Callum Comes a-Calling

Storm Callum

Named storm 'Callum' arrives heralded by the usual colourful wind maps and weather warnings from Met Éireann and (National broadcaster) RTE. He looks from the first predictions, that he will split up either side of the island's SW corner and will mainly be a coast problem. Co Roscommon is a land-locked county, so we only got a 'yellow' warning (for rain).

Upholstery "stuff" will need an official
storage place.

And so it turned out. We'd taken all the normal precautions (hives strapped down, lumps of concrete on hutch roofs etc) and we have our new chicken house roof, so we felt safe enough but no-one here was complacent and we all saw the sorry pictures of the devastation caused by Hurricane Michael which took out great tracts of Florida. I was woken by heavy rain at about 3 a.m. and then again at 6 a.m. and there were puddles but we got away with no damage.

Rooster Gandalf (right) minds a group of hens sunning them
selves and preening. 

We had even got away with a 2 day "Indian Summer" prior to Callum, with the south winds bringing unseasonably warm air up from Spain. We'd been able to sit outside, in my case with the camera, and take a few pics of the various birds relaxing in what might be their last warm days this year. For 2 days we did not light the range (I have now!). There was plenty of bee activity in both the hive and the swarm box.

Despite appearances, we think this may be a hen.

I noted in a recent post that we did not seem to be able to produce here, a white coloured hen despite having Sussex birds in the flock for all the 6 years we have done chickens here. All our white babies seemed to grow up into roosters, way outside the Law of Averages.

Rooster Gandalf has had enough of being magnificent and full
of breeding season glory. He goes for the moult.

Very recently we 'offed' the last youngster as it started to shout Cock-a-Doodle-Dooooo! and grew an impressive long tail and the big facial features (wattle, comb) of a cockerel. He also started trying to jump/rape women belonging to Gandalf and Herme and was getting a good kicking from those two boys. It was not going to end well.

Now, that lad was one of a small clutch of babies hatched in spring, a 2nd one of which was also white, and we watched anxiously as the two white "boys" both grew up, were seen play-fighting one another and seemed to be heading for similar tall stature. We were sure they were both roosters.

Pretty hen enjoying the sunshine

Then a month or 2 ago, the 2nd bird suddenly stopped growing and never developed the tall tail or big face, never crowed and did not start harassing the 'sisters'. She(?) is a bit rangey and long limbed so she will be a big bird but we think we might just have a hen, there.

Turkey hen, 'Deo' seems quite happy solo.

We have been keeping a close eye on the turkey hen, 'Deo' after we had to cull out the 'tom' ('Excelsis' - there was a bit of a Christmas theme developing there, for a while). Turkeys can form very close pair bonds and can pine away and die at the loss of their partner. Deo seems to be OK and happy enough hanging with the three Guinea Fowl cock-birds. So far so good anyway.

In line for some culling action, these two "spare" Appleyard
drakes.

Also in this inadvertent tale of culling and death we have 2 'spare' drakes quietly getting on with enjoying a bit of a stay of execution. They were due to go on their final journey back at the end of our Help-X visit by Sonja and Asbjörn but that was when the turkey-tom decided to lose the plot and attack me. He stepped into harm's way and the processing department had enough on its plate. Never mind, the Lady of the House will not be that busy for ever and their turn will come.

I can never see how this is comfortable.

Did I say 'busy'. Oh yes, I have not yet mentioned that that other big 'time-suck' that mops up our free time each year, is about to re-start..... The Village Play. The Lisacul Players wake up about now each year and start planning the next Easter's production. The 'wake up' meeting was on Wednesday and involved a big gang of them (13) reading one of the (3) plays short-listed by main man and Producer Tommy C. I went along as the reading started late enough that I had all the birds locked up safe from Mr Fox. I am sorry I did not make a note of the play or writer but it was by a well known and prolific local play-wright.

Plenty of bee activity round the swarm box in the warm days.

The Players have to try to find a play that suits their male/female cast balance and they also prefer plays where there is not just one major spoken part. We prefer well balanced 'ensemble' plays. The one we read was very good and very funny and may end up being "The Play", but the Players are going to read another one next week and another the week after, and then decide. I will keep you posted.

Finally, we came to time for the big 'Parma' ham legs of pork to come out of their dry salt/sugar cure and to move on to the next phase: 4-18 months of air drying hanging up from the ceiling in a nice airy, well ventilated space. This change involves having to scrub off all the encrusted salt using cider vinegar (or the odd splash of hot water which you must quickly pat off once the salt is gone).

Legs scrubbed clean of salt

They get wrapped in a muslin sheath or a pillow case to deter the flies but they should not really need that, being so salty and vinegar-y by now on all the cut surfaces and skin. I could not actually find the muslin when I went to do this but pending a rescue, hung them up naked anyway and I have seen no flies on or around them, so we should be OK. They hang for 4-18 months gently drying out and maturing, and losing around 30% of their weight.

That must be about it for this post so I will wish you Good Luck and hope you all survived 'Callum' as painlessly as we did.

Oh - one last thing. We have had our first goose eggs of this season

Chicken House Roof

Stripping off the old 'tin'. 

Away and by far the biggest news for this post is our superb progress on the chicken house roof replacement. Having surprised us by turning up 3 days early on Friday to make a start, builder/carpenter buddy 'K-Dub' carried on the good works on Monday and today (Tues). With me on light duties and the Help-X lad having blown us out, K-Dub was working solo for a big part of this time, but assisted by Elizabeth when there were chunks of new timber to be brought round from cutting-place to the shed, or chunks of old rotten roof to stack away for burning later.

Dismantling the electrics.

The jobs, in roughly chronological order were to carefully remove the good tarpaulin and the small two tarps which went on first back in the post Storm-Doris days. Next up, the electrics had to be peeled away from any wood which was now going to be removed. Next, K-Dub stripped off the old 'tin', sliding the sheets down for us to stack on the ground. Sharp edges on those rusty sheets, so gloves were vital.

Nifty chain-saw action while balanced on a wall.

The next stage involved some rather nifty 'high wire' balancing along the tops of walls (none of the woodwork would have taken the weight of anyone the size of K-Dub (or me)) armed with a chain saw. We'd shut all the fascinated chickens out of the building so that K-Dub could go all round cutting old rafters till the roof woodwork, almost in one piece, collapsed into the shed. He then went into the shed and chopped it up into bite size pieces that we could haul out and stack. Finally on the demolition phase, he had to dig out the wall-plates (timbers which sit a-top walls to take the bottom end of rafters.)

Here the old roof timbers have completely collapsed into the shed.

You know how these builder types, when asked for an estimate, suck in a breath between their teeth and say something like, "We won't really know till we get going - you can find all sorts of horrors when you start demolishing roofs!" Well, here, I could see that minor escalation in action and I couldn't argue with the man. The walls of these barns are almost a 'dry-stone wall' construction with very little in the way of mortar between the stones, maybe some mud thrown in on top to fill some gaps.

Some new timbers going in, mainly so that we could sling the
tarp back over the unfinished roof on Monday night.

Well now, 150 years+ later the wall tops are not so much 'wall' as loose small rubble and dusty dry soil. As K-Dub prised the old wall-plates out of their grooves, the sides of each groove simply land-slid in. We decided that this roof should get, for safe keeping and to ensure that the wall plates did not 'walk' away from each other under the load of the new tin, sagging our nice new ridge-beam, 2 extras.

It's not all chicken houses. Elizabeth, Queen of the Pointy
Shovel takes on the mighty job of digging that raised bed over.

Firstly we would span the building with 4 horizontal 'joist' beams. We actually used the spare 4' length off-cuts to make the rafter pairs between these joists into 'A' frames, which neatly gave the Guinea Fowl back their perches. Secondly we would mix a sloppy cement and pour/spread this along the wall tops around and under the new wall plates to give some grip onto the loose rubble. The top 6 inches of wall is probably now the strongest bit, and would be called a 'ring beam' if we had done it all round the building.

Those last 2 jobs were today's and, for another night we have slung the big tarp back over the work to give the chickens a bit of shelter in case it rains in the night. K-Dub is sure we can finish tomorrow. That would be the remaining purlins, the new tin, 'flaunching' the tin in to the gable at the 'windy' end, fitting the ridge pieces and a capping on the East end, strapping down the roof to the walls, re-assembling the electrics and cleaning up. Busy old day. I will tell you all about it in the next post.

A spindle bush recovering from sheep browsing in our 'Woods'

Meanwhile, in the down time (Yes, we do get some! Light duties, remember) I have been enjoying the various groups of birds coming of age and starting to sort out their grown-up family dynamics. The ducks, you will recall, are a young male Khaki Campbell hatched by us this spring, and a Mum and 5 youngsters of 'Silver Appleyard' variety bought in a couple of months ago.

Well, now they are all full size and the KC has started doing odd 'display' moves to various other ducks. He alone has differentiated into a definite drake (dark head, bassy 'quack', curly-up feathers just above the tail). We know that Mum is Mum, but the 5 youngsters are keeping their sex secret for now, from us anyway. KC-Drake's moves include a rearing up on his back end, standing up on the water with his chin pressed down into his chest, and zooming forward across the water with his neck stretched out forward and his chin almost touching the water. Are these moves designed to impress any coming of age males, or females? We have no idea.

Then yesterday, early in the morning, our alpha rooster, Gandalf came into view followed by an entourage of 15 adult and half grown chickens. Up to now the half grown babies have pretty much kept to their clutch-groups. Are they now feeling the changes of teenager-hood and starting to align with the dominant male, playing their cards right, as it were. More on these stories in future posts. Now I must wrap up as the Woman of the House is off out tonight to a meeting for which she needs this lap top. Talk to you again soon.

'Tis the Season

No Turkeys! Out on that bank on our boundary, where Mr Fox
definitely comes patrolling, is NOT a good place to nest.

British Summer Time. Nice long evenings and the dogs waking me up a good hour later than they have been, driven as they are by their own light-level triggers. Spring is sprung and all that. 'Tis the season for procreational activities to break out all over, sometimes covertly.

Occupational hazard of fencing in these parts.

'Tis also the season for everyone to shore up those winter-damaged fences prior to letting the cattle out to the welcome grass. I got involved a bit in order to help a friend and came back with the usual lacerated forearms from the brambles, hawthorn and blackthorn. This was an early morning job, so Elizabeth found herself in charge of fox watch. The fox has never (yet) attacked in an early morning, so she thought she'd be safe enough snatching a rare 'lie-in' and covering the task sitting up in bed. The dogs were up there too so surely nothing could happen 'out there' which she'd not be aware of. Safe enough, you'd think.

Turkey eggs "hidden" in the scrub.

The morning's peaceful relaxing was shattered when the dogs suddenly started shouting and bouncing around on the windowsill. The Guinea fowl were also yelling and a quick look showed our fox-watch that at least one was up on a high perch. Jumping to the conclusion that Brer Fox was among us again, she raced down and outside, releasing the dogs to go do their thing.

The three ducks gave me a scare when the female fell asleep
on an dead clump of Lady's Mantle. She was so well matched
in colour, I thought we were down to 2 ducks.

A few minutes of retrieving Towser from the tarmac lane where he'd gone to round up the confused Guineas and the only reason for the shout seemed to be that 'tis also the season for roosters to start fighting and two of them were going hammer and tongs in the middle of the front lawn. Our dogs are, by now, pretty cool with 'ordinary' chickens but if they see a fight going on, fluttering and kicking, feathers flying the 'distressed prey animal / easy target' thing kicks in and they will as likely as not have a lunge.

So Mrs C was by now wide awake, of course and in her thorough search of the area, came across another 'Tis the Season' thing, a little clump of three turkey eggs hidden under some fine tree branches but right out by the bank over which Brer Fox comes when he does visit. Not a very sensible place to nest, Mrs Turk. (Gloria or Deo, we do not know whom yet.).

Some first "dandelions" for the bees. These
are coltsfoot, (Tussilago farfara)

Friends of the blog may recall that we lost our first turkey hen when she went right off site to go broody and never came back, presumably discovered by an earlier fox. We are pleased that this girl has at least nested on site and that we have found her. If we leave her a few eggs in the nest, she should keep laying there and not get upset and go off to find somewhere further afield to lay. If we let her build up a full clutch and go broody, we may be able to move her and the eggs to a safer place without making her desert.

Gandalf. King of the Hill.

So, as I said, 'tis also the season for roosters to start eyeing up their rivals 'women' covetously and even making the odd move on them. Our alpha-male, Gandalf is top dog here and it is his much smaller rival 'Herme' the Buff Orpington who is always looking to take over. We have two other much younger roo's, who run smaller gangs of peripheral hens, but they are not moving in on the top spot just yet. It was Gandalf and Herme who were doing the kick boxing display on the lawn that woke the dogs up.

Battle scarred Herme.

We wish these boys had a stronger sense of 'self awareness' and copped on a bit quicker that they were losing this fight and should probably pull out and run away. Herme seems to have no such rationale and he keeps in trying even though he is getting 7 bells kicked out of him. He comes away with his facial bits (wattles, comb, beak) well blooded. Those are long, sharp spurs on Gandalf's legs and Herme has no such equipment. Ah well. The fights are fast and furious but always finish just before we need to intervene. It's nature's way and we have plenty of space for the boys to keep apart if they prefer to.

Mucking out the lambing pens and
dismantling them. I get my shed back!

'Tis also the season to be done with lambing and I get that lovely (well, I enjoy it!) seasonal landmark task of mucking out the lambing pen(s) and dismantling them. I get my shed back. This year we have a minor 'hang-over' of that lamb, Bábóg, who needs bottle feeding and will continue to need that till she is weaned off the milk.

Rosie and her twins. Bábóg is on the right.

She is now on full bottle (500 ml) feeds 4 times a day, all now out in the field where she lives happily with her Mum, brother and all the other sheep. Mum likes to keep her close but will not let her suckle. The final feed of each day, 10 pm, is now in the dark, obviously, so we have fun wandering about the field with the LED head torch looking for the reflections of eyes, then hear the excited bleat and watch one pair of eyes detach from the group and come bouncing across the field in the darkness, homing in unerringly on that bottle-teat.

All is now well on the laptop. The PC is destined for the WEEE
recycling.

What else is new? I am now settled into the laptop after causing only one quick wobble when I logged in as the owner and somehow changed her user account name to my email address. There were a couple of anxious hours while Mrs C worked out how to get admin rights and change the name back, plus to set me up an account where I could safely clomp about in my size 12 boots and not do any damage to 'her stuff'.

Finally. 'tis the season for baby chicks. These are Silvergirl's.

Finally, I just want to note the passing away of an English 'character' from this blog but way back in the Kent days, when life was all about the rebuild on the Thames sailing barge, SB Cambria. Two colleague-volunteers, Mark and Cathy Chapman had been on that project for years by the time I started and we had plenty of good times working with them. Cathy was English born (Edmonton) but unknown to me then, her roots were right here in Co Roscommon. Her Mum is still very much alive, but her Grandma was buried 20 minutes from here in the small town of Bellanagare. There are no other family here now, though some cousins live down in the SE, around Tallow. Cathy has since, sadly, died of cancer (aged 52) and expressed a wish that her ashes be brought 'home' to Grandma's gravesite for scattering or burial. So today a small dozen of us gathered at the graveside with a Priest to bury her ashes-urn and pay our final respects. Rest in Peace, Cathy and commiserations to Mark and to the rest of the family. Mark was delighted that he has an old friend reasonably near to his wife's grave who can "keep an eye on her".

The Pest From The West

Dippy Goose Eggs. Breakfast of Champions.

Friends of the Blog will know that we had started our goose egg season with a first one laid on the 18th, the day after the layer's sister-bird had been killed by the fox. By tradition, though, in this house we get to eat these first eggs (rather than selling them giving them away) jointly at a breakfast, as 'dippy eggs'. We therefore have to wait for the 2nd egg to arrive (that was the 21st) and then for both of us to be available and in breakfasty mood. That brought us round to Saturday morning (24th) but the eggs did not disappoint. They were well worth the wait. Happy First-Goose-Eggs-of-the-Year-Day everyone.

Anchovy flavoured pizza.

We have also been messing around with pizza. Now that I am steadily into the sourdough baking (we buy very little shop bread any more) I was curious to see whether sourdough could be used as pizza base. Of course it can and no end of my contacts suggested recipes.

Pizzas (raw)

This will have the average 'Mum' laughing in her socks. These days they cut their baby-chef's teeth on pizza assembly; it is real kid's stuff taught to 4 year olds, but at 60 years old I had never actually made my own pizza base and then covered it in ingredients.

Chopped pork pizza

I am happy to report another cookery triumph and one of those in which you can claim a good few ingredients as home made from home grown basics. The sourdough was mine. The 'ragu' had been made by Elizabeth using the rib and breast trimming bits of our most recent lamb. The chopped roast pork which went into one of them was from our own pigs. Other ingredients were probably better than used in supermarket pizza - we used extra mature cheddar for the cheese for example and whole anchovy fillets, fresh salad peppers and onion. These bad boys positively BUZZed with flavour.

Fast growing lamb, Tigger, still takes Mumma's milk but is also
keen on grass, hay and the breakfast 'crunch'. 

The down side of this is that I may have shot myself in the foot. The Head Chef enjoyed it so much that she said "Right - THIS is how we do pizza from now on. No more shop bought stuff!"

Thick ice on the goose bath.

Meanwhile, we are now seeing the first real effects of the cold easterly air stream coming across UK and this island from Siberia, for which everyone now seems to be using the handle " #TheBeastFromTheEast " . We have had the dry, bitter winds for a week now and we are beautifully dried out and frozen firm most mornings, but across today and through to Friday the 'Beast' is forecast to up the ante and start dropping snow and hail on us.

Straw bales keep the wind out of the sheep shelter. The sheep
can hunker down behind a bale. 

Naturally, fore-warned we have been able to stock up on coal and animal feeds and I have bought extra straw bales to give protection to the eastern side of my sheep shelter. That is the theory anyway. In fact the sheep have mainly gone right over to the East side of the field and lain down under the thick hawthorn hedge. The bales are used by lamb Tigger for bouncing up and down 'stairs' on. If I had a Euro for every time I'd stood the walls back up.......

Feathers mark the murder scene and the arrow shows the
villain's escape route. 

In other news then, if the storm is called #TheBeastFromTheEast, then I am calling my fox, who comes from the other direction, #ThePestFromTheWest. Yes. He has been back. On Monday (26th) we were both indoors relaxing prior to me going out to do 'Fox-Watch' from about 4:30 pm till lock up, when suddenly the shout went up from the ever-reliable Guinea Fowl. Rushing to the front window I saw a stream of fleeing chickens sprinting right to left, away from the pond side.

Our #1 Buff Orpington rooster. This is Herme. He survived.
His son, who looked very similar, was the victim

Rushing into footwear and coats we raced out but we were too late. We found the sorry patch of feathers which marked the murder scene and from the colour we knew the fox had snatched a Buff Orpington chicken. We quickly checked all the survivors and worked out that the fox had snatched our #2 Buff Orpington rooster, 'Orion'. I let the dogs off - we now trust them not to kill chickens on the way out or back and they chased around for the trail but they were way too late.

Getting in supplies of feed and coalite to see us through
"The Beast"

Upside(s) to this story. This attack had me chasing up the fox-trap supplier and finding that all their orders for these traps would be dispatched today (27th) as they had now been received by them on the Monday. We should get that this week, all being well. Also a new rooster just coming of age and possibly becoming a nuisance is now saved from the 'relegation zone' and promoted to #3. He looks a bit Marans so might make a future replacement for our #1 bird, 'Gandalf'. Assuming Brer Fox does not get him, of course. Thirdly, the attack put me back on high alert so that today I spent a good part of the day patrolling around outside (yes, in the cold!) and happened to be out with the dogs this afternoon at 4 pm when The Pest came back.

The local Tidy Towns group kicked off
their 2018 season with a very good talk
on composting. 

The Guineas kicked off and I saw a duck fly up and bonk down again onto the frozen pond but I was quickly able to let the dogs out of the lawn-field and was very satisfied to see the three streak away in echelon formation, hot on the heels of the fleeing fox. I don't suppose they caught him for one moment (little legs!) but they were gone out of sight for a good 15-20 minutes and returned breathless and buzzing. Maybe the fox will think twice tomorrow, now he know the dogs here are not ALWAYS under 'control'.

Finally, with The Beast coming across over the next few days, and The Pest very much a factor, we watched the black clouds building in the East and the first flurries of hail and snow come down on a squally wind. I looked across at Polly, our next ewe due to lamb, who was the far side of that East Field and saw that she was pawing at the ground. A definite sign of imminent lambing, though I'd not thought she was 'bagging up' that much yet. Still, we made an executive decision to get her indoors - I was mainly thinking of the cold and wet, but the Assistant Shepherd noted that Brer Fox would almost certainly be attracted to all that birth-fluid smell and fresh blood. Foxes will readily steal a new born lamb while it is helpless. I could not bear that.

So she is now in the pen in the Tígín on new straw, with a bucket of water and some grub. She is not totally happy about this but this is one of those times where the humans need to 'play God' and decide what is best for the animals in their charge. Polly's instincts might all be shouting to her to go find a lonely corner of the field and go it alone, but she doesn't know what we know about the Beast and that hungry, frustrated fox who just missed his duck dinner. Lastly, good luck to all our UK friends, who are mainly around the SE which seems to be the place posting the snowiest pictures on Facebook and may be getting The Beastly snow storms in the neck. Stay warm and dry. 

The Boys are Bereft

Apollo and Belvedere, 2 Guinea Fowl cock-birds suddenly
lacking a focal point in their lives. 

Long term friends of the blog may recall that we first got into Guinea Fowl back on Nov 5th 2013, 3+ years ago. Back then we purchased Henry and Min named after the aul' wans on the Goon Show with dreams of eating their eggs and possibly a few young birds.
( http://deefer-dawg.blogspot.ie/2013/11/guinea-fowl.html ).
Much later, Henry was killed out on the road while minding Min who was hiding in the hedge opposite laying the next of a clutch of 16 eggs. Min abandoned the eggs when her hubby was lost and we incubated them, hatching 13 youngsters (keets).

Cornflower

If memory serves, we sold some of these to a local lad who wanted to start a 'flock' but then lost the rest to a fox attack. We certainly never ate any - I'd remember. The pining Min then annoyed us for months with her "Buck wheat buck wheat" mate-calling till we blagged a couple of males from our friend Sue. These were Apollo and Belvedere. Min fell in love with Belv' and Apollo had to take a support role, watching in the wings as back-up.

Arum lilies do very well here.

Min (with Belv's help) may have been laying eggs this year but if there was "anything" going on or any eggs being laid then we never saw a sausage. All good so far. However, a week or so back, our Min was suddenly badly injured a across the 'saddle', all the feathers stripped away and a big bright slick of blood on the place, as if she'd been flayed. She was still walking but we really needed to catch her and isolate her, to give her a chance to recover. We had no idea whether the cock bird(s) had suddenly got rough or maybe she'd fallen prey to the chicken-rooster, Gandalf and his spurs. I caught them "just after" the act, I think, with G strutting and crowing and Min flat on the ground in a daze, bleeding.

Well, anyone who has had experience of Guineas will know how hard they are to catch and we never managed it, plus we thought that life in a crate or rabbit-run might be too stressful to actually do her any good. We decided to watch her and, true to form, the next day she seemed very 'repaired', bald but not bleeding. We chugged along for the next week with Min mainly recovering but occasionally getting blooded again.

Buff Orp laying eggs on the diff of K-Dub's
abandoned "Mad Max" trike. We are minding
this beast which has the back end of a Transit
engine, gearbox and final drive and may, in time
get the forks and front wheel of a tractor. 

Then on Weds 31st May night she seemed to go downhill and went 'to bed' OK but roosted down on the floor of the coop (among the ducks) instead of up in the rafters. It wasn't looking good and, indeed, I found her in the morning, as I expected, stiff and cold. We guess she died from her injuries or an infection taken in through that huge wound. Poor thing.

A family favourite blue Geranium, 'Orion'

So now we have two Guinea Fowl cock birds who are bereft. Stripped of their main reason to be, their woman to Marshall and mind, their prize to fight over, their appetite to protect from chickens trying to steal "her" share of the food, they are lost. They are currently hanging with the chickens and not at all sure at bed time whether they should be going to bed without Min.

Peas showing promise in the tunnel.

We are wondering what to do. The boys are real characters despite having brains the size of petit-pois and are excellent Guard-Dogs kicking off a hell of a racket should a fox or intruder come on site. Back when we lost Henry, we bought them because lonely Min was breaking our hearts with her calling. Will we just buy a couple of gals for the boys and carry on? More on this in future posts.

Big boots and tiny plimsolls.

June is with us and the season for Elderflower cordial (and "champagne" if you are of a mind and have the bottles for it). I was out on the front lawn a couple of nights back giving the dogs their off-lead exercise session when I saw my good lady striding out of the woods armed with a bulging carrier bag but walking in a very "clompy" fashion - not her normal gait at all. It took me a while to work out that she'd been out gathering elderflowers and, to protect those calves and knees from the stinging nettles, she'd found that her feet, still in their plimsolls would easily fit in my 'huge' wellies (inches to spare, allegedly).

Elderflower cordial

The elder flower cordial is probably our favourite soft drink. I love it with sparkling water whenever I need to be off the alcohol (zero tolerance driving in this house). It is very popular too with guests and visitors and Liz has taken a bottle of the cordial to work so that colleagues can enjoy it. A real taste of Summer.

Nice bit of resurfacing by the lads from Rosco-Co-Co (the
 County Council) in our lane but the dogs hate every last
sharp stone chip and every little sticky bit of tar from it!

Finally a silly story which made me laugh. I was taking an old boy, friend and neighbour on a run out to a nearby town on an errand. En route we trundled past an anonymous shop - no sign-writing, no logos, no name, no clue telling you what it might be selling. I had barely noticed it but the Old Boy (OB) piped up with "That's really good shop... Sells EVERY thing.... and if he ever doesn't have what you are looking for you only have to ask him and he will get it in for you". "Fine", I said, "but what kind of stuff does he sell?"
OB: "Ahhhh,,,, I wouldn't know that now...." Not a lot you can say to that, really. OB was not volunteering any more information, anyway, so we drove on in silence.

A mystery construction at the local crossroads. More on this
in a future post. 

That's it for this one. I will just leave you, as usual, with a couple more pics. Still no goslings but we do now have a chicken gone broody in an old knackered wicker basket full of hay in the shed. Bye for now.

I am suddenly getting a way higher readership than of yore.
Thank you very much who ever you are.