The North Wind shall Blow

Cody finds the grass a bit white and crisp

I wake up this morning to our first frost, the grass white and crunchy as I'm going about my release and feed rounds. At this time of year that comes, of course, with clear skies, bright sunshine and, often that NE wind coming down from Donegal at us. The clear skies give us, in this land of little light-pollution, nights of a million stars. You can clearly see the Milky Way, which I never managed while living in Kent and it is actually hard to pick out the constellations you think you know, because they are surrounded and 'enhanced' by thousands of other stars. What I have not yet managed to get is any kind of a photograph of this magnificent star field but one day I am determined to get out there with my camera and tripod and see what I can manage.

This blog quietly slips through the 60,000 page view mark so there are still plenty of readers out there, for which I thank you. It is good to know that I am not just firing these posts off into the ether. I am not writing a best seller here, I realise and most of my readers are friends and family but I know from the 'SiteMeter' reports that there are a few other regulars who presumably just like reading these posts - it is fun to imagine them on the other side of the globe, looking in to this small part of Ireland through the window of Blogspot.

The chilly weather and, of course, the emptiness of the wood-store, have us back on the logging task. This has made me break out the 'new' chainsaw. It's new to me, though in fact is an almost mint condition saw from the 1990's once belonging to TK Min (former resident of this house) and then also Vendor Anne but neither of these owners have ever fired it up or run it for more than a few minutes. That at least, is the opinion of our tame Chainsaw expert, Felix-the-Fix who checked it over for me and declared it to have no wear and tear at all where a used saw would show wear.

Goldie dozes in the early morning sun

I had been a bit wary of this saw for various silly reasons. I had killed my previous one as you may have read, part-seizing the engine and damaging the piston through over-work and possibly incorrect fuel/oil mixture. The problem is, I don't know what killed it and I was nervous of doing the same to this one. Being an older type of saw it also has no rubber 'blister' easy-start primer, so you have to pull the cord 4 times on full choke, then drop down to a #2 position to start it, then quickly blip the throttle to remove the choke and put the lever down to #3 (warm running) position. All a bit fraught. Add to that the Main Dealer had told us scary stories of 'modern fuels' having all manner of highly volatile ingredients so you should drain the tank and run the carburettor dry before storing the saw for more than 3 months.

However, I had been out and treated myself to some Kevlar chainsaw trousers, so I could not just give up and buy wood, I had to steel myself and get stuck in. In the event I needn't have worried, the saw started perfectly and ran well, cut beautifully with its new, unworn chain and only needed that little tighten up which all new chains need after a few minutes of running-in. Liz came out and helped with clearing up the logs I was producing as I dropped three smallish (black spruce) trees in the 'Secret Garden', one of which was leaning at a jaunty 45 degree angle anyway. I also took the opportunity to cut up the pile of old door frames ripped from our outbuildings by K-Dub when he replaced the doors. That was a good bit of tidying.

Goose and Rooster stock

Autumn too, in the livestock dept, so some of the poultry are coming to the ends of their planned careers. Most recently this has included our Jersey Giant rooster who was starting to be a problem both for William the Conqueror (who he was challenging and getting the odd wallop from, so there was a risk of him getting injured) as well as for some of the girls. The JG is a very long bodied bird and was trying to 'tread' some of the hens, especially the mini-Buffs but when he was on board, his bits were a mile away from the hen's and he could not mate successfully. He just held on tight, crushing all the wind out of the hen, straining to arch his back end round. We could not allow this to go on and he was, to us, looking an attractive big bird for the freezer.

He was culled out on Wednesday and had a live weight of (what we thought was..) a huge 4.24 kg (9 lb 5 oz). Liz, who already does all the plucking, decided that he was going to be her first go at gutting out and cleaning, so in she went and created an oven ready carcase weighing exactly 3.000 kg (6 lb 9.75 oz) again, we thought impressive and certainly the biggest chicken so far. It's only talking to Mentor Anne since that we learned that these Jersey Giant variety birds are well named - they continue to grow till they are around a year old or more and can reach live weights of up to 15 lbs which must be some impressive bird! We would have had lots of squashed hens around the place looking like they had been steam-rollered! We are now watching his sister who, at 23 weeks is not quite the size of the rooster, but will presumably grow on too. William is going to be asking for a box to stand on so that he can cope. You live and learn.

As it was, the 'roo' was jointed up by Liz and for our first meal, just the legs roasted, separated into thighs and drumsticks. These were served with chunked Thai-seasoned spuds, artichokes and Romanesco cauliflower and, guess what, we could only manage a thigh each, so the drumsticks are back in the fridge as cold roast chicken. The remainder of the carcase is already portioned up into wings and 'oyster' bits, and breast meat, so we should get 4 meals for two off this one even though he was only half grown.

The bones, combined with those of the La Bresse 'roo' and the recent goose are now bubbling away in our huge stock pot creating what looks like a magnificent stock. The hearts, livers and gizzards are saved in the freezer for later. We don't quite use "every part except the squeal" but we come close.

A Complete Change

A complete change in the weather brings us some strong blustery winds from an unfamiliar direction (SE veering round to SW) and some lashing rain which quickly fills all our normal puddles and delights the geese. It refreshes all the greenery which had been on hold in the wind-drought and we can see real recovery now in the grass depleted by the rabbits. The local farmers are relieved and delighted; they will leave the grass a couple of weeks to put on some growth and then will be able to let the cattle out.

We sustain a little damage. An empty rabbit hutch is overturned and needs picking up and my Mk 2 cloche proved unable to cope with the SE winds (coming from the same direction as I have taken this picture) they struck it on the end and rocked it loose on the open-able side. The rain then filled the 'bowls' which had appeared in the slack plastic and flattened it into the (fortunately empty) bed creating a neat, 8 by 4, 2 inch deep 'lake'. I may improve it (Mark 3?) with Rebar steel rods running inside the water pipes to strengthen the arches, or I may simply dismantle it and do without now that we have the proper poly tunnel.

The poly tunnel itself, survived all this storm, sitting pretty, protected from the south winds by the wall of the former hay-barn. It is starting to look a bit lived in now with my spring sowings of flowers and veg in the motley collection of trays, module trays, sawn-off milk bottles, mushroom chips and so on. We have great hopes for it as a good productive area.

In terms of geese, our egg laying bird(s) are continuing to build up a clutch. There were, when I looked this morning, 7 eggs in a neat well in the hay-box, carefully covered with hay so as to be invisible from above. Curiously this clutch does not seem to increase by one egg a day but, rather, by 2 eggs at once every other day. This took us a bit by surprise but is obviously because we actually have 2 geese a-laying and they are taking turns in the hay box. This might, of course, end in tears when they both decide there are enough eggs and have an argument over who gets to broody.

When that time comes, we are told by Mentor Anne, you know because the would-be-broody starts plucking breast feathers to line the nest. We have decided to try to solve the sharing thing by installing a second hay box at more than goose neck-length away from the first (and actually the other side of a step ladder I have stored in there). We hope that one of the girls will adopt this and start laying in it. We may then sneakily start to even up the egg numbers in each clutch so that the new nest catches up and both reach 12 eggs together. We never count our 'chickens' before they hatch, but we have had some amusing conversations about how we will manage if the place is suddenly over-run by hoards of goslings.

Meanwhile I have dusted off the old pushbike. John Deere Bob's place is just that bit too far away to be an easy walk but too close to use the car with a clear conscience. I have had this bike for ages (15 years?) but had not used it much in Kent. Once I had dogs it always seemed more sensible to walk them if I needed exercise, rather than go for a bike ride. It languished in the shed in Faversham with 2 flat tyres till I decided to get it sorted and serviced to take with me to Ireland. The service was done by a great bunch of lads, the Thanet Cycle Recycle project run by Liz's 'firm', KCA (but now sadly defunct due to funding withdrawal) and the bike was as good as new.

John Deere Bob invited me to come collect some more calf poo but asked could I load it myself. Of course, I was delighted to and zoomed down there on the bike. Bob basically handed me the tractor keys and left me to it, doing my own loading, driving, tipping back here and then cleaning out the 'shepherd's box' on the tractor at the end. Many thanks, Bob. Readers will know that I will have enjoyed playing on the tractor as much as I appreciate now having the poo. We boys never grow up. The toys just get bigger!

We continue to be amazed and delighted by the quality and price of good chunks of meat locally. This "half a side of a pig", as Liz described it came from our favourite old fashioned pork butcher, Cunniffe's of Ballaghaderreen, cost only €14.50 (12 of your English pounds) and divided nicely into enough batches for 5 good meals for the two of us.

We are hoping to do a deal with some friends down the road who keep a few pigs, to swap maybe half a lamb carcass for the equivalent value in pig carcass this year. We have also had an offer of goat kids from the wife of Felix the Fix (Chainsaw Genius). She has a brother and sister litter of 3 week old kids currently being rejected by their Mother. They would need bottle feeding for 8 weeks or so before weaning and , obviously, the billy would need separating, neutering or... um... eating before they made 9 months. Mrs Felix is anxious that they go to a good home and will supply milk for the babies within a decent range. It is tempting and they would be impossibly cute but we are trying to be strong - we went on the goat course and decided against goats for all sorts of good reasons (fencing and housing for a start) and we now have takers for all our grazing in the form of geese, potential goslings and this year's planned lambs. Sorry Mrs Felix.

Never Volunteer

Keep your head down and never volunteer for anything..... seems like good advice. So when the Irish poultry discussion website (Fowl.ie) of which I'm a member was struggling under a barrage of fake new member names generated by a robot spam programme and the poor guy trying to manage it was working 70 hour weeks, why did I hear myself volunteering to help? At the time the guy (who owns and manages the site) thanked me but didn't take me up on the offer. Yesterday, though, he decided he could use me after all and here I am, "Global Moderator" for Fowl.ie to go with my responsibilities as 'web-meister' for the Thames Sailing Barge Cambria website (http://www.cambriabargecharter.co.uk/ ).

The fowl.ie site is (obviously) mainly peopled by poultry keepers, breeders etc plenty of whom have interests outside of pure poultry; they are farmers, small holders, pest control people, writers and publishers, all sorts. They cross the whole rich brew of human life, all ages, 'classes', standards of education and strengths of opinion. They seem to go almost 24/7; certainly they can be up gassing way into the night way after I've gone to bed. It can sometimes get a bit heated but is generally harmless, just like a gang of friends bantering in the pub. There are a few muppets we need to keep our eye on but 99% of them are sensible. If anyone stepped over the lines in the past the Moderator had the option to "kill" discussion threads, warn offenders and ban them, sometimes for a fixed 'cooling off period', rarely permanently. A good few of them have given me their best wishes, some with a wry "Good Luck - you'll need it!" It should be fun, and, I hope, will not use up too much time. Feel free to look in on the website(s) if you'd like to know more.

Our drought is finally over. Overnight light rain on Tuesday 5th laid the dust and left us with a smeary, moist soil surface but no puddles. We have had drizzle on and off since then and enough quick heavier showers to fill up the car-port water-butt. The spring like weather, however, has set all the plants into motion and momentum for spring is building. We have now had a first daffodil open - this one courtesy of Steak Lady and her big net of bulbs given to us last Autumn. This whole net was planted in a curved 'drift' and promises to look superb.

Pond digging continues a-pace and yesterday I finally finished the first 'spit' (spade depth) all across the area so, for a laugh, I dug a small pit at one end down into the clay. I am hoping that the Roscommon clay will be sufficiently goo-ey that I can 'puddle' it into a waterproof layer so that we do not need to spend €860 on a butyl rubber liner. I was curious to see whether the geese might help me in the puddling process. I filled it from the water butt, scattered grain around the rim and whistled up the geese.

They were straight in, curious as anything, first dibbling their beaks into the water and then head-bathing. The sides of this mini-pit are rather steep so the geese were a bit alarmed when they sometimes slithered in down the bank. They made some amusing efforts to reverse out, but quickly learned that they could turn round and simply hop out. As well as the puddling thing, I want to know whether they will mess around too much and the water will never settle, especially as the pond gets bigger but that'll be for later. For now this pit does not seem like draining away, i.e. it seems pretty waterproof, so I will have to dig the rest around this pit leaving a dam to separate the filled bit from the digging. Slopping around in sticky Roscommon clay while trying to dig and push wheel barrows about is not fun.

There is little progress on the poly-tunnel front. The tunnel 'kit' was allegedly going to arrive either last weekend or 'middle of this week'. We have started to clear the site and the picture shows the two main horizontal wooden beams (5 by 2's) which will take the tension on the polythene sheet which we have bought so far. These are 20 feet long and , here, roughly 14 feet apart, which is the size of the tunnel ordered. The old hay barn floor is a mess of old peat turf, rotted straw bales and the old topsoil or underlying clay plus, inevitably, our local head-shaped, head sized boulders. The kit did not arrive and a chase phone-call today had the firm adjusting their ETA to 'Definitely this weekend, possibly Sunday morning'. This unlikely prediction is only credible because we know the main delivery guy has an Auntie in Loughglynn, our nearby village!

More successful is news of the return of my belovéd rotovator which you may recall died last summer (after I foolishly left it out in the rain without its cover) and then spent 8 months not being fixed by the tool hire firm Domac. I rescued it from Domac recently and entrusted it to the tender loving care of Felix-the-Fix (Chainsaw Genius) who has now fixed and serviced it. He tells me that Domac had tried to bodge on some lawnmower parts which were totally inadequate for the 3HP Briggs and Stratton motor. ("I love this engine!" says Felix).

Well, now I have it back and have seen it chug-chugging away in the sweet, relaxed, leisurely way it has. Diamond heard the noise while on her visit here last summer and, still in a half drowse in her bed, thought it was one of the small fishing boats putting out from Poros Island. Lovely. Felix being the kind of careful engineer he is, of course has also given it a huge clean up and oil and service, cleaning out air filters, fuel lines and the carburettor. He is also very careful to explain to me how the fuel tap and choke should be used. His charges were, as always, very reasonable and, as part of the deal, I'd agreed to give him the old dead Lidl chainsaw to strip for parts. In the event I was scrabbling in my pocket for the last Euro and he flapped his hands, grinned and said "Ahh... Don't worry... call it a trade in on the saw!" So, readers, the chainsaw was not a complete write off. I got €1 for it!

An Update on the Update

Sixteen days now without rain so we are now officially in drought. Please send any Aid Convoys and water bowsers soonest. Seriously though, we are enjoying the current dry spell and spending most of our time outdoors working together. I am cracking on with the pond and we are also moving a temporary compost 'site' to a more convenient position. This set of heaps were established in a hurry while we were still buildering and slung together using a rather ugly collection of corrugated iron and of wooden off-cuts banged into the ground as uprights.

There was an old broken down fence which used to run across from the cattle race to the gate into the 5 acre field (part of the land we didn't buy). Only the bit near what is now the orchard gate was still standing; the rest was lying flat or part-buried under mud and weeds, it's barbed wire looping out of the ground Loch Ness Monster style as a superb trip hazard. We had pulled much of this out but we used the standing section as the backs of two back back-to-back heaps, one for good stuff, one for rough. This set up now part blocks the entrance to the orchard field and is unsightly, so the sheet metal is going to go, the compost get moved to new heaps 'behind' the wall of the cattle race, the messy barbed wire extracted for scrapping and the posts pulled out and logged up for burning. We will then have another bit of nice flat bare spoil for gardening on.

The 'inherited' chain saw proved to be a very good one and in excellent, nearly new condition. Our man Felix-the-Fix (Chainsaw genius) serviced it and set it up for the outrageous sum of €6 (£5.18 to you Brits - I know... where does all the money go?) and even showed me how to start it etc. It turns out that Stihl equipment is date stamped, so we know that this saw was made in 1998 although, obviously, not when it was purchased. It might therefore have been bought by TK Min while he still lived on this site and it might be him that used it for the very few times it has been run. Felix could tell this was 'few' because of the very small amount of dust and rubbish under the chain guard and the lack of scuffing and wear on the chain 'bar' (big flat 'blade' sticking out of the front, around the edge of which the chain runs). Anyway, Felix declared it as safe as a new one. He also accepted the offer of my old one for salvage and bits. Oil pumps and air filters are apparently the thing.

We were just done pond-digging and compost heaving and we were sitting down on the outside chairs for a coffee, when two livestock things happened in quick succession. First some bizarre noises from the goose 'pond' drew our attention to the fact that Gander was doing naughty things to one of the gals (which, we are told, only happens on water). The other goose was hopping from foot to foot and flapping and honking. We do not know whether she wanted a turn, or was worried he was trying to drown the lady. This is the first time, to our knowledge that this has happened (though we are not there all the time to watch) but may portend the girls coming back into lay. That would be nice. We are also wondering whether we might get broodiness and goslings.

No sooner had we got over that excitement than Blue appeared with something big in his jaws which we at first thought was a bird with its wings spread. It was, in fact, a decent sized young rat, so it's good to know the cats are still on the case. Not to be outdone, Rolo was later also walking around with a dead mouse and even visited Liz while she was sitting on the 'throne', but his was stiff and cold so we think he just un-stashed it from some hidey hole to prove a point.

Sorry no pics today. More soon.

Runs, Rotovators and Raised Beds.

I have no one big story for this post, so I will treat you to a random scatter-gun load of waffle on a variety of subjects, roughly in time order. I have now finished the third and final (for now!) rabbit run all to the same design as the one photographed in an earlier post. These are for, in order, Rogers (who is already installed in his), Ginny and Padfoot and for the third, our soon-to-be-delivered, pregnant Californian doe, Goldie. In her case, there has been a slight delay as our Mentor Anne suffered a couple of unfortunate fox attacks losing a duck and also their much loved and nicely fertile buck NZ White, Peter. Peter had been intended as the father to our little project. Anne and Simon have been able to obtain a replacement buck, known as Bobby but he is quite young yet and we might be a few weeks waiting for him to be able to do the necessary. Hang in there, Goldie. Good things come to those who wait. Meanwhile some nice drying days gave me a chance to varnish the vulnerable parts of the runs with 'Sadolin', the same varnish / wood preservative I was advised to use on the 2CV trailer - good stuff but pricey at €17 for a fairly small tin.

I finally hear from the plant hire firm who have had my rotovator since last summer, allegedly trying to repair it. They (Domac's) have now, at my chasing, retrieved it from their Ballinasloe branch, an hour's drive away, back to their Roscommon depot half an hour's drive away. I am welcome to collect it, they tell me but, if I like they will try to get hold of a coil and have another go at fixing it if I'm willing to wait a week...... NO! You've had it since July. Now it's MY TURN!

Fair play to the guys at Domac's, though, they were happy and relaxed and not at all offended that I wanted it back now. Even better, they did not charge me anything because they had not fixed it. Gerry, their guy, helped me into the Fiat's boot with it. It just fits with the handles down. I ran it round to Felix-the-Fix, our new found chain-saw genius (of whom more later) who gave it a bit of a wry look and pronounced "Well, it's an OLD rotovator" but took it into his Aladdin's Cave of a workshop. I swear he had the look of love and a "Come to Daddy" air about him as he took it under his wing. He did not believe Domac's story that it just needed a coil but said that he had a number of suitable coils in his shed if that proved to be the bit required.

Meanwhile I am getting on well with the raised 'lazy bed' in my allotment. The whole allotment is 30 m long and about 8 m wide. I have done it in 5 beds up and down the slope, with a couple of cross trenches to use as paths. This will give me 15 beds of different lengths, 5 at 5 m, 5 at 17 m and 5 at 7 m. I have dug the 7's and the 17's and I only have the 5's to finish. Where plastic sheet allows, these get covered up as soon as they are dug to help finish off the weeds. That seems to work better in warm weather, not so well in the cold of winter, but really as soon as you dig these beds you can see the poor old soil start to dry out by natural drainage in a way that it just has NOT been able to do while sitting flat. It seems to me to be breathing a sigh of relief.  The hens like to help with this digging and I am constantly having to watch that I do not wound a hen as I sink the shovel in; they are right in there with me picking up the worms. The geese come round after I have gone, checking for cut ends of left over carrots and other rooty bits.

The wind over recent weeks has caused a decent sized branch of one of the spruces to sag down onto our phone cable. Our old chum from 3rd January 2012, Aerial Keith is called and turns up with his ropes, mountaineering carabiners and harness, impressive tool belt and kevlar (carbon fibre) chain-saw-proof trousers and boots and plays monkey for an hour, swinging about in the branches, quite often upside down with his legs hooked over the branch. He mainly uses a beefy pruning saw but finishes off by chainsaw which he has in reserve dangling on the end of a rope 20 feet up, sometimes sputtering away with its 2-stroke engine idling as it swings like a pendulum. When he needs it he hauls it up  till he can grab it, use it and then let it back down. He clears up our twanging cable and tidies up the tree, does a very professional job and charges us only a modest fee. He declines tea saying he is off to Tubbercurry (town) for a Curry. It had to have a curry house, really, didn't it, with a name like that?

On Saturday 9th we are due delivery of a short under-the-worktop fridge. We have decided to move the 6 foot tall existing one into the Utility room as it restricts food preparation space in what is quite a small kitchen. The new one arrives at lunchtime just when I have given up waiting and gone for a dog walk but the delivery man was happy to fight his way in through the gate, come up the drive to unload it into the dining room. Liz has all the fun then of clearing space for the tall one in the Utility, emptying it so it can be moved, preparing the space for the new one, moving them (I help with that bit!) and reloading both. It's not a 5-minute job.

That afternoon sees me back helping John Deere Bob with the logging up of the big ash tree we felled. This job was interrupted by my saw going on the blink, refusing to idle. I'd had to take it in to Felix-the-Fix, our bearded, German-speaking Swiss backwoodsman. He'd fixed it but I had not actually tried it out till now. Well, the saw sang its song beautifully as I logged up the smaller branches but then, after a half hour, when I started to tackle the big stuff, more than the 14 inches thick that my saw will cut, it all got a bit slow, smokey and sad-sounding. Eventually it stopped and I could not re-start it no matter what. We thought it might just have got a bit over-heated, so we stopped and I was disappointed to admit that Bob might be better off getting Mr McG, with his bigger saw, to finish cutting the big trunk up. It felt like I'd let the side down.

It was, in fact, worse than that. On Monday 11th I took the saw back to Felix and he pulled the start cord, felt a lack of compression and thought I might have fried the piston. In two minutes he had the exhaust and manifold off and could peer down the exhaust port and see the badly scored and crazed side of the piston. "That should be shiny like a mirror" he opined, sadly. So, I have an option to seek piston and barrel on the internet but Felix's opinion is that I have probably had my €110's worth out of it and it owes me nothing, so I'd be better getting a less cheap saw and moving on. The makes they recommend round here are Husqvarna for ground-level work and Stihl for the 'arboreal' (monkeys and ropes) stuff, but realistically you need to spend €350-€450 for a 'decent saw'. The cheap ones are (says Felix) "made to a price" with consequences I have now experienced. Ah well, old chum, Flora-best Saw from Lidl. We did OK together and you definitely earned your corn, as well as being a good 'entry level' saw for a complete beginner. RIP.

And so we moved on to things caravan. Our trusty old caravan in which we lived for the 5 months of the build and which has since served well as 'den' for the nieces in August and kennel for guest-dogs at Christmas, was starting to look a bit shabby in the winter damp, with algae growing outside and damp and mould inside. Liz has blitzed the inside but got to thinking that, should the Silverwoods NOT want to exercise their option to use it for towing / touring (and we have yet to talk to them about this) we might gut out the 'shower' bit (we never used it) and the galley and increase the bed-space to 4 berths, replacing all the soft furnishings. With both our brains in planning mode we actually went on a bit further and started to see the former hay-barn with three bays. The first, our car-port already exists. The second could be a roof over the caravan to stop all the rain, algae and damp and the third, western-most, bay could be a 'greenhouse' of corrugated transparent plastic which would serve instead of a poly-tunnel. Our note-book is suddenly full of 3-D scratched drawings of uprights, horizontal beams, parked cars and caravans, corrugated sheets, doors and verdant greenery.

It's never boring!