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This little mite hatches yesterday (we think) and manages to get
out of the nest. We find him cheeping frantically and waddling
round the shed floor. Fear not, all ends well. 

A Birth is Announced! Best news, I expect, for this post is that we finally have a hatch of goose eggs, this a good 2 weeks after the "due date" for the original eggs (27th May). The reason for this is that the 3 Mum/Auntie geese keep leppin' in and out of the nest after #1 goes broody and the eggs you set get trampled. These will be more recent eggs. Our goose breeding is definitely chaotic.

Curator-ing the @IrelandsFarmers Twitter account

This little mite announced his presence with frantic loud cheeping you could hear across the yard even through the excited honking of 4 adult geese, He'd got out of the nest which means a 4-5 inch "fall" out of the former concrete cattle-trough in which they nest and was a bit lost running round the floor, not trying very well to get back into the nest. It could have ended badly. We had one gander one year so annoyed by the appearance of this new, noisy, scurrying "rat" that he grabbed it by a wing and threw it across the shed, badly damaging it.

But not THESE parents. They lower their necks and chunter at him encouragingly from close range so that he stands up to his full 4 inches of height and wobbles his head proudly. The gander (Gorgeous George) has amazed all of us by being even better a dad than the ladies are mums or aunts. They get distracted, he stays focused. All 4 would protect the little fella with their lives and get very excited and angry at anyone who comes near. That was my problem. If I needed to rescue him back to the nest I knew I would need the chainsaw helmet, gloves, a coat with thick sleeves and so on. A relief then at 6 pm ish to see him back in the nest and now accompanied by a sibling. I can sleep easy and undamaged! Wish the little ones luck.

The Hubbards at Day 5 are growing a-pace. They have lost the
spherical look and already have white wing feathers.

This, though, seems to have been a week where we have both "worked" for hours without actually achieving anything around the farm, not a stroke of weeding, mowing or tidying. For Liz there has been the normal working week plus all the politics to follow, both in the US (Comey's testimony to the Senators) and in the UK (May's snap election and subsequent need to get into bed with the DUP).

Potential fruit #1 : Cherries

Liz always stays up for the results and normally takes the day after as holiday to sleep and recover. This time she was denied the holiday by boss John who suddenly had a funeral to attend, so she had to go in "even if she slept for most of it". The office must be manned and the phones answered at least from 09:30 to 13:30, Mon-Fri. In the end she gave up on the  voting coverage at 03:30, slept a while, worked the morning, then caught up by sleeping from 3 till 6 pm. There's dedication.

My 'job' was to be 'Curator' of the @IrelandsFarmers Twitter account, the voice of Twitter-using Irish farming for the week from Monday morning (5th June) to Sunday evening, tomorrow. Most of my readers, I know, have nothing to do with Twitter even if they are regulars on Facebook. It is seen as too 'ephemeral', sound-byte-ish, fleeting and short lived. You post your comment of 140 characters max and if no-one's paying attention it vanishes down the screen quickly replaced by the next Tweet. It is seen as the medium of smart, office, city types clip-clopping across marble floors in their heels, their thumbs and noses glued to the ever-on expensive smart phones and 'tablets'. It is used by vacuous, brainless celebrities and, of course, Donald Trump

Potential fruit #2 :Plums

Stick with it, though, and you can find sensible, intelligent chatter within and between groups of like-minded souls, whether your thing is politics, news, Ireland or more specialist subjects like farming or even smallholdering. When this happens, someone will generally decide that the subject "needs an account" on Twitter so they set one up and start trawling for members to join them. In this case they give the helm of the account to a different person each week, the "Curator". Friends of the blog may recall that I have curated the @smallholderIRL account 3 times now and I love having the extra following (numbering thousands of people all round the world) for the week with whom to share my news, pictures, anecdotes and banter.

Potential fruit #3 : "Irish Peach" variety of apple

All well and good. Small Holdering is the home turf and I'd know a good few people on that group through Facebook or in real life. I am happy to go on that one and strut my stuff, reasonably confident of a sympathetic reception and not too much "trolling" (idiots who are just out to argue and spoil the chat). But then I was invited to curate the 'proper' farmers' one @IrelandsFarmers. I accepted but if I'm honest I was a bit nervous. How would they accept me, this wannabee farmer, blow-in, smallholder and a Brit besides?

Potential fruit #4 : (pea sized) Peaches

I needn't have worried - it has gone really well with 95% of the stuff getting favourable comment ('Likes' and 'Re-tweets') and only the odd one completely blanked or ignored. I have covered a good range of stuff - the holding here and its stock, equipment, activities as well as what I like to do when NOT farming and some anecdotes on disasters and triumphs. One post I was very pleased with had me showing that picture of the house circa 1900 alongside one of me sitting out front on the mini-horse and cart. As I go to press I have just looked in and that one has been seen by 6713 people, 93 have said they 'like' it and 16 have shared it on ("re-tweeted" it). I seem to have done OK and I am delighted. I have to hand the tiller back at 6pm tomorrow. It is quite tiring and you are tied to the PC (no smart-phone for me!) frequently so I will not be sad to finish but I guess the 'owner' will happily have me back when the rota comes round again.... next year, maybe.

A poor blackbird gets dismantled overnight
in the new kitchen. We suspect feline
involvement. 

What else have we been at? I was out at the archery coach's place  putting the cover back on our enormous "gala tent" (mini marquee) ready for the summer activities, helped only by the lady of the house (Niamh) and a friend (Karl, an Austrian lad). Hard work in quite a brisk wind but very enjoyable and, like the curating, good to get it done.

We do get to eat out sometimes!

For Liz tonight a "Mystery night out" for the Lisacul Players, the amateur dramatics group still a-glow from their very successful performance of "Cupid Wore Skirts" a few months back. They had no idea where they were being taken, only that they had to show up at the village cross-roads by quarter past 7 a bit glammed up. One of the lads was organising it and he was keeping very tight lipped. Small huddles of actors formed (plus Liz and Director Tom C) frantically trying to work it out from the time, the need for €20 as a share of the mini-bus hire and their knowledge of 'Derek' (organiser) where they might be bound. One actor was praying that he'd not take them anywhere with Country music - she can't abide that, she said.

Well. Now they know. I have just had a text from Liz to say they are at a place called "The Oarsman" in Carrick on Shannon. She will no doubt fill us all in on the standard of the place's catering and the presence or absence of good aul' boys slapping their thighs, plucking their banjos and shouting 'Yeeee Harrr!' Y'all have the biggest time now!

Curator (The Voice)

Possibly our new species for 2016 - ducks. To be more
precise, Muscovy ducks.

This week I am wired up to the internet like some teenager, thumbs glued to the touch screen and eyes taking in the feed of 'tweets' racing up the screen, oblivious to any real life going by, neglecting my duties, grumbling when interupted and asked to do chores....... Well, OK, not really; you can imagine I'd not actually last 5 minutes like that. I am, though, as predicted, this week's 'curator' of the Irish smallholders' Twitter account (@smallholdersIRL), the (Twitter) voice of Irish smallholdering, which I took over on Sunday night from the first ever 'curator', our friend Margaret from the Old Farm pig-management training courses in Tipperary.

The Goat Herd Registration docs finally arrive.

She'd done a good job and attracted 160-odd new followers and there was some excellent lively discussion and sharing, so I was a bit nervous of this responsibility and anxious that I might not do as well. In for a penny, though. I am, after all a fairly waffly and garrulous old sod and, after 4 years, a little bit knowledgable as to the ins and outs of smallholdering. We have worked through a lot of the common problems and we are still here. We knew that we could dish out advice with the best of them so I cracked on and seem to be well received and reasonably popular curator. Well... I was. At present Twitter is having a sneezing fit globally and users the world over are in and out like a fiddler's elbow suffering "internal server errors".

We decided to vac-pak that haggis to see could we simulate
the boil it would normally get in the chunk of sheep gut.

I am trying to be a little bit organised and 'themed' about my posts. Day 1 was an introduction and showing the readers ('followers') around the place, getting to know a few of them and letting them know a bit about me and our set up here. Today, when I can get it working, is a day for advising newbies and wannabes, people who might only be planning to make the leap into smallholdering and are still researching, dreaming and budgeting, of things they might want to think about and include in a realistic budget. If we knew then what we now now.... that kind of thing. Things like the usefulness of out-buildings and a cattle-race, the likely cost of getting connected to mains water and electricity, septic tanks, a trailer and tow hitch for the car and so on.

Breakfast of Champions - home made (pork) rillette

You are, of course welcome to go take a peek into Twitter and watch all this go through but if you are doing that go sooner rather than later. As I've already said, Twitter is a fast moving blizzard of short comments. Leave it an hour and the 'tweet' you are looking for is pages and pages of scrolling down the screen. Ephemeral is the word. More on this when I've done my week (and when Twitter is actually working, of course!) and I have a clearer idea of how good a curator I proved to be. Margaret loved her week and is quite missing it now; lots of time suddenly on her hands, she tells me.

Billy nose dives into the ivy branches.

A bit of a catch up then while Twitter is having its hissy-fit. Here the 2 guest-goats have settled in well. Nanny Óg does well out in her big field and happily follows me home to the shed of an evening. There have been no problems between her and the ewes. Billy has eaten himself out of house and home - there is not a leaf of browse (ivy, hawthorn or herbs) left in the pig run which he can get at. I had to phone his 'Mum' today to see if he was allowed ivy - I have whole forests of that on the other side of the patch which I could bring him but I needed to make sure it was not toxic. I remember our first sheep used to love it but I was advised not to let them have too many flowers or berries. Well, it turns out Billy can work away, so I have started cutting down great boughs of the stuff and dragging them across to hang them on his fence and he is in there, nose first with a huge smile on his face. At last! Someone who knows what a goat likes to eat! Sheep 'crunch' and slices of bread? I ask you!

Nanny Óg creating a Savannah browse-line
under our spruce trees.

I was saying a few posts back that we are quite good at the food date-rotation, using up the left-overs and minimising kitchen waste. This week we had a classic example. I had slow-cooked a chunk of pork loin (like 5 thick chops still welded together) in cider with apple to great success. We could not eat it all so a lot of the sauce and some of the meat and fat were left over. Liz took the sauce, enhanced with garlic and more apple, cream and mustard and turned some Hubbard chicken thighs into the kind of meal that had me proposing all over again. The remaining meat, shredded and combined with some of the apple-y fat became a rather gorgeous 'rillette' which I am using up as breakfasts on toast. Anything else went into a stock for a risotto and some soup. Waste not want not.

The big pond has fallen gin-clear in the cold weather

Amusingly we currently have the freezers so successfully loaded with portions of left overs that we were worried we'd not fit the lamb meat from Dylan into them and Liz has issued one of her periodic embargoes on eating 'stage 1' food - raw meat, raw veg, raw offal, shop bought stuff like frozen pizzas and so on. We must use up these portion pots and the cold-roast meat packs. Last year I was able to keep up with this as I would deliberately target them when ever Liz was away. It was nicer to eat a 'ready' meal, than to try roasting a great big joint and only use up one portion of it. Lately, though, Liz has not been on any of her away-missions, so we've been eating (and cooking) together.

Poppea in Jack Russel mode. No skirt. No feathering on the feet

We got fed up with the dogs always being muddy and wet and bringing the farm indoors, taking ages to dry out even when they lay in front of the fire. In Kent we had always clipped the westies in September and then let them go shaggy right round to my Birthday in April, so they'd be warm on their winter walks. I always cut them, too, in my (sorry) imitation of the Westie show-dog cut, big heads, skirts under the belly and great feathery feet like a cart horse. It is the skirts and feet, in particular, which pick up and then retain the mud like an old scrap of soggy carpet strapped to the dog's belly.

Pussy willow starting

This winter we reckon it has been mild enough that they could well do without, so at the weekend we ganged up on the little skanks. I took each dog in turn out to the Utility Room where I battled through the matted mess with the dog clippers, whipping off belly skirts and paring away all footy excesses. We are calling this the 'Jack Russell Cut'. As I brought each dog back indoors in turn Liz was there in swimming cozzie to grapple them upstairs for the multi-shampoo shower of their lives. Poppea, who was foolish enough to go out after this and roll in something, came back in as Liz was still in her dressing gown and about to take her own shower - she got it all again, much to her disgust. 2 showers in one day, Pops! In fact that day was one of those rare ones where all the planets align - the dogs were clean and dry, we had had showers too, Liz had blitzed the bedroom with hoover and broom AND we had changed all the bed linen. 2 people went clean and dry to bed with 3 clean dogs into a clean bed in a clean room - LUXURY. That does not happen that often on a smallholding in Roscommon in a wet winter. It was warm, dry, mudless, gritless, dog footprintless, damp dog-smell-less bliss.