John Downie

Father-to-be, Pedro?

Friends of the Blog may recall that back in August last year I posted that I had seen signs of affection between new ram-lamb 'Pedro' and our mature ewe 'Lily'.

http://deefer-dawg.blogspot.ie/2017/08/pedro-ram-is-in-love.html

Onto the calendar for 5 months later (Jan 25th 2018) went my note saying "poss lambing date, Lily" and we all relaxed while nature took its course. She was likely to be our first at the lambing. You cannot hurry these things, after all. Mother Nature knows best.

Apologies for the technically bad and not
very edifying pic but it does show very
clearly the enlargement of Lily's udder,
called "bagging up" in the trade. 

Coming through Christmas I have therefore been keeping half an eye on Lily particularly, but not really expecting any signs for a week or more yet. Yesterday, though, I could see that she was suddenly 'bagging up', her udder which is normally invisible from behind clearly visible. I apologise for the picture which also shows that she is a bit 'dagged' up and needs some tidying.

Larch logs

Bagging up can be several days or even a few weeks prior to lambing so she still might hit the 25th (or even over-shoot) but we will be watching anxiously over the next mornings for our other favourite signs; declining breakfast, lying down in some far flung corner of the field a long way from all other sheep. Our girls never miss a breakfast, so when there is one missing from the feast you know something serious is happening. Wish us luck. This is a tense and anxious time.

New kids on the block, these 2 year old
crab apple whips. 

In other news, I have finally scored a couple of 'John Downie' crab apple trees, these from top Irish fruit tree supplier, Future Forests (www.futureforests.IE). In every garden we make, Liz and I always seem to pull in plants, offspring, cuttings or varieties from other gardens we have been involved in. Like old familiar friends, we seem to gravitate towards those varieties if we are contemplating buying or 'getting' anything from that broader group. John Downie is the variety of crab apple which in my memory has always grown in my Mother's garden in Hastings.

Mum's tree is now quite a landmark, being huge and visible from either end of the street. I am sure we three bothers used to climb it as young boys, and certainly made a load of wine from its fruit (sometimes wind-falls) as teenagers, while Mum, throughout has been making crab-apple jelly, sending us boys out to harvest its red fruits. When we first laid out the orchard here, the only crab I could find was 'Golden Hornet' variety, which has done very well but this year I was determined to fill 2 gaps with John Downie and this I have now done.

More protection than tree for now. They
should get away nicely. 

The tiny whips look more 'protection' than actual tree for now, ringed around with weld-mesh to keep the geese from ring-barking their tender trunks but, as I say hopefully when I plant anything, "They should get away nicely" (Geoff Hamilton!), and will soon out-grow the geese.

One of last year's babies comes up to 'point of lay' and goes for
a sit down. 

In the poultry department, we are happy to report that we are now well through the egg-drought and now starting to get sensible amounts of eggs per day - recent record days have been an 8 and then a 9.

I love the gentle range of colours of our eggs. 

Some of the new hens, hatched in Spring 2017, are now coming on line. They generally start with a few tiny, yolkless eggs, mis-shapes, double yolkers or shell-less soft 'bags' but quickly get into the proper groove and give us a decent egg most days. I love the range of gentle colours we produce, from almost white (actual white for the ducks, of course) to rich dark chocolate brown from the Marans girls.

2nd job for chickens in the morning after a quick scrabble for
breakfast seed - to the 'watering hole' for a drink. In this case
the duckling's paddling pool. 

I think that's about it for tonight. News on the lambing in a post soon, I hope.

Red Sky in the Morning, Shepherd's Warning. I do so hope not!

All the best.

Busby Berkeley Dust Bathing?

New trees await planting.

The new trees arrived safe and sound on Thursday 27th via the excellent courier, DPD Ireland. Courier-ing and post in general here in Ireland are definitely one job the Irish do better than anything I've ever had in the UK. Post is almost always next day without fail within Ireland. DPD send you a text to say your goods are due today, then follow up with a call 20 minutes out to check you are at the house and finally, in our case, I have persuaded the regular drivers to call at 5 minutes out so that I can go down and stand in the lane to flag them down and make sure they find the place. They are without exception (in my experience anyway, of DPD and other companies) helpful, friendly and, more importantly, careful with the goods, so that I receive my trees in their 'roll' of cardboard and straw, undamaged. I am very happy with both the courier and, in this case, with the tree nursery / supplier, FutureForests.net.

The instructions are to crack open the parcel as soon as you get it (mainly to avoid condensation damage to any evergreens), then to damp the roots but store (roots) back in the bag so that the wind does not get to them. This gives us a chance to examine the trees and they look, as usual, healthy and robust. My 'Camelot' apple was a one year old 'maiden whip', but the other 2 apples and the limes were 2 year old 'feather' (i.e. with side branches). They had good root systems with a good spread of fibrous roots still intact.

Apple trees protected from the geese.

They are all now planted. The apples I managed to squeak in to the orchard by putting them hard up against the fence which was 5 m from my 'first row'. My first plan had been to dot them along the front lawn but this would have involved creating sheep proof guards around them. Sheep are terrors for not only browsing off all the soft new tissue but also for trying to scratch their itches by rubbing their considerable bulk against your fences and posts. Your sheep guards around trees need to be made of serious wood and posts, which is not cheap. My orchard plan meant only 'goose-proof' protection, so I put some old rabbit-hutch wire into use as half-cylinders, tall enough to out-manouvre those long goosey necks. Today, at least, it worked and the trees are free from goose 'tooth' marks.

The kitchen is still in whirlwind mode at present with Liz doing a bit of Christmas cookery and some 'Autumn tidy up' cooking. The pudding mixture, Liz decided to split across 3 smaller bowls - we made an enormous pud last year but it was rather too big to use up AND it tied up the big, useful mixing bowl for all the weeks that it sat in there. This year, then, we invested in 4 smaller bowls and we are now serially steaming them in the slow cooker. The ones not needed for the festive season will keep; puds seem to keep for ever!.

Green Tomato Chutney

I got my instruction today to 'bring in the tomatoes', i.e. to clear the remaining stragglers from the poly-tunnel which were either green or part ripe but not likely to progress any further in the chill, misty days of November, so it is time to make green tomato chutney. This is one of our favourite chutneys and one which I will happy smear on every cheese sandwich I make, no matter what the time of year and weather. So, I cleared the ground and collected almost 5 kg into my bucket and all the plants into a barrow.

Busy kitchen. Bits for paté get chopped and fried prior
to being 'whizzed'. 

The chickens spotted that I was in there and that there was some dry dusty soil on this site after all! They'd been walking on the damp, November grass and wondering whether they'd ever see dust again. When I went back in to collect the barrow, I was amused and impressed by the sight of ALL our grown up chooks dust-bathing, like a bizarre Busby Berkeley synchronised swim interpretation. All chickens lie down on your left side and kick up the dust. Now change to the right side etc. The young Buffs were not there but possibly found the dust-fest later. They do love a good dust bathe these chickens and it does their feathers and old skin good.

View from the front door at 3:30 pm on Tuesday - the mist
comes up and the sun sinks down.

With Christmas looming the Hubbard chicken "gribbly bits" were rescued from the freezer for conversion into paté - hearts, gizzards and livers. These get fried off with cooking brandy and garlic before being 'whizzed' up. The late Diamond always preferred it if you sieved this several times to produce the finest velvety textures as per Nigel Slater's recipes but I must admit I prefer a 'coarse' paté with BITS in it. Now that we are Diamond-less, Liz has allowed that we do not need to sieve it (she sounds relieved at not having too, because it is a real faff!) so I am looking forward to some "Coarse Hubbard Paté" on the menu.

Some more Orchard

Big excitement today as our order for bare rooted fruit trees arrives from the excellent supplier Future Forests of Kealkil, Bantry, Co. Cork. We combined our order with that of Mentor Anne W to share the postage and the trees were delivered there; we collected them today. It being a funny, late season where the trees have stayed in leaf late into Autumn, these had to wait for delivery but that suited us as the orchard which these guys will supplement is within the sheep enclosure and, had they arrived earlier, I would have had to erect tree guards around each one. Now, with the sheep soon to depart, I can heel them in for a few days and then plant them without needing anti-sheep defences till next Summer.

This order, which cost us €180 was for 7 trees plus 25 raspberry canes and 10 asparagus crowns. The trees are 3 varieties of apple (and 'Irish Peach', an Egremont Russet and a Braeburn), a 'Sunburst' cherry, a 'Shropshire' damson, a 'Ludovic' Quince and a 'Czar' plum. The raspberries are 13 Autumn Bliss and 12 of the Summer fruiting variety 'Malling Jewel'. These trees will bring our orchard tree count up to 14, so we still have room for 6 trees in the 5 by 4 array. The asparagus will go into the raised bed which already had tiny, rather weak cheapie crowns from the Lidl "sick lame and lazy" racks. The raspberries will go into the raised beds of the allotment and a couple in the "Jam and Chutney Hedge" in the Kitchen Garden.

For the moment though, the ground is frozen and the sheep are still in the way, so the trees have been heeled into curver buckets and the raspberry canes into one of the other Kitchen Garden raised beds, just willy-nilly, any old how, clustered together just to keep the roots healthy and protected from frost till we can plant them all properly. Thank you very much, Anne, for your help in this one.