Testing Times (and a Minor Miracle)

Little George looks a bit lost with Big-G and Black Feather

We have been witness (and enablers, we guess) to a minor miracle. The tiny gosling rejected by the parent group on day 2 and rescued by us for, we thought, hand rearing, is now back with his parents. In our (limited) experience these rejections are permanent and if you try to reintroduce the rejects they can be attacked and killed. Geese are big, powerful birds, and the damage can be very fast and serious. Even as we let the reunion happen we were anxious that we might have to dive in fast and re-rescue George (Junior).

It was a charming and almost 'magical' day, the day after all our fun and games with exploding eggs described in the last post. Like a Mum who knows she is pregnant but daren't tell anyone before the 2nd Scan lest they jinx the thing, I didn't dare report this till now; I wanted to see us survive the first 24 hours and the first night.  Now, though, I can tell the tale. As I opened the goose house door first thing in the morning, I expected just George to march out to the orchard, and the 2 'women' to stay sitting on the eggs. Not this time. Out marched Black Feather on the heels of the Gander and off to the orchard in a determined way, her involvement in sitting on eggs now obviously over as far as she was concerned. She was a free range goose again.

Up the bath ramp at Mum's feet, down again nudged by Dad.

It was also a lovely warm morning, so I wondered whether to try again with the meeting we arranged 2 days ago between Gander George in the orchard, and G-Junior, safe inside a wire crate. That had gone well, with lots of excited beak-to-beak nuzzling and chuntering. It convinced me that Junior was well imprinted on geese, not humans. I wondered how it would go with George AND a female goose (Mum or Aunt, we don't really know). I did not use the crate this time, but put the gosling outside the orchard fence. Baby straight away started homing in on big guys and they on him. I held my breath. There was a good bit of the nuzzling and some open beak 'mouthing' of baby by George. Suddenly the gosling did one of his little clock-work-toy scampers in through the fence and was as suddenly 'in there' between the parents and was as quickly accepted by both.

These buttercups are a bit tall Dad!

The little threesome walked about in the orchard and even ventured up the bath ramp. There was some sitting down with baby allowed to sit close but Liz and I, looking on and feeling the rather keen wind which had sprung up waited for that moment when baby, who had been nudging around the sitting shape of Mum, seemingly nibbling the ends of wing feathers, was properly invited in under the Maternal wing, into the warm. The rest is history, really. They stayed nicely together all day so that we decided that they were better off like that than if we tried to end the experiment and 'rescue' the gosling again. It would have been more like 'steal' the gosling and we couldn't imagine the grown up geese being too happy.

Back on the nest between the 2 ladies

So we left them be, checking them hourly till 'bed time' when I shepherded them home and Black Feather jumped back onto the nest hotly pursued by the gosling, though he had to make his peace first with his other Mum-Aunt, 'Smudge'. Since then they have been doing happy families. This morning it was chilly and windy and no-one came out to the orchard. They all stayed indoors sharing their time between sitting on eggs, standing guard and walking around. I supplied food and water for all ages indoors (little 2 inch high Tupperware for baby, builders bucket for grown ups!). There is still a possible confusion as to how this goes in terms of either female being willing to leave the eggs to go exploring with Junior, but we are a lot happier that he is being minded by the geese rather than us.

So that was the parenting skills tested on the day when Ireland went to the polls so that the Euro and Local candidates (plus a couple of by-elections) could test their democratic mandates, and today we had the NCT ( =MOT ) test on the Fiat and our Bee Keeper written test. The Fiat failed but only on the alignment of the off side headlight (dip beam aims too high), so I was a bit annoyed but also very happy and relieved that that was all. The Bee Keeper exam went well for both of us, with almost all the questions being ones we had seen before and practised on. We are both hoping for good scores, though we may only hear the results in pass/fail format. We have now heard that the practical 'exam' session is to be on Monday evening. It will be good to have that all over so quickly.

Exploding Eggs

Ordinary common plantain. I just like the look of them.

You will recall that we have long since reached the end of our broody Buff Orpington's planned sitting time and are also at the end for the original twelve eggs which were being sat upon by both our sister geese, Black Feather and Smudge. These things can not be allowed to go on and on unchecked as the birds concerned quickly get out of condition due to the lack of food and exercise, and can get sick. The Buff had sat her full 21 days ending 8th May by which time she'd broken or rejected most of the eggs.

Broody Buff gets (un)comfortable
on the mesh 'deck'.

We gave her another 7 days for good measure after which we cleared the nest and cracked open the eggs to see what might have been what. One exploded so spectacularly on being tapped that a piece whizzed past my ear and I was glad I was aiming the opening away from me. Since then we have hoofed Buffers off the nest three times a day or so to try to break the broody habit. Nothing doing. She'd have a quick mooch round, eat a bit of what was available and straight back onto the nest. Anne tells us that in these circumstances you need a 'broody cage', a wire mesh floored cage where the chicken cannot get comfy and can always feel the breeze blowing round her nethers. Hang the bird in a tree for 24 hours, allegedly and 'Bingo' no more 'clocker'. The girl goes back free-range. I have no such cage but my version of this, which might work was to build a wire mesh false-floor to get Buffers up off the warm hay and breezily uncomfortable. We'll let you know if it works.

Ash bark-beetle tunnels in some firewood.

Back at the geese we had to recover the old date coded eggs (some going back to 4th April!) from under the pair of ladies  and leave them with just the newer eggs if they wanted to stay sitting. This was going to be fun as geese are not always that submissive or co-operative. Also one egg had obviously exploded overnight and hit the wall of the goose house in an impressive 'paintball' splat. I'll forgive you for laughing at my expense, but you should have seen me 'going in' with chainsaw gloves on my hands and my chainsaw helmet with mesh visor protecting my face from any attacks. I needn't have worried. There was plenty of honking and hissing but the geese both panicked off the nest and out of the door at the sight of me looming over them.

Liz was waiting behind the door to close it while we worked. Anne had advised that we candle the eggs just in case they were good and hold each to our ear to listen for the faintest heart beat or sound of a little beak trying to 'pip' the egg (break out through membrane and shell, which can take 4 days). Well, these (4) eggs were silent and candled as fully opaque. We took them to the compost heap and gave each an exploratory crack with a piece of slate. One contained a full size but very dead embryo, the remaining three exploded in soft yellow, smelly mess, addled and a bit 'ripe' after 40 days under the geese. There were originally 12. We can now account for 6 - one hatched, one exploded overnight, 4 recovered. We assume the other 6 have also broken or gone pop and are buried in the debris under the nest. Well, there were also 8 'new' eggs, so we made up a couple of nests of 4 each and retreated. letting the geese back in (and George go with them as he had been a bit upset by our rude assault on the ladies). As of this morning (Friday) Smudge has now claimed all 8 and is still sitting but Black Feather has cried a definite 'Enough!' and followed George out to the orchard in a determined manner this morning, her job done as far as she was concerned. We are assuming all the new 8 are from Smudge, mated by George while Black Feather was already sitting. If she is doing her standard egg every other day, than that will have taken her at least 16 days so the eggs have now been incubated by the sitter for between 2 and 16 days. They might therefore hatch (probably widely spaced) any time from the 4th, right through to the 23rd June. It is not likely to end well. Once the geese have one baby needing to get off the nest to get food and water, they tend to abandon the remainder of the eggs.

Sorry about the rubbish photo - I was trying to juggle egg
and light in one hand, camera in the other. I couldn't use
flash or you'd not see the transparency of the egg.

Finally a more pleasant task, to candle the 16 Guinea Fowl eggs in the incubator, now at day 13. Well, we are very much beginners at this but to our untutored eyes, all 16 seemed to be fertile containing growing embryos. All have healthy sized air sacs and as you twirl them in the 'candler' light you can see a definite opaque side and a transparent side, a sign that the 'germ' disc is spreading its fan of blood vessels out from the embryo around the yolk. These guys are due on about the 6th of June.

It's all go! - oh and we had some fun yesterday as we returned from shopping to find the lawn running with escaped baby rabbits. We had to round them up and shore up the gap where the straight bottom of the run meets the not-particularly-flat lawn.

Broody at Last????

We may finally have a goose going broody on us but the question marks in my subject title are because she (Black Feather) does not seem at all convinced that she should sit there all day. She announced this possible intention by not coming out of the goose house this morning at 8-ish when I let George the Gander and our other female (Smudge) out and went to shepherd them across to the orchard. She has done this before, mind; she often seems to lay her every-other-night egg very late so you have to leave her sit till she's quite finished and then shepherd her across the 'gap' to find her chums.

'Spare' eggs. Black Feather only needs 12 to sit on.

But today she sat and sat (and also seems to have pulled some of her belly feathers out to line the nest, which is another sign). We wondered if we were on, Day 1 of 31 (-ish). We know that geese, even when in the 'heat' of incubation will leave the nest and go for a wander and a wash for up to 30 minutes so, the way we are currently laid out, we have to leave the goose house door open for her and just keep an eye, as she'd then be completely free range, the big pond, veg growing areas, flower beds etc. All being well she'd only be out for the 30 minutes, so wouldn't be able to do too much damage.

First rose of 2014, a 'Dublin Bay'.

Well, she came off after lunch but then seemed to stay off. I wondered if she was trying to 'talk' to her chums, so at one stage I opened the orchard gate and let them all 'commune' but , no, they all three just wandered about eating the nicer grass outside the orchard and bathing in the big pond. At least I had a chance to nip in and steal the 'spare eggs' again - we have being following Anne's instruction to date mark the eggs and then steal the oldest each day, leaving the nest with only 12. Eventually I got bored with watching them stroll about and shepherded all 3 geese 'home' thinking that Black Feather, on being led in there might see the nest and 'remember' her responsibilities. She did. She went to sit and the other 2 wandered back to the orchard. We saw her off the eggs again later in the afternoon too, so I am worried that she is not yet 100% convinced as a broody. Watch this space, I guess.

Keyhole bed fortified with chicken wire.

At this time of year that all our perennials and the tulips start to emerge from the soil with plenty of young, tender, green shoots, very attractive to chickens. They growing tips are turgid with April rain and quite brittle, so that a chicken pushing through the clump, even if she is hunting grubs rather than greenery, will snap off all your tulips and trample down the new green stuff. We go into defensive mode, and can hear Anne telling us when we first met, that there is a big difference between fencing chickens into an area, and trying to fence them out! My ring of sheep fence round the keyhole bed which worked 100% last year was perceived with scorn this year by the new ladies and I had to add 4 feet of chicken wire on top. It's not beautiful but the galvanised mesh is old and dull and if you squint you can ignore it and see the lovely safe tulips coming into unbroken bud inside.

Liz in a cage. I let her out when she's done enough weeding.

We also decided this year to encircle the entire new raised bed with 40 metres of (4 foot high, 2 inch mesh) chicken wire, in this case supported on canes, just because it was going to be a temporary structure. However, Liz so enjoyed weeding without assistance of the chooks and found some more chicken-damage which we had not spotted, that this encirclement may become permanent. If so, we will probably make it more beautiful, all this fencing is starting to look like Guantanamo Bay. The official story for this picture is that Liz has shut herself in. Some might suspect that I lock her in this cage till she's done enough weeding and then let her out!

Flowering currant (Ribes)

There is not a great deal else going on. Broody Betty shows no sign yet of following Black Feather down the 'broody' road. We chug on with our Bee School - Lesson 5 was last Monday. I have 'Piggy School' on Saturday, my training course for Pig Rearing down in Tipperary. I think I will just leave you with some nice 'macro' pics of garden flowers which are currently doing the honours. Enjoy them.

Vital bee food in April - the humble dandelion. 

A new one on us. Coltsfoot (Tussilago)

Pulmonaria (Lungwort)

Doing very well here in 2014. Primroses.

Sixteen to Sit On

In our 'book', geese are meant to come into egg laying in spring when they start to receive the attentions of the gander. They will then accumulate 12-14 eggs before conveniently going broody and sitting on them. These "facts" are based, of course on what we've read plus picked up from Anne and Simon plus one chaotic breeding season when our gander was probably the girls' brother and the two geese nested so close together that each could rob all the other's eggs while she hopped off the nest to bathe and the other would then rob them back in her turn. In short we never knew WHERE we were and resolved to do it better this year. Anne will tell you, though, that these 'facts' are no such thing and birds will do what birds will do, unpredictably and surprisingly to keep you, the poor human, on your toes.

The purr-fect excuse to not do the ironing today?

One of our geese ( you may recall they were named Goosey and Goocie for a laugh but between Liz and I we never knew which one we were talking about, so they now have new add-on names which refer to distinguishing features, Goocie is 'Smudge' and Goosey is 'Black Feather'), Smudge, stayed in lay all winter, all through Christmas and is still there now, an egg every other day. She became (Gander) George's first love and he started 'loving' her a good month ago. We decided to let her start accumulating a clutch. Black Feather came back into lay on the 8th Feb but she was sleeping in separate quarters. We knew she wasn't getting mated, so we have been collecting her eggs for the kitchen. Since then, George has now accepted both the geese, so we are all happy families and Black Feather is now laying in the same nest as Smudge, so I have just had to know which day it is and let Smudge carry on accumulating (odd day dated; e.g. 5th, 7th, 9th etc) while robbing Black Feather's even-date (4th, 6th, 8th) eggs. So far so good. Smudge, though has now got up to 16 eggs and is showing no sign of going broody. The weather might be the reason.

Making up bee hive frames. This one for a honey 'super'

After a nice dry, spring like week which had us out gardening and even enjoying a rain-less St. Patrick's Day parade, we are back to wind, rain and wintry showers. This morning I got a nasty surprise while out chain sawing up some logs when I felt a rat-a-tat on my hard-hat and the mesh visor started to get less 'see through'. Snowy wet hail was hammering down on my hat, sticking in the visor mesh and going down the back of my neck. A joke's a joke, but that wasn't.

Finished hive frame. This one for the deeper 'brood' box.

While we are on the 'egg laying' subject, we are now convinced that Guinea Fowl hen, 'Min' is laying eggs in the hedge or scrub at the far side of the field opposite our property. For 4 consecutive days she has nipped off secretly for 2-3 hours, returning at about 3:30 pm. She announces her return with her 'Buck wheat buck wheat' call and Henry is ridiculously delighted to see her, like some sloppy love story re-union. Yesterday she called from the gate and Henry flew the full length of the driveway at 5-6 feet above the ground to be back with her. It's quite sweet. We had seen him hovering around the bit of hedge we think she is using, and once she was back we went for a sneaky check of the brambles etc but could see no sign of the eggs or nest. We are a bit lost on what to do about this so we are clinging to the fact that she should be safe enough in that thicket from Mr Fox (who is still keeping, much to our delight but also surprise and confusion, a very low profile; we (touch wood) never seem to see foxes or mink). We hope (barely able to believe that this could happen) that she goes broody out there, successfully sits for the 28 days and then leads the keets home in a picturesque little 'crocodile'. We are not happy about this but short of trying to contain these wanderers in some kind of aviary, that seems to be our only hope.

Meanwhile a prompt email shout from the Two Marys sorted me out a bit of confusion over assembling bee hive frames. I have two sizes to build, the tall, 'thin' sort for the (11 in the) brood box, and 10 less tall, 'thicker' ones for the honey comb in the 'super' (as in 'upper') boxes. I had a random collection of parts not assigned to either type as well as being a pair of side bars short, so I was a bit stumped. Mary McN has now sorted me out and I am 'away on a hack'. Indoor craft for rainy days. Mustn't put the sheets of foundation in yet though. Being wax, if it gets warm it can sag in the frames making them all uneven for the bees to build from. If it gets cold it can be brittle and can shatter in the frames, so we build the frames up to part-complete and store the sheets of foundation flat at room temperature.

Country Lore (John Deere Bob says...)

The Whooper Swans on Lough Feigh are very noisy at the moment, especially on these cold, crisp, windless, moonlit nights. We can hear them clearly honking and chuntering to one another when we go outside in the evenings to check on things and 'patrol' the dogs (those are mainly about comfort stops for the pooches than checking the boundaries, but if it deters our bushy tailed red-furred chum then so much the better). Local Country Lore has it (this translates more accurately as "John Deere Bob tells us that...") that the geese being noisy is a bad sign, a sure indicator of cold weather and frost to come. I suspect that rather, we are hearing the geese more because the air is already cold, crisp and still, and the sound travels better.

2 plus 1 makes three?

Our goose issue continues, with George having paired off firmly with one of the females (Goocie) to the exclusion of the other (Goosey) whom he now drives away, all be it fairly gently and with no killer instinct. This is not too much of a problem during the day, while they are out in the orchard, but he was having a bit of a go too, inside the goose house at night, where she had less chance of escape. As a result she was reluctant to be shepherded 'home' and showed every sign of not wanting to go in. She slept at least one night in the 'foyer' bit just inside the door while George and his chosen one claimed the 'bedroom' part.

We decided we needed to separate them so that she would not get hurt while we sorted out what to do. This proved dead easy; I re-opened the door and she exploded out, as if she couldn't get out of George's way quickly enough, and between us, Liz and I gently shepherded her round the building to the yard-side door and back into the goose house but outside the wire mesh. She now sleeps there among the feed bins and hay bales, safe and sound. I have put a bucket of water in there for her. She trots back to the orchard each morning to rejoin her sister and His Lordship.

William the Conqueror, still our alpha male.

Meanwhile I have posed a question on my poultry discussion website to ask any goose-keepers what they advise. Is this 'One-Woman Man' thing likely to stick, or will George relent as we come into spring time and Goosey joins Goocie in the egg-laying game? Naturally, there were as many suggestions and opinions as there were replies, but they made for some interesting reading. At one end we had 'do nothing, keep them together like you have' and he will accept her as the hormones start to flow. At the other I had an interesting suggestion - to separate George from the chosen one and make him stay with the 'reject' goose till he learned to love her. In between was even a suggestion to keep the gander with each goose on alternate days. Anyway, we decided to play the waiting game, separating the lonely girl at night and reuniting everyone in the morning, hoping that as spring progresses and George comes into sexual maturity (he's only a youngster and has never actually met any other geese till he arrived here, so he'll only now be learning some inter-goose social skills) all will be well.

Our chickens, on the other hand, have all now settled down into a lovely, stable rhythm and pace of life. We have 9 hens from the various sources (the original 'Lovely Girls', the '8-Ball' and the Hubbards) and these are marshaled around , protected and 'seen to' by our two remaining roosters, William the Conqueror and 'Mr Buff', our big Buff Orpington from the 8-Ball group, hatched at Easter. These two boys get on really well with William having a slight edge on the 'alpha male' scale. They all sleep together, with the Guinea fowl on the perches in the main chicken house except that is, for the Marans Girls (Bubble and Squawk) who persist in going to bed in the smaller 'temporary' house, but that mainly because we have not pressed the point and forced them to move in with the rest. I probably should.

In other news, Liz dabbled her toes back into education and training, going on a 'Train the Trainers' course just before Christmas, mainly as a way of consolidating her existing, but UK-based, skills into a form recognised here in the Republic where they even look a bit sideways at her Open University degree. Well, this being Liz, she can do this training stuff with her eyes closed, so the certificate we received this morning carries the very satisfying grade "Distinction". Go Lizzie!

And last but not least some more of our tongue in cheek long-distance therapy by voodoo-chain-saw. One of Liz's contacts had been suffering from the unpleasant ailment, cystitis, and felt she'd quite like the word included on our 'death row' of words painted on logs so that they could be symbolically rent asunder. All done now and the pictures are posted on the image sharing website. That nice piece of (re)coppiced ash you can see me cutting through is neatly stacked in the log store. The contact is now cured but I suspect that the genuine antibiotics she was prescribed may have had more effect on that than our messing 500 miles away, but we hope we brought a smile to her face.

Craft and Conflict(s)

We mixed a bit of fun in with the logging today to answer a friend's desire for a bit of 'revenge'. One of Liz's friends is having a torrid time at work currently being asked to take over and rescue a failed project in another department but at the same time keep the colleague who has failed, sweet. The failing project ex-manager is known only as 'SHE' and she is not at all impressed by being rescued and replaced and is being a total bitch but Liz's chum has been instructed by the boss to (using modern parlance) "suck it up". We suspect that SHE is only still in the job because the company has failed to even start a disciplinary process so cannot actually sack her yet. We think her time may come if she is found guilty of even half the devious and conspiratorial manouvres that have been reported and which include pouring poison into the ear of the external client for whom the project is being done.

Be all that as it may, cleaving through wood with an axe has got to be a good way of venting one's spleen so Liz jokingly offered to paint the word 'SHE' onto a chunk of wood and have me chop it to bits while she took photographs which the friend could then look at and dream of being able to exact a more physical and satisfying revenge on this hated enemy. How could we refuse? Therapy at a distance by axe-murder. The friend (and others) were delighted with the pictures and are suggesting (tongue in cheek, presumably) that we could take commissions! Mad Boss anyone? Evil Nurse D?

Also in a possible conflict situation is the new gander, George. We can't be sure yet but I saw him today having a pop at one of the female geese and moving as if to claim the other, as if he has 'chosen' one of the girls and decided to reject the other. Tonight as I tried to shepherd them home, which normally works easily as a group of three, he suddenly lunged at one of the girls causing her to veer off track and refuse to go into the goose- house with George and the 'chosen one'. I had to call Liz to assist and between us, via several circuits of the building past the no-longer-comforting-bedroom-doorway, we finally got her to go in. This may just be a one-off, heat of the moment thing and they may all be good again tomorrow but we will have to watch this closely. We can't have George going all one-woman man on us, particularly if he is going start beating up the 'rejected' sister. Watch this space on this one.

Meanwhile we have gone all 'crafty'. From Carolyn of the mini-horses, came a generous supply of baby milk formula tins (SMA brand, the 900 g size) with lids. Liz decided these would be ideal for storing bakery ingredients - flour, sugars, nuts and so on - and would prevent the over-stuffed avalanching cupboard problem which you may know from your own experiences. We set about hunting (unsuccessfully) for coloured 'Fablon' book covering 'sticky-backed' plastic but finally settled on shelf covering sheet. Liz scored some of this by asking in a number of hardware stores for "the stuff your Granny used to cover her shelves with". This had the man in Cahill's on Castlerea Main Street nipping upstairs calling back "I know EXACTLY what you mean!" and reappearing with a choice of colours.

So with the tins cleaned out we started a little cottage industry with Liz measuring and cutting and me smoothing the film onto the curve of the tins. Liz then fired up the label printing computer and thus these rather nifty storage tins are born. We have used up the ten we got and are now off down to Carolyn's to scrounge more, of which she has a good supply, having fed Hungry Henry (2 in February) on the contents. Up-Cycling!

Settled in.

Left to right, Goosey, Goocie and George. 

Our new gander, George, has settled in well with his new women. They were a bit shouty on the day we took the previous gander away from them, maybe suffering from separation anxiety but have calmed right down now. There was no fighting - I just saw one prod by one of the geese which had him nipping a few paces out of range, but that evening all three allowed me to shepherd them 'home' to their night quarters where they all three seem to be a lot calmer and quieter about their supper feed. Perhaps it was the old gander doing all the hissing and shouting to make sure that once I'd put the feed in I got out of the way again fast; George does not do this.

William and 'Miss White' (a Hubbard) peck at the frozen pond.

George's former life had him in a bit of lawn with a couple of drakes but just what Charlotte calls "a small paddly pool" to bath in. He does all the head-dipping and showers water over his back and preens himself but we are wondering if maybe he has not learned how to swim. So far he has not ventured into our bigger water bodies (the enamel bath, half of a blue plastic drum and a 5 foot diameter, butyl lined pond) for any kind of total immersion baptism. He watches the women go in but does not dare to see if he will float. No doubt he'll get there; the other geese took days and weeks to learn the ramp up to the bath. So for the moment he looks a little grubby, and not the pristine white of a well splashed, dipped goose.

Sorry for the poor picture. Guinea fowl in flight. 

We are amused by the ability of the Guinea fowl to fly despite being wing-clipped by the guy who sold them to us having clipped their wings, allegedly knowing what he was doing. He proudly showed us to cut only one wing (which would be correct) and to only cut the main primaries back to the point at the tip of the alula (thumb) feathers. Well these guys could fly over Liz's head (about 5 foot 1 inch) from the day they were clipped, so as a method of preventing them tree-roosting or straying it was doomed to failure. This did not, as it turned out, represent a problem because they have been perfect angels from day 1, never attempting any of these bad habits. Min, the female, is seen here descending from the orchard gate; she rather took me by surprise and hence the poor photo quality.

Blue skies! (and a First Quarter Moon)

Meanwhile, we have surprised ourselves by being able to stick rigidly to our New Year's Resolutions. We decided jointly to have a 'dry' January after the excesses of Christmas, so not a drop of alcohol has passed our lips. Admittedly this is only the 2nd weekend but we are feeling good about this and we are likely to hang in there. Liz decided no more smoking indoors, so she now goes outside whatever the weather to puff away. The plan is to make the house no longer smell of tobacco smoke, but it has also had a good effect on the actual amount she smokes. She has even gone outside in the worst weather when I am saying "Ah come on - surely you'd be forgiven in this gale and rain!"

Knitted by Liz - Raglan sweater

My other resolution is to FINISH the winter with a full log store instead of a part, or 'almost', empty one. This too has been going well and lately I have been attacking some big trunk/bole pieces of ash which Bobby and I cut last winter (and in doing so killed my old chain saw). These bits sat around in the yard all year deciding whether to be rustic benches or firewood but I have now started slicing them up and splitting the slices into 'logs' for the range. Today I treated myself to a splitting wedge to cut down on the damage I am doing to my good axe by belting it from behind with a sledge hammer when it sticks part way through the grain.

And finally, Liz has finished my Raglan sweater, her biggest project since the most recent outbreak of knitting. We are both very pleased with it and she has showed it off to the Knit and Natter club where the ladies know about these things and are impressed by the even tension and consistent knitting, as well as by the skill with which she has sewed it all together. Liz is now scouting through an enormous pile of knitting mags borrowed from Carolyn for what to create next. Any suggestions?

George and the Ladies' Christmas

Red Kuri Squash - nice fudgy texture when roasted.

Hot on the heels of my 'Wren Boys' post comes another tradition from these parts which was new to me, that of Ladies' Christmas. Mrs Silverwood's post in Facebook has it thus. “Nollaig na mBan” or “Little Women’s Christmas” is an old custom that’s still celebrated by women all over Ireland. It goes back to the days when large families were the norm. Men never lifted a finger in the house to help, and were never expected to. If a man washed the dishes, he would be called an “auld woman” by other men. No full blooded Irish man was prepared to risk that!

Ominous sky precedes our latest "Category Orange" storm, Christine

But each year, after the Christmas holiday, tired women finally got a break – for one day, at least. On January 6th (the same day as the Epiphany), men would take over of the housework, offering women a chance to go out to relax with each other." Nollaig na mBan would be pronounced 'Nollag na Morn' or there abouts. Now call me a cynic but I think this tradition might be more 'fondly dreamed about' than actually happening. I cannot see those kind of blokes, Irish or otherwise, who'd let their women do all the work and never lift a finger, suddenly bringing their women folk tea and toast in bed on Day 12 and happily volunteering to knock up a delicious curry for when they get back from the pub.

George and the author. Note rainbow.

Readers who have been with me for the past 12 months, will know of our goose in-breeding problem. Our first three geese, Goosey, Goocey and Gander joined us last January advertised as a breed-able trio and we didn't know enough then to spot that Gander had serious wry-tail (or to realise that this might be a problem). We also suspect that they may have been a sibling group possibly even from the same clutch, brother and sisters. They settled in and got nice and clean and healthy; it was when they started breeding that we got some problems - infertile and dead-in-shell goslings, deformed babies with necks twisted round, goslings who went lame after a month or two, completely losing the motor control of their legs or just fading and dying. Out of 17 eggs incubated, we ended up with just 2 full grown young ones.

We decided to cease breeding with these three birds and to either just collect eggs (which one of the geese is still producing every other day all through Christmas and the New Year) or to swap out the gander so that we could out-cross rather than in-breed. Step forward then, our friends Carolyn and Charlotte of the miniature horses who had come out of geese after all sorts of fun and games with mink attacks but had been left with one lonely successful gosling.

This bird, named George even before anyone could sex him was hand reared by Charlotte and is as dotty and tame as anything, loving to have his neck tickled and to be cuddled and handled. As he was on his own, he grew up with Charlotte's motley mixture of call ducks and 'Swedish' ducks and most recently was running with a couple of drakes whom he used to marshall and follow around. We THINK he is a gander. A friend of Charlotte's who keeps a lot of geese thinks he is, from the stance and behaviour but admittedly did not pick him up to check his equipment.

George meets his women (He is closest to camera)

To cut a long story short, we have swapped out 'Gander' with 'George' today and George, after an hour in a holding pen to make sure they'd not fight and to let him see his new surroundings in peace, is now released into the orchard with the girls. They were a bit shouty when their previous fella suddenly disappeared, perhaps anxious to attract him back, but seem to have settled down now with George. I am hoping they have bonded enough to be able to shepherd all three 'home' tonight and shut them up in the relatively confined space of their sleeping quarters. I may have to quarter them apart for this first night. So.... welcome aboard George.

Nearly finished. Raglan sweater.

In other news we are currently surviving the recent wind storms (latest was named Christine; I don't know when Atlantic anti-cyclones started to get names) with, thankfully, no more damage. We experimented with a red kuri squash, a gift from the Silverwoods, and found that roasted it has a lovely delicate flavour and a fudgy texture. We will keep some seeds and try to get it to grow in our calf muck heap. Liz has almost finished my raglan knit sweater, the biggest thing she has attempted in this recent burst of the craft. Meanwhile we are sploshing about in wellies with mud everywhere after the recent, seemingly relentless rain, and wishing spring would come and it would all dry out a bit.

Henry and Min Re-United

In a recent post I might have worried you by finishing with a story that one of Henry or Min had gone AWOL at 'bed time' and we'd been out hunting with torches. Well, next morning  the pair were happily and noisily reunited. The missing bird had run for cover into the collection of bikes, cement mixer and other junk in the goose end of that building and kept his/her head down and kept quiet. That explains why the other bird was so contented to be up on the perch alone and also stayed quiet - he/she was presumably well aware of where the hidden bird was keeping quiet. In the morning they just had to each find their separate way to the yard and give each other a load of telling off. Not so silly after all.

Haggis mixture

In the kitchen we wind steadily on towards Christmas and even beyond. Liz converts a huge quantity of lamb "trimmings" (bits like the breast meat which the butcher would normally cut away and discard) and offal (including this year the lung which we specifically asked Ignatius to keep for us for this purpose), into home made haggis mixture. We love our haggis in this family and last year Liz found a recipe where you bake the mix in a baking tray instead of stuffing it into a piece of gut or sheep's stomach, or some kind of plastic 'cover' and it was easily the best haggis we had ever eaten. This probably because it was made with real ingredients instead of 'commercial' heaven knows what, so it is bagless haggis for us in 2014 too.

Hubbard hen at 19 weeks

Our two remaining 'Hubbard' chickens have amazed us over the last month by filling out from the rangey, gangly, big-legged adolescent shaped birds of October, to squared off, filled out, solid chicken-shaped birds now. They are 19 weeks old at this stage so they are approaching the standard 'Point of Lay' age where you'd normally buy them if you wanted them as laying birds, but these ladies are of a fast growing meat breed which the commercial boys would normally be 'finishing' at 100 days or so. Mentor Anne is keeping 2 of hers round to a fully mature age and is going to try a bit of breeding with a La Bresse rooster.

White Hubbard hen

Ours are still here for looser and more "happy chance" reasons. We had gone through a phase of 'harvesting' them, especially the roosters which were getting troublesome, and were finding them dead easy to catch because of their habit of gathering round my feet as I scooped feed from the feed bins, especially if it was raining outside. With just 2 to go, I wanted to 'do' these on the same day so that neither would be left lonely. I never got that chance and then the weather dried up and they stopped doing the under-foot thing. Also, we now had 4 birds in the freezer and needed the space for the lambs, so these two got a stay of execution and are still with us. A living larder, maybe, or perhaps we will see how they do as egg laying birds.

We've now done the run down to Silverwoods, so the lamb is all distributed to its final users. The Silverwoods have pronounced it excellent and, being as loopy as we are, found this lovely piece of lamb based 'tat' during their recent holiday in Bulgaria and thought of us. Fine, elegant tableware, I think you will agree, fit to grace the most elegant Christmas table. We have no idea why the lambs depicted are cuddling tiny teddy bears. Our lambs never had them. Perhaps it is an animal welfare thing?

Castlerea prize draw sign

We finally came to the point here where there was no longer any escaping a job which I'd been putting off and rather dreading, that of slaughtering the young geese for the Christmas table. These geese are now 6 months old and full adult size. Well, we girded our loins and got on with the job this morning with Liz, for her first time, actually getting involved and in (watching) at the kill. It went well, better than I had feared, and the boys (we are sure both these are ganders) met their end quickly, cleanly and with as much respect and as little distress as we like to ensure and they are now hanging in the Tígín awaiting the plucking and dressing job tomorrow. The relief is immense - we are now pretty much through the autumn slaughtering 'campaign' which we appreciate we have to do but cannot claim to enjoy.

There is just the one more goose to 'go', but this is our current parent bird 'Gander', he of the genetic wry-tail abnormality which he is sadly too able to pass on to his sons and daughters, so the plan is to swap him out with an unrelated gander called George who currently lives down the lane with Carolyn of the mini-horses. We get George and we deliver Gander to them but we are currently not sure whether we need to deliver him alive or whether he will be collected and despatched by K-Dub.

Finally today, we loved this Prize Draw sign seen in Castlerea (picture above) where 1st Prize is a Charolais heifer. She looks a lovely big girl from the pictures we have seen and is worth about €1000. You have the option of taking her home if you win, or immediately selling her at the Mart and going home with your money. We were laughing about what we'd do if suddenly presented with a strapping young female beef-cow. We'd have to give it to John Deere Bob to look after. We are not set up for cows' we don't even have a cattle herd number.