Sleeping Through the Night

We are looking good for some fruit types despite the drought

Now there's a subject close to the hearts of all the new parents struggling with sleepless nights and night feeds of the new infant. I have adopted it as a milestone in the slow progress of my recovery from the recent pneumonia. When I first came out of hospital, I had some bad nights with a ticklish, persistent chesty cough which had at me as soon as I laid down to sleep and had me reaching for the trusty Benylin "dry cough" linctus. This may be too much information, but I was also getting up to pee at about 4 a.m. and had the cough all over again when I laid back down.

The only relief then was to sit bolt upright, so I would spend the last 2-3 hours of each night sitting against the head of the bed, usually joined by the cuddle-loving Poppea (dog), until I could realistically give up and get up at 6 o'clock. As the days went by it was encouraging to see these 2 coughing sessions get  better and shorter. I started to be able to get straight to sleep at night and even started to only get the morning one from half past 4, then 5, half 5 and so on. I was looking at being able to sleep right through the night. They were clear improvements on the way to recovery.

A new one for us this year - we may have some damsons.

At the same time, I know that productive cough is good, in that it is the lungs' way of clearing out the muck and dirt of illness. In my case, this silver lining had a small cloud - this new "muck" might be a sign that I was congesting up again. I guess I also have to take on the chin an occasional bad night like last night, where the bedtime coughing just would not stop and still had me sitting upright, sometimes downstairs, till 2 o'clock in the morning. To be fair, I then got to sleep and slept right round to 8 a.m. Swings and roundabouts. No other health news.

Beautifully mowed grass.

That Help-X lad (Rafael) never did show, so we are setting up August accordingly with Elizabeth picking up all the hard work as it comes due and me stuck on 'light duties'. One of these jobs this week was the mowing, her first time using the mower. I'd heard the mower chug into life when I was sitting round the front of the house. She was well away.

By the time I came down from a good nap, the pond garden was like a billiard table. "Good Job!", I said. "It was EASY!" she commented, sounding a bit surprised. I will have to watch that I don't lose these jobs while I'm 'ill'.

The timber arrives for the chicken house roof.

I was more worried about that other big job to which I would have put the missing Help-X-er, that of helping our builder chum K-Dub re-roof the chicken house. I remember from helping K-Dub do his house roof in Sligo, those are some big baulks of timber and , certainly to start with. Charlotte and I had to stand sticking out of the top of the part built house on ladders holding the new ridge-beam up in fresh air where it would ultimately sit, while K-Dub fitted the rafters to it (and nailed them to the wall plates).

K-Dub starts cutting out the 'barge ends'

Looking up at the beam and the sky, with the moving clouds, your eye had no fixed perspective to help balance. You had to keep looking down to the horizon to prevent falling off the ladder. Quickly, K-Dub fixed enough rafters to it that they were taking its weight, and we helpers could let go of it and come down our ladders to safety.

Not to worry. K-Dub turned up today (an EARLY builder!) - he was waiting on a sink for another job, so he had today free and decided to start. He would cut through the concrete 'barge' ends (gables) to free up the rusty old corrugated iron, plus cut all the rafters to shape/length in preparation.

We are looking at a reasonable plum crop.

This roof, he said, would be nothing like as hard as the house, mainly because the ridge beam gets slung between the two gables. There is no wobbling around on ladders. He can fix it in position with battens, while he brings all the rafters to bear. He anticipates being able to do most of the job on Monday - stripping off the old 'tin', demolishing the old timbers with a chainsaw and re-assembling with new wood.

Mum out with 'The Bumbles' in the woods.

If we don't get as far as new 'tin' on Monday, we can sling the good tarpaulin back over the new wood frame overnight to keep the birds dry. Tuesday will be for making good and finishing off the ridge which gets series of 8 foot long 'V' shaped bits overlapping. We had a good day today and got most of it done, till the 110 volt transformer 'died'. Ah well. I had thought we were starting on Monday, so EVERYthing we did today was a bonus.

I found Connie's hidey-hole down behind some scrap plaster
board in the Tígín

Friends of the Blog will recall that we had 2 birds we were calling 'AWOL', rather than dead to fox. I was poking about in the Tígín and happened to pull out some scrap plaster board and I found Connie sitting on 6 (very old) eggs. She was not out in a hedge and vulnerable to the fox after all. That status is now reserved for the female Guinea Fowl.

Snouts down for some apples.

Meanwhile, Brer Fox has changed his tactics again and nailed a couple more birds. He has lately come every day, instead of every 10th day. On Weds morning at about 9, he was spotted by Elizabeth as he first appeared in 'The Woods'. She happened to be looking out of an upstairs window. She shouted, so I let the dogs out of the front door. Unfortunately, months of training told them to turn left and head for the front lawn gate. Mr Fox was to the right, so able to make good his escape.

A nice sturdy cherry tree but no cherries
this year. The drought got them.

At this time of year, 'The Woods' presents a lovely sunny bank in the morning and can be full of birds. Foxy can sneak in up the 5 acre field, nip through the hedge anywhere and ambush a sleepy bird. On Tuesday, I took up position out there with all three dogs and waited all through the 9 o'clock 'slot' thinking I'd deter him. Not that fella. He waited till I went in at 10, gave it half an hour and then bang! He snatched a young poult. He was probably watching all the time and thinking, Matt can't stay here 24/7.

R+R, Roscommon style.

I thought we'd be safe today. This fox has always left us a week or so after a successful raid. I was out there with K-Dub and Elizabeth was about too, setting up to dig the big raised bed. Surely enough human presence to deter a fox? No. He came in at about 9 a.m. and managed to snatch one of the small goslings.

Ah well, enough for this one. Maybe by the time I write again, a completed chicken house roof and no more foxy deaths. Finally, to be fair to Rafael he has apologised for his 'mistake' today in an e-mail. For what it is worth.

Home! (...but Deefer's in the Dog House)

Home in time for the pea harvest

Back home then to a rapturous welcome from the three dogs. I just fall to my knees and let them all have at me at once, sniffing and nuzzling, rather than stand, bent over while all three try to jump up for a fuss at once. They were delighted to have me back but Elizabeth had tipped me off that #1 daughter (Deefer) was in SERIOUS TROUBLE having killed our last turkey poult. Silly girl. The Woman of the House was hopping mad (she did it in front of Elizabeth despite a warning shout) and is now still "doing time" for it. If Deefer was in the Military, she'd be doing "jankers", scrubbing the toilet floor with a toothbrush or something. I know better than to undermine that by trying to do "Good Cop", so she stayed on punishment detail till late that night.

Opening up this year's "Parma" ham.

I don't know what it is about turkeys specifically - Deefer does not have a problem any more with tiny hen-chicks, ducks or goslings. Maybe it is the high pitched whistle-cheep triggering some kind of 'vermin' response rather than a 'valuable baby bird' one. She immediately goes all tense and twitchy with prey-focus, like a good sheep dog. There is no talking to her. A quick snap and bye bye poult. She has now killed all three leaving the (chicken) hen that we put them under to brood and who had since been rearing them, totally distraught. We will never trust her with turkey poults again, that's for sure.

However, I promised you a livestock round-up in this post, and quite a story it is. At Elizabeth's visits to the hospital, I must have been focusing a bit too much on the fox-attack stories. I was worried that I'd have to get home a bit quick while we still had some hens. No need to worry. We have plenty of hens and plenty of young 'followers' coming on behind. I think it was only the one we lost while I was away. When Elizabeth made the feed rounds that evening, which she does by broadcasting the grain in the yard, surrounded by chickens of all ages, turkeys, ducks, Guinea fowl, and geese and goslings, she seems to be knee-deep in birds. It is a pleasure to watch! I will try to find the photo.

In no particular order then.......

The pigs have come on well. The big female (left) is ready.

Bees: The main colony is still going strong and the swarm which I spotted had invaded the lure box is still active. Regular readers will probably know that Summer bees in Ireland, only live about 6 weeks each, dying worn out by all that hard foraging. If you get a swarm and it lasts beyond 6 weeks, then you have hit the Jackpot and snatched a viable, queen-right one. She will have been laying eggs from days of arrival (as soon as the wax-loaded workers drew her out some comb) and these new bees will be able to take over after the 6 weeks to keep the colony going. I will have to check my dates, to see if our 6 weeks are up.

Elizabeth doing 'shepherd'. She has no fear. She knows the
sheep will follow so she strides off with her bucket and, of course,
all the flock trot along behind.

Pigs: The pigs have come on leaps and bounds under the new management and the female, who was always a bit bigger than the boys, is now ready to go on that final journey. The boys we will hold back another month or so, if mainly due to lack of freezer space. We have booked her in on the Tuesday, so we now need to do all that trailer-familiarisation training thing that we do, over the weekend. It will be fun. We only want her in the trailer, but all three are likely to get enthusiastic at once. Watch this space. The freezers are completely devoid of pork now except for a small tray of (3?) trotters, so it will be nice to get some meat back in there.

The big ram lamb is on the left here. 

Sheep: Here too, two of the lambs are now good and ready and one of these, the ram lamb is also starting to mature and to 'jump' anything that moves. We dare not risk him getting the ladies pregnant, so he and one other lamb are also booked in, this time on Monday. We have decided, in the light of the uncertain health of the staff(?) to ease things a bit this winter and to try something new. The remaining 2 lambs (both ewes) will stay with us round till next Summer and then be killed as "hogget" rather than lamb. Hogget, the half-way stage from lamb to mutton, is supposed to be very tasty. We will not bring a ram in this winter, so we will not be 'doing' lambs next Spring. The girls can have a year's rest.

Young poults roosting where ever you look.

Birds: Plenty birds about, as I said, though not many eggs forthcoming. Too many birds are sitting eggs, or rearing babies, or they are babies themselves. There are 2 currently AWOL, the female Guinea fowl, and a white Sussex hen, 'Connie', we hope well hidden up from the fox, brooding eggs. We have no idea where. We see Connie occasionally, so we know she is still alive. We are knee deep in young poults, most of whom I lost track of which 'Mum' they came with while I was away.

Not ducklings any more. Silver Appleyards

I am very taken with the 'new' ducks. These, you may recall, were just a rag-bag purchase in a hurry when we needed ducks to replace the females killed by the fox. Mike the Cows had a family of Mum and 5 half grown ducklings of the "Silver Appleyard" variety. These youngsters have done really well and almost caught up with Mum in size, making it quite tricky to tell which actually is Mum. They have bonded well with our original drake, a Khaki Campbell, and now move round as a tight group of 7.

They have also taken over the pond, which they head for the centre of, as soon as danger or an intruder looms, or a dog gets too close. This good news may well be the reason why (touch wood) we have not lost any to the fox yet. I am delighted and amazed. They spend their time between the pond and the safety of the yard, sprinting between the two in a waddling 'crocodile'. They never stray out to the perimeter where Mr Fox might lurk in the long stuff. Long may it continue.

Emma and Flora start on the jungle formerly known as
"raised flower bed"

Humans: I finally got to meet the two latest Help-X lasses, Emma and Flora. I was worried I might miss them all together if the hospital stay continued into a 3rd week. They are pure delight, full of youthful vigour, happy, relaxed, and keen to work. Elizabeth had been 'minding' them and setting them their tasks, but she handed me that job as soon as I was back.

Trying out the 'chimenea' - could be quite
handy as the evenings start to cool. A lovely
gift from Steak Lady.

I have had them out cutting briars in the East Field, cleaning out the duck house and now, clearing the valuable plants from the weed-bed formerly known as "raised flower bed". This space had become so weedy that it really was simpler to dig out the good plants and start again. The plan is to dig it all clean over, then cover in weed-proof membrane and gravel, planting the (cleaned) good plants back through this, like we did to the front rose bed.

Crocosmia (Lucifer) giving us great colour
at this time of year.

That is surely enough for this one. Anything I missed, I will try to rope in for the next post.

Pay by Weight

Pay by Weight advisory letter. 

December already! Doesn't time fly when you're having fun? Tonight the post will mainly be rubbish. (No change there, I hear you heckle) - in this case the recycling and landfill stuff we put in those wheelie bins. We the customers of this service are to be moved, as promised, onto a 'pay by weight' system instead of paying just a standard 6 monthly rate.

Daffs just starting to show their noses.

My Brit readers may not be aware that 'over here' waste disposal is not done on the UK system of being included in the 'Poll Tax', so in Kent, we paid our £120 a month (or so) and trundled the bins out on the necessary day, paid to have them jet-washed if we chose and thought no more about it. Here, the "Local Property Tax" is very new and much smaller - more like €100 per YEAR and does not cover any services (as far as I know). You sign up to the local waste disposal contractor separately - in our case the man from Barna Waste spotted that we had moved in to the house and came up the drive on foot to recruit us.

The mead is still bubbling away.

We pay €175 per 6-months which covers both wheelie bins. In our case this is for recycling (cardboard, paper, tins, hard plastic (bottles and trays but not bags), metal etc, but not glass, plastic bags or crockery) in the blue bin and for landfill (black bun; everything else but not green or veg waste - we compost that - or glass bottles). Glass we take to the bottle bank (the "Drive of Shame" we call it). Wood we burn if possible.

We judge ourselves to be pretty good at this and keen to tread light footprints across the planet and we were fairly sure, when this much-talked-of change to pay by weight came along we'd be on the 'good guys' side of the fence. 'Barna Claus' might be making a list and checking it twice, but we hoped we'd be on 'nice' list. Rumour had it that new tech on the bin-lorries and smart tags on our bins would let the contractor know what weight of the blue and black bins was on each 'lift'. If we sneaked too much weight into the black bin we'd get charged more at the end of the 6 month period with the surcharge added to the next bill. We weren't 100% sure what the trigger point would be but were pretty sure we'd be below it.

Lisacul Players' next production (from the website).

Well. Now we know. A letter arrived today advising us that we will continue to be charged €175 per 6 months but that is buying us an 'allowance' of 450 kg on the black (landfill) bin across the 6 months. If we go over the 450 we will get charged at 22 cents / kg. These are fortnightly pick-ups so the 6 month amounts to 13 visits, but the limit is quite a generous 34.6 kg per bin.

The season for hearty stews with loads of root veg. This one
from one of the culled cockerels - a Roo Stoo?

We can relax. We have never even got close to 34 kg. This is confirmed by the flip side of the advice letter which helpfully tells you what you put out for them in the 6 months April 2017 to Sept 2017, in our case only 110 kg. The blue bins are not limited or surcharged (though I assume they are checked!) but it was good to know that we only put out 78 kg via that route in the test period.

Bobtail's 3 chicks at 11 weeks seem to suddenly be like small
hens, rather than babies. 

Now the quick thinkers among you, at least if they are as cynical as I am, might be thinking that, hold on, if my €175 buys me an allowance of 450 kg of waste and I have only been using a quarter of that, might there not be space in these sums for a discount for the "very good" guys? There was talk of that in the early negotiations, apparently but any whisper of this costing less than the €175 has vanished from the Barna Waste communications. Ah well.

Meanwhile, everything else is chugging along. Bobtail's 'babies' seem to have changed overnight into small hens and left behind all traces of chick-hood. Stumpy's three (9 weeks) are not far behind. The white hen, Connie, is now settled happily in her broody-cage where she can get to food and water but none of her sisters can helpfully drop eggs in and add to her workload.

Stumpy with 2 of her youngsters. 

I need to make sure there are no hen eggs in there because if she hatched one of those at 21 days, she might get off the nest with it and abandon the nearly-'cooked' duck eggs. After a week this is not a problem, because any hen eggs dumped in would hatch after the ducklings which is not ideal but would not harm the ducks.

Connie's broody-cage. She is behind the
'galv' bucket which is on top of the black
tool box. 

I also finally got to pruning the willow hedge/arch, which is now in its 4th year so is producing some pretty big, thick unwanted branches.

Pruning the willow arch.

This is quite a major undertaking and produces a big pile of willow 'sticks'.

Nice and cosy. Connie sitting on 5 duck eggs. 

Enough for this one, anyway. Good night all.

Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord...

Stir up Sunday

A blog post with at least some of those words in it is by now almost an annual tradition. A blog of mystery and unpredictability, this is obviously not. We do love this process, though and can think of no finer way of creating the 'pud' and the Christmas cake. Off then on a special shopping mission on the Saturday (25th) and some of the dried fruit doused in Jameson overnight.

Hours of fun, too, on the Sunday adding final ingredients, mixing and doing the obligatory stirs before tipping the mixes into their respective cookware, lined with grease-proof or covered in same and foil, tied down with string like Mamma used to make. Now cooked too - 8 hours gentle blupping for the pud - and left to rest for the required amount of weeks. The icing of the cake is my department - I have a cunning plan but need to source some coloured icing, which could be tricky.

Temporary fences allow the sheep to access all areas. 

Friends of the Blog following our hosting of local gardening journalist, Paul Kirwan may have been expecting our story to appear in the Roscommon Herald today but unfortunately we got 'bumped'. Paul had had a story about his involvement in Golf Course "gardening" sitting on the back burner for weeks and the paper decided to go with that one this week. 'We' are therefore postponed to next week. More on that next week, maybe.

As bad as it got slush-wise.

We had a short burst of winter over the weekend. Nothing impressive or photogenic, just lots of raw, biting wind and wet wintry showers. No real frost either, so we are very sloppy under foot and pinned down to indoor jobs.

The ever reliable duck eggs. 

Rather bizarrely, our white Sussex hen, 'Connie', has decided to go broody. We have no idea why she thinks it is Spring but just maybe she has worked out that by doing the broody thing she can sit in a lovely warm nest in a shed and be given waiter-service on the food and water, protected from piratical 'sisters' trying to drop more eggs in on her by the cage I have built around her little hidey hole.

Not so much 'frozen' as covered in a
layer of part-melted slush. The pond
goes gun-metal grey.

I have, though, stitched her up. Not wanting any more chickens just for the moment, I have slipped 5 duck eggs under her. She will not be able to check on her diary but her instinctive Day-21 will come and go. Duck eggs take 24-28 days at least to incubate. Day 28 will put her right on Christmas Day so, with luck, our guests will get to see cute, new-hatched ducklings. Chickens will generally just sit tight, unaware of any problem and not visibly concerned that the chickens look a bit 'funny'. You do then need to take the babies off the Mum by about Day 10 because the Mums get quite upset that their babies will not learn to scratch and peck and do not try to stay dry. We'll have to see how that goes.

The turkeys are still thriving and impressing us with their size. We reared three because in previous years we have given them to family, one going to Sparks for a special dinner he used to do for a gang of his Dublin builder mates. Sparks is no longer in that world and now lives outside the capital, so tells us he doesn't need one, and neither, apparently, do any of the Silverwood gang so we have three turkeys and only ourselves and our guests to satisfy. Turkey for Easter anyone? St Patrick's Day?

Finally just a couple of pics for the usual reason, that I have them. First up, Lizzie. When you are wiped out by a cold and chilled to the bone, wrap up well in the 'onesie' and under a blanket. If that's not warm enough chuck a couple of cats and a dog on the bed too. Toasty.

Next up the two grown-up boy-cats, Blue and Soldier who have lately been fighting a bit over the best roosts and nests. Here they both grabbed the top of the book-case under the stairs, with their heads against the woodwork in a quiet stand off. Anywhere you can climb, I can climb higher? In the end Soldier blinked first and jumped down, leaving Blue to stretch out luxuriously across the case-top with a rather smug look on his face. The status quo is restored. For now.

Connie, Big Red, Beebs and Stumpy makes 19

Beeblebrox with her 7 chicks

We are suddenly tripping over baby chicks everywhere. Awash, we are. Readers of recent blog posts will already know about our first two broodies, the white Sussex, 'Connie' who is now confidently marching around with her three and Big Red who has four. Big Red has taken to hanging about the yard with hers waiting to pounce on either Liz or I hoping for the next hand out of my hard-boiled egg mixture. She does not need to be doing that for too long - the babies only get egg in their commercial crumb for the first week.

When the 'Parma' ham runs out, boil up
the bones for bacon and bean soup. 

Next up we were expecting our chicken-with-a-gammy-foot, 'Stumpy' who was sitting on five eggs in the proper official nest boxes in the main coop. She was coming up to Day 21 today (7th). Before she could get there, though, Connie wandered off with hers one evening intent on bedding down in the mint patch on our kitchen garden. "Oh no you don't", we said, "Mr Fox will get you!"

Not very common... a DUCK double yolker. 

We went to rescue her (and chicks) into a kitten basket and found to our surprise that she had nestled in alongside our black Araucana-cross hen, Beeblebrox. But what was SHE doing there?

Empress and Pride at 4 months

Beebs, incidentally, is named for the two-headed man character in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Being part Araucana she has that weird feathery top-knot on her head, looking like a 2nd head, hence the name. Anyway, what she was doing was demonstrating to us very neatly and shamingly that we are not the close, detailed protectors of our flock that we probably should be.

She was sitting on about a dozen eggs and may have been broody out there for days. I had been shutting "all" the birds up each night without spotting that she was absent. No roll call. Just a quick visual check of lots of full perches and rafters. Ooops. But then, we now have a bird sitting on 12 eggs who is "out there" vulnerable to foxes etc. Do we try to move her plus the nest indoors? Do we try to build a fox-proof cage around her? Either would have been OK but may have caused her to get upset and desert the nest. We have moved nests before and the chicken just frets to get back out to where the eggs WERE. It is heartbreaking.

Empress nailing a chunk of yellow melon. 2 for €2 in SuperValu
at present. We can afford that!

Rather recklessly (irresponsibly?) we decided to risk her out there. It is a quiet little corner surrounded by a thicket of mint, tight against the wall of the Tígín deep inside the kitchen garden where I can not imagine a randomly patrolling fox would bother to go. We worried about this decision long and hard. We then stressed about this each night and especially on Wednesday when we were both woken at 03:00 by a vixen screaming very close - possibly in the lane out front. When it started raining we propped 2 long sheets of corrugated over her like a lean-to.

Well, long story short, we have, so far, got away with it. 2 days ago Liz was taking the air out in the kitchen garden when she heard loud cheeping from the mint patch. We had a hatch, only TEN days after we found the nest. The quick-witted among you will spot that this means she had been 'missing' at night and broody for 11 days before we knew anything about it. Embarrassing. She now had 7 little balls of fluff shadowing her about. There was, briefly, an 8th. I found one egg part-open with a struggling wet baby still part inside, but later this poor mite was stiff, cold and still wet. There had actually been 15 eggs and only one proved to be infertile, so Rooster Gandalf is obviously doing a good job even if we aren't!

Then yesterday, right on schedule, our 4th and final broody, 'Stumpy' nailed it with loud cheeping coming from under her skirts. What I always do for these new mums is try them on a bit of chick feed. They lean down to peck it and make that bass-y "Food kids!" clucking and if there are any mobile babies under there, these will generally pop their heads out and start learning to peck. I could see Stumpy was sitting on at least 3.

Back on that digger yesterday. This is that mini-mountain of
good topsoil we needed to barrow away to the new raised beds.

Today she came off the nest, job done and I was delighted to see she had hatched all five eggs. 100%. Go Stumpy! So we have 3+4+7+5=19 babies at the moment, more babies than we had birds a month or so ago!

Focaccia loaf, first knock-back

What else is new? I have been back out to Sligo at the diggering. The pressure is on. 'We' need to move that pile of topsoil to make way for the '804' gravel sub-base which will then need laying and 'whacking' in time for the 3 concrete lorries to arrive, scheduled Saturday week to pour those shed-bases. It's all go over there.

Sourdough loaf.

I have been messing around in the absence of Lizzie (she's down in Laois minding Auntie Mary) with some more sour dough stuff. My 5th attempt at a standard loaf came out quite well - no scorching, no excess flour on top, no 'scars' where I had let the dough stick to the tea-towel.

For relaxation I broke out the 'self sufficiency' book on bread we have (James and Dick Strawbridge) and had a go at their 'focaccia' recipe with sea salt and rosemary. I added 35 g of my sourdough starter to the dried yeast in the recipe and got a really good rise out of it.

Final prove, then bake to a golden brown and brush lightly
with olive oil for a gloss finish. 

You stick a mini-forest of rosemary sprigs into the top of this for aroma and aesthetic reasons. It was a thing of beauty. I will post a pic in the next blog. Was delicious too with a rather 'fusion food' Lancashire Hotpot main course.