Ready for the Membrane

Sure sign of Autumn - the porridge!

As I type this it is still quite early (7 a.m.) and I am the only one awake. Don't worry - it is not another of those 'woken-up-by-coughing' nights - I slept like a baby and I am 'sleeped' out and well rested. As the Autumn starts to bite, these mornings are increasingly dark and gloomy, so I need to crank the livestock release/feed round back from 8 o'clock, or the fox will still be about when the birds come bursting from their houses all full of the joys.

Asbjörn and Sonja supervise the incinerator watched by the
ever present turkey, 'Tom' 

Sheer hard work by many people over the last few months has finally brought our big raised flower bed to a state of well dug over-ness and levelled out-ness where Elizabeth has declared it fit to have its weed proof membrane cover fitted. This is her baby, her decision and she very much wants to be there for this job, but today is Day 5 (of 5) of her hard land-scaping course which will go on to at least lunchtime. We therefore decided to give everyone a late start and lie in and we will do the Help-X hours in the afternoon, so that everyone can play.

Pruning and re-weaving the arbour over the 'Darby and Joan'
chairs

It has been a marathon job to get this far. The bed is about 16 m long by 10 m at its widest  and is quite clay-ey, being the spoil from the big pond with subsequent compost mulch layers added over the years. It can be heavy work to dig if it gets wet. We were going to do all this digging in Summer when the soil is more manageable. We used Help-X-ers Emma and Flora to clear it but then I got sick and our August Help-X blew us out, so the dig over was down to Elizabeth helped by 'Sparks'.

More Help-X product. 6 huge bags of
kindling.

As the wet season started we looked on in increasing despair thinking we'd missed the boat and would have to wait till Spring. But then, as Asbjörn and Sonja rocked up and proved very capable, it also stopped raining and the ground started to dry out. I asked them to give it a go at just an hour a day. On this basis, skimming lumps off with a shovel, moving soil with wheel barrows from peaks to troughs, and with much cloddy raking, they have prevailed and we are delighted to be able to get the membrane down THIS year. Even if we do not plant anything through it, that is a huge landmark and consolidation.Well done A and S.

A lovely full moon and a bit of mackerel-sky for the equinox.

The week, though, has not been all about the raised bed (Thank Heavens!). Asbjörn and Sonja have been everywhere and doing every kind of job all with the same keenness, enthusiasm and application. In the last post, they were just off to their weekend trip to Sligo to find their friends and the Celtic arts festival. I collected them back on the Saturday afternoon, we fed them pork chops, and that was the only time they wanted off.

From the UK arrives a new pig-sign, OSB for 'Oxford Sandy
and Black', of course.

A popular job was burning all the prunings from the raised bed shrubs, plus the brambles from the East Field plus some more recent rose bits (The Rambling Rector had been getting a bit up close and personal with the poly tunnel canopy!), in our dustbin style incinerator. I like this job and can get quite 'Zen' tipping away, cutting the prunings into short lengths and dropping them in, trying to keep a good fire going, and Asbjörn is obviously the same. Sonja had done her 4 hours or so of helping, but A went out again after lunch and stuck at it, even through light rain, till 6 pm - 8 hours of lonely Zenning (well, lonely except for the ever-present Turkey-Tom). Between them they cleared the whole pile - very useful.

Cheese and Dillisk Biscuits.

While Asbjörn worked away, the catering department had gone into full swing and the night's feast was to be a Madhur Jaffrey inspired feast of creamy turkey 'curry' with side dishes of potato and cauliflower and of "dry okra" plus a good range of yogurt-with-cucumber and tomato salsa style coolants for those who found the spuds a bit fiery.

Black Spring's Nan's pork hock under construction.

Dessert was a trad sticky toffee pudding (with extra sauce in a jug!), to the delight of Sonja. The following days saw some cheese and dillisk biscuits (dillisk (dulce) is an edible seaweed) and the family favourite recipe "Black Spring's Nan's pork hock", a gorgeous Chinese slow-simmer. The meat from the hock gets served with steamed shredded cabbage (or pak choi if you can get it) and noodles. The left over sauce sets like a jelly and can be eaten that way as a "cold soup".

New neighbours - this suckler herd. Sometimes the calves even
stay on THEIR side of the fence!

Other jobs done by the Help-X-ers have included pruning and re-weaving the living willow 'arbour' over our 'Darby and Joan' chairs on the far side of he pond plus moving some of our kitchen extension rubble down to fill gaps under the fence at the north end of the East Field.

Daily job. Re-salting the 'Parma' ham legs

Here the sheep wire is nice and tight between the posts and stapled to the very bottom of each post, but in places the ground dips between the posts and foxes (and little white dogs) can slip under. We have a pile of rubble that needs a 'home', so 2 fit wheel-barrowers are just the ticket. They have also gathered up the dog-end of a stack of split firewood from the far corner of the yard, and barrowed it all up to the wood store just outside the kitchen door.

In other news, I am taking another turn as curator of the UK version of the small holders' Twitter account (@smallholdersUK). I am the voice of Brit smallholding from last Sunday evening round till this one coming. These accounts work on the basis of the followers hearing from a different smallholder each week, which keeps it nice and varied. Our Irish one is currently parked up for lack of volunteers - it ran out of steam after a couple of years, but the UK has a bigger catchment and is still going strong. It is not restricted to people who do their small holding in the UK.

Towser rolled in goose-poo and attracted some unwelcome
attention from Sonja.

That is about it, I guess. I will post again on Friday which will be the last working day for these Help-X volunteers. They are back off to Dublin on Saturday, ready for their flights home on Tuesday. We will miss them. They have been great.

Luck ran out for the 'lucky' rooster. Ah well.

Not Now, Kato!

Kittens with a 'thing' about shoulders

All my readers except one will probably be familiar with the Pink Panther films with Peter Sellers playing the bumbling Inspector Clouseau (and don't worry, Mum, I will explain all!). You will also then, recall the character 'Kato' (now 'Cato' for some reason) played by Warrington born, Singapore raised 'Burt' Kwouk, Clouseau's manservant.

The 365 project is going a bit Christmas as lit up trees and
house fronts start to appear in the 'patch'

The running gag through all the films was that Kato was ordered to attack Clouseau when he least expected it to keep him alert, usually resulting in Clouseau's flat being wrecked. Amid the chaos, the phone would ring and Kato would calmly answer it with "Inspector/Chief Inspector Clouseau's residence", before dutifully handing the phone to his employer and being thumped by Clouseau. (Wikipedia)

All good fun but we now have 2 little 'Kato's of our own. The kittens seem to have a thing about shoulders and getting up onto them and they do this at unexpected moments, creeping up on you from behind with cat-like (yeah, well) stealth and leaping up as far as they can before scrambling the rest of the way up by gripping with their claws. They do this whether you are seated or standing, whether you are empty-handed, or using a sharp knife or holding a boiling kettle and, more importantly, whether you are clothed in nice thick coat and hat or just a spaghetti-strap 'vest' top.

Blue doesn't give a fig for Christmas but he does like a
'shopping' box.

I have even been leapt at from a window-sill after seeing what was about to happen and retreating backwards across 6 feet of kitchen thinking (you fool!) that that kitten would 'bottle' jumping across to land on my polo-shirted chest. Ouch. Right on the 'farmer's tan. Both of us have multiple lacerations about the shoulders, Liz probably worse than me, but then, I don't do the 'spaghetti strap vests' quite as often as she does. They are no longer little feather-weight kittens, but adolescent, half grown lumps of cats, so they pack quite a punch. This is a habit we need to break them of.

Nice local gin and Irish chocs, but will they last till the 25th?

As for most people by now, Christmas has started happening for us - lights, shopping, planning and lists. For the 365 project this has meant a bit of light relief and inspiration in the long run of 'nothing happening' Autumn days. I can nip out of an evening and 'get' a few nicely lit house fronts and trees. It's not easy because the twinkly new LED lights are as likely to be in their 'off' phase when you fire the shutter, as 'on' and the automatic mode on the camera reacts to all the black surrounding night by washing out the colour from lights, but we chug along and always seem to have something to submit to the project.

Mrs Blackbird will be a 'Collie Bird' for the 4th day of Christmas

Today was one of those days where we were both free and we needed to do some shopping but for Christmassy reasons this needed to be separate and a bit covert, so I took the car south in the morning and Liz took it north in the afternoon. When ever we leave the normal 'patch' we latch on all sorts of extra jobs and purchases which we can not do in the two local towns. Don't get me wrong - 'local' is best and we always support local small businesses and traders if we can but there are things you need to go to the 'big town' and the bigger shops for.

2 cats just can not get comfy in a Spanish lemon box

For example, Liz had heard of  a new brand of gin made in Ireland (in Co. Waterford) which was winning awards, and thought to be the best Irish made gin at a reasonable price (€25). This is Boyle's and only available locally in Aldi supermarket, the nearest one to us being Roscommon Town. One of my friends from archery had latched onto a conversation we'd had at a meet where I had told him that we managed to get poitín locally (no names, no pack drill, obviously!). He asked me to get a couple of bottles for his Mum (I kid you not!), so that became an add-on mission. We met, 2 cars in the car park outside Aldi, him dressed in a hoodie, passing anonymous wrapped parcels over in exchange for cash. I wonder what their CCTV crew made of us.

Liz and a kitten enjoy the 'new' reclining settee.

Liz is dreaming up a rather nice add-on project for the '365' thing around the 12 days of Christmas, No details yet as I don't want to spoil the surprise but we are trying to 'translate' the 12 gifts (pear trees, calling birds, drummers drumming etc) into the village 'patch' and the 18 townlands that make it up. There are some lovely ideas there and I have been sent off to try to photograph certain things in time for the 12 days. The plan is to put the 'gifts' up on their correct days (the 'pear tree one' on day 1, turtle doves on day 2 etc). More on this when it has all happened.

Marans Rooster

On the Dec 26th week I am having another turn at 'curator' of the @SmallHolderIRL Twitter account. I was the 2nd ever curator almost a year ago and the Twitter account, led by Margaret Griffin (@FoodBorn) has gone from strength to strength with now 2500 followers and a regular supply of new volunteers willing to tweet for a week from their holdings. We have had all manner of Irish smallholders as well as some from the UK and all have had their own distinct slant on the activity - organic growers who run veg-box schemes, bee keepers, Dexter beef growers, potager veg growers, shepherds, you name it.

A big chunk of 'hang' comes out of the freezer and into sweet
cure for 'bacon and cabbage' on St Stephen's Day

I am quite excited about this as I love doing it and I have picked up the post-Christmas "turkey sandwiches" shift plus, I am delighted to realise, St Stephen's Day (Boxing day to you Brexitters) which is, of course, the day for the 'Wren Boys'. There is a lovely Irish tradition of which more on the day. We are especially excited that we will have Steak Lady here over Christmas and she will just be blown away if (as last year) some real costumed 'Wren Boys' do show up on the 26th.

The 2 well known local edible seaweeds, Carrageen and Dillisk.
Now we just need recipes!

Well, that's enough for this one - I'll just post a few more pictures in the 'tail' as I have them. Have a good run in to the Festive Season, all, and don't go anywhere near Sligo where Liz texted me today from her shopping trip that she didn't realise "It is National Drive Like a Gobshite Day".

My little cubby hole where I write this blog under the stairs
can get a bit gloomy. Not any more. Liz found this little string
of fairy lights at €2.50. Now I can see the keyboard.

Hope I don't need to explain that one.