiggy Winkle uncurls and sets off after the doggie
encounter.

It must be time for a livestock round up; I know some of the readers like to hear the latest moves and worry if they have not heard from xxx for a while. Pigs are good and ever bigger. We have had no repeats of the belly-ache wobble by Somerville which scared me to death last week. I must measure them again for a weight estimate. I may do that tonight if I can 'borrow' Liz's dress-making (soft) tape measure again. I will let you know. Our current thoughts are to 'finish' them in late October.

Chip with his damaged pupil. It seems to not be able to close
from the right side of his face but he manages. 

We are now down to our 'ground zero' on the sheep flock with the last two lambs-for-meat being away at the butchers hanging for their week before they get cut up in our presence next Monday. The 4 keeper 'yows' going in 'steps and stairs' in ages down from 7 year old Lily, 5 year old Polly, through 3 year old Myfanwy and now this year's 'replacement' Rosie. We will probably stick with 4 as that gives us potentially more than enough lambs but you may recall that we have offered to rehome a couple of 'geriatrics' for our Mayo breeder friend who may be coming out of sheep.

Firing on all cylinders - 100% hit rate from the ducks, all be it
one is still sneaking out the smaller 'first' eggs
('fairy' eggs or 'witch' eggs).

The ducks amazed us by all coming into lay - we got 4 eggs from 4 females. Admittedly one of these was one of the small 'fairy' or 'witch' eggs which new birds do as they stutter their pipework into action. These eggs usually have no yolk or a funny, embryonic squiggle of 'germ'. You can eat them (though I prefer to discard the squiggle!) but the birds quickly come on line properly with a normal size egg after a couple of days. These are young ducks only hatched in March, so I assumed they'd not come into lay till spring. Their '4 x 4' productivity out-does anything we have ever managed from the chickens (or the geese for that matter) where I think our best was 9 eggs from (then) 11 likely hens.

I was getting a bit carried away with my flavoured goats
cheeses. Here left to right, chive and garlic, parsley and marigold
and then honey and paprika. Great fun. 

No such excitement from the hens of similar age to the ducks, the 'Corporal' and his 3 ladies. Not a one egg yet there. The other adult chooks are bimbling along disappointingly rarely giving even 3 eggs per day (from 7 eligible grown ups); I am excluding the 3 Buffs who are currently tied up rearing youngsters, the Corp's lot and the 2 month old Marans.

Badge of Honour? You've not lived till you have been snotted
on the left man-boob by 60 kg of hungry pig.

Our two most recent broodies (briefly here as "Dustbin Lady and Crate Lady" if you look back a few posts) have delighted us by forming a nice little family group looking like a pair of London Nannies taking their charges out to the park each day. Both Mums share the job and the 5 babies seem to happily interchange between the two 'parents'. They are so close now that I call them the "Two and Fives". The five chicks are all thriving, with little buff coloured true feathers coming on their wings between the chick-fluff.

There is always paperwork.

The other 'former broody' is way further forward with her little 'Araucana' chicks (the 'black babies'). These guys were hatched in late June so are 11 weeks old and should probably have left home by now, off to University or earning their own wages. It may be that they are little 'bantam' sized things and Mum thinks they are still 'her babies' but we still see her with them, minding them. Being Araucanas (or at least A x game) they are tricky to sex - both sexes have the fancy top-knot and an erect tail so we may have to wait till they reach 'point of lay' (21 weeks?) as we did for the white silkies in Kent, to see do they lay an egg or shout cock-a-doodle-dooooo!

Turkey Poults

This week we took delivery (Thanks Sue) of our three handsome turkey poults, settled them in for a day and then let them go free range. Up to now they had lived under cover in a shed and (said Sue) were long overdue for some sunshine and freedom. They spent settling in day out in a small triangular run in our yard, gazing up at the sky and the passing poultry. Yesterday they went free and had a good old explore of the site. Today, in the rain they were back indoors looking a bit less impressed but at least they are under cover voluntarily so it still might count as an improvement.

Free range turkeys.

The three is made up of 2 bigger (older) birds and a youngster. The bigger ones may even be children of our own late lamented Tom and Barbara who gave us some eggs in spring prior to Barbara going off to do her suicide-nest in the fields. I passed these to Sue for hatching but I have no idea whether those eggs became these particular birds. It would be nice to think that the DNA is carrying on but these birds are for Christmas so any boys will be 'gone' before they turn into  red-pyjama-hating, Liz-attacking, kick-boxing hooligans.