Brer Fox Comes Back for a Goose

Not a clean death - she was covered in puncture bite marks
and badly bruised. We think the neck wound was inflicted
when the fox tried to pull the carcass through the sheep wire. 

Our fox left us 10 days after taking the duck, in which to relax, start thinking he was a one-off and maybe drop our guard a little. Then he sneaked back at 4 pm on a Saturday. Luckily for him (or her, of course, foxes are almost impossible to sex on a fleeting glimpse) he chose a time when I was off site and Elizabeth was hoovering, so that she did not hear the Guinea Fowl alarm-call cacophony until it was too late.

A good old fashion (goose) stew with
dumplings. 

I was out at a gentle, afternoon, drinkless, family and friends gathering for the 60th birthday of my archery coach, Con, and heading home at half past 4. At roughly the same time, Elizabeth finished the hoovering, killed the noise and heard the Guinea Fowl clamour. She raced outside and found one GF high up a tree, giving out all manner of dog's abuse, which is never a good sign. Casting around she could find no cause for the racket but we know and trust these birds, so we keep looking for as long as it takes, or they stop the screaming.

Goosey Gumbo? This lovely soup (over rice) made a fitting
end to the fox's abandoned prize. 

Then she saw the sad white shape right at the bottom of the orchard against the fence. It was straight away obvious what had happened - the fox had got into the orchard, killed the goose and then dragged her to the fence. Unluckily for the fox, this was a big, 5-6 kg bird he had chosen, so he could not jump back out of the orchard with his prize.

The day after losing her 'sister', one of the
survivors gives us the first goose egg of
2018. 

He'd put it down by the fence, jumped the fence unladen, then tried to pull the goose through the fence. It was too big a goose to fit through, so he'd presumably spotted Elizabeth bearing down on it and fled the scene. She never actually saw the fox. She'd just about time to carry the body back to the shed and hang it up to bleed out a bit, and shepherd the survivors to safety, when I pulled in to the drive way and heard the sorry tale. We didn't know at that point, whether the victim was one of those females I'd been waiting to start laying eggs, or our belovéd gander, Gorgeous George. It was the former.

Still spoiled rotten and sleeping indoors at this stage, Lily and
the month old lamb, Tigger. 

The plucking took place that evening, when the bird proved to be so full of puncture holes and bite marks, that Liz decided to skin the bird instead, half way through plucking. This goose was going down the 'stew' route. At the gutting stage it turned out that the bird also had half a dozen part-formed eggs up her 'pipework', the largest of which was almost laying-size and could only have been a day away from our long awaited "First Egg of 2018".

Outdoors now - breakfast with Mum and Aunts on
Monday morning.

Long story short, the goose became a superb stew and dumplings, the gribbly bits went in the wheelie bin and a great pile of white feathers went on the compost heap. The latter fact is the most significant because our furry, bushy-tailed friend came back for his lost prize the next day (Sunday) at about half past eleven. This time we were both up and about when the Guineas kicked off, we raced outside, each via a different route and caught the lad in the act of sniffing the pile of feathers on the compost heap, right up by our cattle race. He scarpered, of course, when our 2 heads appeared round either end of his covering wall, galloping off and clearing the 3-4' sheep wire into the pig-pen without breaking stride. He paused briefly to see how serious we were and then shot off down the pig-pen and cleared to bottom fence the same way, vanishing off down the bog field below us.

A 2018 first, the new kitchen windows are
thrown open to let some warm air through
as the sun shines brightly outside. Spring
is here. 

In a surprising parallel to Sue and Rob's garden-fox mentioned in a previous post (10th Feb), to get to the compost, the fox must have come in over the fences again but through the gangs of surviving geese and ducks, ignoring them. My guess is that he came first to the piece of fence where he'd left the goose in such a hurry, and once there, could either see or smell the "dead one" (he wouldn't have know it was only a pile of feathers) 40 yards away on the compost. I assume that had we not disturbed him, he'd have quickly worked out that he needed to kill another bird and done that (or more) on the way out.

Naturally we are back on high alert, Fox-Watch for all the hours that the birds are out of their sheds and free ranging. We have also abandoned all our optimistic foolish ideas that this might be a one-off, fox, a 2017 youngster turfed out of the home earth and roaming around looking for a territory to call his own. He came on the 2nd Jan, took the duck on 8th Feb, and has now come back on the 17th and 18th. He is now a local and regular visitor, though he didn't come back on Monday or today. While he is all unpredictable and careful, there is little we can do about this except keep watch and listen to what those Guinea Fowl tell us. However, if he starts to get regular, predictable and a bit complacent, then we have some options. Wish us luck.

Briefly chaotic Living Room scene, books
everywhere. 

It is never ALL bad news though. The next day, one of the other geese laid her first egg of 2018 so we are back in that 'game' and the waiting is over. The ewe Lily refused to come 'home' that evening to her indoor pen in the Tígín as we've done happily for 4 weeks now and seemed to want to go, instead, into the East Field where her 'sisters' have been all along. I let her in and closed the gate on her happy re-union. It was a warm evening, so I decided that she was all done on the 'Intensive Care', indoor housed thing. Tigger is a big, bouncing, plump, chunky lad at this stage and no more likely to die of his sister's hypothermia that is his fully-fleeced Mum. They have slept out ever since (all be it they actually sleep in the shelter with the other girls) and I have been able to muck out the pen ready for the next mum+lamb. This looks like it might be first-timer Rosie, from the 'bagging up' evidence, or Polly, from the 'I want to be alone' sleeping behaviour.

One of the book walls!

Finally, Elizabeth finally made it to IKEA in Dublin to buy 2 more of their excellent, full height, 80 cm wide, flat packed "Billy" book cases. There are, obviously, a gazillion books here and the cases we have have been double stacked and overflowing for too many months. Liz finally cracked, girded her loins and went to do battle with IKEA. The boxes, although almost 7 feet long, fit neatly into our little Fiat Panda with all the doors shut; you just post them in the back hatch and slide them down into the passenger side foot-well. Brilliant. Well, now they are assembled (by the Flat-pack Queen) and full of books after a massive, day-long sort-out. We are so tidy, we won't know ourselves.

Whirlpool's Oven Men

Dead oven heater element. Melted split circled.

Let's hear it, then, for the fitters who work for 'Whirlpool' and come out and fix the Nation's IKEA built-in ovens. Cynics may say that at €155 a call-out (incl parts and half back if they can't repair it and declare it a write-off) they OUGHT to be pretty good but we will hear none of that. The guy came within 2 days of my first shout, texted me to say when he'd arrive and arrived then. He had the suspected element in his van and was in and out within 20 minutes. He was polite, friendly and very professional. I'm calling that a success.

We have been celebrating our return to oven-ness by baking a sponge (Liz) and a sourdough loaf (me). The oven is doing exactly what it is meant to do. I only had to "buy" loaves for the three days.

Dogs get a run around in the East Field at sunrise

Where there is livestock, so they say, there is dead stock and also, just as often we hear "you can't win them all" I am sad to report the loss of one of Stumpy's 4 second-brood chicks. This one never looked like she'd thrive; you develop an eye for these things and can quickly spot that the baby is just a tiny bit smaller, slower, less 'bright' and less active around the feeding lessons. You worry for them and sometimes they pull through but often a 'non do-er' just gets left behind and fades away.

This little Buff-Orp chick seemed also to cling much more closely to Stumpy's feet and was often in the way when she clumsily (she only has one good leg) demonstrated scratching at the ground. We saw her kicked flying many times and once she seemed to get tangled in Mum's flying feet, so was smacked back and forth with each 'scratch'. Ah well. Today I was not surprised to find her lying out on the cold concrete, barely able to keep her eyes open as Mum and the three thriving siblings moved off to find food elsewhere. I picked her up and held her in my hand for a while to see if it was just cold/shock but then passed her to Nurse Lizzie and the sick-bay. Sadly, she only lasted a few more minutes, but at least she died warm and cuddled, not stretched out in the cold.

Pedro paying close attention to Polly.

In the sheep department we have better news. Yesterday morning I spotted Pedro the Ram playing close attention to our old dark-grey ewe, Polly and a few minutes later was mounting her repeatedly. This is the first time I'd actually seen the act so I hope you'll forgive the photo. If all this outdoor sex offends you, then click on by! That gives Polly a likely due date of 5th March. We have no idea whether Pedro has done the deed on ewes Myfanwy and Rosie but it's all looking a bit promising. One small fly in the ointment - the ewes might be a bit 'fat'.

A first for me, seeing the ram doing the deed. The fence rail
nicely censors the rude bits!

The Party Line is that ewes are much more fertile if they are a bit skinny and are commonly "flushed" on poor mountainy land for a fortnight or more just prior to the ram being introduced. Well, I have no Mayo mountains on my patch, so my sheep have had to make do on good Roscommon grass and if they are a tad rotund then there isn't a lot I can do about that. As we go through Winter the grass will fade and they should be at the correct weight come lambing.

Taking a break. Pic by AB

Meanwhile, little to report though we are quite busy, with all three of us (we and the Help-X lad, AB) doing plenty of jobs. It is just that most of those tasks are the hum-drum everyday life. In AB's and my case it's all about clearing up for Autumn, mainly pulling un-ending stinging nettles and dragging out piles of old prunings and branches for onward processing. Of course there is also cooking and shopping and the usual round of helping friends and neighbours.

AB's take on that clichéed Irish-Rush-Hour postcard scene.
We caught up with these escaped ladies on the way back from
Sue and Rob's place. AB was laughing out loud. 

I will do us all a favour and keep this post nice and short. Have a nice weekend.

Soldier borrowed AB's bed. 

Two Minor Crises

Home made pork "scratchings" or, as they are known round
here, "dog treats". 

Two minor crises drop their pebbles into the calm mill-pond of our quiet Autumn and leave us feeling guiltily worried that we should not really have that superstition about bad things happening in threes. We should not really be waiting for the third thing to go wrong but there it is. niggling away. Our first involved the septic tank getting a blocked exit and the 2nd involved the oven 'checking out' with, we think, a dead heater element.

Sorry if you've just had your tea. Septic tank
(bottom left) with one cover-slab open and,
just outside it, hole dug into the shingle-pit
to expose the out-pipe.

I am not sure why I spotted the septic tank thing - for some reason I walked down there at bird lock-up time and peered down the inspection hole, to see the reflection of my face looking back from 3 inches down, instead of the standard (for 5 years) 12 inches down. A quick check at the top 'manhole cover' up by the new kitchen door, showed that the 'water' was backed up in the sewer too. I was home alone at that point and, anyway, could not really ask Help-X volunteer 'AB' to fix it, so the buck stopped here. Liz and AB arrived a few minutes later so they did, in fact, get to help. Bad timing, guys!

Brine-cured pork belly bacon rashers.

For those town-dwellers with mains sewage and no experience of septic tanks and 'local' sewage treatment, perhaps a few notes on how these things may work (or are meant to work). Your household waste (toilet, sinks, shower, washing machine, dishwasher) all wooshes down the sewer pipe to end up in a big concrete pit - in our case about 6' by 4' by 6' deep.

A very late water-lily flower.

While it all sits in here a good old bacteria and fungus culture gets at it reducing the solids to a fraction of their 'live' volume and creating a reasonably clean, clear 'water' fraction. This exits at the far end of the tank via a 4" pipe about 12" down from the brim, into a big, 6' deep pit filled with beach shingle. The pit is covered with membrane and then 6" of local clay-ey soil and grass grows over it to disguise it all. The pit 'leaks' like any good soil and the 'water' quickly runs away into the 'run-off' area, legally at least half an acre of YOUR land.

A rubbish pic but quite fun, with the camera almost touching the
ground. Stumpy and her 2nd brood chicks. 

A quick exploratory grope about by hand (elbow deep - nice!) told me that the outflow pipe was well blocked with waddy, raggy stuff (we guessed old loo paper etc) and lumps of white floaty fat. Nothing for it but to dig down into the shingle pit, find the other end of the pipe and rod it all out with likely sticks and garden trowels. Obviously with the exit blocked the shingle pit was as dry as dust (well, you know, as dry as any part of this county gets in October), so when I broke through, I knew immediately - the tank level fell and the shingle pit filled up.

The current waterfowl count. 5 geese and
5 ducks.

We knew we were sorted, but it would only 'fix' at the speed the 'water' could leach away into the soil from the shingle pit. Overnight, then. By next morning the tank was back at standard depth and the shingle was, once again 'dry'. It only remained for me to shovel all the pebbles back in, refit the membrane, re-cover with clay/grass  and replace the concrete slab. A good hand wash and a bacon and eggs breakfast were enjoyed before the rest of the house was even awake. I hope that didn't put you off your tea.

The oven was not so easy to DIY. It 'died' on Sunday and failed to fully cook my latest sour-dough loaf  despite looking like it was working - fans, lights, pre-heat light and so on. It was, in fact, only cooking to 80ºC. Our delve into the instruction books and tech manuals and some internet searches led us to believe that these machines have a re-place-able heating element which can fail. This is a 5 year old oven from IKEA.

More pork products. Pig kidneys and bacon.

Onto the phone for us then, to try to rustle up a 'Mr Fixer', with the inevitable run-around that that can dish up. IKEA do not actually make ovens (now, there's a surprise), either 'Whirlpool' or 'Electrolux' do that for them and it is to these guys you must apply for after-sales service. In our case, Whirlpool's main base in Nottingham, UK. In fairness they have been quite efficient and have (for a €155 fee) agreed to send a bloke tomorrow who should arrive with a working knowledge of this oven and, we hope, an element in his back pocket. These days, such missions are covered by a text info service which is nice. I was a bit amused, though, by my text which advises me that the man will arrive at some point between 07:39 and 10:39. Why those times, specifically? I smell an automated route-planner / scheduler and a job sequencer in action.

Grand-Mere Pierrette's Boeuf-carrottes under construction.

Ah well. Other than that we are just chugging along assisted by our Help-X Frenchman, 'AB'. He is proving to be as solid and successful at the 'boring and hard work' jobs as he was at the more glamorous butchering. We have mainly been pulling nettles and moving piles of old hedge cuttings, branches of fallen trees (remember Storm Doris?) and other woodwork through which those nettles are growing. It's all looking a bit tidy in areas we did not get at with the Spanish lads.

Supper is served. AB does the honours. 

AB has also cooked for us, a favourite family recipe called 'Boeuf Carrottes'. Huge respect to 'Mere d'AB' and to source of this recipe, Grandma 'Pierrette'. Basically a stew made with 'chuck' steak (from upper shoulder of the bullock) and carrots, it was a delicious revelation, with the beef meltingly fall-apart tender and the sauce brim-full of flavour.

Tidy and nettle-free.

Thanks very much AB. I'm cooking tomorrow. No pressure!

Aunt May's Chest

Ooo-er! No we haven't gone all school-boy smut. That is merely the (tongue in cheek) name for a rather lovely piece of heirloom furniture which you will meet in this post, along with some of its colleagues. The Aunt in question is one of Liz's long-dead relatives.

Liz's first pic to the 365 Project.

But ho for 'Imbolc', 1st of February, pagan first day of Spring, St Brigid's crosses and all that malarkey! We did actually make some crosses but readers of the previous post will know that the 1st of Feb was special to us this year as it was 'launch day' for Liz's Lisacul 365 photography project. We both wanted to get out there, take some pictures and fire them into the project's email in box  to make sure that the machinery was all working and that anyone enquiring of the website would see signs of activity. Liz took this rather stylish shot of her cross. I pinged in (rather predictably?) some livestock photos.

A predictable sheep?

The project is going to be an interesting one to manage because so far it has been set up with no deadlines for getting your pictures in - the team wanted no-one to be restricted by being too late or unable to get to an email by a certain date. The result is that while we know that the 'traffic' through the site since Liz's radio interview has been gratifyingly heavy we have no idea how many people are clicking away photographically out there. Worst case, I guess, would be someone thinking they would click away all through the project year and then have a big sort out and bang in their chosen 366 shots in Spring 2017! I suspect that some will wait for the first selections to be announced and to be posted to the site before thinking, "Hold up! Mine are better than those! I better get them sent in" Anyone fancy being on a 're-selection' group?

Deefer-dog enjoys the new cushion(s)

But what of this 'chest'? We have in our collection of furniture, a pair of small 'easy chairs' - bare wood frames with webbed backs and a simple cushion sitting on a webbed 'hammock'. They are my favourite chairs and the ones I use most despite the fact that they were free of charge and came with the Faversham house, having been stashed in one of the garden sheds as junk. Back then they had what were once rather nice tooled leather backs but had become perished and torn. We did not have a lot of furniture back then and we had a chum who was learning upholstery, so we asked her to take them on as a project. They came back in a nice shade of dark blue with nice restored padded cloth backs and matching covered cushions.

Auntie May's tiny dresser. It doesn't reach to my
shoulder height.

20 years later they were looking a bit well 'loved' with holes in the cushion covers, worn out beading, collapsed sponge blocks and badly stained fabric. Step forward Liz and the sewing machine for a first go at home upholstery. First though, we needed a trip to excellent local upholsterer and supplier of 'stuff', TX Upholstery of Carrick on Shannon where we were intrigued by them using a small, very quiet, gentle reciprocating saw to cut out our sponge blocks. Back home Liz already had some nice black and silver(y) fabric picked out and in fairly short order had knocked out 2 lovely cushion covers to go round the new foam. We are not sure what will happen about new backs for them as the material only just went the cushion covers, but they are lovely and comfortable once again and have quickly been re-adopted by the dogs.

One of a nearly matching bespoke pair of book cases

All this furniture-bashing got me to thinking that we have arrived at a lovely collection of pieces in this house of which we are very proud and with which we are very happy. Liz phrased it best when she said "It feels as though we have spent our whole lives accumulating the furniture for this house". Most of it is real wood, some stained but none painted, so it looks very right in this farmhouse environment. None of it was a priceless antique from some fancy-pants shop. None of it quite matches, so you'd never think we bought the house empty and THEN decided to furnish it. It came in fits and starts, some of it 'finds' in Kent (Chatham and Faversham), other stuff family heirlooms which we have only had since moving in, other stuff old-looking but actually new or bespoke built for us and finally the out-and-out new like the recent IKEA bookcases. That's probably true of everyone who has muddled along buying bits every now and then with no clear definite final vision.

Kitchen dresser with the 'other' alcove bookcase to its left
 (and the obligatory sleeping cat, of course).

My favourite pieces could well be the bespoke 'nearly matching' pair of book cases made to fit the unequal alcoves either side of our fireplace in Faversham, or possibly our wedding present kitchen dresser which came from a very close friend of the family up in Portmarnock (Co. Dublin). We also have a lovely oval mirror which came from my 'Nana'. I know that Liz has a great affection for the heirloom piece which gives this post its title, an old dresser which came to us via some time at Silverwoods.

Triumph of function over antique(y) charm. IKEA came to
the rescue when we just had TOO MANY books. 

I love that it is tiny, like a 2/3 scale model of our other dresser, reflecting that people (and houses) were much smaller back in the day. It does not even reach my shoulders. It is stained very dark, which we were once going to strip off and give it a lighter look, but a little way into the stripping/sanding we decided we liked the part-restored (distressed?) look and so it got a reprieve.We have another lovely old family piece, a chest of drawers upstairs. Somehow all these various items come together to make a comfortable, well furnished home. Now I must just evict a dog from my favourite chair.

The Family Gossip

Honey bee, Picture by Katherine Austin

'Tell it to the Bees' they say. Apparently, in times past, the bee hive and the bees were always considered part of the family and therefore had to be included in the gossip and news or they would feel excluded and might take offence. You would visit them each day and talk to them - catch them up on all the hatches, matches and dispatches. Well, be that as it may I do it, but I suspect that has more to do with getting the colony, for whom vibration and transmitted noise are such a huge part of life, used to our voices and our comings and goings so that they do not all pour out of the hive in alarm and in defence mode whenever we pass by or talk near it. The colony, left to its own devices seems very calm, hard working and healthy now. I can creep in on my hands and knees weeding as I go up and down the ridges really close to the hive without the bees even noticing. I am quite glad about this as I did not want the bottom of the veg patch to be effectively out of bounds, or (more ridiculously) have to start weeding wearing the bee keeping suit!

I'm sure these funny looking ginger dogs
were smaller than us when they first
arrived!

Talking of gossip, Liz has been on a mission to Dublin to touch base with all the family and to catch up on the gossip with our good friends, Therese and Owen. She'd not actually seen T+O for a long time, but said that (as is often the way with really good friends) she slotted in immediately as if she'd just nipped out to the shops. They were amused and delighted by Liz's tales of country living and taking up knitting.

Mutual suspicion? Towser eyes up a Tamworth.

Steak Lady (and Mr SL) have lived for as long as I have known them in a big house chopped up into a gazillion B+B rooms and they have always had this well populated with language students. As a result, they never really retired, and have been working hard, continuously and pretty much all round the year for decades. They have now decided that enough is enough, so the house is up for sale and proper retirement to a single-storey place, possibly somewhere down near the Silverwoods, beckons. Liz was able to catch up on the latest on this while she was there for lunch

A huge supper under her belt, Lucia needs a lie-down in the
sunshine

Meanwhile, Sparks has also moved to a new place nearer to his work and Liz nipped up to admire this place and to catch up on brother/sister news. At all three places she was plied with gifts and as well, called in at IKEA on the way home in search of standard-lamps, so she came home with quite a car full. We have some unusual foodstuffs including red caviar and a jar of baked-bean type beans but not in tomato sauce, these are 'au naturel' in the French style, floating in a clear brine.

Haricot (Navy) beans 'au naturel' and red caviar

The red caviar (we looked it up) is actually salt-cured eggs but not of the sturgeon, these are from Pacific river-salmon. Somehow they are still in a small jar which only has (Russian?) Cyrillic script on it and a Moscow address. Liz made a tapas-style meal tonight so that we might taste these delights; it was my first ever taste of any kind of caviar. The caviar was, as you'd expect, very salty and had the texture of tiny 'bags' of jelly (the fish-eggs) - interesting and OK. We toned the salt down a bit with creme fraiche but we were fresh out of ice-cold vodka (!) Good fun but I don't think either of us will be rushing out to buy more.

Caviar comes from the virgin sturgeon
The virgin sturgeon is a very fine fish.
The virgin sturgeon needs no urgin'
That's why caviar is my dish! (boom tish!)

Inch long young quinces looking very promising.

Also in the car was a sewing machine, a generous gift from T+O. Liz has been looking for one of these for a while now, and a chance misunderstanding raised the subject. Owen was asking what we had sowed (meaning fruit and veg), Liz heard this as 'sewed' as in needlework. This machine had been gathering dust in a cupboard, so T was delighted to give it to someone who would be likely to use it.

Crab apples coming on nicely

Meanwhile, back here, the 'waif and stray' white cat, Pirate, is now getting well used to us and Liz was able to handle him today (a first). He (for he is definitely a 'he') is now a regular at supper time, yowling around when he sees the dogs walked back indoors from their orchard exercise session and also, for the last 2 mornings, coming over for breakfast when he hears the bowls being filled for our own cats. Yesterday for most of the day he slept curled up on the 2CV roof in the car port, so I put the cat basket up there with a 'vet-bed' blanket folded into it.

The dogs watch the rabbits, the rabbits watch the bee hive?

He didn't use it that day, but I noticed that this morning, he was asleep in there first thing and it was from there that he emerged to come across for breakfast. This is good news - we will need to get him into that to take him to the vet, so if he is already in, then we should be able to just flip the door shut before he realises what's happening. The poor little mite will definitely need to see the vet, he is not at all well. His eyes are bad; his right eye is completely 'gone' and the left seems very cloudy to us. His ears are scabby and dirty looking, and he is eating so much we suspect he may have worms. On the plus side we can see no sign of fleas or other parasites among his white fur and he is a lot less skinny than when we started feeding him 3 weeks ago. We will let vet Aoife advise us, but we think we may be able to get him well again.

A Proper Session

Monday 16^th sees us all mainly ‘swerving hard work’. It feels like that kind of a day.  We played indoors with Mum and Dad on the computers, catching up with the finances, whacking some kitten pictures up on Flickr and cracking off a soda bread loaf and a couple of yeast-bread loaves, breaking in Dad’s new loaf-tins. Mum and Dad declare these breads “Very nice”. The soda bread is so delicious they have eaten most of it already.

Mum was maybe a tad more productive, constructing a couple of IKEA flat-pack CD rack/shelf units and Domestic-Goddessing bathroom and downstairs. Other than the indoor stuff, Dad was supervising chooks who DISGRACED THEMSELVES by climbing onto one of the raised beds (only the one with Dad’s seedling leeks in it!!!!) and laying it waste with their scratching. Dad’s own fault really - we've been saying for a while we should fence them "out" of that bit. He even have the wire sitting in the shed, but heh, mañana and all that.

As Dad describes it, the campaign to “try to make the 6 year old Westie bitch, Deefer, (that’s me!) learn to love the new kittens. Deefs is a natural "only child", (says Dad) fiercely jealous of anything that might come between her and her Dad, and also with a divil of a killer instinct when it comes to vermin and prey animals. We have worked our way through new (cat-friendly)dog-Coco, Charolais cattle and then chickens, all of which she got used to, bored by, and is now hearing our instructions not to kill. She's now on rabbits which are still worth a chase round the outside of the run and a shout at though the wire and we, foolish humans, have now introduced another prey species and this one IN THE HOUSE!” That sounds about right, Dad!

 
“There is no doubt at all that Deefer” continues Dad, “left to 'play' with kittens unsupervised, would do that shake-rat thing and we'd have two corpses in a few seconds. We are therefore trying to give her 30 minute sessions with her on the lead in the room where she can look, sniff, hear us trying to instruct her and see us doing "we love this kitten... it is a member of the family... it is a pet... part of our pack... it is not vermin" at her”.

On Tues 17^th July, the main event is undoubtedly that Mum and Dad find, at last, a proper Irish Traditional music session. This is happening (and does each Tuesday night) in the Village Inn pub in Lough Glynn and was told about to us by John Deere Bob who goes to it most weeks even though he is Teetotal. It was, after 25+ years of searching and chasing down tips, finally a real traditional session, not some kitsch laid on for tourists and not a formal 'gig' where you go to see a specific band or person. It’s just a motley collection of blokes and a couple of young girls in a pub, grouped at one end of the bar behind a balustrade thing. It started off fairly 'formal' (probably because the team from the “Comhaltas” National Archive were there video-ing), so each of the regulars got their turn on camera if they wanted - as I said, mainly old boys dressed in dark suits, some with old venerable hats on (flat caps, but also a baseball hat), ties, black shoes and in one case wooden soled clogs. One had a superb Dubliners style bushy beard and a pink, Father Christmas face. The two gals were young teenage local 'celebs' having won the Roscommon Fleadh (Music Festival) with their squeeze box playing, but were demon penny whistlers too. As well as music there are “Recitations”.

The 'recitations' were something to behold, tales of missing home and eventually returning, tales of ganders which were no good at stud, tales of some Cockney trying to fool 'Paddy' in London that his ass (as in donkey) was actually his brother etc. The musical group even indulged a couple of local 'characters' ("a bit-een simple" was how one of them was described by our own John Deere Bob after the event) by allowing them to sing or 'clog dance'. To be fair, one of them was a good singer and parodied a well know song by bringing in local JCB contractor Noel R (Our own “Poetic Plumber”) who everybody knew and changed the lyrics to suit all the local landmarks, towns and pubs. The other was a bit of a dire singer and his clog dancing was the subject of Mum reporting to have been  "in awe" when describing it to friends. Loud, certainly but having a rather loose relationship with the rhythm of the reel. 

After the National Archive people packed away their kit it all went a bit more random and the group was joined by several more including extra bodhrán players, spoons and a bloomin' good banjo player, young lad. Mum and Dad report that it was just an absolutely meltingly brilliant event which they wouldn't have missed for anything.

Also on that day, Dad strings a length of chicken wire across the kitchen garden to fence the chooks out of the raised beds. He also clears the felled elder round to the shredder heap. This is now getting rather big and ‘we’ need to hire a shredder to process it through into suitable path material for the kitchen garden, between the raised beds.

Working Away

On the 6^th July we had what Mum describes as a “pootly-pottery day”. Mum and Dad moved Stalag Bunny, so confounding Padders latest attempt to tunnel out. They then spent some time looking at the weeds on the allotment bit, but it's too wet to even try to get on it so we have to hope the veg gets away quickly. They weeded and thinned crops from the kitchen garden instead. Lunch featured beet leaves, other salad leaves and radishes from there. After lunch we let the chickens out to mooch around – Mum describes this as “closely watched by Deefer and Coco who disapprove thoroughly of this proceeded but are willing to indulge us for the moment”.  Supper is heart and mushrooms, with baked rhubarb for pud. John Deere Bob turned up just as Mum and Dad were finishing so we had a nice gossip and some more gentle instructions on how to manage the land (raise the skirts on those trees, dry the wood out for a year, put the trenches in the allotment in north/south so the rain runs off towards the bog, etc) along with some praise for what we've done so far. Love him.

Saturday the 7^th sees Dad head to Dublin to help Sparks with the first stages of an attic conversion, leaving Mum in charge. At one stage she is telling internet friends that, “Right now, there are three chickens in the run and three in the rain gully (a four foot ditch) that runs from the back of the chicken run down to the bog. And they're finding so many grubs and yummy stuff that grain is so not tempting them out. Devils! I've been calling 'chook chook chook' till I'm nearly hoarse and Deefer and Coco are trying to tunnel out of the house to join the fun. The three feathered hooligans in the run are alternating between laughing themselves sick and whinging about not being out there with the other girls. Meaniess.

Dad claims to be “Very busy at present due to helping Sparks to start the conversion of the attic. This means all the heavy stuff, hefting 8 foot RSJs up into the attic from front garden, sticking these into the walls and bolting together into one 16 foot beam. I hate to complain after a month and a half of wet miserable weather but it was BLOOMIN' HOT up under those roof tiles in the Dublin sunshine! Having done the 'steels' we then started on rafter beams, doubling up the flimsy rafters with sensible '5 by 2' timbers, so again, all that wood had to come up through an upstairs front window, then a hastily cut hole in the boy's (5) bedroom ceiling ("Daddy! Why is there a HOLE in my bedroom?" ”

On Sunday 8^th, Dad reports a “big ol' fried breakfast up in Dublin cooked by Sparks for whom I was steel-erecting Saturday”. Dad fills the little Fiat car with scrap wood for range down here, and some kitchen goodies dropped off by Steak Lady, plus spare soda bread and SuperQuinn sausages. Dad headed for Steak Lady’s as he needed to take pics of Tut (Tutankhamen) the tail-intact Yorkie for a friend of Mum’s but Steak Lady was sweating on feeding breakfasts to 8 B+B guests so was a bit brisk and Dad fled.

Dad reports that he is not 100% on the navigation yet round Steak Lady’s and out to IKEA on the ring motorway (M50) but knew it was near the airport, so set the sat-nav to “airport”. On our sat-nav when you don't know the street name in a small town or village but you want to go to the village 'centre' you click on the name and then "City Centre". Like an eejit, Dad did that to the Airport, so he went the 15 minutes from Steak Lady’s to the Airport in 45 minutes via the Dublin City Centre and O'Connell Bridge. Sight seeing tour! Yay!

Anyway, he dug himself out and got to IKEA as it was opening (11am) and successfully completed mission to buy two CD shelf units and found a utensils-pot for the draining board. Mum approved. Dad rocks as domestic shopper! He has a 2 and a half hour run back to the sticks, happy re-union with wife and we doggies and lazy afternoon letting chooks out, mooching about. He mowed the enormous front lawn enjoying attendant swallows swooping along next to him catching the insects he was half-killing with the mower. Delightful. Dad cooked lovely Cajun chicken and veg supper to which Mum added yummy mushrooms in cream sauce.

9^th July

On Monday 9^th we quietly enjoy our morning as there is no chance of a badly timed visit by near neighbour John Deere Bob . He has caught Mum and Dad out still in dressing gowns before now at 0900 but on a Monday he is otherwise involved, away in Galway. Lay-in! Late breakfast. Yay!

Mum attacks an alpine range of ironing while enjoying Lord Black in the Leveson Inquiry. Dad is off to builders' providers "Cooneys" of Castlerea (we think we were probably their best customer Dec 2011 to May 2012) to order wood and sheeting for this week's carpentry projects, the car port, the log-store and the wee housey for the Gas Cannisters.

Then... Weeding. Dad’s lovely allotment, 25 foot by 100 foot all proudly ploughed and rotovated by tractor this April and intended to be kept clean of weeds by regular hoeing, and to be full to bursting by now with burgeoning rows of crops has fallen victim to the ceaseless June and now July rain. Everything small-seeded has sulked in the chill, wet and gloom, and has been overcome by slugs and general malaise, and the weeds and grass cannot be hoed because it's been permanently too wet. Dad says, “It is an embarrassing disgrace”. Despite the wet this drives Dad to get amongst some of it on his hands and knees with me helpfully licking his face now and then and was a-ripping and a tearing out grass, creeping buttercup, baby docks and any number of other wrong 'uns. These were tossed into the Carver bucket and onto the ever-increasing compost heap. It looks a little tidier but not much. Still needs to dry out like JULY should be, and he can hoe it. 

Sadly today also has its tragedy. Around 1300 we realise we have not seen little Coco for a while and start calling his name and then we start an anxious hunt. Outbuildings, sheds, fields and gardens are scoured. Dad’s heart sinks as he decides to check the lane outside and there he is horrified to find the small sad form of Coco by the side of the road. He is dead. The nature of the injuries tells us that it must have been instantaneous, quick and clean. Dad thinks he recalls a bulk tanker lorry going past at about the right time so maybe that hit him. The driver probably would not have even known. Dad gathers up the little fella and he gets a small grave in the kitchen garden close to Haggis’s last resting place. Poor little mite was only 2 years old. At least his final months were spent happily exploring and racing around on ‘the farm’ where he was loving it. We’ll all miss you, Cokes. “Small Brown Dog” Dad would call him.

On Tuesday 10^th Dad is involved in heroic car-port building - big long 20' beams of '5-be-2' slung between the two sides of the former hay barn, 3-be-2's in the other direction and some nice shiny new corrugated sheets over the top. There is lots of iron-y clanging and banging. With Dad back in buildery mode Mum is encouraged back into "Catering Team" mode and there were, much to Dad’s delight, bacon butties!

It might have been the noise which put the Lovely Girls off their laying but not a one laid an egg in the morning. Only when they'd been out free ranging for a while did they all one after another get 'the urge' and like kids out on a football pitch being allowed sneak off back to the changing rooms for a wee, you'd see them slinking back to the coop doing their "I'm about to lay an egg" squawking and clucking. One poor lady ended up the wrong side of the chicken-wire. She could see the coop pop-hole but in her little bird-brain didn't work out that she could go round the other way to the gate, so was just fretting up and down the same 3 feet of fence till Dad 'helped her get over it'. I think the egg was so near she nearly laid it as she landed. Gotta love 'hins'. Not the brightest element in our menagerie.