Hot Nuts?

We knew 'Tim' was sick, but did they need to drop him
outside the funeral parlour?

It was only  2 months ago (20 posts) that I was singing the praises of our ever trusty and reliable little Fiat Panda. How quickly things can change. 'Tim' seems to have taken exception to our plaudits and decided to stack up in very short order, a rake of problems which are starting to test our faith in 'him'. That's the contract, aul' fella. Stay reliable, good, cheap to run and free from faults and you are a 'keeper'; start turning all cantankerous on us and you get pensioned off.

It was a lovely (if hot) day so we decided to do a small job
in the front drive.... this turned into a couple of hours of
sweaty blackthorn-bashing.

The problems Tim decided to try our patience with were, in quick succession.....

The pale blue hatching shows the bit of 'view' which was
obscured by the blackthorn thicket. 

1. Drinking fair amounts of radiator water, leading us to suspect a head gasket leak but we could manage that (we thought) as 2 litres every month or so was do-able. If you read the last post you'll know we came unstuck on a mission to Roscommon and had to be recovered back to Lough Glynn.
2. First turn of the key in the morning, you expect the healthy "whinny" of a starter motor spinning the engine over, followed by the 'vroom' of a successful fire-up. We had a sudden change to the 'thunk' of a servo cutting in, followed by silence. It became a lottery whether you'd get the whinny or the 'thunk'. That problem seems to have gone away by itself. 
3. With the possible water leak fixed by the addition of the modern version of 'Radweld' - it is called 'Blue Devil' and costs an arm and a leg per bottle, so we assume it is not just Radweld re-badged. Touch wood, it seems to be working - we were off on a test drive - an hour or two round Charlestown, Knock and Ballyhaunis. It seemed fine but then in Ballyhaunis we became aware of a worrying metal-on-metal grinding from the front left corner. This seemed to be at wheel-speed rather than anything engine related, so I guessed brake pads (worn down?), discs, wheel bearings, drive shafts etc. We stopped to inspect but then drove home carefully and every time we picked up speed it went away. I took the car down to local tyres/exhausts/brakes place, Keith Revin in Castlerea and they, today have confirmed my brakes thing, so we are into new discs and pads on both front corners. 
4. My 'Hot Nuts' title I will explain later.

It was St John's Eve, so we were allowed
 to burn the blackthorn branches. 

As a result of all this we have, as I said, started to distrust young 'Tim' and are quietly looking for a possible replacement. That is not easy in Ireland at the moment because, with the economy being banjaxed, everyone is hanging onto their old cars and not replacing them, so there are few good used cars on the market. We want to come up to a few years newer but with basically the same size and style of car; not necessarily a Panda. We are on 04 reg and worth about €1500 and we are looking for maybe an 09 or a 10 reg. We have a couple of local dealers looking on our behalf, both of whom sucked the ends of their pencils and muttered stuff about having to tap up their Dublin contacts. Dublin seems to be the place to go at present, if you are looking for a used car. Out here in the sticks it is a used-car desert. Obviously we could have done without this spend just now, but hey, cars do not last for ever and the Fiat has done 11 years and 7 of those were very good ones for us.

Meanwhile, the weather has been kind and 2 days back we found ourselves hungry for some heavy duty gardening. We decided to tackle a thicket of blackthorn growing just inside the gate on the left which was growing out from the hedge and obscuring our view from the front gate up under the larch trees. It was sweaty work but, being St John's Eve it was the only day it is legal in the Republic to have a bonfire, so we could look forward to a nice relax in the evening burning all that while cradling a cool beer or wine. We used the trailer as a big wheel barrow to move it all round to the East Field. A very pleasant afternoon's 'serious' gardening.

A chamomile lawn? Well, maybe not.

We are always amazed and delighted by the way that bits of ground, paddled to a brown, bare muddy oblivion during the 'wet season' manage to recover in spring, greening over and turning us back to respectable 'lawn'. This is generally good old grass but this year, for no reason we can see, the brown mess inside the goose orchard gate has come back as (I think) 'stinking chamomile' (Anthema cotula), the feathery leaved 'daisy' which we called "Stinking Mayweed" in Sussex. Now, I know this is not the real 'lawn chamomile' of Mary Wesley fame. That is a sport of this plant found and developed in the 30's called 'Treneague' which never goes above 6 inches and does not flower. These guys, if I did not mow them off, would easily top 24 inches and flower like mad, but I am enjoying the fact that I have a 'Chamomile Lawn' of sorts.

Male turkey, 'Tom' caught NOT displaying. Liz
jokes that it is like catching your Dad in his
pyjamas. 

In the birds dept we are not holding out much hope for the broody geese who are now through the likely times for the known-start-date eggs but with no apparent result. The Elderberry Buff too, seems to want to come off the eggs for an hour or more at a time, sometimes twice a day, for a dust bath and a wander about scratching. feeding, drinking. She is always back on them sitting tight by evening, so we can lock her up, but that seems a lot of not sitting to us for a successful incubation. The turkey eggs in the incubator, we don't know after the long power cut where we tried blankets and mugs of boiling water but we are not sure we kept them warm. Tom, our turkey cock has now relaxed here and does not spend all his waking hours in full display mode

Lovely mugs from our craft-genius neighbour, Carolyn. 

But those 'hot nuts', I hear you ask. Just an amusing ribald comment by a garage guy. The 'metal on metal' grinding noise at the front of the Fiat today turned out to be badly worn (maybe 'bare' would be a better word) brake pads which, even if you use the brakes a bare minimum will still get a lot hotter through friction than brake-pad on metal, on the short run to Castlerea. The keen young lad who stepped up to do the investigation rattled them off the wheel studs with his air-gun and then dropped the first one out of the socket into the palm of his hand.

New tyres for the trailer (which has 2CV
wheels) have to come from my old chums,
2CV specialists ECAS in the UK. 

The shout of "OWWWW! They're flippin' ROASTing!" echoed round the garage and soon attracted all his colleagues over to try them out and join in the fun and banter. The lads were all impressed by the heat off them and, being the kind of place it is, they were all happily riffing on me having 'very hot nuts'. Ah well, maybe you had to be there. Anyway, the good news on that one is that they can get the replacement discs and pads by Monday and if I show up at 08:30-ish that will give the nuts a chance to cool down by the time they open (at 09:00) and they will sort me out as a first job for €125 all up. There's handy.

Slugs with Chainsaws?

Bee's Lemon Kniphofia

After many years of gardening and searching, having seen one in a book, we have got hold of a nice example of a 'red hot poker' (Kniphofia) but in the less common colour of pale lemon. We have been searching for the variety 'Bee's Sunset' for ages; well this one is Bee's Lemon so it will do for now. It stands proud in a half barrel full of a goodly mixture of our good loam and some muck from the mini-horses and after spending the summer as a tuft of leaves, has now produced an excellent stand of flower spikes. So far so good!

Slug damage to a Kniphofia stem.

Maddeningly though, the early spikes were being knocked over by something and being full of sap and brittle, they appeared to be almost snapped off. I suspected clumsy chickens but then noticed that at the 'break' there was not an actual break in the stem, but a 'cave' dug out, starting as a small pit in the skin of the stalk but then being hollowed out till there was just the skin at the 'back' of the stalk. The skin on its own was not enough to support the heavy flower head, so my 'vandal' was felling them. Pale brown slugs were quickly found to be the culprit. They were felling a stem and then getting bored (or full up?) and leaving them. They were proceeding through my stand of 'pokers' like a logging gang with chainsaws, felling a stand of forest. We are trying to be a bit organic and wildlife-friendly here, so I could not reach for the slug pellets; I am reduced to sneaking out at night with my head-light on, picking the little devils off and either flinging them as far away as possible or stomping on them on the gravel yard. This battle seems to be working reasonably well and I have, at time of writing, almost a dozen flower stems now starting to open.

These flies are everywhere, confusing me by looking very
like our bees. You are OK once you get your eye in; the
flight and eyes are wrong and only one pair of wings.

On the tenth of this month, the pigs reach 5 months age, so needed measuring again for the 'bust squared' weight estimates. They have now reached 66-70 kg so they are fast approaching 'ready' We are going for pork weight (carcass at 55 kg-ish) rather than baconers (80 kg) so it is looking like our 'bible' (Liz Shankland's (Haynes) Pig Manual) could be spot on with her 6 months estimate. Liz is already eye-ing them up in terms of joints of meat and recipes; she has an evil glint in her eye as she compliments their 'magnificence'. I need to get organised on creating the 'race' up from their field gate to a place I can get to with the trailer so that we can get them used to exploring, finding the trailer and enjoying the treats and straw there-in. That way the final journey will not be too traumatic of difficult for either us, or the pigs. We are not looking forward to that day, but it comes with the territory.

A possible white cornflower from an 'insect friendly' seed mix.

We had a nice treat today. John Deere Bob needed driving to nearby town Ballyhaunis to collect some money from the meat factory where he had sent 5 bullocks. He wanted to thank us for our help and invited the two of us to join him for lunch in a pub in the town. You never know exactly how much money you will get for cattle, he tells us, as it depends on a variable pence per kg figure and on the final, cleaned carcass weights of your beasts, but he was very happy today and proudly showed us the paperwork. He is not 'rich' for long, though, he joked; on Thursday he has to go to Castlerea mart to shell out for ten replacement 'weanlings' he has bought.

Californian poppy (Eschscholzia)

The pub was excellent. Called 'Val's Bar and Deli' it is a lovely pub with excellent service and delicious food. We three all had the fish but with differing choices of veg and salad. The lady saw that we looked like a hungry crowd and threw in a great bowl of chips for us. For me, too, a rare chance to get some Guinness down me with Liz offering to drive home. I love the 'black stuff' but amazingly I have now lived in Ireland for over 2 years and have probably drunk fewer than a dozen pints in that time. It is a pub drink (the cans or bottles are just not the same) and we are rarely in pubs as one of us would have to drive home. It is lucky, I guess, we did not buy a house within walking distance of a Guinness pub!

Finally a picture of Pirate enjoying a bit of sunshine in the yard - we are enjoying a week of 'Indian Summer' which is much appreciated after our rather wet chilly July and August.

An Occasion of Sin?

Class of 2014 try out the 'new' trailer.

On Friday the 1st, out of the blue, comes our long awaited text from that elusive Scarlet Pimpernel, Kenny, our sheep man. It seems he has broken his phone and lost a lot of contacts (Mmmm...) and has had to get back in touch via his brother Joe and our brother, Sparks. Kenny and Joe were part of the amazing stilt-walking plastering team of brothers who did such a good job on our rebuilt house. He was now back and offering us up to 5 lambs 'tomorrow' (Sat 2nd) and also suggesting that we meet him halfway at a car park in Ballyhaunis to transfer them from his trailer to ours. We asked for four. Kenny describes them as 'boys' so we put up on Facebook a jokey competition to name them and got back some very amusing sets of four names, everything from Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, through the Ramones names, the Four Horsemen, the Rat Pack, the 'A' Team, the Goons, "Uncle, Tom, Cobley and All" to Eeny, Meanie, Miny and Mo, various recipe lists and even, cleverly "Post, Prey, Poon & Asted" I'll leave you to work that one out!

Eyeing us up through the vent gap on the trailer.

I have to admit I was a bit scared of the trailer-transfer thing and had visions of sheep sprinting all over the busy town of Ballyhaunis an a Bank Holiday Saturday afternoon, with us in pursuit but that bit, at least proved that these sheep people know what they are at. However we suddenly had our Saturday now driven by the schedules of sheep-man Kenny. As well as a plasterer, Kenny is a small scale sheep farmer with a flock of one ram and about 30 'Mums' plus whatever singletons, twins and triplets he has managed to produce that year, and we have fallen in love with him over the years and use him as sheep supplier, mentor and source of sheep wisdom BUT (and it is a big 'But') he is a bugger for the lacks-a-daisical timekeeping and he will surely drive us mad.

Liz lets the sheep out in the East Field

He will text you one day promising to call back first thing tomorrow to confirm arrangements, but then he'll not text back, or it will be 'definitely around 2 pm'. Then as 2 pm approaches you will inevitably get a call saying he's fallen behind. Woe betides if you are hanging around waiting and putting off other jobs 'in case he calls'. One of our deliveries finally arrived at 11 pm and we were shepherding new sheep around in the dark with torches. It all somehow hangs together, though and we've not lost a sheep yet. This batch we finally got a firm rendezvous for the car park of pump-supplier 'EPS' in Ballyhaunis (which would be empty at the weekend and is nicely surrounded on all sides by fences but with an easily 'defended' open main gate). We backed our two trailers up tight together and guarded the side gaps while Kenny's son Oisín strong-armed the first sheep from A to B (the remaining three happily followed, as sheep do). The lads talked us through the sheep, which are an interesting mix of Mule and cross breed all with the same father (a Suffolk Down x Texel). Three ram lambs and a 'Yow'.

These Mayo-born babies taste Roscommon grass.

The 'Occasion of Sin' thing in my subject line? For the non-Catholic readers and anyone who was not schooled by the good Nuns who 'police' sweet little Catholic school girls, Liz tells me that as well as filling the girls with knowledge, a good part of the day was spent protecting them from bad influences and anything which might put at risk their purity and innocence. (Sounds like hard work to me, so fair play to the Nuns!). In this world, anything seen, read or come across which might give the girls a frisson of excitement or make their ears prick up and might cause a SIN to happen (gasp!) was referred to as an "Occasion of Sin". Liz tells me that Kenny the sheep man, with his devilish handsome, Wild Irish Rover good looks, dark curly hair, fine features, twinkling eyes, strong hands (swoon) and fit farmer's body is definitely an Occasion of Sin and would have been kept out of the school by Nuns armed with pitchforks and flaming torches.

Aren't these ear-tags meant to be attached to the sheep,
Kenny?

Ah well, the sheep are all home now and safe in our East Field, recently vacated by the last mini-horse to leave, Cody. There is plenty of grass there and the gang are patrolling around now seeing what it tastes like in all parts of the field. We have not settled on names yet - the choice was too huge! This was the first use of the new stock trailer in anger and we were delighted with how it all worked, all be it we lost the spare wheel from its mount at some stage and had to retrace our steps to go and rescue it in case it was lying in the road causing an accident - it wasn't, it was well hidden in a grass verge. Ah well, we've done all the paperwork and Kenny has given us the strip of ear-tags which he has promised (faithfully!) to come round and fit to the sheep in the next few weeks. Brace yourself, Lizzie!

Pirate after his most recent Vet visit

Meanwhile a quick picture of our old soldier, Pirate the Cat, now all goo'd up again with medical fluids, new stitches and scabby stuff. Poor aul' soul. We hope this is the last visit and now he can get better properly, put on plenty of weight and clean himself up a bit. He has effectively taken over the caravan now and won't let our other two cats in. It's his territory now. Our two cats don't actually mind, especially now that it has turned a bit autumnal and wet, and they are allowed indoors (Ha!). They are currently both stretched out luxuriously on a bed in the spare room. We daren't let Pirate indoors, as the dogs would try to rip him limb from limb. It's a shame, because he is so obviously an 'indoor' cat. We are secretly hoping that one of our guests or visitors will fall in love with him, one who can give him a proper indoor berth with no terriers. Meanwhile, though, we will keep him safe in his new life based around the caravan.

As Sharp as a Tack

I have been helping John Deere Bob with a few jobs, most recently stripping some ivy off his cattle barn, which had got a firm grip and some 2 inch 'trunks' clinging to the block-work. Being a climber and not needing to support its own weight, ivy is never that tough and I made short work of it with a billhook, loppers and a standard hand saw. I had to cut it off at ground level and then rip it off as far as the top of the block wall. Bob had no ladder available so he told me to 'leave that top stuff to die by itself'. He was delighted and came by the place later to bring us a sack of his good dry (local) turf for the fire; he was all full of beans having sold some beef animals to the 'factory in Ballyhaunis' for a very good price.

Buff Orpington rooster at 25 weeks. 

We love ol' Bob - he's a really sound old boy! We think he's about 72 but he's as sharp as a tack and full of mischievous humour and a ready, breathy laugh. He gets about on his tractor (his only vehicle) and looks after his 20 or so cattle. He is one of these guys who you get the impression is ready to retire but is frightened that if he stops he will seize up, so having sold one lot of cattle he's quickly off to buy the next lot. He loves his politics and is delighted that, in Liz, he has met a worthy adversary in debating his opinions.

He had an opposite view to Liz in the recent Seanad (Senate) Referendum and the two of them sat poring over Liz's lap top as she flashed up results table and maps from the results websites. He knew the results for Roscommon and local counties but wanted to know the percentages for counties further a-field, like Waterford and the Dublin turf and talked about the 'panel' voting system which gets the Senators voted in. For me there is an extra pleasure in just hearing him talk away in the soft gentle local accent, where the stress is on the second syllable of 'Mayo' and where 'meal' becomes 'male' and where S's have an almost 'th' thud mixed up in them which is impossible to write phonetically (County S(th)ligo?). Then he decides he has been here long enough, jumps up rubbing his palms together. Well! Good luck Now! he tells us as he reaches for the door. Lovely old boy. I pray that I am as fit as he is when I am 72.

We've decided to try out a new type of animal bedding, replacing wood shavings with milled straw. Both come in bales of 100 litres at about €7, the straw a few cents more but being finer, you get more coverage for your money. We have been OK with the wood shavings but various people on the poultry forum and Mentor Anne have advised that this straw is better after use as garden compost as it breaks down faster than the wood shavings.

Marans looking all woe-begone in full moult.

I am mildly concerned that it comes "medicated" with some kind of chemical claiming to be a 'Salmonella inhibitor' (but being a bedding rather than a feed, it does not have to tell you what this chemical is). It just smacks a bit to me of 'preventative' medication which is one of the things we organic types are meant to be 'anti'. I also asked whether an anti-bacterial agent in the straw might also mean anti rotting on the compost heap, but I am assured that this is not the case. So far so good anyway, I have done my mucking out today and bedded everything (rabbits, chickens and geese) down with this stuff. It looks nice and fresh and clean. One of the claims on the packaging made me smile - it is 'screened to inhibit dust' I read through streaming eyes as I choked on the wafts of something remarkably like dust when spreading it around on the goose house floor.

One more laugh for today - having some meat left over from the huge Jersey Giant rooster we culled out recently, Liz made a version of shepherd's pie with a mashed potato crust and a fill of the meat, leeks and mushrooms. Delicious! But what to call it? Shepherd's Pie is obviously the lamb/mutton version, and Cottage Pie is the beef version. I put it to my Poultry forum to come up with a name and one lad who uses the name 'Jemsey' on the forum suggested the inspired moniker "Cull-a-Cock Pie". Excellent!

Galway Hookers

There's no point in being in this lovely part of the world if you can't go out and do 'tourist' once in a while, and (says Dad) there's no point in being the official blogger on a website devoted to working sail boats of you can't occasionally indulge your passions for the West Coast traditional sailing work boat, the Galway Hooker. In these days of puppy and kitten overload, I am occasionally indulged with a car trip rather than be left alone to kill the kindergarten and so it was today that I was loaded into the car for a bit of touristing.

The plan was to look up the Hookers in the centre of restoration excellence, Kinvarra, but there are several Kinvarras on the map. We headed first for the one in Connemara - we knew that the hookers were mainly used to ferry turf, supplies and livestock between the islands and headlands of Connemara, so this seemed logical and anyway, gave us all a superb scenic run out through Ballyhaunis, down to Ballinrobe and then threading out between Lough Corrib and Lough Mask and on through the Maamturk mountains and down to the first Kinvarra. This proved to not be a sea harbour (all be it very scenic) so we headed on south and the east along the North shore of Galway Bay, stopping for a picnic on the beach, where I got a nice run a round.

From there we headed on through Galway and south again to the Kinvarra near to the Cliffs of Moher and The Burren. Not only did the town signs have Galway Hooker logos, but as soon as we set eyes on the harbour we spotted the lovely black hull of a big hooker (Cliona na Toinne). We parked up and went for a walk, spotting another couple of hookers including the small type they call púcán. Dad took a million photos (it takes all sorts). Mum spotted a poster advertising a Traditional Boats Festival running tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday

Hands up who thinks we'll be going back?

Deefs.

Concreting the Aprons

A big day yesterday when we finally got enough of a break in the weather to do the concreting of the aprons; those 'paths' around the sides of the house which shed water away from the walls and help prevent damp. The forecast had Wednesday 20th as the best day this week. It was NEARLY good enough, but read on. The experts today were Mike the Concrete again, he who came to set up the shuttering almost 2 weeks ago now, and today his mate was Declan, Sean-y being tied up on another job

 They were here on site and ready when the ENORMOUS concrete mixer lorry arrived from Grogan's of Ballyhaunis, a town about 15 minutes away. We only needed 3 cubic metres of concrete which is normally less than they'll bother with, but they were slack and Mike is a mate and frequent customer of theirs. The driver managed to reverse the lorry up the drive and thread it through our side gate. He was a good man, both skilled and very co-operative and helpful.

 These guys can be only interested in dumping their load and getting out, if they are inclined but ours was prepared not only to move the lorry around to the various bits of the job, but also to despatch the mix down the chute at manage-able speed, even a barrow load at a time so that the three of us, working quickly and hard, admittedly, were able to spread it roughly into the aprons without double handling any. The driver even turned the lorry right round in our 'car-park' bit so that he could drop the left over bit onto what will be the caravan bay in the former hay-barn and even hosed our barrows out with his wash hose when he'd done washing the chute and drum of his mixer. What a hero! Grogan's should give him a pay rise! Dad gave him a decent tip.

 This concrete laying lark is quite a caper and the two guys were veritable artists at the job. You don't just pour it into the hole(s) and spread it flat. These guys smeared and sloshed it about to get it fairly flat using shovels and the rake. Then they level it to the levels already set up 2 weeks ago between the expansion joints by drawing a plank back and forth, and settle it by slapping it with the plank edge. Next a smooth surface is created with a wooden hand held float. Then you leave it a while to start to 'cook'. This is best done by drinking tea on the front terrace as provided by Mum from the posh teapot and accompanied by biscuits while you gossip and yarn.

Refreshed by tea you can now go over the already smooth surface of the concrete again with a metal hand held float but also a big, wind-surfer sized float on a twist-able pole, the twist action enabling you to slope the float slightly towards or away from you to give a good action which does not cut up the stuff you just smoothed. Then you go round the edges with a "bull-nose" float which puts that last 4 or 5 inches wide smooth edge and the curved 'nose' instead of a sharp corner. Finally you use a 12 inch wide 'diamond roller', a heavy-ish roller with waffle-iron diamonds in its face, which puts a pretty imprint onto the concrete in stripes, to give a non-skid, attractive finish.

There you are! You didn't know concreting was so complicated, did you? Nor did we. The concrete 'cooks' fairly fast, so if you can get about 2 hours from the end of doing the diamond roller-ing with no disturbances and no rain, then it's 'Happy Days', job done. New concrete, though, does not like heavy rain. The rain washes the concrete powder down off the top layer of sand and grit, breaking up your nice glossy, smooth (and bull nosed and diamond-patterned, in this case) "skin". As we got towards that crucial point, ominous black clouds were gathering. The boys were joking with Mum that she should say a Rosary, get down on her knees and even (they tell us some "Good Catholics" do this) deploy an icon. Mum, smiling, produced an "Infant of Prague" fridge magnet (Diamond would be proud of us!) and the boys told her to put it on the wall overlooking the apron! I felt sorry for them though, when the rain suddenly hammered down, breaking up the beautiful skin as described.

When it stops and the sun comes out, you can work the concrete again, smearing the exposed grit back down into the mix and giving yourself another smear of cement, which the guys did, but you can only do this once. The concrete is now cooking well and 'going off' and will quickly become too hard to work. So with all the 'pretty' stuff repeated and more dark clouds gathering, the guys rushed to cover their work with handy bits of corrugated sheeting, plastic sheet and wood and just about managed to protect it all before the rain comes down again. At this point, Mike and Declan can do no more. They go home, with Mike promising to return today to check up on whether we got away with it. "You can't odds it" he said, philosophically. "No good getting excited about it; These things 'appen"

It looks OK this morning, peering under the sheeting, but we'll leave all the protection down till Mike tells us we can lift it.

Deefs