Covering (a small bit of) Sligo in Concrete

Nanny (Óg) arrives home in our trailer. 

I had a nice chance to tease the 'Facebook lot' this week, when I was asked by our friend Charlotte to provide car and trailer to go off to buy a female goat (miniature in the original plan) for them. This goat was to be a companion to their existing goat 'Billy' who was sadly pining for his buddy, the miniature (gelding) horse 'Cody' who will be familiar to regular readers who have been with me for the last year or so. 'Codes' had been put back in his field and Billy was very vocal in his loneliness, bleating all day and all night.

Ain't she cute. Love the beard.

Billy is a miniature, so he really needs a mini-Nanny, but they are tricky to come by (as well as costly), so Charlotte has put herself on a waiting list for the breeder and meanwhile, sourced this Nanny to keep Billy company. She is actually in kid anyway, so Billy took one sniff and then lost interest till she wandered into his house looking every inch like she was taking over now, thank you! I have this running joke going with the Facebook crew that I am always sneaking off to buy new animals, usually with Charlotte as my accomplice, while Liz sits at home trying to rein me in. Something to do with having gone off to "look at" young turkey poults early this year and returned with our full sized adulrs, Tom and Barbara. It's not like that at all really, of (cough) course. I had put up on FB, a 'status report' that I was "NOT off to buy a goat" which, of couse, they all took to mean that I was off to do exactly that.

Cake mix ready for the oven.

Anyway, off we went to Knock village and following superb directions, found the bright pink 2 storey farmhouse we sought and the man showed us to the barn where the goats for our selection were kept. They were lovely clean healthy animals except for the feet and we got the distinct impression that they were housed permanently on deep-litter - a foot or so of old poo and straw over which the guy might have thrown some new straw that morning to fool us. That was OK. We knew we (I) could trim their feet up when we got home. They were all ear-tagged and official goats, so Charlotte chose one, paid up and we all retreated indoors to do paperwork.

Not bad for a first effort. This cake now gets well wrapped and
stashed away till mid December marzipan and icing time.

The goat is home now and we did, indeed, have some fun trimming her feet. She is a very sweet, well behaved animal and was no trouble to hold while I did "farrier" on her, lifting each foot in turn. I have never seen such long toe-nails on a sheep or goat, so it was very satisfying to give her the pedicure. Some of the 'toes' had long 'nails' on both the inside and outside, as well as a big thick horny growth at the 'heel' end, so that she was walking on tippy-toes on basically a tube of horn. No wonder Charlotte could see and commented upon how much more comfortably she was standing and walking when we'd done. Very satisfying job. The girl is officially called just 'Nanny' but we couldn't resist taking her a wee bit into Terry Pratchett territory by calling her 'Nanny Óg' (Young Nanny in Irish).

Pouring concrete at the Sligo house

The big story today, though, is of the major landmark achieved in the house build where I help just inside the Sligo border, that of pouring the concrete floor(s). This was always going to be a serious job and one causing a lot of concern to the 'main man' as he got all his ducks lined up in a row - men, equipment and concrete. This was going to be a new floor all through the existing house and out into the porch out front and across a 22' square extension out back, all tied together with 8 mm reinforcing mesh. It would involve 2 full concrete mixer lorry loads which if memory serves, translates into 17 cubic metres or 24 tonne, which is 320 heavy wheel barrow loads. The lorries would arrive at 1 and a half hour intervals, and there was no stopping once they arrived, so the main man had laid on a gang of 7 of us, mostly big, strong, fit, professional builders, mates of his from the building trade in Dublin. I say 'mostly' - 2 of us were obviously me and a tiny bar-man who they call "20%".

Of course, the weather chose today to totally fall apart and we were quite alarmed in driving out to the site at 08:15 to be driving through heavy sleet, some of which was laying on the tarmac. The day also laid on a few heavy rain bursts and a hail storm. Still, short story is we made it and main man is delighted that he got all the concrete in, spread and tamped, then 'bull-floated' down to a glass-smooth finish. He had 4 of the best lads on barrows running a shuttle service to/from the lorry's chute, and three of us on spreading, leveling and tamping. In the picture (which 'main lady' took at about 1pm) we are at the start of this, with just the first corner filled. I am on the right, main man in the middle and ace-tamper on the left. This was a first for me. I had seen our paths laid round our house but those lads pretty much asked me to get out of the way, so I watched from a distance. This time I was part of it. I am in awe of the work rate of these guys and massively impressed at the team work. I can see now why main-man needed all seven (and also deployed me to leveling; I'd not have lasted 5 minutes on those barrows!)

So, now the job is done and the guys have all adjourned to a local pub to celebrate with a few pints and to watch the Ireland (footie) match. I cried off this bit (though I was, of course invited) on grounds partly of knowing I'd not keep up with a gang of Dublin builders around the pints, but also because we had a special meal planned here tonight (Duck in Guinness) and by the time I was in, livestock done, dogs walked, shower taken and a glass of wine or two to the good, we were both a bit cosy and 'home' here. Good luck lads, and I hope Ireland win the match. Maybe we'll meet again further down the build. It was a blast. I could actually listen to those guys all day - they have worked together for years and the banter is superb.

Wandering Wendy and Lucy Long-drop

Thursday 26^th

Hin3 does it again with the egg from 7 feet up stunt. Please don't let this become a habit. Mum and Dad like these eggs and they taste nothing like as nice when collided with poo-y sawdust and concrete.

A scorcher of a day here so what's more sensible, asks Dad, than to don a sweaty chain-saw hard-hat and thick kevlar glubs and go throw that petrol engine around again at the neighbour Una's? He is rewarded by more beautiful tea, scones and farmhouse kitchen. Lovely! Mum takes advantage of his absence and blitzes the floors. Kitten unspecified has managed to poo one end of the leather sofa and wee the other end. Happy, contented young animals will sleep in kitchen from now on. Living room is returned to 'best parlour' status and animals are barred.

The West Field gets mowed and Dad digs a third raised bed. Mum and Dad do lots of weeding in kitchen garden and thinning of young, but too close-planted carrots. There is lots of communing with happy animals in evening sunshine of yard. Dad even got the hand-held camcorder out to record but we promise not to inflict another cute kittens playing video to the millions on You-Tube. There is a SUPERB oxtail stew from Restaurant Feigh and so to bed.

27^th /28^th

Meanwhile, back in diary territory, we had a bimbly Friday. Dad was aching a bit from chain saw wielding Thursday, so he pottered and did tidy up jobs, thinned carrots, weeded, moved some corrugated iron sheeting and left-over concreting gravel and plastering sand off the "bit to the left of the hay-barn" (we have snappy titles for our bits of garden). 'Lucy Long-drop' did NOT, for once, lay her egg early morning from the 7 foot perch, so we know we got 100% productivity - 4 heggs from 4 hins. Go the Lovely Girls . All be it 'Wandering Wendy' still hops out of the run and nips off to our woods to sneak hers out privately. We have now 'busted' her and found where she's a-laying but we think she might be getting a clutch together to go broody on (5 so far) so we are sneakily date-marking them and returning them to the nest each day, leaving them be till she has, in her view, enough, whereupon she may start to sit, and will be gathered up, eggs and all and put in a broody-box somewhere safe from foxes and out of the rain, probably the calf house.

On the Saturday Dad is off up to Dublin to help Sparks in his attic. The alarm goes at 0530 and we have that usual flurry of feeding pup and kittens and mopping up any badly located poo and wee, then letting out bunnies and letting out and feeding chooks. Lucy Longdrop has, this morning, done another 7-foot up egg, so Dad has to clear that up, chuntering about stretching necks and the stock pot. He gets a good run up to Dublin (2 and a half hours on almost clear roads) and gets stuck in to 'slabbing' (cutting and fitting thermal panels and then plasterboard) in which we they, rather delightfully, joined by Dad’s old friend and Best Man, Billy T. He is a good friend but one of those you sadly let drift, till it's barely a Christmas Card a year and it’s always easier to make the effort some other time (all be it they have been chatting on Facebook for the last couple of months but never actually got together). Well, says Dad, they had a brilliant day working with Billy and chatting to him and it just highlights that you should never let good friends drift away in the first place. 

Sparks reimbursed Dad petrol this time in the form of a couple of chainsaw toys; a new chain/blade and a sharpener/grinder. Hours of fun trying to work out how to use that later. He has a nice run home into the sun always seeming to on a stretch of road just AFTER it had rained, so had all the spray and glare driving west into the setting sun, with his eyes already sore from the dust from the thermal panel 'foam'. He has a “beautiful shower” and lovely chickenny pasta provided by the welcoming Mum (love her!) and a glass of wine or two before we all settle down to watch a recording of that superb and uplifting Olympic Opening Ceremony. And so, via another try-to-open-your-eyes-under-water-in-the-sink eye wash, to bed.

Concreting the Aprons

A big day yesterday when we finally got enough of a break in the weather to do the concreting of the aprons; those 'paths' around the sides of the house which shed water away from the walls and help prevent damp. The forecast had Wednesday 20th as the best day this week. It was NEARLY good enough, but read on. The experts today were Mike the Concrete again, he who came to set up the shuttering almost 2 weeks ago now, and today his mate was Declan, Sean-y being tied up on another job

 They were here on site and ready when the ENORMOUS concrete mixer lorry arrived from Grogan's of Ballyhaunis, a town about 15 minutes away. We only needed 3 cubic metres of concrete which is normally less than they'll bother with, but they were slack and Mike is a mate and frequent customer of theirs. The driver managed to reverse the lorry up the drive and thread it through our side gate. He was a good man, both skilled and very co-operative and helpful.

 These guys can be only interested in dumping their load and getting out, if they are inclined but ours was prepared not only to move the lorry around to the various bits of the job, but also to despatch the mix down the chute at manage-able speed, even a barrow load at a time so that the three of us, working quickly and hard, admittedly, were able to spread it roughly into the aprons without double handling any. The driver even turned the lorry right round in our 'car-park' bit so that he could drop the left over bit onto what will be the caravan bay in the former hay-barn and even hosed our barrows out with his wash hose when he'd done washing the chute and drum of his mixer. What a hero! Grogan's should give him a pay rise! Dad gave him a decent tip.

 This concrete laying lark is quite a caper and the two guys were veritable artists at the job. You don't just pour it into the hole(s) and spread it flat. These guys smeared and sloshed it about to get it fairly flat using shovels and the rake. Then they level it to the levels already set up 2 weeks ago between the expansion joints by drawing a plank back and forth, and settle it by slapping it with the plank edge. Next a smooth surface is created with a wooden hand held float. Then you leave it a while to start to 'cook'. This is best done by drinking tea on the front terrace as provided by Mum from the posh teapot and accompanied by biscuits while you gossip and yarn.

Refreshed by tea you can now go over the already smooth surface of the concrete again with a metal hand held float but also a big, wind-surfer sized float on a twist-able pole, the twist action enabling you to slope the float slightly towards or away from you to give a good action which does not cut up the stuff you just smoothed. Then you go round the edges with a "bull-nose" float which puts that last 4 or 5 inches wide smooth edge and the curved 'nose' instead of a sharp corner. Finally you use a 12 inch wide 'diamond roller', a heavy-ish roller with waffle-iron diamonds in its face, which puts a pretty imprint onto the concrete in stripes, to give a non-skid, attractive finish.

There you are! You didn't know concreting was so complicated, did you? Nor did we. The concrete 'cooks' fairly fast, so if you can get about 2 hours from the end of doing the diamond roller-ing with no disturbances and no rain, then it's 'Happy Days', job done. New concrete, though, does not like heavy rain. The rain washes the concrete powder down off the top layer of sand and grit, breaking up your nice glossy, smooth (and bull nosed and diamond-patterned, in this case) "skin". As we got towards that crucial point, ominous black clouds were gathering. The boys were joking with Mum that she should say a Rosary, get down on her knees and even (they tell us some "Good Catholics" do this) deploy an icon. Mum, smiling, produced an "Infant of Prague" fridge magnet (Diamond would be proud of us!) and the boys told her to put it on the wall overlooking the apron! I felt sorry for them though, when the rain suddenly hammered down, breaking up the beautiful skin as described.

When it stops and the sun comes out, you can work the concrete again, smearing the exposed grit back down into the mix and giving yourself another smear of cement, which the guys did, but you can only do this once. The concrete is now cooking well and 'going off' and will quickly become too hard to work. So with all the 'pretty' stuff repeated and more dark clouds gathering, the guys rushed to cover their work with handy bits of corrugated sheeting, plastic sheet and wood and just about managed to protect it all before the rain comes down again. At this point, Mike and Declan can do no more. They go home, with Mike promising to return today to check up on whether we got away with it. "You can't odds it" he said, philosophically. "No good getting excited about it; These things 'appen"

It looks OK this morning, peering under the sheeting, but we'll leave all the protection down till Mike tells us we can lift it.

Deefs  

Concrete Jungle

The humans have been working very hard lately, in between the lazy bluebell walks. A concrete path in the garden, they decided, is in the wrong place. We think so tto - a dog chasing down the garden has to veer left, then dive through an arch spraying gravel everywhere like Roger Clark, 90-right onto a brick path, then 90 left onto the concrete and on down the garden to the greenhouse and shed.

The path's basically been in the wrong place since the humans moved in, and they've hefted up all the rest of its length, but this last remaining 12 foot or so has been left, being the path along "by the chicken run". Well, the chicken run is no more, and there are no plans to re-introduce chooks (there's this theory that I'd kill 'em, but I've no idea where that came from). So a plan was hatched to rip up the remainder of the concrete jungle, and replace it with a stylish woodland glade path, curving gently between old brick soldier-course kerbs, and laid in shredded bark

That was the weekend's project and very nice it looks too (plus it's a lot easier to run down!) give or take the pile of hard-core which was the path and now needs to be the carloads heading for the tip.

Dad'll be too tired to walk us!

Deefer