Silver

I couldn't quite stay away. In particular, I couldn't let a major milestone like our 25th Wedding Anniversary slip by without a mention. 3rd November 2018, High Noon, as Elizabeth loves to point out.

Plan A had been to take the weekend off in Westport at a nice hotel, nice restaurant. We had Charlotte of the Mini Horses* lined up with time taken off work to cover the farm baby-sitting. Then I got sick and the hospital visit  and op were looming over us, threatening to scupper any plans we might have involving hotel bookings plus I'm on restricted fluid intake so I'd have been the one ordering quarter pints of Guinness!

We decided to rein it all in, stand Charlotte down and re-schedule a 25.5th  or 26th Anniversary when we are over this hump and we know where we are. Plan B was to be a home version of the fine dining, some wine and with the place set up as much like a hotel environment as we could manage - house gleaming like a spotless new pin., best table linen and fancy candlesticks, best china (I'm pretty sure the china is also 25 years old - it was surely a wedding present).

Near neighbour and local florist supplied these gorgeous
flowers.

It was a miserable, wet, cold day, so we also had fires going at both ends of the house and a goodly stack of logs on hand. I was set up to "cheat" a bit surreptitiously on the fluid volumes - saving myself (almost) enough cc on the water bottle that I could join Mrs C in 2 glasses of the fizz, a glass of the posh Beaujolais and a 'tint' of Teelings whiskey with the cheese.

The menu was as follows......

Salmon Fish Cakes with salsa of tomato and cucumber.

Steak with roast-on-the-vine cherry toms and duxelle (mushrooms)

Pear and chocolate tart

Cashel Blue cheese with slices of pear and water biscuits

'Fizz' - McGuigan's (Oz) frizzante

'Fleurie' Beaujolais from Francois Dubessy

Teelings whiskey

Nom Nommetty Nom!

Ooops. Looks a bit black in the pic but trust me, that's
just the mushrooms (Duxelle). Steak was deliciously rare
inside

It all added up to a superb, splendid day and evening and, for me, a lovely relaxing spoil. The Lady of the House, of course, was on duty for which I am so, so grateful, swapping between accessorising her floaty dress and pearls with a champagne coloured shawl and the kitchen apron, one minute 'Domestic Goddess', the next 'Domestic Help'.

Pear and chocolate tart to the right..

The steak had come from our good friends and local butchers, Ignatius (and Joe) Gannon down in Castlerea, who "deal with" our lambs when required. Joe had thrown a couple of burgers into the bag for good luck and both congratulated us on the 25 years.

When you can't have many cc of liquid in
the day, might as well make them count.

After a suitable rest (a 'trou Normande'?) to let the pear and chocolate tart settle (I love that combination of flavours) we segued into the Cashel Blue cheese and with that cleared away, we played a couple of games of Quixx (one to me, one drawn) and adjourned into the Sitting Room for a nice long evening of reading and total rest congratulating ourselves on a Celebration well planned and excellently executed.

We also thoroughly appreciated the blizzard of congratulations and good wishes that come to us via Facebook and Twitter whenever we have one of these family type things to 'announce', so if you are an FB-er or a Twitterer and happen to be reading this too, then thank you very very much if you supported us that way. Plenty of jokes about the "next 25 years" too of course - I'd be 86, which is quite do-able if I can get through the current hiatus. Who knows what the future holds. 

Ah well, just a couple of unrelated pics to use up. The 'pie' is my Turkey-Shepherd's pie. 

Deefer.

The picture of Deefer is one Elizabeth took of her asleep on my lap last night. Have a good weekend, all.

* Charlotte of the Mini Horses has pretty much handed the horses (Romeo, Bob and Cody) back to Mum and has branched out into 6 (at the last count) goats. Good luck with those, Char' ! 

Much Ado About Ernesto.

Friends of the blog will know that Elizabeth loves her Shakespeare. You get very little of that standard of culture performed round these parts, so when we saw advertised a performance of "Much Ado About Nothing" by a group called the Pilgrim Players, she mentally signed up immediately. This was to be an outdoor, bring a picnic, performance in the grounds of the former Bishop's Palace (Edmondstown House) just outside Ballaghaderreen. I must confess that I cried off, thinking that 4 hours sitting out of doors in a cooling evening might be beyond me at this stage. Mrs C, not discouraged, was determined to go on her own if necessary.

Storm Ernesto's predicted track

With terrible timing, the weather forecast told us of a surprise named storm, Storm Ernesto barging through on that Saturday night with yellow warnings for wind and heavy rain, so Elizabeth donned coat, hat and umbrella and made sure her picnic was in a waterproof bag and Tupperware pots. You have to respect that determination and commitment.

The birds have quickly adopted the new roof timbers as
perches.

Fair play to the venue organisers, the seating area was equipped with straw bales and chairs, and slung over with parachute silk to keep off any light weather. It also had a space at the front where the players could nip in under cover with the audience and say their lines from very close range if need be. When mozzies started to be a problem, Elizabeth bartered some biscuits and clementines for a lend of a nearby man's insect repellent spray.

Connie (arrowed)  has ended her marathon broody-session
and come back to join the flock.

So, they all sat down and enjoyed the start of what proved to be a really good performance as the rain started to fall in earnest, quickly, soaking through the parachute silk and drenching the audience. Ernesto was just too powerful and mean-spirited in the end and Elizabeth got very wet and cold, but the play was only 75 minutes long, so she stuck it out with the rest of the audience. They even got to chat with the cast out front at the end. She was soon back indoors, complete change of clothes into the 'onesie', gin and tonic in her hand. Shame for a hoped for lovely evening as well as for the others in the audience and the players. We've had three months of heat wave, drought and perfect outdoor Shakespeare conditions, so it as a real shame that this all collapsed on the evening 18th August. We heard great things about the other 'shows', matinée and evening. We hope the venue and players are not put off organising more such plays next year.

The digging of the raised bed almost complete. Rain stopped
play about half an hour from the end. 

On the Sunday, two very good friends of the blog had offered to come and help with the hard work, knowing of my 'light duties' status and our Help-X blow-out. Specifically the guy of this couple was offering to do some hours of the heavy digging across the raised flower bed, easily worth a good evening meal and an overnight stay. These good people actually ended up doing a couple of other jobs as well and Elizabeth was inspired to some superb cooking to reward everybody.

There are some interesting colour schemes among this
year's hatched birds.

The evening meal was our 'Parma' style ham with melon, with a superb roast lamb (ours)  as main course with cauliflower (ours) cheese and 'Boulangere' potatoes, then Sussex Pond Pudding. You get an extra thrill at the good food when you know that many  of the ingredients are grown just outside the door. We have done very well for herbs this year, so even the mint in the mint sauce was picked and chopped minutes before serving. The fruit jelly for the meat (I *think* crab apple and red currant) was also ours.

The Bumbles are now half grown adolescents and spend a good
bit of each day (and some nights) away from Mum

If you are not familiar with  Sussex Pond, then it is a sweet suet pud (our suet, naturally) flavoured just by an organic lemon or bits there-of and cubes of soft brown sugar. No actual filling; just the oozing, sugared lemony-ness of the inner suet crust. Cream is available to 'cut' its richness. Although I was born and raised in Sussex, I cannot actually recall being fed it as a kiddie. Pud Lady (Mum) may want to correct me on that one.

Finally, a sheep story and another report of generous help from our lovely friends and neighbours. This concerns our youngest bought-in ewe, Myfanwy, who is about 4 years old at this stage and who, alone, did not get pregnant last winter. Over the last 18 months or so, I had noticed that Myf' periodically seemed to get a Jungle Book style itch in the middle of her back, about a foot forward of her 'tail'.

Myfanwy's sore, itchy patch.

She would rub herself at this spot under any convenient piece of hedge, fence or their shelter. She would wear down through the wool and start to break the skin, so that she sometimes oozed a little blood and it looked angry. Then she seemed to get over it, stopped itching it so that it all dried up, healed over, grew new wool and we all forgot all about it till the next time. These gaps were often months long and only when you saw her doing it again did it occur that this was the same place as last time. The raw patches were only ever an inch or so across. I never found any fly strike or other skin problems while shearing.

Nobody gets to refuse the worm/fluke drench when Charlotte
is in charge. 

Suddenly this year, she is at it again and has itched a huge patch, a good 5 inches across. Some of this patch is healed over, but to its left edge, the red-raw is looking serious. Small flies are starting to show a keen interest and they will not be helping the healing by keep on making tiny, irritating bites. I have tried to contact our vet but she is so busy these days that she rarely replies. I put out a plea on the Facebook small holder groups but did not get anything useful back - plenty of old wives' tales (Stockholm Tar, used sump oil, sheep dip, old Ivermectin (parasite-icide) you might have lying about, etc).

Charlotte messin' with the lotions and potions

Luckily, very good old friend of the blog, respected stock-wrangler and near neighbour Charlotte (of the Mini Horses) read of my plight and volunteered to come round, look at the sheep and do any treatment within her power. I drove out to collect her this lunchtime. Like me, she could find no maggots or any signs of other parasites - lice, fleas, eggs, poo - and the skin away from the lesion was all pale pink and healthy deep down between the wool. These guys tend to gather at the warmest spots on the sheep, so spine, kidneys and shoulders.

The ducks and drakes are starting to sort themselves out by
their green heads and curly tail feathers. 

General discomfort and irritation at skin level can sometimes be caused by worms internally, so we decided to worm/fluke drench the whole flock and to lather Myfanwy's lesion in a thick, coconut-oil like cream (actually meant for humans) called Pinewood's "Emulsifying Ointment BP". This might sting a bit on the open wounds when it first went on but soon calmed down and is thick enough that even as it warmed up to skin temperature it would not run off or get washed off. The little flies would hate it and they did, immediately stopping their landings and exploratory walking across the wound.

Deefer

I must now watch the sheep closely for a while, and apply new cream every couple of days or after heavy rain (basically as soon as I see more flies). I must also look out for scour (diarrhoea) which is a sign that the sheep may well have been carrying worms and are now shedding them (dead). This can upset their systems and would mean we'd need to re-dose after 4 weeks to catch any stragglers.

Towser

Ah well. That is enough for this one. Still no sign of the AWOL cat or the AWOL Guinea Hen, so these may not get mentioned again unless we get firm news (preferably good!). Everybody else is bimbling along just fine. It occurs to me that you have not seen pics of the dogs lately, so I will leave you with pics of all three taken today.

Poppea.

Have a good week.

Like a Duck to Water.

Shearing the first ewe, helped by Charlotte

The main story today (certainly the freshest) was the shearing of the sheep. We were coming round to that time of year and the forecast spoke of a heatwave held back only by a Northerly air-stream which had been keeping our temperatures down in the 14ºC area. Sheep-folk begin to worry about heat and the dreaded fly-strike but we need 3 rainless days to make sure the sheep are dry.

Charlotte tackles Polly, our grey Jacob cross ewe.

Waterlogged fleeces and electric hand held clippers are not a good mixture even for we smallholders; the commercial boys worry more about the wet fleeces not being sale-able to the buyers as they are 'dishonestly' heavy. Our wool all ends up on the compost heap so that side of things does not worry us. This year I have ace sheep-wrangler and stock-person, Charlotte (of the mini-horses) back down from Dublin, working locally and keen to help with any shearing I do on her days off. Elizabeth is happy to step aside and we all benefit from the "shearer's chocolate cakes" which get baked while we shear.

Self conscious 'naked' sheep?

So, there we were, all organised from Tuesday and delighted at the lack of rain come this morning, so I raced out to Sligo to collect Charlotte and then we were all go. I love working with Charlotte and even now, 6 years in, I still learn from her. My shearing technique is to zoom up the sheep from dock to neck in long "blows" which can be fast but can leave the sheep striped like larch-lap fencing. Charlotte tends to scoop little blows out, rolling the cutting edge away from the sheep almost as soon as she has 'delved' into the fleece. It's a bit slower but very neat. The whole sheep has maybe a few mm more 'pile' left but there are none of my 'almost pink' patches or any stripes.

All done here. Charlotte is just practising her 'upside down'
technique on one of the lambs. 

We are both impressed by how much heat 'comes out' when we open up that fleece with the first 'blow' up the spine. On a sunny, windless day, the girls are living inside a 3" to 4" pile woolly overcoat and I am sure their skin temperature must be up there at blood heat. When you first glide the shears up the spine and 'unzip' the fleece, the sheep's skin is way, way hotter than your hand - probably 10-15ºC hotter.

Nobody wants the old fleeces so they
go on the compost. 

Healthy sheep have temperatures of around 38.5ºC. By the time you finish shearing, 30 minutes later, the whole animal has cooled down and the skin is more like human skin temperature. They get a whole new lease of life and go scampering round the field with relieved expressions.

The gang spent some time in the orchard prior to shearing.

The other thing we all love is the sudden change from spherical, broad-in-the-beam shaped sheep to tiny, thin, angular, goat-bony light-weights who look not that much bigger than their lambs. They were possibly rounder than normal this year because we'd been struggling to get some good grass into them to get some condition on after them lambing in the hard Winter, and we'd moved them into the orchard for a couple of days. My hope was that when we called them into the cattle race to be 'done' they'd not be so starving that the small amount of 'crunch' they'd get wouldn't leave them bleating piteously. That went OK.

The oak (left) before the ash? You decide. 

Friends of the Blog may also recall that the biggest ewe, Myfanwy, had not (yet) lambed, and I do not actually know whether she is pregnant. Back in February when we 'offed' the ram, Pedro, one of the reasons was that he had started attacking Myfanwy and I did not know whether this was just sex fore-play or annoyance at her rejecting him. In theory, as he was with us till Feb 5th, she might still lamb till 5th July. I was keen to get Charlotte's assessment once the ewe was sheared and we could all get a look at her shape and her udder. The consensus is that she's just big, having not needed to feed a lamb (or two). Ah well.

Hen with ridiculous hair (Donaldina (Trump)) goes broody
in the duck box.

Meanwhile, I am amused to note that our drakes, newly bereft of their last lady-duck have suddenly taken to going on the pond. For 2 years they have showed no interest and I have been delighted that they've left the pond alone with it's gin-clear water and healthy plants (and fauna). Back on Wednesday I may have been witness to the tiny, short, insignificant-looking event which changed all this. I had gone out to sit by the pond with the dogs all milling around harmlessly at my feet. A Guinea Fowl was calling from the 5 acre field behind me and then came zooming over to land on the grass nearby.

A new sight here - ducks on the pond. 

The dogs, excited by this flurry of movement took off at a run towards the Guinea which set one of the drakes off also flying about 2 feet from the grass. Quite by accident, I am sure, it touched down right near a dog and opted for a bounce and sidestep which pitched it into the pond for possible the first time in it's life. I watched with amusement at it's change of body language and facial expression as it went from "Oh crap! Now I'm in the pond!" via "Coo... I seem to be floating....perhaps this is not so bad after all" to finally "Mmmm... I LIKE this... look... I can paddle my feet and swim!".

Our 3 young lime trees are suddenly
covered in leaves.

There has been no holding that drake back since and he has now taken his brother on to the water to share the joy. The pair go every morning for a dabble, a swim and a water-borne preen and splash about. It remains to be seen how much damage they do and how long their welcome lasts.

Another wishbone for the car. €170 supplied and fitted
(incl. wheel alignment)

There have been just 3 other stories brewing. The car has had to go back to the garage (ker-ching €€€€€) to have to 'other' side wishbone changed and the steering re-aligned once more, for uneven tyre wear. "State of the roads round here," said the man, "I'd recommend to anyone to get alignments checked every 6 months" Never heard of that before in the UK, but there are many potholes here, plus savage 'sleeping policemen' and just general yumpy-bumpy bog roads.

In with the new, out with the old. Lidl's at Castlerea.

Our local and much loved Lidl supermarket is temporarily erased from the face of the earth. The new shop has been under construction 'next door' for a while but for 3 weeks the old has been shut while they make final changes and move all the trading across. I was impressed by how fast 'they' cleared the site. I had shopped in there on Tuesday 8th May. By the time I tried to shop again (Tuesday 15th) it was shut, demolished and cleared away as if it had never been. Impressive feat.

The pigs look great under the now fully in-leaf beech.

Finally, we are now expecting the arrival of our next Help-X volunteer, Laura D, our first try at having a helper of the female persuasion. She was booked in for Monday but has since asked if she might arrive on Saturday (tomorrow). We have no problem with that except that Elizabeth has the car down at Steak Lady's place (There's a Royal Wedding on, apparently and the Ladies are going to do it justice in their own Living room, sat around the TV with the fancy hats, party food and drinkies). I would not be able to nip and collect her from the railway/bus stations. So Laura, not to be put off, is going to try her 'travelling' skills out against the trains, buses, taxis and possibly hitch-hiker picker uppers and try to get here anyway. Good luck, Laura. Safe journey. See you soon. Just don't know HOW soon.

A short lived Duckling

Connie brings the one surviving duckling off the nest and
quickly has it feeding like a pro.

A quick post this time, as befits the little recovery period we are having betwixt our busy, visitor bedecked Christmas and the New Year weekend. With the French off the premises, Liz headed for Silverwood land for another very quick tour of Mum-minding duty. A family meal with a 3-line whip had been planned but then cancelled without anyone telling Liz so she ended up just doing the one night. Mum is 'fixed' enough to no longer need random daughters fussing about the place. She is signed off now till 15th Jan. 

Little Paddler.

In the mean time, Friends of the Blog will recall that we have a Sussex hen who went broody in late November and then hatched, we think, 4 duck eggs just as the French visitors left. This lady only managed to bring 1 survivor off the nest. I found only one part-chewed corpse, so I guess that the nest got predated by a rat and the other babies were taken alive or dead. 

This double yolker was to be the duckling's Day 4 breakfast.

The survivor ("Little Paddler") was going great guns. His 'Mum' quickly taught him to feed and he was gobbling up the tiny portions of chick-crumb and hard boiled egg I was taking to them 4 times a day. It was alternating snow, hail and sleet outside, so I shut them in the Tígín to be 'safe', warm and dry. By day 3 (Thurs 28th) he was looking very promising and Mum was sleeping on the floor with him under her skirts.

Horrible, sleety, haily weather. Yes, I did get caught with
a line of washing out!

Sadly, this morning, (Day 4) when I went in with breakfast, Mum came down from a higher perch and there was no sign of the duckling. Mum was fussing and clucking around as if asking me where the baby was. We looked everywhere but could find no sign, no sad little corpse. If she had gone up there to perch and left him 'peeping' on the ground, then he'd have frozen to death in minutes and/or been carried off by the rat(s). Maybe he was taken by the rat and she then flew up to perch higher in her angst? We will never know. Ah well. These things happen. Mum spent part of the day all stressed out clucking about, presumably missing him but by afternoon seems to have calmed down and forgotten him. Sorry, Connie. Better luck next time. 

Just a light dusting of snow this time.

We are still determined to do more ducks, so we have decided to buy a Covatutto incubator like the one we used to borrow from Charlotte of the Mini Horses. We will set a dozen eggs in that in the spring time. We may also try Muscovies; not so good for eggs, but much better than the Khaki Campbells for meat. Also,more fun, apparently with their keenness to fly and sit on your roof tops!

Opening up the new Parma style ham.

We finally got around to 'opening' the Christmas leg of 'Parma' style ham. It had been missed off menus and side lined by the sheer amount of food we were trying to cope with, even with the French visitors. 

Roscommon style 'Parma' ham. 

This leg was from the 2016 pigs, so was 16 months at the air-drying / curing and is deliciously sweet. Liz has pronounced it my best so far. I am quite impressed too. We obviously have that job sussed and if any readers would like to come and have a sample (I know Charlotte likes a 'Parma' ham and may be around at present, down from Dublin) then do drop by.

That is about it. We are now all battening down the hatches for the next named storm, Storm Dylan who is meant to roar through on Saturday night. We are under Orange warnings here for 70-80 kph winds all across the Province of Connaught, though inevitably, coastal areas have the highest predicted wind speeds. 

Beyond that, assuming we aren't blown across to Longford, we will also be enjoying the New Year weekend which will also bring me to the end of my latest stint as curator on the @smallholderIRL Twitter account - where I am sharing a fortnight's shift with account boss @foodborn Margaret Griffin. We are nearly done - finishing, neatly, on Sunday 31st Dec. 

Enda on the Exit Slope

Poor Enda. When a hen looks this rough there is usually
only one outcome. 

Enda on the Exit slope? No, no, no, not beleaguered politician Mr. Kenny currently battling to stay in charge of the country. This Enda is Enda 'Vaneera' our now longest serving chicken. We fear she may be on the exit slip-road of hen life. We've had her 5 years now and for the most recent 2 of these she has strutted around in charge of all hens, a real alpha female. She has also batted away any male attention - we are sure she has been barren for 2 years - and has been the keenest garden-helper when ever she saw a human weeding or disturbing soil.

Parrot tulips

Recently she amazed us by coming back into lay, giving us about a fortnight's worth of good eggs but this, sadly, seemed to be a reproductive swan song (at risk of mangling my metaphorage here!). A few days back she woke up suddenly unable to cope with the attentions of our rooster. He jumped her and rolled her onto her side, then finished and she just lay there instead of the usual huffy get to your feet and shake out those feathers. Seeing her still there, apparently submissive he did it again and again till I had to shoo him off and rescue the poor girl.

Pear blossom

I could see that all was not well and gave her some days in the sick bay and isolation to let her regroup. Bad news, I'm afraid, she is not recovering and is going downhill. Friends of the Blog will know that in our experience, chickens don't do "sick". They go from perfect health to dead with nothing in between, so it is amazing that she has lasted these few days. I think she will shuffle off the mortal coil today. I'll let you know.

'Our' pigs with their Mum (Iris) on their first day out of the
sty.  17th April here so 6 weeks old. 

Happily, there are winners as well as losers for every post. Our pig breeder (Hi Adrian) sent us the latest pictures of our soon-to-be piglets who are (we hear) bounding with health and full of mischief. He has also told us when we can collect them, any time from 7th May. We are so excited. We are getting 2 of these, probably a (castrated) male and a female, and our friends Sue and Rob another 2. I presume Adrian has also sold the 5th.

'Parma' Ham, Roscommon stylee. The "Parma" word has
protected geographic status dictating permitted breed, diet
and 'terroir' but we do our best with our local beasts. 

While we are on pigs, with our latest visitor, Mum in Law (Steak Lady to this blog) on site we wanted to crack open this season's first Parma-style ham so that we could taste some and declare it ready. Mum is often in the part of Spain which does the 'Serrano' equivalent and has even brought us back an official, wickedly sharp, designed-for-the-job, "Cuchillo Jamonero" carving knife, with its 9" long by slender 5/8" 'deep' blade which lets you slice off almost transparent slices of ham. The ham was a great success and we have been slicing bits off ever since for starters and tasters.

Our other local fan of this meat is Charlotte, normally now a Dublin resident but, by coincidence (or did she smell the ham?) down here for a few days to look after little H (5) while Mum and Dad were at a wedding. Obviously we had to have her over for a taster and packed her off with a size-able "doggie bag".

The ladies try out the new ham.

This whole leg will do us about 4 kg of ham, we think - the muscle loses 30% of its weight, ideally, during the air-drying process. The 2nd leg is being saved for similar treatment at Christmas. Any friends of the blog reading this and fancying a taster, get in touch while we still have some. We'll be good for about a month but it won't go much longer than that even as 'back up stores' in the freezer assuming there is any left for that.

We love the way Mum does these roasties. Liz calls them
"hedgehog" potatoes but I am told they are officially called
Hasselback. That could just be a foreign word for hedgehog.

Mum's visit, meanwhile, went off really well and was enjoyed by both guest and host. At one stage she even took over the kitchen and cooked for us - she know the way to our hearts! She had bought with her a lovely beef roasting joint knowing that we do our own lamb, pork, chicken and duck. She did this with a stir-fry of veg plus some superb special potatoes. These are cooked whole but see no water or par-boil prior to roasting. They are sliced almost through into very thin slices and the whole then wiped in oil including trying to get some oil down into the cuts. It is great to eat them in these slices. It is like having all the best bits of a roastie in your mouth at once!

Mutt and Jeff. NZ White cross bunnies.

I also took Mum across to see Rob (Sue was in UK) - she loves their place and is quite taken with Rob as he is with her. I think it is the nearly OVER-stocked air of chaos. "How many chickens have you got?" We had a lovely welcome from Rob and the enthusiastic, small and huge dogs ("Woool-ufs" says Mum) - they have terriers plus a St Bernard and a mad maybe-Newfoundland pup which is even bigger than the St B.

Get that grass cut you bunnies!

We came away with a couple of half grown bunnies. These lads (named Mutt and Jeff by Mum) are NZ White crosses, quite a big breed. They are surplus to Rob's breeding programme so, if they can avoid Mr Fox, they can spend the summer doing lawn-mower in our apiary. Bees, famously, hate the vibration of a petrol lawnmower, so rabbits are the perfect solution - the bees ignore them and they ignore the bees. The grass stays short so the bees will always recognise 'home' by sight.

A nearly full house for Friday night. Wednesday
and Saturday were quickly sold out. 

Last but not least among our "Winners" in this post, THE PLAY. This village event, having had a good but slightly wobbly dress rehearsal, played a real 'blinder' on the First Night. It went really well with no hitches and delighted the audience into gales of laughter and frequent enthusiastic applause. Everyone is over the moon. I have written a good review which is now up on the website (  http://lisaculinfo.ie/first-night-review-cupid-wore-skirts/ ) and Facebook and Twitter have been a-buzz with nice pictures and favourable comment. As I write this (Saturday morning) we have also had a brilliant 2nd night and we have high hopes for Last Night which is tonight.

Watch this space.