I am the Captain of this Ship

The Captain - our 'back up' Buff Orp rooster.

Of the 'Baker's Dozen' of Buff Orpington chicks hatched in the incubator (  http://deefer-dawg.blogspot.ie/2014/08/the-bakers-dozen.html ) we are now left with just four. One died of natural causes as a tiny chick, we culled out 2 roosters, sold 2 more and the marauding fox took mainly female birds, so we are left with three very fine hens and a lovely cockerel. The hens are in lay now, though not fully grown, and the rooster looks very healthy and well feathered. If you see him on his own, you'd know he was a handsome chap; it is only when you see him with the full grown roo', (Lieutenant Colonel Sir Buffton Tuffton, sah!) that you realise that he has a way to go yet.

The Captain (nearest to camera) is always on the
periphery of the flock. Sir Buffton (yellow circle)
holds the centre ground. 

He is still quite slim and rangey looking and about half the width of Sir Buffton across the chest. He lacks the boss's huge wide fluffy pantaloons and his confident strut. At present he is allowed to hang around at the periphery of the flock as they move around the 'farm', but makes sure he can always sprint off if the boss gets a bit close for comfort. He is always the bridesmaid at the moment. He does get to 'tread' the occasional hen when they have strayed from the group and if they are willing (the Sussex Pontes won't tolerate him!).

The purple sprouting broccoli in the latest snow.

For the moment we are keeping him as our back-up rooster should anything go wrong with Sir Buffton, but he needs to stay content in that 2nd-in-command position and bide his time. If he gets too much 'sap' rising in the spring and challenges his Father/Uncle he will get mullered for sure. We would have to cull him out. The three girls have now assimilated into the main flock with the 'boss', so they spend all day with him but then adjourn to the smaller coop in which they grew up, with their 'brother' at bed time. Because his boss is called "Lieutenant Colonel" we have decided to give him the rank of Captain, so that is his name. He may gain a promotion through the ranks. I will let you know.

A nice view of the back of the house - the snow nicely disguises
the rusty roof sheeting on the Tígín (outbuilding). 

More pretty snow falls overnight Monday/Tuesday earlier this week. This is all well and good from the point of view of picturesque photos and the sun shines to brighten up the day, but I am on serious business on Tuesday, trying to collect Lizzie from Knock airport, back from her long weekend in Bridport. There is a tense morning when we hear that flights are being delayed and (worse) diverted from Knock to Shannon. Knock is a very pleasant 20 minute run away through the bog-lane. Shannon from here is 2 hours and 12 minutes slog down the N17 (in good weather).

A Ryan Air flight gets instructed to jill around above Longford
before being diverted to Shannon Airport

As well as the airport website these days, you can get up to the minute flight information from websites which track all the planes in the air in real time, and you can find 'your' flight and see its height, bearing, speed and so on. Before Liz had even boarded I could see a Ryan Air flight out of Stansted get put into a holding pattern (see picture) above Longford before being sent south on its diversion to Shannon. Things were looking dodgy.

Liz's flight is well over the Irish sea and still heading in the right
direction as I hop into the car to drive over. 

Liz got re-assuring noises from the stewards on her plane, an Aer Lingus flight - they were "quite sniffy" about Ryan Air's performance. "Well, WE got in yesterday", they said. I watched the flight anxiously as it crossed the Irish Sea and was still aimed at Knock when I ran out of time and had to drive to the airport. Luckily, steward pride did not come before a fall this time, and Liz touched down OK on schedule. Indeed, she was early and the incoming flight almost took the roof off our car as I turned in off the N17. Huge relief all round. I had not been looking forward to a drive to Shannon as even then the clouds were closing in and sleet was falling heavily; I wondered would the airport get shut down with Liz's plane on the ground. Not in the end - that afternoon that weather system was all done, the sun came out and we have now all thawed out, snowless as if it had never been.

Goose egg double yolker. 

2 whooper swans flew over tonight while I was exercising the dogs in the orchard before supper. They were heading east, and I wonder whether they might be our last two wintering birds en route home to the north of Norway and Russia. These guys do not announce their departures like the swallows with their noisy massing. You see them moving about (I watched 4 others fly over about a week ago) and then suddenly on a crisp, quiet, windless clear night you realise that you can not hear the bugle calls any more. They have gone. I have seen just 2 down on the lough for the last week or so and now I see two flying over. Coincidence?

One solution to the egg glut - pickled eggs. 

While I'm on birds, we have moved from a shortage of eggs, without the 'proper' flock coming into full lay, to an egg glut. The young Buffs are now pumping them out and the two 'new' geese have come into lay to join the old girls, so we sometimes get 5 goose eggs in 24 hours. Each goose egg is worth about 3 chicken eggs, so Liz loves them for cooking and they make gorgeous scrambled eggs on a toasted bagel, but I was also able to pickle a batch of the young Buff eggs. 18 just about fitted into our biggest Kilner.

Anyone who regularly hard-boils eggs will know that 'fresh' is not necessarily 'best' - it can be tricky to peel the really fresh ones as the white does not separate  from the shell - the outer layers stick to the shell and you are left with a rough looking 'boily'. Having done 18 of them while taking note of dates, I can happily tell you that the cut off point is 4-5 days. Anthing younger was a problem, anything 5 days or more peeled perfectly.

We finally score some Gubbeen cheese, the subject of our Christmas
gift book. 

Well, there is enough, I think, on chickens, birds and eggs. We finally scored some of the Gubbeen cheese , subject of my Christmas present book. More important, possibly, was that we see from the label that there is an outlet for more of this, within easy range of Sparks. We just need to badger him to dropping by the shop next time he comes down this way. Meanwhile, thank you very much to our 'supplier' - you know who you are. We will be tasting it tonight in a cheese-course we have included in our supper.

Polly and Lily

In a shed, awaiting collection.

At last I get the phone call from Mayo Liz to say that my ewes are ready, separated from the flock, shut into their shed and waiting for collection. The original plan had been to collect them back in early December but this plan was scuppered by Mayo-Liz having to put in some extra pre-Christmas shifts and the husband and son(s) who had been about to help handle the sheep and separate off my two were always 'on a roof' (one son is a roofer) or 'taken to his bed' (which can mean ANYthing in Ireland).

The shepherds outnumber the sheep here - 4 people help
to 'gently' load the precious and delicate cargo.

We had to wait through Christmas in a sheep-less condition and I was beginning to despair of getting them before New Year. On our trip down to Silverwood's to do our present exchange, Christmas visit and consumption of a superb roast beef rib lunch laid on my Steak Lady, I had taken to jokingly shout "I want my sheeps!" which just had Liz helpfully pointing out all the fields of sheep on the 2 hour drive... "Look! He's got HIS sheep.... and so has he!" etc.

Safely home to Co Roscommon, Polly on the left, Lily
on the right. 

Today I was happily going about other business - actually doing a bit of logging in the 'apiary' (bee hive paddock) taking advantage of the frost to keep the bees hunkered down in the winter cluster and not keen to come out and investigate the buzz and bark of the chain saw. They stayed put as I was 95% sure they would, but when you are using a chain saw it is best to have 100% concentration on not chopping your leg off, not 95% watching for that and 5% keeping an eye on the hive entrance to see if anyone sticks an antenna out. We survived anyway.

Sad wet slew of Buff Orp feathers.

There was one other drama before the call - I spotted a sorry tuft of buff coloured feathers in the East Field and rushed to count my 'Baker's Dozen' young buffs, already down to 12 after a natural-causes death. Only Ten! Liz came out and helped me do a search and she found a suspicious animal track through the frost diagonally across to the eastern fence, where a sad wet slew of more feathers told the tale, Brer Fox had snatched at least one but I have to admit to not having counted them in or out last night, so I cannot say whether this was yesterday or the day before. I then took the dogs for a walk and when nearly home saw a big dog fox on McG's lawn (neighbour) which then nipped through a hedge, crossed the lane in front of us (the dogs were trying to dislocate my arm by then!) and loped off down to the lough. This in broad daylight at roughly mid day. Later, Bob told us he had also seen a fox yesterday and he could clearly see something pale in its mouth, which he thought was a hare but could well have been our other missing young hen. We think that these birds may have been snatched on separate days and possibly both in the East Field where at least the chooks will not now be able to go with the sheep gate closed but we will be upping the patrols and outdoor activity and double checking the evening lock-downs. I will also wait till full daylight before releasing the birds in the morning, I've been letting them out at 08:30 when it is still fairly gloomy here. These things happen, I guess, in a fully free range system. Annoyingly, it is 2 hen birds that our red bushy-tail chum has taken - why couldn't he grab a young cockerel? - they are coming up to the age where we need to cull them out anyway!

Lily takes off down the field.

Anyway, we got our call, I fired up Charlotte of the Mini-Horses (who wanted to go with us), and we headed for Mayo Liz's place with the trailer. We had a nice long chat, tea and biscuits, did all the paperwork and reversed the trailer up to the shed. You have to be gentle with these pregnant ones, they told us, so we stood back a bit and let the 'experts' at it. This looked to involve a rugby scrum with 2 bodies hanging onto and steering each ewe - they weren't going ANYWHERE but my trailer. We bade each other farewell and very gently drove home before unloading the sheep into our field - no man handling this time - we dropped the ramp and stood back blocking exits while the ewes slowly and warily explored the ramp and then the field entrance. We gently swung the gate shut behind them and there we were. I have since nipped in to photograph the new girls and we will now leave them to settle. The names, Polly (for the darker, Jacob x Hampshire Down) and Lily (for the pale, Suffolk x Hampshire) were provided by a literary chum of Liz's. When we were buying them and needing names back in October, she spotted that it was the 100th Anniversary of the birth of Dylan Thomas (27th Oct 1914) so decided we should name them for the entertaining "leading ladies" in 'Under Milk Wood', Polly Garter and Lily Smalls. We wanted names evocative of fecund female good health, appetite for... um.... loving, and easy production of babies. Polly and Lily it is then, Good Luck ladies, may you by now be successfully in lamb and 'cooking' ready to lamb in late March or early April.

Another Project, Another Mentor

Brawn boil up. No pots big enough, so I invented these
foil cone 'hats' to keep the heat in for the 6 hours

Over in Darkest Kent, Liz and Mazy are doing Sterling service, I know, helping Diamond's partner John to go through her stuff (a lot of it is clothes so, like me, John would have been lost in all the instructions describing 'Windsmoor' suits, cashmere cardigans and 'posh' handbags). They are sorting out the known bequests and following Diamond's instructions re charity shops and getting money to the Friends of Kent and Canterbury Hospital, The Pilgrim Hospice and so on. I think the fierce need to be practical and the mountain of physical work are just what they need right now.

Rather gruesome brawn mid-point. Best not to ask.

Back here I have managed to catch a whiff of Liz's cold just as she was leaving, so I am dosing myself up on Lemsip and keeping indoors out of the wind and showers except when the needs of livestock and dogs dictate. I went ahead with converting the relevant bits of pig into brawn which is an amazingly faffy, messy job. Up to now Liz has done all this - the cutting, the 6 hour boil, the stripping out cheek-meat and other muscle, the reducing of stock, the assembly in a mould and the pressing down while refrigerating.

Product. Note fancy 'top' made by arranging sliced tongue
in the bottom of the mould. 

Having had a go this time, I do solemnly swear that I will not ask her again - what a pallaver! The washing up and general kitchen devastation, the gribbly bits, the fat and skin! If Liz volunteers, though, I will not be complaining as the product is just superb and delicious, a slice of that sprinkled with a little salt, wedged between 2 slices of good bread is just superb. It gets a little spiced up with bay leaves, juniper berries and peppercorns in the boil so I couldn't swear that outdoor-reared (in this case Tamworth) brawn is different from 'commercial' but it is certainly as good as any I can remember.

Threadbare in heavy moult. One of
last year's Hubbard hens

Meanwhile we chug along happily into Autumn and the clocks change to bring us early mornings and long, long, dark evenings. The shortening days put the brakes on egg laying and the chooks all come into moult to varying degrees. From 9 hens we get two or maybe three eggs a day if we are lucky - often it is just the one or none. John Deere Bob still shows up regularly for his eggs and we don't disappoint him but, unbeknownst to him he is often clearing us out, taking our last 6! The days of glut and making pickled eggs with the surplus seem a long way away just now.

12 young Buff-Orps. We think, 4 roo's and 8 hens. 

The young Buff Orpingtons (the "Baker's Dozen", as was) continue to thrive. Being still a bit smaller than the adults they tend to get bullied off any food or corn thrown down 'centrally' but I have started to distract the grown ups in one part of the yard, and then sneak round to where the Buffs are hanging around and feed them out of sight/earshot of the adults. Happy youngsters.

Empty pig run. 

All quiet now in the pig department, of course. They didn't actually do as much rootling and clearing as we expected them to do, probably because there was enough space and variety of herbage for them to be choosy. They seem to have cleared dock, ground elder and some bramble, but have only done the edges of grass and nothing very deep. They messed around at the bottoms of fences but were successfully deterred by my bottom strand of high-tensile barbed wire and never looked like tunneling out except down in the ditch, where I have described my preventative measures in a previous post.

A little pig-damage to re-seed. 

Out in the open by the orchard they have stripped some of the turf and then chopped the soil into mush with their sharp little feet, so we have re-seeded that area; we hope the weather is still warm enough to get that seed going.

In the sheep department, as you know, we need to obtain some more freezer space before we dare get the sheep slaughtered and butchered. I am waiting for the 'Catering Manager' to come back and decide what we do about that. All in good time. There's no rush. The existing sheep are big enough but only just.

Shepherd's Pie and black (Tuscan) kale

We are now going to try buying in-lamb ewes which we will look after through the winter and then, we hope, see some new baby lambs out of in Spring. In this we have had an excellent result. We have found, via Carolyn and Charlotte of the Mini Horses, a lady in Mayo who is a friend of theirs, a small scale sheep farmer (about 30 ewes, I think) who is willing to let us visit and ask all manner of silly questions while she shows us around their set-up, but can also sell us ewes of various ages and crosses (including Liz's belovéd Jacobs). She is also willing to hold 'our' ewes back till she puts them to one of her tups (rams) in about 6 weeks. This will suit us perfectly as it will give us a chance to get a freezer and move the existing 4 sheep on.

Some of the 'O'Hara' craft beer range from Carlow Brewing Co.

Finally, I was delighted to find our local supermarket, SuperValu in Ballaghaderreen, selling a relatively new (since 1996) Irish craft beer, 'O'Hara' from the Carlow Brewing Company. They do a good range through from pale coloured beers to stout and I can now vouch for three of them, anyway. I raised my glass in the direction of Darkest Kent on Saturday, Diamond's Birthday. Rest in Peace, Di.