Cull-a-Cock Curry

Some lovely sunsets. This taken by a friend on the Facebook
"Ballaghaderreen" account yesterday and used with permission.

Rather pleasingly our 2018 which started out with that long, cold wet Spring where no grass grew and we were all feeding our livestock with hay and supplements, has now given us a lovely Autumn. You will recall we also had that humdinger of a heat wave in May/June so it has been a bit of a weird year for the weather.

Full moon - pic blagged off Internet

So the last few weeks have featured no wind, clear skies (lovely and blue by day, big bright moons at night including the 'Beaver Moon' full moon on 24th this month), some light frosts and minor freezing of the big pond. More importantly there has been no rain so we are nice and dry and mud-less. A lot of the beef animals are still outside on the grass, to the delight of the local beef-men. Indoor housing means more work and more slurry to spread from the tanks under "slatted houses". After their tricky Spring, that will come as a lovely relief.

Blue sky, green grass, white geese and a
rather black-ice frozen pond.

For us,with our sheep, it is already the 26th Nov, less than a month to Christmas and Elizabeth is only today having to buy the extras for the ladies; a bucket of their 'salt lick' mineral with molasses and a bag of their "crunch" (mixed grains, again with molasses). These give them plenty of energy, minerals and trace elements to keep their bones, feet and guts healthy as the grass starts to be exhausted. It is especially important if they are pregnant but Friends of the Blog will know that we are not 'doing' lambs this Winter, so that, at least is not a concern.

Frozen pond. Good news for Brer Fox, bad news for ducks.

The cold, dry sunshine has also been a good opportunity for the 'staff' to polish off a few jobs out of doors (we could have made good use of a couple of last Help-X-ers after all!). The Woman of the House decided to tackle the privet hedge out front.

Elizabeth goes 2 feet back into the hedge prior to taking the
top out of it down to about her shoulder height. The daffs in the
verge will love it and we will be able to see out as we nose the
car into the laneway.

This hedge had grown thick (4'?) and tall (8'?) and since we had been here it had only been shaped/trimmed by any passing Council contractors we could flag down and then picked at by us around the gateway 'splay' when we couldn't see to poke the car's nose out of the driveway. Elizabeth decided to "go for it" carving 2-3 feet back into the  front of it, exposing an old cutting-level at about her shoulder height. She will then cut it off at that height - we will be able to see into the windows of passing cars.

The downside of this, of course, is the MOUNTAIN of prunings that have to be coped with, gathered from the verge and disposed of but this is not, in fact a big problem. Just beyond where the lady is standing in the picture is another gateway - that through to our "Primrose Path". Nip in there and on your right is a cleared patch of ground under the trees (scene of much nettle pulling by Help-X-ers (and myself) this Summer). From here the prunings (after the leaves have fallen) can be tossed over the sheep fence and easily dragged across to the fire-pile ready for Bonfire Night (23rd June in Ireland).

Latest 'time-suck' for the heart patient, Mahjongg (solitaire)

Of course, I am chatting away here describing all this hard work as if I am involved. I can only sit and watch, longing to be fit enough again to help, lobbing in the odd "helpful" suggestion (Sorry, Boss!) and killing time with Mahjongg, Card Patience or some such. This is all Elizabeth's doing at the moment and I am extremely grateful. The daffs in the verge will definitely enjoy the extra light and people (including us, of course) will be able to see over the hedge even from normal-height saloon cars. I was holding off the job while we thought about buying a proper power-tool but Mrs C did this with normal secateurs and loppers. Fair play.

Sometimes just a tomato soup and tea
will do.

The frost and ice have unfortunately brought Brer Fox back out scenting around for sources of food other than the mice which are presumably now retreating under ground. We had our first strike since 3rd Sept. It was broad daylight (they all are!) and I was home alone but wide awake. The Guinea Fowl kicked off and I let the dogs out. They went fast a furious making that bee-line for the hole in the hedge through to the 5-acre field, that tells us that this is probably no false alarm. They were gone a good 20 minutes, so presumably chased the scent a good distance. I went to check the birds and found, sadly, only 5 ducks. A female (inevitably) was missing. Why can't they take the drakes?

I guess that the ducks, which have been used to racing out to the middle of the pond for safety whenever Brer Fox's nose appears through the hedge, were snookered this time by the pond-ice and may have been confused and indecisive, long enough, for the fox to nip in and snatch one. Ah well. Down side of full free range. I read subsequently that mine was not the only "first-in-a-long-while" fox strike that day. An Internet friend who small-holders in Derbyshire had a strike and our friends Sue and Rob over by Ballenagare had a turkey-stag taken. It's that time of year.

Processing the roosters

And talking time of year, as we run into Christmas, all those Spring-hatch baby chickens we were enjoying are now reaching the 21 week stage, which is 'Point of Lay' if you are a female, but time to issue those first Cock-a-doodle-doo calls and start bothering the hens if you are a 'bloke'. We hatched about 30 babies this year so the Law of Averages says we are looking at 15 probably roosters - way too many! These guys need culling out, or you end up with cock-fights and the hens getting too harassed. I watched one poor hen get 'trodden' by 3 roos in quick succession. She did not get up off the ground after #3 for a good 5 minutes, till #4 grabbed the back of her neck and tried to climb on. It's not pretty and is horrible to see done to your gentle, lovely ladies.

We chose 4 likely 'roo's and offed them on Thursday. It seems a shame - they are gorgeous birds, bright of eye, clean of leg and beautifully feathered, with their gold flecking flashing in the sun and their black tails glowing iridescent green (think magpie or head of mallard duck). They have had a good, free-range life and theirs was a quick, stress-free, painless respectful end. They are delicious and still tender - only 6 months old, so no need to go down the slow-cooker, coq-au-vin or "cull-a-cock-curry" routes; normal cooking is fine.

We are always a bit sad by how "scrawny" these big magnificent roosters turn out when plucked - you are pulling a good 2" deep 'pile' of feathers off legs, breast and cape and these are only range-y young adolescents of 'multi-purpose' breeding. (Dung heap specials, basically!)  We are more used to the 'designer' 'Hubbard' meat birds which will go 4 kg carcasses even at 120 days age but our source of Hubbards dried up a couple of years ago, so we are now more than happy with these 2 kg 'babies'.

That, I suspect, is enough for this post. Look after yourselves, till next time.

'Tis the Season

No Turkeys! Out on that bank on our boundary, where Mr Fox
definitely comes patrolling, is NOT a good place to nest.

British Summer Time. Nice long evenings and the dogs waking me up a good hour later than they have been, driven as they are by their own light-level triggers. Spring is sprung and all that. 'Tis the season for procreational activities to break out all over, sometimes covertly.

Occupational hazard of fencing in these parts.

'Tis also the season for everyone to shore up those winter-damaged fences prior to letting the cattle out to the welcome grass. I got involved a bit in order to help a friend and came back with the usual lacerated forearms from the brambles, hawthorn and blackthorn. This was an early morning job, so Elizabeth found herself in charge of fox watch. The fox has never (yet) attacked in an early morning, so she thought she'd be safe enough snatching a rare 'lie-in' and covering the task sitting up in bed. The dogs were up there too so surely nothing could happen 'out there' which she'd not be aware of. Safe enough, you'd think.

Turkey eggs "hidden" in the scrub.

The morning's peaceful relaxing was shattered when the dogs suddenly started shouting and bouncing around on the windowsill. The Guinea fowl were also yelling and a quick look showed our fox-watch that at least one was up on a high perch. Jumping to the conclusion that Brer Fox was among us again, she raced down and outside, releasing the dogs to go do their thing.

The three ducks gave me a scare when the female fell asleep
on an dead clump of Lady's Mantle. She was so well matched
in colour, I thought we were down to 2 ducks.

A few minutes of retrieving Towser from the tarmac lane where he'd gone to round up the confused Guineas and the only reason for the shout seemed to be that 'tis also the season for roosters to start fighting and two of them were going hammer and tongs in the middle of the front lawn. Our dogs are, by now, pretty cool with 'ordinary' chickens but if they see a fight going on, fluttering and kicking, feathers flying the 'distressed prey animal / easy target' thing kicks in and they will as likely as not have a lunge.

So Mrs C was by now wide awake, of course and in her thorough search of the area, came across another 'Tis the Season' thing, a little clump of three turkey eggs hidden under some fine tree branches but right out by the bank over which Brer Fox comes when he does visit. Not a very sensible place to nest, Mrs Turk. (Gloria or Deo, we do not know whom yet.).

Some first "dandelions" for the bees. These
are coltsfoot, (Tussilago farfara)

Friends of the blog may recall that we lost our first turkey hen when she went right off site to go broody and never came back, presumably discovered by an earlier fox. We are pleased that this girl has at least nested on site and that we have found her. If we leave her a few eggs in the nest, she should keep laying there and not get upset and go off to find somewhere further afield to lay. If we let her build up a full clutch and go broody, we may be able to move her and the eggs to a safer place without making her desert.

Gandalf. King of the Hill.

So, as I said, 'tis also the season for roosters to start eyeing up their rivals 'women' covetously and even making the odd move on them. Our alpha-male, Gandalf is top dog here and it is his much smaller rival 'Herme' the Buff Orpington who is always looking to take over. We have two other much younger roo's, who run smaller gangs of peripheral hens, but they are not moving in on the top spot just yet. It was Gandalf and Herme who were doing the kick boxing display on the lawn that woke the dogs up.

Battle scarred Herme.

We wish these boys had a stronger sense of 'self awareness' and copped on a bit quicker that they were losing this fight and should probably pull out and run away. Herme seems to have no such rationale and he keeps in trying even though he is getting 7 bells kicked out of him. He comes away with his facial bits (wattles, comb, beak) well blooded. Those are long, sharp spurs on Gandalf's legs and Herme has no such equipment. Ah well. The fights are fast and furious but always finish just before we need to intervene. It's nature's way and we have plenty of space for the boys to keep apart if they prefer to.

Mucking out the lambing pens and
dismantling them. I get my shed back!

'Tis also the season to be done with lambing and I get that lovely (well, I enjoy it!) seasonal landmark task of mucking out the lambing pen(s) and dismantling them. I get my shed back. This year we have a minor 'hang-over' of that lamb, Bábóg, who needs bottle feeding and will continue to need that till she is weaned off the milk.

Rosie and her twins. Bábóg is on the right.

She is now on full bottle (500 ml) feeds 4 times a day, all now out in the field where she lives happily with her Mum, brother and all the other sheep. Mum likes to keep her close but will not let her suckle. The final feed of each day, 10 pm, is now in the dark, obviously, so we have fun wandering about the field with the LED head torch looking for the reflections of eyes, then hear the excited bleat and watch one pair of eyes detach from the group and come bouncing across the field in the darkness, homing in unerringly on that bottle-teat.

All is now well on the laptop. The PC is destined for the WEEE
recycling.

What else is new? I am now settled into the laptop after causing only one quick wobble when I logged in as the owner and somehow changed her user account name to my email address. There were a couple of anxious hours while Mrs C worked out how to get admin rights and change the name back, plus to set me up an account where I could safely clomp about in my size 12 boots and not do any damage to 'her stuff'.

Finally. 'tis the season for baby chicks. These are Silvergirl's.

Finally, I just want to note the passing away of an English 'character' from this blog but way back in the Kent days, when life was all about the rebuild on the Thames sailing barge, SB Cambria. Two colleague-volunteers, Mark and Cathy Chapman had been on that project for years by the time I started and we had plenty of good times working with them. Cathy was English born (Edmonton) but unknown to me then, her roots were right here in Co Roscommon. Her Mum is still very much alive, but her Grandma was buried 20 minutes from here in the small town of Bellanagare. There are no other family here now, though some cousins live down in the SE, around Tallow. Cathy has since, sadly, died of cancer (aged 52) and expressed a wish that her ashes be brought 'home' to Grandma's gravesite for scattering or burial. So today a small dozen of us gathered at the graveside with a Priest to bury her ashes-urn and pay our final respects. Rest in Peace, Cathy and commiserations to Mark and to the rest of the family. Mark was delighted that he has an old friend reasonably near to his wife's grave who can "keep an eye on her".