Tough Aul' Birds

I promised to report back on the 'Duxelle' (mushroom and ham based) stuffing Liz created to use up some of our mushroom glut, using the Darina Allen (Ballymaloe Cookery School) recipe, and I am happy to report that it was delicious. Full of flavour, too, was the roast chicken it accompanied, being the tiny carcass of the Sussex Ponte bird we culled just before New Year because she had injured her self 'beyond repair', possibly the rather bedraggledy girl we knew as 'Baldy' last summer. I can not be as complimentary as this about the texture of this bird - we were both really surprised at the toughness of the meat. She had received a fairly standard roast having been spatch-cocked and looked 'normal' but as soon as we started to attack it we were switching to sharp steak knives to cut meat from bone. The meat thus cut was very good and perfectly edible but it was a struggle to bite through the skin and we ended up ripping our half (each) to pieces with our hands and teeth, Medieval Banquet style.

Of course we quickly worked out that these Sussex Pontes, our old originals obtained at point of lay (20 weeks old) in May 2012, are 2 years old, easily the oldest chicken we have ever eaten. Standard commercial birds are pushed to killing weights in just a couple of months, commercial free range and organic birds more like 80-100 days and our own Hubbards were being eaten at between 100 and 140 days. This is why, of course, there are recipes around like 'Coq au Vin' designed to slowly cook a sinewy old bird to edible tenderness. We will know for next time and not try to fast-roast our 'geriatrics'; Heaven knows what the Marans birds will be like - they are more like 6 years old! Ah well, Baldy was left with plenty of meat on her bones when we'd finished our Medieval gnawing (and we were perfectly well fed on the meat we had eaten and the good range of veg accompanying her and the Duxelle stuffing) so she went into the stock pot and got the hours of gentle simmer she'd really needed.

Meanwhile our inner 'tough aul' birds' have been called on over the last couple of days as a result of the weather. Last night another 'orange warning' wind storm came through and blew a hole in my theory that the outbuildings are safe enough as long as the wind is from the south. We heard the mild clang in the dark of a sheet of corrugated iron going air-borne and the dogs woke up and started fretting. In the dark at half six or so, I ventured out with dogs to check on things (the dogs only because dogs fretting in the night can mean that someone has an upset bowel and if they can't get out you will end up cleaning up 'accidents' indoors). Our way up the cattle race was blocked by a long sheet of corrugated iron and a quick scan with the torch showed me that the chickens had lost a roof panel. I think it had simply shaken loose on its nails and slid down like an avalanche to land in the yard; the wooden frame of the roof there is quite badly rotted and probably long overdue replacement. In the dark, though, with the wind blowing a hooley and the rain coming down, there was not a lot I could do - the chickens were all OK not being directly below the new hole. I went back to bed to sweat out the wind noises and pray that no more panels went for a fly about.

That was our job, then, for the morning, trying to shore up and replace rotted roof timbers, then slide the sheeting back up its 'slot' and fasten it down with new screws and waterproof washers. Luckily the wind had abated a lot and the rain was now in bands between which you could nip out and scramble reasonably safely on roof ladders. It remains to be seen whether our repair will hold, the forecast has several more wind systems coming through. Mercifully, we only lost a roof panel and that not damaged. The internet and news are full of homes flooded, power lines down, rivers bursting their banks and coast roads impassable. Our sympathies to anyone who is really struggling through all this. We also take our hats off to the earlier Irish resident 'tough aul' birds' who survived all this kind of weather and mud without the benefit of modern outdoor clothing, power tools, light aluminium ladders and Posidrive screws.

Christmas is all over. The tree has been stripped of its finery and now languishes on the pile of 'sneddings' awaiting its fate on the range fire. The tinsel, baubles, pine cones and fairy lights are back in their crates in the Utility Room till next time. The cards are in the recycling. The Christmas Cake is all gone, the huge pud is cut up into sensible one-meal portions and frozen. Liz had blitzed through the house sweeping up the shed pine needles, pieces of dog-chewed decorations and rescuing the (thankfully plastic these days) silver baubles which we'd displayed artistically in a big bowl on the coffee table. Blue the cat had invented a good game of scooping them out of the bowl with a front paw and watching them roll onto the floor, whence they ended up under the sofa, the settee and the tree. Thank you, Blue, we have retrieved them all now.

The 'Hin' formerly known as....

Three different livestock stories tonight, just to keep you abreast of things feathered and furry here on the 'farm'.

First up I think I posted a while back that one of our Sussex Ponte 'hins' seemed to be bearing the brunt of the rooster, William's love and affection. He was 'treading' her (as they say) so often that his spurs had scratched away big chunks of feather across her wings and shoulders, leaving her with bright pink bald patches which had us a bit concerned she'd get sunburn in the hot weather. She was nicknamed 'Baldy'. Some people make tough cloth 'saddles' for the hen when this happens to protect her back from his rough treatment, but the better advice is to get more hens and spread the load a bit, naturally. Without really meaning to, that is exactly what we did by obtaining the 2 Marans birds with whom William has fallen deeply in love. He now favours these ladies and has dropped Baldy like a hot potato and, we were amused to note, done her a big favour in the feather department. All her bald patches are now covered in new feathers 'in pin' (still in their sheaths). We will have to keep an eye on Bubble and Squawk to make sure they don't start going bald!

Meanwhile, it being a lovely warm sunny day here in Co. Roscommon we decided to let the new chicks out in one of the rabbit runs, to feel the sun on their backs and get a chance to scratch at some rabbit-grazed short grass. They loved it and their 'Mum' was able to do them some good scratch-training.

If the speed of response by chicks has anything to do with how much their Mum loves them and stays protecting them, then these 8 babies are streets ahead of the 5 ducklings, who wouldn't scratch no matter what she tried. Ducklings just don't. With these chicks one dip of her beak and a single cluck had all 8 whizzing towards her on their surprisingly mobile legs and 8 little beaks diving in by hers to see what she'd turned up. Soon we will be letting the family out properly to free range. We have no fears from cats or the other chickens and we seem to be doing OK so far with regard to dogs on leads, foxes, mink etc. No! Our concerns are actually for dear ol' William the rooster, who is so keen to re-acquaint with Betty after her incubation 'holiday' that he chases her, tries to scrabble on board and would knock the chicks flying as she leapt to protect them. He's a big solid boy, and they could get badly hurt or killed, so we will wait a while till the babies get a bit bigger, tougher and speedier in their evasion runs.

You'll possibly know of the rather thin time we are having of the 'meat rabbits', born to Goldie in mid June. We had about 9 originally but they do not seem to be thriving and, although they look very healthy, one by one they have died for no apparent reason. We just find them lying on their side, stiff and chilled in the morning and up to now have disposed of the tiny bodies and moved on. We were putting it down to some internal, developmental problem possibly born out this being Goldie's first litter, and the fierce heat wave that we had during her final weeks of pregnancy and the babies' first weeks of life. By last weekend we were down to 4 babies left alive, 3 white albino and one dark rabbit-brown. None of the deaths had been foresee-able, they seemed to go from healthy to dead without us seeing any in-between sick stages or symptoms. By contrast the 12 baby bunnies of Padfoot and Ginny are thriving and growing well.

Then we had another death last week while the Silverwoods were here and this time we saw it coming. I went to move the run one morning to new grass and this rabbit was very pathetic looking and lethargic, not bothering to run for cover as I loomed over him. I nudged him into cover out of the rain but later he was back out. We rescued him to a warm dry box in the girls' caravan out of sight of the small children, but by lunchtime, Em-J reported hearing him wheezing and by 1 pm he was dead. We talked to Mentor Anne and she wondered whether liver fluke might be an issue, this ground having been grazed by sheep last year (all be it lambs treated for fluke and that, way back in December).

We decided to autopsy the rabbit and the girls decided they would like to see that. Em-J has a scientific mind and is choosing school/college options aimed at giving her a possible career in forensic archaeology. She'd done some biology but never dissected a mammal before. J-M was just on a bit of a thrill-seek and was not going to miss this one! I talked them though how we would open up the body cavity and what would be where and calmed their fears that there would not be blood and gore everywhere. We donned neoprene 'murderer' gloves and in we went. In the event the liver proved to be as clean as a whistle, very healthy looking with no flukes or damage visible as we sliced it up. Lungs, heart, diaphragm, spleen, kidneys and gut all looked normal to me.

The one feature which did strike me and I have certainly never seen (and I've skinned and gutted a few rabbits!) was that the bladder was full with wee, inflated to the size of the top of your thumb, though not inflamed or angry-red looking. It just looked like the boy had not had a wee for a while, but I am no expert and this might be standard for these rabbits. Anne and I were both a bit concerned that the bladder would have emptied in death, so a blocked duct may be indicated and again, this might point to an infection or a developmental issue. We do not know where to go with this but I will probably autopsy any more dead ones we may get. It was an interesting exercise for the girls, too and they were both pleased to have seen it and not to have run out in horror.

We hope, of course, that the remaining three babies make it through.

All Change

It's all go locally as the farmers try to rattle in a first cut of silage in this hot spell, with some rain forecast for tomorrow. They try to mow one day, leave the cut grass to wilt overnight and then bale and wrap the next day. These are big heavy round bales, so the old boys like our own John Deere Bob and their lightweight tractors take a back seat on this one and the young lads with their big contractor kit do the honours. Bob's contractor used a big 4WD, 6 tonne, 110 HP Case IH tractor with a serious baler hitched on and we could hear the roar of the diesel and the bass thump and clang for each completed bale from here. Bob has around 80 bales now but will need to take a 2nd cut in 8 weeks to get his 130 or so together that he needs to see him though this winter.

I am sorry to only have poor pictures so far but today is day 18 for the baby rabbits born to Ginny and Padfoot. They are active enough now to have started to emerge from the 'bedroom' by hopping over the low 'wall' I installed, so it's time to remove the wall and let them start to explore the grass of the run. We think these Mums each have about 5 kittens but until they start to explore properly you cannot really count them - the nest is a ball of hay and belly-fluff with random bunny bottoms, heads, ears and legs protruding, too tangled up to count.

All change in the poultry section. We have been a bit anxious about doing this, but we have wanted to swap the geese from the calf house, with the chickens from the milking shed. This would involve a certain amount of carpentry and fixing up of chicken wire, a lot of 'mucking out' and, we thought, some hassle at bed time where nobody (we predicted) would want to go to their new sleeping accommodation and confusion would reign. The woodwork was mainly about making a pop-hole in the new door of the calf house and constructing a perch-ladder in there. The chooks have been used to flapping up to a perch 7 feet up via a couple of staging posts. Now they would have a 'ladder' at 45 degrees with perches at 21 inch intervals so nice and easy. The nest boxes would also be moved along with the feeder and drinker. The geese are basically getting the floor area of the former chicken house, now cleared of perches and cleaned up. The young chickens will also be persuaded to use the new chicken house and to merge in with the old chickens (including their 'mother'!) but we will do that as a separate change later, planned for tomorrow.

[Horse Chestnut grown from seed]

It all proved to be a whole lot easier than we'd expected. During the 'woodworking' one of the hens had shown up obviously looking for the nest boxes in order to lay an egg. She recognised the boxes but these were currently sitting outside in the cattle race while we cleaned up. I put them in the new quarters, grabbed her and put her in one of them where she settled happily to her egg laying, unperturbed by the fact she was in 'the goose house'. We bribed the 'Young Ones' into their old familiar run and closed them in. We bribed the horses into their field and turned off the electric fence which currently runs close to the new goose house. We were on.

['Million Trees' Mountain ash]

The geese proved to be a doddle to steer into their new quarters. It seemed that it was a familiar looking door into a familiar building so they just went with it once they'd spotted Liz lurking in their normal path. They paddled in onto the clean wood shavings and accepted a supper of wheat and rolled barley. Seemingly quite unconcerned that this was not their normal end.

The chickens, we were sure we'd have some fun with - chooks are far less steerable and tend to panic and scatter as soon as they sense they  are being cornered. But at around half six they happened to have gathered near the new space. We opened the calf house door so that they could see the hen sitting on the nest box and the rooster and 2 hens just wandered in out of curiosity. I went to close the door behind them but 'Baldy' spotted my intention and bolted back out. This might have been a problem, but we sensed that she was still very interested in getting into the building where her 4 chums now were. Liz hovered near the pop hole to stop the captured birds from coming back out but Baldy was then heading for the ramp to the pop hole, so we both stepped back, holding our breaths to see would she use the ramp and go in, the first bird so to do? Bless Her - she did, with barely a hesitation. We now had all the birds where they needed to be for the night, so we shut the pop-hole and retreated to let them settle.

My other two pictures are examples of our tree-planting successes. The horse chestnuts (conkers) were collected from below a tree in Gravesend (Kent) last Autumn while I was staying on the Sailing Barge Cambria moored there. I have three successful seedlings from 4 conkers. The mountain ash is a 'Million Trees' sapling, most of which are doing very well and putting out lots of new leaves. We are pleased to be having tree successes and will look to carry this on, planting more each year.

G-Day?

Today, the 22nd of May is our 'G-Day', the first day that any goslings were likely to hatch. So far no sign of any activity but I am told that, as happened with the chickens, they can have hatched but be kept a secret by their Mum for a couple of days - you might see and hear nothing. I have crept in and sat very quietly and listened but there are no new noises. Ah well, we are nothing if not patient, so we are leaving them well alone and allowing Nature to take its chosen course. Our friend Carolyn, just down the road, has had 6 goslings from 6 eggs 2 days ago, so we are a bit envious. We are also told that our problem of failing to separate the girls and allowing the egg 'borrowing' to occur might evolve into arguments over the new babies. This can go badly wrong for the babies, as you can imagine, but we are clinging to the belief that it's a bit late to separate anybody now, and that these two sisters have been nothing but amiable and nice to each other for the 4 weeks of sitting, so might just carry that into Auntie-hood.

Meanwhile our suspected barren hen, 'Baldy' gets a reprieve. The stock pot is back in the cupboard. She laid an egg! Fair play to her. She laid another this morning, so we hope she is back on line. Mind you we have not yet had that 3-egg (100% productivity) day  as one of the other girls took a break. You should always listen to your known experts - Mentor Anne said all along that William would not be 'treading' Baldy (and making her bald) if she was infertile.

The chicks are now at 4 weeks and have that amusing, half feathered, 'threadbare' look where you can see their reptilian ancestry shining through. Looking and strutting about like mini velociraptors and having all the experts having a punt on sexing them, which is notoriously difficult. Are tails up or straight backward? Is that a bit of a comb forming above the beak? Mentor Anne is going for 4 and 4, 2 roosters, 2 pullets among the buffs, my Sussex a pullet, The La Bresse cross a rooster and one of each in the Jersey Giants. Place your bets, ladies and gents.... the wheel is in spin!

In the orchard the apple blossom is just now starting to open so it is at that dark pink stage where only the backs of petals are visible. These are only young trees so we are pleased to have any blossom and we are not expecting any fruit. When the wind is less fierce we are getting a fair few bumble bees coming through now and the odd hover fly. I have not seen any honey bees and Anne tells me that Irish Bee Keepers are reporting 76% hive loss this winter on account of the hard weather. We'll see this year as the year in which the new trees got established and hope for a sensible season in 2014.

Diversifying our orchard a wee bit, we found in a local Garden Centre, and planted a hazel nut tree. The fruit tree layout was originally going to by 4 rows of 5 trees but we found that there was room for a 6th row at the north end, still giving clearance to the hedge line. I will do a line of nuts and other non top-fruit along here where their bushy shape will not detract from the plan to be able to look down avenues of blossom across the neat goose-grazed grass. Everything in its place? We had intended to get some hazel and nut trees from the 'Million Trees' project but it all seems to have gone a bit quiet in that department and the latest email update had them including escape clauses like 'trees will be made available as funds are obtained'. Reading between the lines it seems to have stalled and run out of money and trees. Ah well, the 27 we planted here are now breaking bud. We gather 'they' managed about 100,000 on the day which is, at least, 100,000 trees in the Irish landscape which would not be there but for the programme.

In the 'allotment' things are looking pleasingly weed free. We have decided to attack the enormous task of weeding in the same way I do pond digging - trying to achieve an hour every day, which translates into 2 big 'Curver' buckets onto the compost. Nearest to you in the picture is last year's rainbow chard which has amazed us by not bolting away to flower and is continuing to give us good yields. I have now got peas, broad beans, 2 kinds of artichoke and 3 of potatoes breaking the surface plus lines of smaller seedlings which I need to protect from the hens dust-bathing games.

Finally, with the grass growing like billy-oh and us not yet ready with multiple-gosling lawn mowers I have had to fire up the lawn mower to stop it all getting away. Carolyn has now sold the 4th horse (a 'big' ( i.e. normal sized) Irish Cob called Sam) so she was able to drop by yesterday with a third lunge rein, one each for 'our' three miniature horses. I was therefore able to 'deploy' my three mini-horse mowers today on the three reins , 2 in the Primrose Path and one on the front lawn under the trees where I daren't mow for fear of cutting into tree roots. We needed 3 reins because the three horses fret if they can't see one another and mess about trying to gallop up and down rather than settling down to eat the grass as intended. You can't just take 2 out mowing and leave the 3rd in the field. It was fun and games this morning in Liz's absence, trying to get 3 head collars onto 3 horses and then get them all tethered. I am not an experienced horse-manager and I think they spotted that!