Bo, Luke and Daisy

...in which I update you on a lot of exciting live-stock stuff including ewe 'Rosie' going sick and needing the vet, we collect this years pigs and the grey hen, 'Crate Lady' comes off the nest with 5 new babies. It's all go, for sure. We have left the slow-news days and short posts behind but I daren't give you too much detail on these stories or we'll all be here hours.

Towser tries to work out what flavour of dog this is.

The bottle feeding of the rejected ewe-lamb is going really well and she is thriving. She is also coming to love being indoors and socialising with the dogs, who have also now got used to her and we are not living on our nerves worried that they might turn on her and attack her. Indoor "sheep worrying" is definitely not needed. She is filling out and growing visibly before our eyes, so much so that she is leaving her "breast fed" brother behind, but more of that in a while.

Indoor sheep worrying?

I woke up to a worrying sight on Weds 14th, the new Mum, 'Rosie' standing miserably in her pen, facing away from me, showing no interest that breakfast might have arrived. She was also "scouring" (diarrhoea) badly and also passing some bloody remnants of after-birth from her vulva. A bucket of part-eaten food sat in the pen from the day before. All was not well. I needed to phone our wonderful vet, mentioned several times in this blog, "Aoife (rhymes with Deefer)". We tried taking her temperature (rectally) using our first aid kit mercury-in-glass and could not read it. We did not know then that 'normal' for a sheep is 38 to 39ºC, and our patient, who was at 41.5ºC pushed the mercury so far up the (human) thermometer that all you could see was mercury.

Baby-formula for lambs. The green tub is
"Survivor" brand colostrum. 

Armed with this knowledge, Aoife turned up in an impressive hurry. Hurry is her style, and when she talks to you it feels like a machine gun blast of information, symptoms and medicines to solve the thing. I find myself thinking "Whoa! I need to write this down". Sheep-folk here would generally do a lot of their own 'vetting', though possibly with 'prescription' meds which you can only get from the vet, so Aoife tends to do that day's injections but leaves you stuff for any treatments over the following days, making sure to show you how to do a subcuteneous jab or an intra-muscular one and that you are happy doing them.

Sheep meds and my scrappy notes of instruction.

To cut a long story short (well, shortER) our girl had a rake of issues. She was exhausted and still off her food from the labour and the lack of roughage (she was ignoring the hay) had stalled her rumen. She was also possibly in early stage liver-fluke attack. Her temperature was up, making her feel uncomfortable inside all that fleece. Aoife showed me that the inside of her eyelids was salmon pink rather than red, and that you could pull small tufts of fleece away with a little force - it was not falling away easily in hanks. Red eyes and fleece falling out are symptoms of advanced fluke infection.

The ram lamb gets a go at the formula milk.

She got injections of anti-biotics, a vitamin to stimulate the gut and anti-inflammatory to get her temperature down. I also had to take her off the 'crunch' (meusli with molasses) and put her on hay and water (plus small amounts of ivy) while she stopped scouring. Later that day and over the following days I had to mix up some 'by mouth' antibiotic from a sachet and do her two injections. If her temperature came down I needed to get her out on the grass. Under this regime (Thanks Aoife!) she perked up really quickly, got her appetite back and has stopped scouring. Everybody is out on the lawn during the days, even the bottle fed lass, who is now named 'Bábóg' (Irish for female baby or doll, say it 'bab' and the the og as in 'bogus').

First hatch for Crate Lady, our grey hen. 

My little comment about Bábóg out-performing her brother on the formula milk had us worrying today that her brother was looking a bit weedy, thin and 'meh'. We wondered whether Rosie's sickness might have also involved her drying up a bit and the lad not getting enough milk. Elizabeth took him in hand and tried him on a bit of Bábóg's bottled milk, which he sucked well enough, all be it nothing like as well as Bábóg. He will learn. We will offer him more 'little and often' over the next few days to supplement the real stuff. If Mum starts up again, he will presumably ignore the offered bottle.

Sorry about the rubbish photo - the grey hen comes off the nest
with 5 babies but into a small sunbeam in a dark shed. I will get
better pics when I can get her out into the sunshine.

The grey hen we call 'Crate Lady' came good at the end of the last post, with a first hatch on the Tuesday and she climbed off the nest on Thursday with 5 new babies. As she was famously down in a foot-deep crate, this meant me having to lift her down off her shelf and tilt the family carefully over  so that the little ones could get out of the crate - they were never going to be able to climb out. They are now all thriving and Crate Lady is bringing them out of the shed, our first new family of 2018.

Rather a lot of pig for one small car and two dodgy looking crates.
You may be able to see a snout at ground level in the left hand crate
down between the feet of the standing pig. 

Biggest news today was our collecting of this years piglets from our breeder in Boyle (Co. Roscommon). It was lovely to be able to go see our breeder (Adrian) again, see all his piglets and talk breeding and blood lines. I was slightly worried because he sells such big pigs. Last year's were 10 weeks old and we could barely fit 2 in the crate - I had asked for smaller, 8 weekers this year. However even though these were 8 and a half weeks old, the litter was only 3 pigs, so the babies had had so much milk that they were nearly as big as last year's. Adrian struggled to do that lift-them-by-the-back-legs; they must be 15-20 kgs already.

Landed safely.

We got them to the car (they got wheeled in a wheelie bin!) and loaded into my worryingly flimsy looking crates. I was definitely having second thoughts and it was an anxious journey home (at least to start with), as I could see in my rear view mirror, the two in the wire crate fidgeting about, trying to turn round, climbing over each other and sometimes pushing (inadvertently, I'm sure) against the sides and doors of the crate, looking like they might well burst the crate and I'd have loose pigs in the passenger seat.

Settling in and straight down to nose-based exploration, 

I knew that if I pressed on, a) I'd get home quicker and reduce the length of the risk and also b) pigs tend to be unhappy passengers and the movement and vibration of the car makes them go all quiet and subdued. I still sent Mrs C a text pleading with her to be ready in gloves and wellies as I might need to make an emergency landing!

No such worries in the end. The subdued pigs just lay in the bottoms of their crates, no more thoughts of bursting out, while we wheel-barrowed them round to their paddock and landed them outside the ark doorway. Another long story gets cut short here, as they are now settling in and looking very happy and they have even received 2 visitors. Everyone wants to see the new pigs.

Working on a suggestion from 'Sparks', I was trying to name them some combination of the characters from the old American TV comedy, "The Dukes of Hazzard" which has crooked and corrupt county commissioner Boss Hogg. But these pigs are 2 'bonhams' (males) and one gilt (female), so Elizabeth decided they should be the main Dukes of Hazzard characters, cousins Bo, Luke and Daisy. I now need to make the name plate.

What ever the case, they are here and we are very happy with them. Only one resident is not happy. The black hen we call 'Beeblebrox' had been, unbeknownst to me, laying her eggs in the ark, walking in to the pen each day. She had accumulated a clutch of 13 eggs, so may have been about to go broody. I found the eggs when I went to bed down the pigs. Beeb was in there when we landed the pigs and shut the gate. She does not know how to fly out (apparently) so we had to release her after she'd been chased a few times by the playful newcomers. Her eggs come to the kitchen but we don't know the exact age of them, so they get labelled 'With Care'. That way we know not to use them as hard-boiled and to always open them into a empty bowl before adding them to baking or scrambling them in case they are off.

Small...... Far away. 

As I said, there is a lot going on. Neither of us will need anyone to sing us a lullaby tonight. We will sleep like new hatched chicks, belly-full lambs or travel-exhausted piglets.

Looking Forwards

With Christmas and the New Year all done, dusted and packed away we start to feel like we should be looking forward to the new season, Spring, new stock and all the fruit, flowers and veg leaping into action. In the previous post, I wrote that we were waiting on the splatter of tiny feet with a batch of 7 duck eggs in friend Sue's incubator. That has all now happened with three lovely healthy ducklings hatched over the 6th and 7th, collected by us on the 8th and now going through the first "brood box" week.

We use a semi-transparent plastic crate for this (well, a series of crates of increasing size to suit the growing babies) and our "electric hen" (warming plate) and we feed chick-crumb with plenty of water on the side (as these are ducks and they prefer their food dibbled in the wet) plus, for the first week, finely mashed hard boiled egg with the shell finely chopped and mixed back in.

Curiosity might not kill the cat in this case!

We are reminded each time we do this, that ducklings do not naturally creep under mother's skirts (if she is swimming, they'd submerge!) but climb instead onto her back. The ducklings are the same with the electric hen and you can generally find them all hopped up on top in a huddle. As I write this they are 3 days old and thriving. They have good appetites and have quickly learned about food, water and keeping themselves clean. You can not let them out onto the water properly till they are about 3 weeks old, as their preen-glands have not yet developed or started to produce the water-proofing oil for their feathers. In nature their mother would have oiled them up in the nest.

Hopefully the parents of this years piglets, pregnant sows
Iris and Plum.

I may also have mentioned that we had been in contact with our piglet-breeder, a guy called Adrian who farms over near the town of Boyle. You may recall that although last year's piglets came from a chap called Dermot in Wicklow, 3 hours drive away, we did not have to make that drive ourselves. Dermot was coming most of the way here and if we'd meet him in Boyle, we could get away with a half hour drive and a bit of piglet-wrangling in Boyle's market car park.

Half grown piglets at Adrian's place.
These are about 5 months old

The reason Dermot was up here was to collect a sow from Adrian and take it 'home' to get it pregnant by one of his boars. That sow and another have now produced a couple of litters each and are pregnant again (pig-people like to keep their sows in pig as much as possible because if you 'rest' them they can be a devil to get back on heat). One is due this month and the other in March. We hope to take 2 gilts from the January litter, which will be weaned after 8 weeks, in March. Sue is hoping for the same. Obviously it is all in the lap of the gods at present - as with humans there is no telling whether they will successfully 'farrow', or when or how many piglets might result and how many survive to weaning. Litters can be as big as 15 piglets or down in the 5s. All we can do at this stage is wish them all luck and pray hard.

Polly with last year's twin lambs in March (2016)

In the sheep department I had been getting a bit concerned at a stiffness or lameness I had seen on a couple of cold damp mornings in our oldest ewe, Polly. At 9 years old, Polly is at least 5 years older than any commercial 'serious' sheep farmer would keep a breeding ewe. They are allowed a couple of seasons and then generally turned into mutton at 4 years old. Well, every day is a school day with livestock and I now know a bit more about shepherding after seeking advice from Mayo Liz, the person who we are sure knows more about elderly sheep than anyone - she supplied us with Polly (and Lily and Myfanwy) in the first place aged 7 and still has some of her other ewes at 13 years old.

Mineral Lick for sheep.

Every time I see a lame sheep, I have been reaching for the foot-trimming shears and paring away any shaggy edges of 'toe-nail' I found. Well, apparently you should not always do this - restrict foot trimming to 1 or 2 times a year. Sheep get over most foot problems much faster untrimmed. Then, too, I have learned all about "The Mineral Bucket". This I possibly should have known because way back when I was a student doing a bit of milking, I remember the cattle had access to great big salt-blocks to lick. Also I know, in theory, that those goats you see creeping out along the sheer vertical walls of dams in Europe, clinging on by the edges of their toe-nails to the joints in the stone, are doing it to get to the salt deposits encrusted on the wall by water seeping through the dam.

Polly beats Myfanwy to the mineral lick. 

Be that as it may, Mayo-Liz always gives her sheep mineral licks in Winter because the quality of the grass falls away and they might lack minerals in their diet. This might be why Polly is getting stiffness in her joints, especially if she is starting to lose teeth through old age. The 'lick' is a mix of minerals and salts thickened up to a very stiff, clay-like consistency with molasses and is dark brown in colour. All the sheep love it and the older 3 (born at Mayo-Liz's) all piled in with delight. It was like an old friend! They lick and nibble and try to rasp away at the stuff goo with their lips, teeth and hard-pad (top jaw) trying to beat all the competition off till they have had enough. The bucket is now a stop on their endless circuits of the field. I THINK I can detect a new spring in Polly's step but that might just be fond imagination.

Not so chatty now, Mr Fox?

Finally a bit of fun to close off the fox story. We are fairly sure that we have solved that problem for now with our shooting of the boy-fox back in November and our new habits of keeping the birds in if we are both off site seems to have driven off the older girl (plus my man-with-shotgun from Jan 2015 has shot 2 other animals recently on his own place). Well, I thought it might be fun and cathartic to take a stuffed toy fox to our first archery club session on Sunday - we are for ever shooting at coffee cups, balloons and other bits of junk when we get bored with shooting at the official targets.

The only good fox?

So it was - we sat Brer Fox on a little wire hoop in the target at 40' range. I was actually the first to hit him and with a very lucky first arrow (right in the mouth) but he was soon getting peppered by all and sundry and starting to leak stuffing. Ah well. All good harmless fun. I should quickly re-assure my readers who do not know this story or about archery, we would not dream of taking a bow and arrows to the real thing. It is illegal throughout the British Isles to hunt any animal or bird with a bow and arrows. I am told you can still hunt that way in parts of Europe and USA but have to use the very powerful "compound" style bows and even then it has to be under license.

Towser.

So there you have it. 2017. Bring it on.

The Best Laid Plans.....

This post was going to be all about the wonderful time I was going to have trying out the sport of archery for the first time in the delightful company of the Silverwood clan. Then along came Storm Desmond with his howling gales and our first ever RED weather warning, this one for rain plus all the usual advice from the Police not to risk any un-necessary journeys. I won't bore you with the details as most of my readers will have probably copped their own share of Des by now and some will have struggled with the genuine hardships of flooding and damage which make our 'big puddles' pale into insignificance. I am in no way claiming 'hard done by' status; we just got a bit wetter and more blown around than usual. I postponed the archery till after Christmas and opted to stay here and look after the place, the livestock (and Liz?) rather than leave Liz on her own.

This tiny narrow drainage ditch is not usually visible from
our hill top. Here the concrete 'kesh' bridges are submerged.

So, I have some nice pictures of our "floods". The drain that runs into the River Lung below us has burst its banks as has the Lung itself, the local bridge named for our townland is almost up to its arches with the River so full and high, and the name-sake Lough is as big and full as any locals can ever remember seeing it. That was quite some rain that came down. We were worried for the trees near the house (and may have decided we need to do something about them), of course, but relaxed enough to be joking about conspiracy theories.

The bridge is nearly up to its arches with the 'Desmond Depth'.

Are these storms now being named, we wonder, to soften us up because Met Éireann KNOW SOMETHING about climate change that they are not telling us yet, perhaps that our standard N. Atlantic storms in November are going to be so powerful soon that we need to name them like Hurricanes? (gasp). More ridiculously, we wonder whether these storms are cunning enough to know that they can get named if they would only put in that little extra effort. Thus Abigail was not that impressive, Barney was getting there, Clodagh was definitely trying and Desmond was the best/worst ever. Do we have a Stephen King novel here? Sentient anti-cyclones?

The local Lough is no mean body of water this week. The tiny
white dots here are our wintering Whooper swans. 

Meanwhile, back in the real world the locals are all impressed by the size and fullness of the Lough. It has filled the whole valley, where it is normally a thin weedy ribbon of water half hidden by the bullrushes. Gossip has it that it was "always" this full and contained enormous pike one of which sits, stuffed, in a glass case in Liz's work-place. But then ten years ago the Dept of Civic Works (or what ever they are called) changed the drainage and allowed the Lough to empty much faster rather than hanging on to the water 'up here'. "You wait", said one local veteran, "..and in a couple of days you will hear of flooding in Boyle or Carrick. We never had that before. They should never have done that".

My new favourite 'weapon', this old cleaver was once the
property of John Walsh's Dad though he took to using it
in the cellar for chopping up kindling wood. 

So much for the rain and floods. We got off lightly this time and we are now enjoying some blue sky, calm (ish) days as the big puddles drain slowly away and the cat, Blue. stops cursing us for cutting off all his grassy walkways and hunting routes with water and puddles. We sympathise with the folk in UK who inherited Desmond from us and got the serious floods and damage. With this non-archery weekend over we are now coming up fast on Christmas and we needed to start thinking about festive food and, in particular, turkeys.

Liz dons farmer's wife hands and starts plucking this monster.

Our first 'customer' is Brother in Law, 'Sparks' who has this year bought one of those fancy-pants  American style, cylindrical, outdoor, deep-fat turkey fryers. He is due to cook turkey for a gang of mates this week and 'ordered' a bird from us, rather bravely, having no more idea than we did as to how it would 'do', how big it would get or what it would cook and taste like. This is our first year of turkeys and our birds are the old fashion 'heritage' variety "Bronze". These are old style "single muscled" birds where most shop mass-produced birds these days are white and 'double muscled' like Belgian Blue cow or a 'Beltex' sheep, bred to put on extra muscle in intensive systems and fed no end of special food, growth promoters and so on like a steroid-enhanced weight lifter.

Those massive wing feathers took some pulling. 

When these guys hatched in June, we had no idea how they would flesh up and I worried that we'd only be able to give Sparks an over-grown chicken. We were amazed and delighted at the growth rates on them and within 4 months the youngsters were nearly as big as their Mum (Barbara). Spark's bird was always going to be the biggest as he wanted his in early December but even so, we knew we were on to a serious weight bird and him only 6 months old at this stage.

If you don't want to know how these big, living birds turn into oven ready, plastic wrapped carcasses then skip this and the next 2  paragraphs. Then, of course, there was the problem of how do you cleanly, painlessly and respectfully despatch such a big bird. The books talk of a rather gymnastic process involving standing up with your bird upside down holding his feet in your hands. Juggle a broom handle across his neck, stand on it and pull his legs upwards, breaking his neck. I was not at all convinced that I could do this quickly and cleanly and with no stress to the bird so I have to admit that I fell back on good old decapitation, the trusty meat cleaver and a big chunk of wood. Thunk. Job done, 100% certainty of death.

A lively auction  down at the Community Centre to raise money
for the same.

Done well, the bird is grabbed and 'cuddled' so he stays calm though he might be a bit curious as to why he is being walked across the grass, through the puddles, out to the other side of the pond. At the very last minute you shift your grip to his legs and let him hang upside down with this head sagging onto the wooden block. He relaxes and possibly feels rather helpless but he is not in any kind of pain and then (thunk) he knows no more.

Our antidote to Desmond.

If anyone is thinking of trying this, just be aware that although the bird may 'die' instantly, he will kick off an unconscious explosion of wing flapping and leg-twitching which will go on for a good 30 seconds and will bleed out profusely through the neck cut. The flapping will splash this blood everywhere, so I do it outside and near some long grass, so that I can dangle the bird low to the ground and contain the blood that way. You always get some on your wellies and trouser legs, so it is worth wearing old clothes and being ready to rinse the wellies before you go back indoors! I take a dustbin liner out with me to 'hide' the dead one in so that I don't have to march back past my gang of curious geese, turkeys, chickens and Guineas with a dead bird hanging from my hand, making my way back to the shed where the bird gets hung upside down by his feet to bleed out into the bag. I don't suppose the birds feel upset or grief at the loss of their friend but it makes me feel better.

Polly doing 'Monarch of the Glen'

At that point the birds get handed over to Liz who loves the plucking and 'dressing' side of the job. My work is done (though I do help with the big, tough wing feathers). This lad we were delighted to find, weighed just under 10 kg 'fresh' (but sans head and blood) and then in 'oven ready' format weighed 7.9 kg (17 lbs). Liz went for the 'traditional' presentation, legs still on, some feathers still on the 'hands' and with the giblets (neck, liver, gizzard and heart) in a bag stuffed up his fundament. Sparks can cut off the hands and feet and make good gravy out of the giblets if he desires. Good luck, Sparks. You will be our first Guinea-Pig customer and we will be very interested to know how the boy cooked up.

Spent Mushroom Compost

Feed the soil and it will feed you. The substrate in our poly tunnel managed its first season producing shallots, strawberries, some tomatoes and pumpkins but is not really in good heart. The ground there was the floor of an old hay barn, so well compacted by farm machinery, strewn with bits of old peat-turf, riddled with stinging nettle roots, tussock grasses and, it turned out, many an annual weed seed, especially chickweed. The soil, where it existed, seemed to be mainly the clay subsoil, the topsoil having been scraped away and into 'the bank' (of which more in other posts). The clay had been badly poached and puddled up making the ground into a quagmire that we hoped would dry out a bit once the tunnel cover was on.

Mushroom farm tunnel.

We decided to dig the whole floor over, recovering as many bigger bits of peat turf as we could, pulling out the weeds and stones, but then to leave it to sit, chopped over while it might drain a bit. We would not, for the moment, add any fertilizer or soil improver. We thought it would go one season like this while the soil structure recovered, helped by worms and crop plant roots. This is what happened. I cleared the area at the end of the tomato season and then let the chickens in to scrape and peck through the aftermath creating a nice seedless and critter-less crumb, which they are happy to do. They especially love the chance to dust-bathe in there on rainy days.

But now we need to get the soil ready for the next season so we will add some of our well rotted calf manure, but also some spent mushroom compost. Anne has tipped us off about a mushroom farm within half an hour's drive, up beyond the town of Boyle, which runs 8 dark poly-tunnels full of mushroom beds and which clears (they use the expression "bounces") the compost from one tunnel each Monday. The inoculated compost  (in this case 'chestnut mushrooms') goes into the shelving and onto the beds in these tunnels packed into bales looking like thick grow-bags with the tops cut away.

When the crop is grown, cut over several weeks and 'spent' (cropped out) the beds can be cleared by lifting these saggy damp bales out for commercial disposal but the farm encourages gardeners and other interested parties to come and collect as much as they like. Anne and Simon bring their van (and, in fact offered us the use of same) and can fit 30 such bales into the back. We took the Fiat and managed to squeeze 8 bales into that with the seats down. We wished we still had the 2CV and its trailer. We may well get a tow bar fitted to the Fiat. The spent compost is a lovely 'clean' product which, said Liz, smells beautifully of the woods in autumn. It is also covered in tiny button mushrooms-to-be which will apparently give us a crop for a while in our own poly-tunnel. Well it's home now and spread around the tunnel here. I could probably use a couple more bales, realistically, to give good cover.

The rest of that outing was also a very successful shopping expedition. I needed a new chain saw chain and a file to sharpen the existing one(s) so East Brothers near Boyle did the honours. We needed socks, jocks, Marmite and some jeans for Liz from Tesco in Carrick. We also needed paint for Anne's glass-painting hobby from Carrick. Scenic, too, with all the lovely sunshine and autumn colours around Lough Kee. Very pleasant.

Spreading the compost around in our own tunnel.

We were amused to learn some more story on our 'failed' Hallowe'en where, you will recall, no children turned up and we are left with a bowl of un-used sweeties. The main 'Mum', Mrs McG was laughing about the adventures with me, It seems that the McG tribe set out with good intention that night but poorly off for torches, one Mum with a small torch but the other just using the light on her mobile phone. They started off going west down the lane away from us meaning to call at some of the houses down there. They actually pre-agree these with some of the old boys who live alone in these old houses and in some cases actually give the sweeties to give back to the children!

Roast pork belly with apple, chestnut, sage and onion stuffing

Returning from this western leg of their mission one of the smaller boys had tripped over and fallen on his hand, grazing the 'heel' of his hand and getting gravel in it, and worse, his older brother had then stumbled over his prone form in the dark and fallen too. The Mums had picked up the kids and wiped away tears and cleaned grazes as best they could. They were then just about to set out our way when a big loose dog bounced up the land behind them. Apparently it did not attack or harry them, it just bounced enthusiastically, but the little ones aren't very good with dogs, so there were more tears, crying of "Mummy!" and also, by then, it had started to rain, so they aborted the trip and all went home to get clean, dry and safe. Mrs McG was 'horrified' to learn that we'd been there, all waiting in vain and even writing poems to cover our absence and she joked that they'd make sure to do us first next year.

The End of the (2CV) Road?

We can't claim to be a best seller here but we chug away gently at our standard 20-30 views per post but just by dint of posting so many stories over the 6 years we have been in existence, and have managed to accumulate over 50,000 page views. I am happy with that. I am glad that my regulars keep looking in to see what we are about and that they are, presumably, a bit entertained, or why would they?

The heat wave continued for a few more showings, through Thursday and Friday, but we noticed on Friday night that the breeze had swung round to the North and had strengthened, giving us a beautifully cool night Friday night and a misty, cloudy Saturday morning. Our friend Mentor Anne hates the heat and goes into what she describes as 'hibernation' staying indoors, but even she was able to emerge on the Saturday to enjoy the cool. We were all off to a 'new' Farmers' Market they have discovered in Boyle, a small town in the very north of Co. Roscommon which has a famed butcher's van doing organic and welfare chicken and pork (Peppered pork chops 'to die for' says Anne) as well as plant stalls, herb sellers, a fish monger, bakers and other traders. We fancied some mackerel to go with our home grown gooseberries. Well, as it happened both the mackerel and the pork chops were sold out; you have to get there early or the good stuff all goes. No matter. We grabbed some (organic) chicken livers which Liz will convert into paté, some lovely prawns for supper tonight and some thin beef steaks for a future meal.

We stopped at a nice little coffee shop for a cuppa before going our separate ways. We were concerned to get the prawns into refrigeration before they got a chance to do us any mischief. By lunchtime the weather had heated up again and the cloud and mist had cleared. We think that this is the likely shape of days this week, with no more rain in the fore see able. What a change from 2012 when we seemed to be permanently washed out and prey to crop failures due to the wet. I have now ridged up all my vegetable area and look like having to water stuff! You don't do watering in the West of Ireland, surely?

The time has come round again when the belovéd 2CV needs her NCT test (= MOT) and here the story went to pot a bit. Not good news. She is sound on all the difficult bits we fixed last time (suspension, steering and other heavy metal) but failed on a range of daft, lighter weight stuff all of which, had I still got easy access to my 2CV-fixer man, 2CV Llew in Kent, would not bother me in the least.

The exhaust emissions are slightly too high which, if you know what you are doing around the 2 adjustment screws on the carburettor (idle and mixture) and have access to a gas-analyzer, is a 5-minute job. The rear fog light is out - either a bulb or an earth. There is corrosion on the bottom of a door (a seam-weld) and the boot floor and on one wing; the sort of thing Llew buzzes a wire brush over and then makes good in an hour or so. But without Llew I am at the mercy of our (brilliant, I have to say) local garage, so we are off to get a quote on Monday but realistically, when I have done only 112 miles in the car since the last NCT we are both a bit 50/50 about whether we can justify it. Clara has the tow-hitch which has been useful, but we could probably get a tow hitch for the FIAT if needs be.

No matter, we will worry about making that decision when we have the quote. Whatever happens we are going to hang on to the mortal remains because even as an NCT failure the car has a value and is rare enough that someone might want to invest or, failing that, would make a superb chicken house. Meanwhile she is still 'legal' till the NCT runs out on Wednesday, so her swan song may be our trip to Castlerea to buy one more pallet sized water tank, this one to supply the sheep drinker, fed from the down pipes on the east end of the house. Watch this space for updates on that one.

Finally, our swallows seem to have nearly finished their nest right up in the ridge of our Tígín, well out of the reach of the cats. Sensible swallows.

A Kind of Inheritance

My previous post describes the unearthing of a tractor-mounted fertilizer spinner / spreader from the bank at the west end of the (now) Pond Garden and way back I have spoken of a horse drawn hay rake found in the same bank and hedge. These are all part of the charm and interest we have obtained by buying this place, an abandoned farmhouse and surrounding fields. It is our inheritance, if you like, and we have both been very struck by the fact that we have taken custody of a piece of history. We both feel very strongly that we must treat the house and land with respect, keeping it and improving it till we eventually hand it on ourselves to the next custodian(s).

The house, particularly, feels in a way which is hard to define, as if it has a soul or a spirit which we must try to make feel secure and to please. We hope that we have completely gutted the place and renovated in a sensitive way, somehow bringing it new life and warmth. This might all sound a bit weird and spiritual compared to my normal shallow, superficial warblings and I may not be describing it very well, but as we lit the first fires and sent our first warmth and smoke up the chimneys and started to see the rooms and walls dry out, we were both saying things like 'There! That's better, isn't it, house?' and we always wished it well as we went off for the weekends during the build and tried to re-assure it that we were not abandoning it again.

Too weird? Ah well. The previous owner and dweller we have called TK Min in this blog, TK being his initials; 'Min' for him being the son. This farm has been owned and run by the K family going back generations; they were definitely here in the 1901 census, and Dad (TK Max) and Grand-dad, along with Mum and Grandma are all buried in the fine family grave along in the local village cemetery. Grand-dad and Grandma died 1955 and 1963 respectively, TK Max in 1987 and his wife in 1962. 'Our man', TK min died just over 3 years ago on the 18th Feb 2010 although he had moved out of the farm around 10 years ago and the farm has been out of use and not lived in since then.

We never met any of these people. We know a bit about them from talking to local folk and have read the exciting newspaper stories of their instant fame when having their car hi-jacked by the robbers in a local bank raid in which 2 policemen were shot and killed. Our dealings have been with TK Min's sister, our 'Vendor Anna' who was involved with selling us the place on behalf of the estate following TK's passing. We have since become firm friends. There are two other sisters, hence the 'Three Sisters' described in this blog during the conveyancing, but we have yet to meet them also.

So, it was in this way that we came to 'inherit' our beautiful house and the wonderful grounds - the fields, walls, trees, the yard, the 'Secret Garden', the cattle race, the Tígín and milking/calf sheds that we love so much. In terms of physical contents, naturally most of it had been cleared away for the sale, but we also inherited a few bits and pieces and tools - a kitchen knife and an enamel, cream-coloured roasting dish, a couple of pitch forks and the hay rake. A rather nice plate and some personal papers including TK Max's "An Garda Síochána" (The Irish Police Force) membership card and newspaper cuttings, we have passed to Vendor Anna.

Until last week, that was about it. Then we were talking to Anna's Paul about the fact that I had fried my chain saw engine and needed a new one. Paul very generously volunteered the machine in his shed, a nearly new Stihl which originally belonged to none other than our own TK Min! The little we know of TK Min does have him as rather a nervous guy and no-one can actually imagine him using a chain saw. Paul is also not a great fan of these tools, so he has not used it either; nor did he intend to start, so this one is probably about 6 years old (says our man at Stihl Main Dealer, East Brothers of Boyle) and will not have turned a crank for most of those 6 years.

We are delighted of course and very grateful to Anna and Paul as it saves me buying a new one for €370+. I have whizzed it straight round to our chainsaw genius, Felix-the-Fix to check it over, service it and (mainly) re-assure me that it is safe to use. It even came with the instruction book. I have used some of the saved money to treat myself to a pair of those kevlar, chain-saw safety trousers as, in general, I prefer life with both legs.

There you have it then; our inheritance and our plans for its custody and enjoyment.