Bull and Barrel

Feeling a bit sorry for the guy (Mike the Cows) who rents the fields next door because he only had a scrappy warning sign up (faded felt pen on old hardboard) I decided to do him a secret favour, nicked his sign and painted him a decent one. He won't know it's me, and I don't even know if a) he's putting his cows in there this year and b) running Felix the Bull with them. I have now sneaked the sign back up and we are wondering whether anyone will comment, or suss us, and if so how soon. Hee hee! 

The sign looks very smart and quite professional. The white is just some exterior woodwork undercoat. The red gloss was left over from painting the Utility Room door and the dark green was just a small tin of wood preserving stuff useful for the rabbit hutches. The red was dabbed on using a half inch gloss brush salvaged from my jar of old brushes. The finer stuff was done with a set of kiddies 'art' brushes got from a local shop for €1.99. No expense spared! The design was just scratched out in pencil and then lashed in free-hand; hence it is a bit wobbly in places. 

Mike, though, does need to attend to his fences if he is going to put Felix and the gang back in there. I don't think I've ever seen such a rat's nest of scrappy barbed wire, rotting posts and baler twine set to hold back 800 kg (or so) of Charolais bull (and his wives and children).

I have now made and installed the Mk 2 version of the goose bath. The geese, you will recall, were using a temporary arrangement made from 4 lengths of timber and old plastic sheeting. This worked OK and the geese enjoyed it, but geese, although they have webbed feet, do still have claws on the end of each toe, which are reasonably sharp. The geese eventually puncture the sheeting and the water drains away. 

All around here, in almost every field, the locals use a type of blue barrel cut in half as food bowls and drinkers for cattle, sometimes plumbed in with loo-cistern style float valves and standing in posh frames. I tracked a supply of these barrels down to a local agricultural supplies place in Castlerea. They are 25 gallon capacity and nice tough plastic. 

They are empty but sometimes have the last 'dregs' of what ever was in them, still in there. Unfortunately (and rather alarmingly) few still have their labels on them, so you have no idea what this might be. One barrel in 'our' pile said simply 'flouride' and the shop guy had no idea what was in them. His attitude seemed to be 'buyer beware - at your own risk'. We believe they may be 'food grade' as an embossed mark on the plastic says "Do not refill with Food Grade product". The huge number of them around the local farms made me wonder whether they might be an ingredient in the local animal-feed milling industry. 

Ours proved to have a small amount of a white, milky, odourless liquid in it which diluted down with my rinse-water and was 'lost' as safely as we could. The insides of the barrel also seem to have some kind of wax protection, presumably to stop the contents picking up plastic taints, or the contents attacking the plastic of the barrels and becoming contaminated with residues. We scrubbed this off as best we could with hot soapy water. It then remained just to sink the half barrel into the ground and fill with water - three buckets in the barrow three times. We have sited the new 'bath' near the bottom of the orchard so that when I have to bale it out to clean it the water can run off harmlessly under the hawthorn hedge, though this made for a long walk with the water-laden barrow. We then steered the geese down past it so that they'd know it was there. 

We will see how it goes. That was yesterday. Today I fed the geese some sprouted wheat close by the bath and saw them drinking and head-bathing in/from it but we have not actually seen them climb in for a paddle about. If they do, this will be, we think, the first time they have ever been in water deep enough to swim on so it might be a bit alarming for them. 


Finally, just a quick picture of me on the sofa surrounded by the dogs. Poppy is on my lap, Towser on my shoulder and Deefer sitting by my side. We'd lit the Living Room fire that day, so we were as warm as toast and recovering from the jolly gardening and dog-walking. 

The Comings and Goings of Cows

We are now, to all intents and purposes, surrounded by land grazed by Mike the Cows's Charolais herd. Well, mainly Charolais, the nearly white beef breed, but the group of 20 or so does include a couple of black Angus and some more Hereford-y gingery beef animals with the Hereford white face. Those are Charolais crosses. The bull, Felix, is purebred Charolais. Many of these girls have calves at foot, and/or are in calf at the moment. They will be taken back to Mike's Grand-dad's farm to actually have their calves, which won't be long now. They are very broad in the beam.

You'll already know that I drive Mum and Dad nuts by my regular chasing out across the fields to the west of us to shout at the cows if I think they are coming too close to our gate. I get up quite close to the cows. They mainly ignore me but occasionally I have to nip back a bit quick because one of the Mums has a little go at charging at me, especially if I'm a bit close to one of the calves.

We have now (on Monday) opened up the gap at the bottom of the east field now that we have the new cow-proof fence keeping the beasties off the garden and the lane. The grass in the east field, not grazed at all this year, is nice and long, if a little infested with docks and rushes but it's a welcome bite for the cows who were struggling a bit on the short, over-grazed land around us owned by Vendor Anna L and grazed almost continuously through the Summer.

The pups are getting quite interested in all this cow activity and I have sometimes tried to lead them astray into the cow fields but they are not that brave yet, and seem to take my barking as a cause for concern, so they don't come that far into the field and nip bacvk a bit smartish if Dad does his "Pupuppuppuppup!" shout.

Inside Out

As we get more and more sorted inside the new place, we also start to broaden our horizons. We meet some neighbours. All through the project we have had regular visits from a local old boy who we only ever see driving his John Deere tractor. John Deere Bob, we've Christened him. He was very curious about us and our moves to do up the old house which he's known from his youth. He knew the previous owners, TK-Min and TK Max plus the three sisters. He seems delighted with what we've done and very impressed by what we've achieved and he loves the warmth, brightness and dryness of the finished place. Our other neighbour, Una, says "there was never any warmth in that house..." There is now! Mike the Cows finally gets round to letting his animals into the surrounding fields and also does a deal with Dad whereby we get our fields 'topped' (mowed down to 3-4" including the rushes) and Dad gets his allotment bit ploughed if Mike is allowed to electric fence off our 1.5 acre field to the east of us, and graze that. The cows are a purebred Charolais bull called Felix, complete with ring through his nose, about a dozen Charolais girls, some with young calves at foot, plus a few random hangers on including a dark bullock and a couple of darker heifers. These boys and girls amble around in the neighbouring fields and when we can get away with it we (Coco comes too, but the H can't be bothered) like to go shout at them. We never get too close because they are very big. usually they ignore us and just keep chewing the cud or lying down looking at us vacantly, but sometimes they all get up and start walking or half-trotting towards us, which sends us scurrying to and through the gate. I'm brave, but not that brave! Work moves from the indoors to the 'grounds. Dad finally un-boxes his chainsaw, assembles it on the dining room table and then takes it out for a try. It's a good weapon and we now have a source of logs for the stove. Dad hires a couple of skips and we can throw the pile of builders rubbish and left over thermal panel offcuts into it. We finally have a clear view of the front of the house, and from the terrace out across the lawn. The grass is damaged in places where the rubble was stored, so Dad rotovates up these patches, rakes it smooth and re-seeds with grass. Mum, who has always wanted a box hedge but never really got one going in Faversham, finally gets her chance at the kerb edge between front lawn and terrace. While he's got the rotovator out Dad tills a nice bed along this edge for Mum to plant in the rooted cuttings. That should get away nicely. A new face appears, another neighbour, Eileen C, welcoming us to the village and bearing gifts of a little auricula cutting and a photo (above) of the house taken in 2000 when the white outside paint was obviously still quite new and fresh, and the drive not yet overgrown with grass. Deefs