Keeping us Waiting

Twin lambs tonight for Polly, both boys.

More good news and relief in the sheep department after the curing of Lily by vet Aoife. This time it is Polly's turn to supply the story and she had us sweating on it a bit. I knew she was 'on' when she refused breakfast and spent the day displaying 3 other good clues of imminent lamb-exit; going off on her own for a lie down away from the 'flock', 'pawing' at the ground with a front hoof and looking very uncomfortable so that she restlessly sat down, stood up, moved around and sat down again.

I had agreed to head out for Sligo to help K-Dub to tip a van load (64 panels) of plaster board sheets and walk them all indoors, plus some bags of bonding, beading and other bits. I judged (correctly, I am pleased to say) that Polly would easily go 2 hours without needing help so I flew over there at 9 and headed back at 11 when the unloading was done. When I got back I found that there had been no progress and Polly was still sitting out in the far corner of the field but had been worryingly joined by the 3rd ewe (Myfanwy) who was sitting in a copy-cat stance and, to my mind, seemed very pink about the vulva. Were to have two lambings today?

A close inspection of Myf's back end told me that this was a false alarm and she was not yet bagged up at all, so maybe she was enjoying the wind-up potential. Polly then, kept me on tenter-hooks all day and only started to 'move' (passing a mucus plug and some amniotic sac) at around 5pm. This was so long after breakfast that Charlotte (who we keep standing-by on these occasions) advised an extra careful watch as she may have been in labour "all day". I contacted the vet, Aoife, to confirm that she would be available if needed and she was a bit more relaxed about the 'all day'; happy to think of "things" starting only at 5 pm.

Wetting the babies' heads. One dark and one light. It seemed
only fair.

Well, I am happy to report that "things" did indeed crack on a-pace from that point and Polly whooshed out both twins while we had nipped in for supper at 18:30. Both were out, up and suckling by 19:00 and I decided to leave them where they were for washing and bonding for half an hour before we gathered the family indoors. It was pitch dark but I could keep an eye using my rather dim head-torch and my presence would stop any sneaky foxes creeping up on Polly to steal the newborns. At one point Soldier the cat wandered over all curious and got himself charged and nearly stomped on for his pains by the ewe, so I suspect even a fox might have thought twice. Ah well, they are safe in the Tígín now, warm and dry on new straw and it has all gone quiet so I hope that signifies bellies nicely full of colostrum (and some 'crunch' and a welcome drink of water for Mum).

Rosie - one of Lily's lambs. These ladies are nearly 2 weeks old
now.

A new experience today for me, that of voting properly in an Irish General Election using the 'single transferable vote' system. My British readers may not know that here we do not use the 'put an X in the box', winner-takes-all, one MP per constituency method. Instead the constituencies can put more than one 'TD' into the parliament (up to 5, I think) so our voting sheets can have dozens of candidates on them and you vote by stating 1st, 2nd, 3rd etc preferences by putting numbers in the boxes; all the boxes if you like.

I will not try to explain the counting system here (though I do sort of understand it) but suffice to say that the winners get enough '1st preference' votes to make a quota, or hope to make quota by having themself as people's 2nd preference, or 3rd or whatever. Yes, I know. It actually works very well and is quite user friendly. I voted as far as my 6th preference. I am wary of trying to pretend to be expert in this and I usually avoid politics in this blog but here goes.

My problem is not the complexity of it all, but trying to work out who stands for what. In the UK you 'knew' that Labour stood for the working classes, the Tories for the management and affluent farmers, and the Libs were somewhere in between. Nothing so clear cut here. The two BIG parties, Fine Gael (FG) and Fianna Fáil (FF) are almost identical and the local wisdom is that you choose between them depending on how you stood in the Irish Civil War in the 20's. Were you 'pro-treaty' (i.e. were you in favour of accepting independence but with the 6 Northern Ireland counties partitioned off and left as British) or were you anti (i.e. you wanted the whole island to be independent).

A 'boreen'. One of this week's Lisacul 365 pics.

This was hugely contentious and split the country, communities, villages and even households, with father 'fighting' son and brother battling brother. A lot of that emnity and tension simmers on so it is a tricky subject to discuss but results in people voting for FF because "my Father did before me and my Grandfather before that" etc. I have asked many people and none of them can tell me, an incomer, why I should favour FG or possibly FF. One tongue-in-cheek view has it that they are all corrupt anyway but we like them that way and we ask them how they can help US specifically before we decide. More recently people seem to vote more on who last messed up the economy or depending upon who was 'on watch' when that hospital got closed.

Ash Bark

Throw into this mix the many and various minor parties and a wealth of independent (non-party) candidates to blur the lines even more and you have a confusing situation for a newcomer. There was one saving grace this time - a new website (MatchCandidate.IE) which asked you 30+ questions about all manner of contentious issues (the new water charges, legalising abortion, healthcare and so on) but then also asked all the candidates the same questions. The site compares your answers with the answers of the potential TDs and finds a best match (and next best etc). You can then drill down to find out WHERE you matched and decide from that whether to assign your 1,2,3 etc.

Anyway, suffice to say, I went armed with a list of 6 likely choices and only adjusted my list a bit at the crucial stage, pen in hand, in the booth. By now (22:12 pm) it is all over bar the counting (and then the negotiations between the parties which 'nearly won' to form a coalition (we rarely get anyone with an overall majority)). The count starts tomorrow at 09:00. History will tell you the rest. I am going back to being a non-political shepherd and off for a last check on Polly and the new babies

Working Dog

On the 28^th, out of nowhere we get a day with some sunny bits in between the rain showers, and it's actually quite warm. For Dad it’s a chance to break in the enormous felling axe, splitting the 'rounds' of the sawn up Leylandii and generating oodles of nice logs for when Summer's over and it's wet and windy again (!)

Local old boy John Deere Bob seems to have adopted Mum and Dad as new residents worth cultivating and is now our most frequent visitor. His only 'car' is the old John Deere tractor which he put-puts around the village on, into the local bigger-village (Lough Glynn) to the Post Office, and into nearby town Ballaghaderreen for his shopping. Mum and Dad are working away mid morning-ish and we hear him chugging up the lane and we pause to see will he turn in or is he off to see near-neighbour Una, one of his other tea-stops. If he slows and turns up the drive, Mum nips to get the kettle on and find the fig rolls. Bob parks the tractor in front of the house and shuffles in in his farmboots and black Thinsulate hat, sitting in 'his chair', settling down for a good aul' chin wag.

He's a real charmer with twinkly eyes, a quiet soft voice and a lovely laugh. He has a deep knowledge of things local, things rural and Irish History. He loves to compare notes on history books with Mum , who is also versed in these things (no good to Dad! Even UK history whizzes over his head like pensions and VAT, barely clipping the ends of his hairs!). They talk of the Civil War and the Uprising, and of T.D.s (= M.P.s) and politics, constituency changes, but also of local stuff like the 1901 and 1911 census data etc. He usually passes comment on whatever jobs Mum and Dad are doing. In Dad’s case today, he gives us some tips on how/when to use the splitting axe and what types of wood to burn in the range and on the fire. He checks our progress on extracting the horse-drawn hay-rake and tells us all about the soil and the 'sausage-turfs' we found there. He tells us of raised beds and vegetable growing techniques. Then he goes away again, checking his watch and deciding to chug gently on, on his rounds on the John Deere. Lovely old bloke!

Mum and Dad head for county town Roscommon to explore, just because they've never been. The town centre has an Easons (good book shop) but not much else to attract them back - rather too many pubs, clothes shops, betting shops and boarded up abandoned lets. It smacks of a place where the landlords did not react quickly enough to the dip and as a result now have nobody paying them rent instead of letting the poor hard pressed shop keepers away with reduced rent. No. We will keep passing through as it's on our way to the In-Laws, but we'll stick to the 'by-pass' and the business park bits.

There is a lovely patch of sunshine in the evening, so we're out on the new (concrete) sun deck to watch the sun sink.

Friday 29^th sees us up early. Mum is urgent, up-and-dressed by crack of sparrow's and saying "I want go to a garden centre NOW!" She'd found a promising one out Boyle way (Co. Rosco still but only just) called Ardcarne, 25 mins away in the car. It turned out to be wonderful and Mum and Dad rattled gently through €80+ in fairly short order taking in some special offers on fruit bushes and the "knackered and half dead" racks (They aren't called that by the shop, but Mum and Dad delight in buying unpromising plants cheap knowing they can rescue them due to being good experienced gardeners. New and properly priced stuff also found its way onto the trolley - a dahlia, more roses, some Iberis sempervirens, a yellow flag iris for the bit we'll leave boggy and various seeds and bulbs. All this retail therapy is a happy result of buying a garden which is part chest high brambles, nettles and weeds, and part former cattle yard but in no part clean cultivated tilth.

Mike the Cows drops by with his young son Fintan to nosey on our progress and talk lumber-jacking and logging, fences, the village, holidays, Dublin Prices, getting his kids to a Westlife concert and all manner of other subjects. Mum, Dad and Mike looked a right aul' group of rustics putting the world to rights; Mike in his farmer boots, torn jeans and big ol' beer belly, Mum in battle-scarred waxed jacket and green wellies and Dad in even more disreputable Barbour 'gillet', painty, buildery tan-coloured jeans and (gasp) sandals and socks (highly illegal but Dad was in a rush to get out there). Mike can talk for Ireland but he's always a good laugh.

And so to Mum's big long meaty ribs and noodly stir-fry. The red wine's called "Working Dog". Last night we were not, for once, working like dogs.