A Visit From The Dans

Welcome aboard, Dan and Dan.

As promised, a post mainly about the current visit from Friends of the Blog, 'Dan and Dan(ielle)', a.k.a. "Mr and Mrs Dan". These two have been here before several times, but normally as a rest cure (though once Dan came alone, to write up a Masters thesis). This time they wanted to support us in our hour of need for volunteer labour, so were determined to be more like Help-X students than holiday makers. Most welcome and huge thanks, Dan and Dan. It had been lovely to see them again.

All three dogs adopt Danielle on the black sofa. Here, Deefer
seems to be doing a 'High 5'

They flew in to Knock on a very early flight on Wednesday having been woken up in Milton Keynes by an 0430 alarm. They hired a car at Knock; previously they have brought their own car across on the ferry but that loses them a whole day at either end, travelling.

Danielle on the mower. It was a bit random, but eventually the
mown patches got joined up.

I wasn't at all sure how the 'volunteering' would work out. They are city types with no garden and no experience of the physical jobs we might need doing round here on the small-holding; mowing, splitting logs and so on. Also, these two are family and good friends, so I did not want them to fail at anything or get upset, so I wondered if I might have to be a very gentle 'boss'.

Team effort alternating the mower pushing with the bag empties

In the event, I need not have worried. They are also enviably full of youth, strength and fitness, so they went at every task with enthusiasm, power and increasing skill and speed. They have LOADS done. Despite the early start and long travelling time, the first afternoon had them master the mower and mow the entire pond-garden.

Refreshments near Westport.

Day 2 and we all woke up to heavy drizzle, so mowing was off and the pair decided to go touristing, taking their hire car off to Westport, a look at Achill Island and some of the twisty, mountainy country roads of the "Wild Atlantic Way". They stopped, of course, at the odd pub for refreshments. Some of the pictures in this blog post are theirs, taken on their phones.

Dan getting tight into the edges by the living willow arch/tunnel

Today, then, back onto the treadmill with more work. They really got stuck in; Dan was still mowing at 5 pm! Other jobs today included breaking up the messy stack of old roof timbers from the chicken house into single clean lengths.

Attacking the pile of old roof beams.

This had been cut up as it stood, with all the 'A' shapes and 'T' joints intact, making for a very untidy pile. With Dan on the nail-bar and lump hammer and Danielle putting all the bits together like a giant jig-saw puzzle, the big random heap was quickly re-assembled as a neat efficient stack up on 'skids' out of the wet and flat of top for easy sheeting from the rain.

Dan goes lumberjack on the old hawthorn
hedge

One day I will be fit enough to zoom round it with the chain saw and reduce it to 16" lengths for the range. I pray! The chain saw is one piece of kit I do NOT let the volunteers play with.

The next job was unusual and, I suspect, a unique one locally. Friends of the Blog may recall that we have a decapitated hawthorn hedge up between the front lawn and the 'Primrose Path' and that we also have a ewe (Myfanwy) with an itchy patch in her middle back which we are just now starting to cure. Among the ewe's favourite scratching posts are some of the "overhanging" limbs of the old hedge which she can get right under and itch upwards.We want to put the sheep back on the front lawn (to save the mowing) but we needed to cut off all these offending limbs before we let Myfanwy anywhere near them, or she'd just open up all the nice new tender skin again.

Feast fit for a heart-patient? Don't worry, I
reined it in a bit!

Obviously, this was also a visit by cherished cousins, so the catering dept has also swung into full, 5-star, envelope pushing action. There has been duck in Guinness sauce followed by choc-cake and home made lemon ice cream. There has been a superb, creamy, cidery 'Somerset Pork'. There has been a gorgeous fish pie and a lunch time version of the full Irish (breakfast) fry. These have been well accompanied by interesting salads and side dishes.

Somerset Pork.

Danielle is a cider drinker, so she has been working her way through some local small-brewery, artisan type ciders and Dan loves the local "red ale" style beers, so he's been ranging around those.  I'm still on restricted fluids, so I get to taste these goodies but can only look at these pints getting poured and quaffed. One day......

Good Night all.

Ah well. That is surely enough for this one. Dan and Dan are here with us tomorrow and then head off back for their flight home on Sunday, so more on the  visit in Tuesday's post. Good luck now.

The Struggling Writer in his Garret

Welcome aboard, Dan

We accommodate all flavours of holiday maker here. Our current visitor is (Mr) Dan of  'Dan and Dan' fame, frequent visitors and Friends of the Blog, married last year on that cruise ship off Italy. 'Mrs Dan' is famously the more enthusiastic about our livestock and was here with her Mum (Cousin Cathy), if you recall, a few weeks back, narrowly missing our ewe 'Rosie' having her twins and failing to see any ducklings hatch.

The best kind of 'struggling writer' came
bearing gifts. Thanks Dan!

This Spring, the couple had decided to visit separately because Mrs Dan wanted to treat her Mum to a birthday break, while Dan's visit needed to give him a week of total peace and quiet in which to write up a thesis as part of his final marks on his University "Masters" degree.

The writer in his garret. Also known as our
spare bedroom.

The 'Uni' in this case is London School of Economics, the Masters is in Business Management and the Thesis is in "Supply Chain Resilience" That subject is one close to our hearts as it was my bread and butter for most of my working life but is also currently quite topical and timely following well publicised failures in Danish shipping giant Maersk and in my own company, DHL's abortive attempt to take over chicken distribution for KFC. The former was as a result of a massive cyber 'hack'. The latter was just a dog's breakfast comedy of errors.

Emerging now and again for food.

So, Dan is here for a short week, closeted in the spare room where we have borrowed him a desk and given him a chair and even 2 turkey feathers for quills. He works away in 4 hour+ bursts emerging only occasionally for tea and stopping (otherwise) for just his meals and to sleep. He has 6000 words of brilliance to create by Tuesday and has already done a lot of taped interviewing with people in the business, which he is able to upload to a voice-recognition website which transcribes the audio and gives it back to you as text. Sometimes the text is even quite accurate but he still has to spend hours proof reading it to make sure his thesis makes sense. At other times he has to go on conference calls for his 'proper job'; this course is only really an allowed study-sabbatical. He also works well into the evening after supper, so we leave him alone for three hours or so when we nip off to the latest play rehearsal. He is getting on OK and is still on schedule to complete by Tuesday.

A tangle of lambs round his legs as Dan tries
to line up the bottle on the correct lamb's mouth.

He allowed himself one little 10 minute distraction when he decided to tease Mrs Dan by being caught on camera, bottle feeding the little ewe-lamb which she was so fed up to have missed being born. We were a bit concerned that this could be the end of a short but happy marriage but Dan happily pinged them across to Mrs Dan on 'messenger' and within seconds (he said) drew out the expected jokey/angry phone call.

The brilliant play-set created by the guys at the CE scheme.

Other than that, life has been all about The Play which is now getting scarily close. Dress Rehearsal is only 2 days away on Monday evening, and the performances are on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. By now, of course, they have the set built on the stage and everyone is mightily impressed and delighted with it. It features a 'Rayburn' style range made from the real, metal front and top but built to a wooden carcass as well as an old dresser for the 'good china' which had to be given 2 new doors made to look in keeping. Elizabeth stepped from 'Producer' to 'props' dept for an afternoon to knock out some matching curtains and cushion covers out of an old duvet cover, on the sewing machine.

The Players rehearsing a scene from "Anyone Can Rob a Bank"

The Lisacul Players are now in parachutists "ground-rush" mode, cramming in rehearsals every evening and even a couple to fine tune one of the acts on Sunday afternoon. No spoilers on this blog, of course, suffice to say it is all frantic hard work as the deadline looms, but "The Show will go on" and I'm predicting it will be a superb, funny success which will delight the audience and leave the team all exhausted but elated. Watch this space for progress reports.

Liz jointing up a turkey.

(Typing is interrupted at this point by the Guinea Fowl kicking off their alarm, and me letting the dogs loose just as the Heavens opened and a huge hail storm comes down. The dogs may or may not have found a scent-trail but they give up half way across the 5-acre field and race back to get under cover from the hail. Their route home crosses that of dozens of hens and roosters fleeing for cover too and I even saw the whole flock of ewes and lambs racing for the shelter. If Brer Fox was indeed on site and snatched a bird, then I suppose we should leave him welcome to that one.)

Clearing out the 'office' under the stairs.

...Which rather distracted me from my train of thought. What else is new? With the loss of my trusty old PC, the house lost the need for my own 'garret' - the little cubby hole under the stairs which had become an office and glory-hole. The Interior Design Department feel there are far better (and more attractive) uses for this space including, possibly, a comfy chair for herself, so the area is being dismantled for all my bodged shelving and the accumulated junk found better homes (or consigned to the wheelie bins in the best tradition of de-cluttering).

The late Cathy Chapman, featured in the
previous post (plus dog, Kes)

I suspect that is enough for now.

A Sloppy Mess

Marzipanning the cake. 

After the excitement of our snow and the beautiful pictures that were possible, the thaw was always going to be a come down. The snow is all gone now and the melt water is sitting on the surface, waiting to drain away, turning our grass and any soft paths into a sloppy mess. The ducks don't help, of course, with their keenness to dibble about in any puddle with their bills, sifting for grubs and worms in the slop. Areas that should be green are brown. We need it all to drain, which does not usually take too long, and then for a short, sharp rain shower to wash the grass blades clean.

This loaf had me worried this morning, but seems to have come
 good. When I first went to knead it after the overnight "sponge"
stage, it seemed cold, dead and dense. It then rose sluggishly, but
I had no need to fret. Looks and feels OK now.

This may well be the shortest post ever as we are literally just getting ready for the start of Christmas visitors. Coming this weekend we have old Friends of the Blog, formerly "Dan and Dan". Dan and Dan(ielle) are now famously wed on a cruise ship off Italy earlier in the year, so maybe we should call them Mr and Mrs Dan. They arrive tomorrow for a quick break but we will get them involved in decorating the Christmas Tree and sharing in our glühwein, so it should start to feel like Christmas for all of us.

That half-deer still giving us some useful joints - this a half leg
of venison, up for roasting tomorrow for the guests. 

With Liz away and the snow coming and then thawing, the dogs, cats and I have inevitably walked a fair amount of wet into the house. We can train humans to wipe their feet on the rugs and to take off their boots at the door (well, most of the humans, anyway!), but cats come and go through the cat flap at will and the dogs are so pleased to be back indoors and have eyes only for their dog-treat ('sweeties' here), so if you can get them to put each paw down on the rug even once in passing, you are doing well. It's a never ending battle.

A new way with belly pork. Mini 'porchetta'

A quick sorry update on those duck eggs we have (had) in Sue's incubator. They were keeping us waiting - a week ago we could see little feet kicking about in the 'candling' light beam but then day 28 rolled round to 35, 36 and now 37. Sadly they have now failed to hatch and are dead in their shells. It happens. They would be VERY late season, laid in November, so probably the drake and ducks are not doing their 'mating season' with the required amount of spring in their step. Their various contributions were not in peak of health and these babies were never going to be. Thanks for trying, Sue. We will give it another go in Spring. We have another string to our bow, of course - there are 5 duck eggs under very late broody 'Connie', which come to Day 28 on Christmas Day. Perhaps a real bird might fare better than the incubator. Watch this space.

A 'Swiss roll' of belly meat with inter-leaved herbs, all rolled
up in the skin. 

Meanwhile, we have found a new use for those big squares of belly pork. Bacon rashers and fried strips of belly are all well and good, and Black Spring's Nan's recipe is Divine, but we saw on the Internet, some people making a mini 'porchetta'. Our go-to You-Tube butcher, the 'Scott Rea Project', shows how to take a foot-square chunk of the belly, lay it flat on the chopping board and slice through it horizontally so that you can open two 'pages' like a book.

Nom nommetty nom!

Don't cut all the way through - leave yourself a 'hinge' at one end. You now have a sheet of 'meat' 24" by 12". Smear all over this sheet a mix of as many herbs and flavours as you fancy - we used salt, garlic, rosemary, thyme, sage, fennel seed and lemon zest. We strip all the stems out of the herbs and use just the softer leaves. Now roll the whole thing up leaving the skin outside and facing out, and do your best butchers' knots to make it keep shape. Score the skin all over to help the crackling. Sprinkle with salt or oil according to preference.

We served our porchetta with steamed kale (2 varieties), carrots
and white rice. 

Pre-heat oven to 230ºC (very hot!). Put the roll on a rack sitting out of the roasting dish. Have a mug's worth of water in the dish to stop the worst smoking and spitting. Cook for 20 minutes on hot, then turn oven down to 150ºC and cook for another 3 hours or so. Take joint from oven, cover with foil and a tea towel and rest for a good 20 mins to relax, while you do the veg. Ours was lovely and...oh!... the crackling. Thank you Scott Rea and the rest of the Internet pork-chefs. Good eating.

One Out, One In

The 'Wimmin'. Left to right, Cousin Cathy, Steak Lady and Lizzie

It is a bit like hand-over day at a guest house here today with one guest vacating the spare bedroom and, following a quick blitz by the 'Housekeeping' dept, a 2nd installed. On the way out was Mum in Law (Friend of the Blog, known as 'Steak Lady' here) who'd been up for a couple of nights and was now off home.

Cathy and Liz (snr.)

Creature comforts - Deefer lying in a patch of sunlight while
leaning her head on the warm lit range. 

Fuller's London Pride.

Collected from her Knock Flight at lunchtime today was Liz's cousin Cathy, a first time guest. Cathy was Liz's closest cousin when they were all young children together and 2 families briefly lived in the one house in Portmarnock. They are still the best of friends but Cathy is a busy lady (all that taxi-ing teenagers about that all Mothers are familiar with) and had not, till now, been persuaded to make the trip to Ireland to visit us in our new abode.

Regular visitor Danielle (as in Dan and Dan, recently wed on a cruise ship) is Cathy's eldest and Jacob, who visited recently (April 15th) is her 2nd child and oldest son. Cathy recently had a Birthday and Danielle plus Jake conspired to arrange her flights over here and time off the home duties to spring us on her as a nice surprise present. Cathy only found out yesterday that the true destination was here and the rest is history.

Bee hive.

We love that when asked by her children what she'd do here she said, quite simply "I am going to Stop!" Not stop as in stay here (though I think that is even a possibility!) , stop as in take your foot off the accelerator, stop fussing, stop worrying about anybody else, stop with the child-taxi service and all the demands of busy parenthood. All that stuff is catered for by the kids' Dad or the older 2 'children'. We love that we can provide the sort of accommodation where guests can really relax, no demands on them, lie in if they want, sleep during the day and so on. Cathy is surely a deserving case. It will be interesting to see whether she really does slow down. Liz is currently showing her how to make Mayonnaise. I guess that's a form of relaxation.

Part of Liz's Birthday 'haul', this metal and glass owl (and a
frog) for the outside walls. 

Less relaxing and rather more alarming a story comes to us from a friend and nearby smallholder (no names, no pack drill and some 'detail' redacted to protect the innocent and guilty. No pictures, obviously). This lady went out to milk her goats a couple of days ago and was attacked, badly and without warning by her Billy-goat. She was badly hurt - rammed, knocked down several times, stomped on and bitten.

Mum on the phone.

The boy intended to do her some serious damage. He managed to bruise her all round the arms and chest and gave her some bad scratches by slamming her into sharp edges. It started when she unbolted the door to go in for the first milking-Nanny and he slammed the door back past her so that he and all 3 Nannies got out into the yard. It was during her attempts to round up the Nannies that he kept coming at her. It seemed to go on for an hour, she says, though she has no idea really how long.

An interesting birthday present - a DNA testing kit.

She talked me through what she could remember - they'd gone all round and about and between a car, trailer, 2 wheel barrows, pallet sized water butts, stacks of tyres and a fruit cage frame. The Billy had moved the trailer in his efforts to get at her and banged it into the car. Eventually, scrabbling back up from lying on her back between two water butts on the gravel with the goat towering over her with "mad eyes", she was able to grab a pitchfork and manouvre him back into the shed door. There he went all quiet.

While we're looking out, these guys are
often looking in. 

To cut a long story short, Billy goat is no longer living at that address and our friend swears she will never own another male goat. On the plus side, dozens of people have raced around to her with sympathy, help and offers of cover while her partner is currently out of the country for a few days. Liz and Liz went round yesterday and me today. She is now recovering from the shock and is able to tell the story without the tears welling up.

Soldier. The shiny redness is a reflection off Mum's car bonnet,
 on which he was sitting

It is one of those things that all we live-stock folk have at the back of our minds - even if it is only roosters, stag-turkeys or buck-rabbits rather than the bigger, heavier, more powerful rams, boars, bullocks or protective females of these species with calves/lambs/piglets to protect. They can and do turn vicious and have enough teeth, jaws, hooves, horns and claws to do a soft-skinned human plenty of damage. Stay safe people. It's a jungle out there.

Mind the Bike

Dan and Dan sign the Register in a gently rocking
environment. 

Friends of the Blog, frequent visitors and happy couple, Dan and Dan(ielle) were last seen about to take that stroll up The Aisle on board a cruise ship somewhere in the Med. Congratulations you guys; you obviously nailed it and sent us a rake of pictures to prove it. You both look splendid and look to be having a having a whale of a time. The very happiest and brightest of futures to both of you and we hope to see you again soon in your new guises and Mr and Mrs Dan. Thank you for sharing the day with us via social media.

Meanwhile, back in Roscommon, we are all feeling a bit quiet and subdued after the departure of "our Spanish lads", the Help-X pair, Manu and Pedro. They have moved on to a smallholding with horses near Blessington and we hope they are enjoying themselves  (almost) as much as they did here. They tell me there is no broad-band there, though, so they are reduced to text messaging and so on. We have written them a good review on the Help-X website and they may well write one about us. It should all help both parties find work or workers next year.

2 kinds of Spanish ham

We have been enjoying the wonderful 'stuff' the boys left in their wake and not just the 2 kinds of Spanish ham they surprised us with as their final act before getting into the car for their run to the railway station, one a big fat salami sausage, the other finely sliced 'Serrano' type ham.

Totem man carved by the lads

We've also been wandering round with big grins on our faces at the extremely tidy, parkland type look of our place and at the 'Easter Island Man' totem pole fella just inside our gate.

Back to normal for us, then (or what counts for normal round here), tidying, post-visit blitzing (tho' the guys were very tidy and generated very little mess) , a mountain of postponed laundry and ironing, repairing a couple of tools which did not survive the boot-camp, shopping and that sort of thing.

Puff balls

The old redundant, grassed over cow-muck heap behind what is now our goose house, celebrated by yielding half a dozen nice fresh white puff-balls. These have appeared before but we have never bothered with them and left them to go 'puff' with their dark green spores.

Lentils with sliced runner beans and puffball as part of a curry
menu. 

This time, I dived on 3 of them and brought them in to see if we could do a 'Food for Free' forage recipe. Liz quickly rattled up some recipes off the Internet and the puffballs have appeared for a couple of nights now as the 'mushroom' part of various dishes. We agree with the Internet advice that they have a very delicate (absent?) flavour and are best used "as tofu" as a creamy bland base for other flavours.

Beeblebrox's ever bigger chicks. 

I suppose I should quickly add a Health Warning for anyone reading this and trying to follow suit. Wild mushrooms and toadstools can be very poisonous and can be difficult to ID one from another. Small puffballs can look a lot like the scary 'Amanita' toadstool when it is still inside it's 'cowl' so you should always slice your prospective puffball in half down the middle to check that you have an amorphous white lump, not an embryonic mushroom- shaped structure about to burst out of it's ball-shaped cover. Also, make sure you are eating these guys fresh and white. Any discolouration of the flesh and they have gone over and may not be safe.

Honda Gold Wing under cover

Just for a change, we have been minding an enormous motor bike for some friends. It has gone 'home' now, so I am safe to reveal the fact. These are new friends, Les and Jean who are just starting in the Irish Smallholding game. They have bought the place a few km due south of here and have dropped in a couple of times to drop stuff and do a few bits, but they have not yet nailed down the immigration/changing jobs/money side of things. Jean is still working in the UK and Les is only at leisure because his work involves a school, so he is on Summer Hols.

How much dashboard do you need on a bike?

We got the bike to mind while they were both going to be away from their new place. We are not bikers but I had, at least heard of this beast, the Honda Gold Wing (Lead Wing to its detractors because of the weight).

Thunbergia.

It is a huge 'touring' style beast with very comfy leather armchair seats and a cocoon of panniers, boxes and storage baskets. The dashboard is a ridiculously well equipped panel like a plane cockpit with stereo speakers included. The engine, at 1500 cc is 50% bigger than the one in our car and the bike has a reverse gear! Launched in 1979 (Les tells me) these beasts are still for sale new but with an 1800 cc engine and costing around £24,000 (Sterling). So, a lot more than a new Fiat Panda then! No thanks, Bikers, you can keep that one. Les's isn't new, of course but he tells me he sold a classic old convertible Jag to find the money to buy this one.

Liz is producing some lovely clean carcasses and the birds are
making good weights. The last 4 have been 2.2, 2.5, 2.8 and
2.9 kg respectively. Not bad for 72 day old fowl.

Finally, as the Hubbard birds come up to 70 days old, we have started "harvesting" them in earnest. This is rather early compared to the advised age for full free-range ("slow grown") ones but we want to off them all by Liz's Birthday, so we have been sorting 2 a day. By now Liz is skillful enough at the plucking and dressing that the birds come out a lovely clean carcass and the last 4 have made very good weights oven ready; 2.2, 2.5, 2.8 and 2.9 kg.

These Lidl supermarket "cheapie" lilies have been a revelation.
In their tub just outside the front door, Liz tells me she can smell
them 15 feet away while pruning the roses and if we leave the
front door open, their scent fills the house. 

Amazingly, this batch of 12 chicks contained only one rooster. The chances of that would be 1 in 4096 (0.5 times 0.5, 12 times) but it doesn't really matter when you are only growing the birds for 70-80 days. The roosters may go slightly bigger but not much and we are more than happy with our 5-6 lb birds. 5 lb is way more than we two need for a meal, so most of them end up jointed up and the freezer fills up with bags labelled "4 Hubbard thighs" or what ever. It is, as ever, the most delicious, meaty and succulent chicken you are ever likely to eat. If you can, you smallholders, try to get hold of these Hubbard day-olds as your raw material for chicken-meat birds.

That is about it for this one. Catch up with you next time.