GAA Action

Don't Panic! Your old mate and blogger has not suddenly gone all sport orientated. Those who have known me for a while would probably KNOW that this was impossible or at least highly unlikely. I managed to survive the first 50+ years without knowing the first thing about soccer, my main objection being that the sport was (is) boring to watch and can happily go the whole 90 minutes of a game without anybody scoring at all, even at the top, professional levels. GAA Football (Gaelic Athletic Association), I am assured is a whole different kettle of fish being fast, exciting and high scoring. This time of year in Ireland is also when the "All Ireland" finals take place and our nearby county of Mayo (also the country where my lambs were born) got through their semi final a couple of Sundays back and this one just passed would see Liz's Dublin team in their semi against Kerry. The place has gone mad decorating gateposts with flags and houses with bunting in county colours. It is a regular subject of conversation - the barber's where I was this morning, the local post office and even John Deere Bob who drops by. My curiosity was piqued. This was an important part of the culture of my new life and friends.

Here then is the only sport related blog post you are likely to get for a while, borrowed from another web post.

"On Sept 2nd, I am woken up by Quoth, our local raven who swings by occasionally. He/she was shouting from the spruce trees and getting a bit of abuse back from the crows and magpies. The morning was spent gently bimbling in the garden, spreading calf poo on the cleared potato ground and picking beans. I walked dogs and got talking to near neighbour whose kids were in the middle of clothing a big cuddly-toy dog in a Roscommon GAA football jersey. Seems that as well as the 'big match' (an All Ireland semi final Dublin vs Kerry) there is an Under 21's ("Minors") match on at 13:30 featuring our own Roscommon and dodgy 'nordies' Tyrone. 

I came in early pm and caught Liz listening to the match commentary IN IRISH. I am in awe. Not only do I have no interest in sport, soccer, rugby and stuff, I also have no Irish worth a light and this guy was rabbiting away as only sports commentators know how. Wandered off back to my weeding. We lost narrowly by all accounts.

Later in the afternoon came the 'real match' in which Liz had more of a vested interest, being a 'Dub'. Out of nowhere we also suddenly had enough broadband to actually stream the televised match programme. Our BB is usually so poor that we measure it in kilobytes (700-900) as opposed to 'megs' and can only watch short Youtube clips without it going all stuttery or dying all together and refusing to perform. But No, here we were with uninterrupted visuals, so I decided to watch my first ever full GAA match.  I'd been told that GAA is a whole different kettle of fish and so it proved. For them as don't know, you can score in the goal below the cross-bar (3 points) or between the posts above the bar (1 point). This match had half a dozen scoring moves in the first 10 minutes. As boring as soccer it definitely wasn't. It stayed exciting all through and Liz was even getting a bit sweary at the midway point.

Her Dubs were looking a bit shaky at one stage and she was voicing those ol' '3 times' superstitions - Man U had lost, the Roscommon Minors had lost and now..... However, the Dubs put in a late surge right at the end and saved the day, winning 3-18 to 3-11, i.e. the two teams scored 35 times between them!" 

So there you are. The Dubs now play Mayo on 22nd and it will be all over for another year. In the two weekends in between now and the 22nd, the Hurlers get their turn - their game is even more mad, frenetic, crazy, fast and dangerous. They all run around armed with a hockey-stick 'club' (Camán) and the ball (Sliothe) seems to be a rock covered in leather. Face masks are almost obligatory these days.

Meanwhile it is all getting a bit Autumnal here. We retreat some evenings into our Living room where we either light candles or the real fire for extra coziness. The blackberries are turning black in the hedgerows and John Deere Bob is happy for us to raid the hedges of his cut silage fields. The sloes will also be red by now and turning black soon but ours out front were annihilated by the contractor hedge cutter so I need to take a stroll round the sheep fields to find some bushes with sloes still on them.

The front lawn has gone all 'Food for Free' on us and is now yielding a good supply of field mushrooms. The first of these took us by surprise under one of the big trees and had reached 8 inches diameter before we spotted it. This one Liz simply cut in half and fried like that, serving it up on its own slice of toast. Poor man's beef steak? More recent ones have been smaller. We are back into beetroot now and 'succession planted' radishes and, soon, peas.

For me, though, a weekend back in the UK looking up the Pud Lady and some Faversham Friends including 2CV Llew, before I head for St Katharine's Docks in London to help man our sailing barge Cambria. She is on show to the public as part of the St Kat's Classic Boat Festival which is , in turn, part of the Mayor's River Thames Festival. Liz gets to look after the 'farm' for a while so she is in training on livestock and the differences between milled barley and seed wheat. Wish us both luck. I will be 'off air' for the duration and will post again when I return.

The Green and Red of Mayo.

Oh the Green and Red of Mayo
I can see it still
Its soft and craggy bog-land
Its tall majestic hills
Where the ocean kisses Ireland
And the waves caress its shore
Oh the feeling it came over me
To stay forever more
Forever more

The lyrics there from one of our favourite songs by local boys, The Sawdoctors, "The Green and Red of Mayo" to celebrate the fact that our lambs are all from Irishtown County Mayo and therefore entitled, (Nay! Expected! Compelled!) to support Co. Mayo in the 2013 All Ireland GAA football competition. This is the nearest Ireland comes to an FA cup final, although half the country would say that actually the GAA All Ireland 'Hurling' competition is WAY more important. As well as being split into counties, Ireland seems to be split into hurling supporters and Gaelic football supporters and ne'er the twain shall meet. In the football side, Mayo are doing rather well, having creamed the defending 2012 champs, Co. Donegal a couple of weekends ago in the quarter finals, to make the final four.

However, readers who really know me will be smiling that I am even trying to write about sport when what I know about UK football after 56 years could be easily written on the back of a postage stamp. Once when Liz was extolling the virtues of Ryan Giggs, I said "If he's THAT good, why doesn't he play for England, then?" (It's because he's Welsh, apparently!). However, the locals round here LOVE their footie and hurling and flying your county flag is a big thing. Ours is the Roscommon flag, Blue and Yellow, but the 'Rossies' get knocked out in the early stages and most people have taken down their Roscommon flags. Mayo is now the thing and the roads are bright with green and red flags, bunting and even big elabourate windmill things with green and red 'sails'. We thought it would be a bit of fun to let our Mayo-born lambs join in the display.

We bid a fond farewell today to our visitors this week, Dave and Julie B, friends from Kent and my old barge-related life. We've had a real blast with them and they have been superb, ideal guests. They seemed to quite fall in love with the place and enjoyed the house, the 'farm', the livestock, the pets, our hospitality and the area. Julie was particularly taken with the pups and (eventually, when she deigned to approach Julie for a fuss), Deefer. Dave is more of a cat-man and made a great fuss of Blue, but also had a soft spot for our silly, one-ear-up-one-ear-down bunny in Padfoot's litter.

We've had some excellent times together and we are now sad to see them go as we dropped them to Knock Airport for their 3 pm flight home. I have since had a text from Dave saying they are safe as far as the M23 and thanking us for it all. Not a bother, Dave and Julie, it was lovely having you and you are welcome back when ever you like. I will be catching up with them soon when I visit UK and stay on board SB Cambria in Saint Katharine Docks as part of the Classic Boats Festival.

We counted the dogs, cats and rabbits after they had gone to make sure none had been smuggled out. We know what these Westie fans are like!

Settled In

Readers will be pleased to know that the sheep have settled in OK and are all thriving on our nice moist green grass. 40 shades of Green and all that. In this case, obviously "The Green and Red of Mayo" as these ladies were born in Irishtown, Co.Mayo so should be supporting Mayo in tomorrow's All-Ireland GAA football final and if Dad can get them a green and red flag for one of their fence posts he probably will. Our mission is to settle them down nicely so that they are calmly eating and putting on weight. They arrived at respectively 31, 32 and 33 kg and a good slaughter weight would be in the range 46 to 60 kg, 46 for lean meat, 60 for more fatty meat.

Looking at the various websites, carcass weight is about 48% of live weight (although that depends on about a million other factors) and the offal bits that Mum and Dad love (hearts, kidneys, liver) are on top of that. A big old shoulder joint here can be around €27, and the lamb meat can be from €5 per kilo for scraggy stewing bits, up to €21 for rack of lamb. The theory is that having bought these girls for €80 each (€2.44 per kilo live weight) we should still win and have the fun of owning sheep, followed by a freezer full of lamb slaughtered and butchered up by our own tame butcher's "behind the scenes" meat factory, Cuniffe's.

There is, though, a 2nd option which may be called into play. These are healthy, good quality girls who would easily take being bred from to produce our own lambs. This obviously involves keeping them  alive and fed through the winter and then putting them to a hired or bought in ram at the appropriate time and then coping with all the lambing fun and games. Mum and Dad are not sure if they are ready for all that yet. Meanwhile, there's an acre less for Dad to mow.

All the hand feeding and making friends is mainly about getting them so used to us that we can slip a halter onto each one and lead them about the place, including onto other grass like the front lawn. You get them used to the bucket of 'nuts', goes the theory and they will follow you anywhere, so you can get them to the lawn and 'home' again when required. You can also tether them to the fence by their front end while you clip any 'dags' off (I'm not going to explain) round their bums to keep them clean and prevent fly-strike.