Of Bees and Brehon Law

My two whooper swans were down on the lough (again or still?) today so what ever the flying pair I reported in my last post were up to, they were not my lough couple off on their final move back to Iceland. We have them for a while yet, though we get very few of the still crisp nights in which to enjoy their nighttime bugle calls and the sounds of their splashing and chasing about. Spring is definitely coming, though. After a few days of strong winds and rain it was a lovely relief to wake up on the Sunday (8th) to still air, blue skies and bright sunshine. Very sloppy underfoot, but this sudden break gave us a chance to both get out into the garden and start to look around. We moved our 'giant' rabbits (Goldie and Nugget) to a new, grassier site out the front of the house and Liz whipped round the currant bushes and roses with the secateurs.

Garden assistants

Liz loves her roses and all the care, pruning and gardening jobs that go with them. We have quite a few and an area in the 'nursery' well stocked with new plants we are getting established in tubs and cuttings which we are trying to strike, some of which come from Steak Lady's old garden up in Portmarnock, now abandoned in the house move. A shaggy rose will always drag Liz outside even when the weather is saying stay in and knit or play on the internet but these guys have started into spring growth and stolen a march on the pruning process. Liz was heard having conversations with them apologising for cutting away all the new growth which they had worked so hard to create and reassuring them that they would thank her in the summer when they were growing into proper shapes covered in bloom. She thinks that this persuasion worked as "only one pulled my hair (Dublin Bay) and only L'Aimant scratched".

The pig area looking tidier now we've trimmed the fallen tree.

I am now only fewer than 3 weeks from my big scary Intermediate 'bee school' exam, so the study of bee books and documents, the watching of YouTube videos (one was a 75 minute lecture by a German lady to the (Irish) National Conference on bee mating biology) and the avid reading of all things bee have become part of the local focus. This includes reading the excellent Federation magazine from cover to cover  as soon as it lands and two particular items this month caught my eye (although they may be of no use in the exam!).

Naked tree trunk

One concerned how old Irish Law worked around bees as livestock. Regular readers will know that I am no historian and would hesitate to start pontificating on such a massive subject as historic legal systems, which support whole books, Professorships and PhD research, but bear with me. I can safely say that Brehon Law which existed in Ireland from way back till it was superceded by the arrival of the Normans (1169-ish) and by the coming of Roman Catholic Law is highly regarded as being solid, fair, logical and sensible. It was certainly a whole lot fairer in its treatment of the female half of the population when it came to estate ownership, dowries and marriages than the RC efforts which have followed.

'Old' Mrs Buff checks out the egg laying
potential of the pig ark. She approved.

The piece which caught my eye (Bee Keeping in Ancient Ireland by Fergus Kelly of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (An Beachaire Vol 70/3 March 2015)) was based around some luckily preserved 7th Century texts called 'Bee Judgements', thought to be the only evidence in the world of any legal framework for bee 'foraging' rights. If your cattle grazed someone else's land, then you had to pay the land owner for the grass, so if your bees foraged on the land, then you would need to compensate the owner just the same. The payments were either in swarms or honey, thus spreading bee ownership through the countryside. The beekeeper might be liable for compensation for injuries caused by his bees (stings) unless the injured party got stung while trying to steal his hive.

Poor Deefer. Denied access to 'Dad's lap, she sulked off to a pile of
wellies and tried to look as put out as possible.

If your bees started swarming, then as long as the swarm stayed on your land you owned the bees. If they took off across a neighbour's patch then you immediately lost full ownership. If you could keep them in sight you were allowed to give chase and capture them (provided you did no damage to his land) but you then owed him one third of all the honey it might make for that year. If you lost the swarm and the land owner claimed it then he/she had to give you 1/3 of the honey. Honey was, of course, the only sweetener available and was much relished (says Fergus Kelly) and valued. Nice article.

Lamb Savoyarde - a nice alternative to the hot-pots and
shepherds' pies. A lamb 'stew' layered with sliced potato.
Actually the very last of our stored Sarpo Mira.

The second piece which caught my eye is one which might interest Mentor Anne (it might even be a new one, Anne?) is in the News and Views section of the mag (An Beachaire) by Philip McCabe and concerns the possibility of honey being 'contaminated' with GMOs. This has already happened in 'canola' honey in Germany. Honey-production focused bee keepers who are pushing their hives to the limit, as well as taking too much honey and having to feed fondant or syrup, will sometimes also decide that their hives are short of pollen. Pollen is the protein and fats food for young larvae but is very difficult to get hold of, so these bee keepers use either 'pollen substitute' or 'pollen supplement' which are man made pastes mixed from "processed plant materials".

Pig trotters (Crúibíns or 'Crubbeens') glazed in mango chutney
Sweet, glutinous, sticky finger-licking good. 

As they are trying to mimic a high protein food, it will not surprise you to learn that these 'materials' are often those well known high protein ingredients, soya bean meal, maize meal and mustard. The real pollen itself is an allowed constituent of honey, so perhaps these companies thought that a little 'substitute' would not hurt. Well now they have been 'busted' and the German authorities have described them as 'completely irresponsible' and have said that anyone who uses this product ('Feedbee' made by a Canadian outfit) will risk breaking the 'zero tolerance' limit and their honey would not be marketable anywhere in the EU. We don't buy a lot of honey but I am reassured that this little tweak was stomped on so hard and so quickly.

A future knitter? Maybe not.

Finally, a bit of fun for those long evenings when you are pinned down by the 'orange warning' gales. I was gazing curiously at a bit of Liz's knitting a few days ago and wondering how this dexterous twiddling of a single strand of wool could make the wool be turned into a sheet of cloth which didn't just unravel as soon as you took it off the needles. Nothing for it but to give it a go, so Liz promptly set me up with two needles and a ball of wool, cast me on 20 stitches and gave me a very quick 'masterclass' in the fancy finger moves.

A not very square square.

To cut a long story short I got stuck in and battled through all those beginner mistakes which must be familiar to any knitter, rubbish and inconsistent tension, dropped stitches (some of which Liz rescued) and the inadvertent adding of 8 stitches to my original 20 as I worked my way up. I got to a reasonable level of competence on pure knitting before Liz had me trying to 'purl' it too, so I ended up with an inch or so of what is called 'stockinette stitch' (get me!) and was then even allowed to cast off myself. Not bad for a first effort but "square" it wasn't! For my next trick I intend to actually cast on my own square and knit it all. That might be the end of my sortie into knitting and I'm still none the wiser as to why it works, even though I know how it works.

Uninsured GMOs

These Lidl supermarket Muscari did very
well on the Dining Room windowsill

At last we enjoy a bit of a thaw. The temperatures outside zoom up to a heady 10-11ºC, all the snow melts away, the drizzle has a familiar non-crunchy wetness about it and we even have some bees out flying, evicting the latest dead colleagues and doing their hive hygiene thing. The pond looks odd this morning, still covered in a wet, thick, pond-sized sheet of ice but one which is now freed up all around from the banks and covered in wet, thawed rain so that the ice is part submerged. I have been out digging or cutting red cabbage, turnips, sprouts, parsnips and red beetroot without having to scrape away the snow first.

Popcorn and old Doctor Who episodes
for a quiet night in.

Last night I was able to fill the goose baths using the garden hose, though for the first few minutes the hose was pushing out 'sausages' of ice which plinked onto the old ice sheet landing like a small dropped heap of cocktail sticks till the new water eventually evicted them all and the hose could run at normal pressure. The 'little' lamb thrives and is now big enough to be safely out of doors through the night. In reality he probably has been for a good week but we are nervous and over-careful beginners, so the chap will have been enjoying not having to expend calories on keeping warm in the frost. Tonight, his first night out (other than his date of birth, of course, when he took us by surprise and  was welcomed to the world by rain, wind and a wet tuft of grass on which to lay his head) he will only have to worry about keeping dry.  They have a good field-shelter out there with straw-bale walls and a scattered straw floor. They should be grand, but I will be anxiously checking first thing to make sure everybody coped with the night.

On a completely different note, our house insurance is with the mainly farming based company FBD. I believe these people used to be called 'Farm Buyers Direct' but like many such outfits, they now go with the initials and logo and have left the old name well-buried behind, but anyway, they are an insurance company who specialise in insuring farms and farm buildings. We were pretty much obliged to go with FBD when we were building because no-one else we could find, would agree to insure a house over 150 years old but this is not a bother, they have proved to be a perfectly good, professional and reliable company, helpful and pleasant to deal with (all be it we have never had to try to make a claim!).

A welcome gift of a dozen duck eggs from the Mum of one
 of Liz's 'students'.

As you'd expect, we get our renewal reminders sent out annually and we pay up and it all goes away again for another twelve-month. Generally I don't read the small print in any kind of detail but this year I happened to have the papers in front of me having just sat down with a coffee. I was surprised, amazed and, I guess a little delighted, to spot that FBD have now added a specific claims exclusion to the rules - the policy now

The new dish washer chugs through another load.

"excludes loss, damage, cost or expense of whatsoever nature or any legal liability for personal injury to third parties or damage to property belonging to third parties directly or indirectly caused by, resulting from or in connection with a) the research into, testing of production or supply of any genetically modified crop or genetically modified organism, where liability may be attributed directly or indirectly to the genetic characteristics of such crop or organism (and) b) the presence of such crop or organism other than where contained in feed products purchased for use as animal feed on the farm"

Duck egg Spanish Tortilla with our local 'red' coleslaw
(our own red onions and red cabbage plus carrot)

I am curious as to why this should now be so (and I am expecting Mentor Anne to possibly comment - she watches these issues like a hawk and will not have missed this one). I cannot imagine that FBD are taking a principled stand against GMO; many of these big insurance companies have funds which invest in exactly those kind of 'Gen-tech' and bio-tech start ups. I suspect it is more about fear of the unknown which many of us have at the core of our objection to the use of GMOs. We just do not know what will be the effect on natural populations or even on populations of traditionally improved and bred crops of these new man-made genome tweaks. For an insurance company, that may well translate into "what will be the insured risk of those effects" so they are dropping these issues like hot potatoes till there have been some effects and test cases and know whether they can risk their shirts. They presumably have to include the "other than where contained in feed products" bit because the vast majority of commercial feeds already contain GM soya or maize meal, so they would end up with no customers.

Shot gun shell.

Meanwhile, RIP Fox #3, a younger female this time, 36 inches nose to tail.

New Feed, New Fence, New Freedom!

Our chickens went on strike! Egg laying sputtered to a halt and stopped altogether. We have been messing around with ones twos and threes a day (from 4 'layers') earlier in the year and then 'lost' Betty to a broodying session and now to being an excellent Mum to the 8 chicks, so that we were down to one or two a day. We had a couple of generous donations of a dozen each time from Mentor Anne who is getting glutted out from her 30-odd birds so we've been OK but we were always suspicious that one hen was not pulling her weight at all. We have a slight problem that we cannot tell the Lovely Girls apart so we weren't sure this wasn't two hens laying every other day, but we have one girl spending so much time with William that she is always copping his amorous advances and her feathers are quite worn out across her 'saddle'. This one never seems to be 'missing' (as in off to lay her egg).

Last week this low production took a turn for the worse and one hen started laying very thin-shelled or shell-less eggs which were getting broken in the nest boxes and going to waste. Some days we had no eggs at all. We referred the case to 'Doctor Anne' who asked us all sorts of questions and homed in on diet. I have been feeding the local feed merchant's "standard" grade layers pellets but lately have found that their 25 kg sacks contain a lot of pellets broken down to dust size, so that the feed looks like it might be the sweepings from the end of a production run. At Anne's suggestion we have started the hens on Pedigree Foods' Organic Layers Ration. We have also discontinued the 'mixed poultry corn' which contains maize (and might, these days, be the GMO version of maize) and are going with local feed-wheat. It may take a few days for this new nutrition to work through but today (almost certainly by chance) was a 2-good-egg day. We will tell you how we get on. We are also going to fit the birds' legs with coloured leg-rings so that we can identify the non-layer and, if she doesn't watch it and these baby chicks come up to laying age, she may find herself in the stock pot.

The biggest project recently is our fencing of the 1.5 acre East Field with sheep-proof (and therefore mini-horse proof) fencing. This has been done by our fencing guy Paul M with me helping him as labourer. If you are interested in the detail, sheep fence is high-tensile square mesh about 3 feet high with smaller holes at the bottom (to stop baby lambs) with a strand of high tensile barbed wire at the top. It is all strained to bass-guitar twanginess using a thing called a 'monkey strainer', so it has massive 10" 'strainer' posts at each corner and for the gate posts and narrower (4 inch?) posts in between about every 3-4 yards. The strainer posts can be braced and buttressed with extra diagonal posts. The whole field is, as I said, 1.5 acres or about 127 yards by 44 yards, i.e. about 340 yards total fence which will set you back about €1050 installed. It's one of the bigger investments in the small holdering game, but good fencing should last you 10-20 years.

We started the task last Thursday afternoon, had a quick couple of hours on Friday morning before Paul had to go off and attend a wedding, missed Monday for Bank Holiday, and then got properly stuck in on Tuesday and today (in the rain). We'd done by about 4 pm. Paul joined us for tea and scones and then I had to show him a couple of bits Vendor Anna needs on her bit of land and then he was gone. He's a lovely bloke and great fun to work with, being full of local stories and anecdotes. We would happily use him again and I would recommend him to anyone round here who needs fencing done.

 We are delighted and feel like we have "got our field back". Since last year it has just had the beef fence (3 strands of barbed) between us and the field to stop Mike-the-Cows's cows from straying onto our lawns and garden and was open to the north. It felt like we didn't own it and shouldn't go there. Now we can come and go through the new gate opening by our Utility Room and the fences around the 'outside' stop animals coming and going across our boundaries.

At 5 o'clock then, we were ready to unleash the horses. We had two at that stage, Bob and Cody, who had been tethered on the lunge-reins since Sunday 5th and we had been moving them on to new grass each day. Now we could lead them into the field and take off the head collars and let them run free. And RUN they did, all overcome with excitement at the new space, grass and freedom, not seen since November last year. They took off at a full gallop, racing in great arcs up and down the field full of the joys, like a couple of mad youngsters (they are actually about ten years old). I walked round the field showing Liz the fencing (I know! I know how to show a lady a good time!) as they raced away and back past us again and again. It was lovely to see.

After a while they calmed down and set to eating. I texted Carolyn to say the field was now ready and soon, Charlotte showed up with the other horse, Romeo (he of the cart pulling). We let him go into the field and the others were so delighted to have him back that they went racing around again. It is a brilliant funny sight to see three Thelwell style ponies galloping about as a group as fast as their little legs will carry them.

Happy Horses (and happy roses and rhubarb!).