A Nice Kind of Boss

Kitchen finished but for aluminium detail
strip along step (bottom of pic) and light
fitting (top left)

With the kitchen now all but finished we "builders" can move on to the next job. The little bit of de-snagging (as they say) involves just a fancy metal angle strip on the step and the light fitting in the new bit of kitchen, both of which we have yet to buy. The next job is all about creating, in K-Dub's yard, a series of concrete pads. One will take the planned big new shed/building/workshop/winter-quarters for the mini horses. Others will support dog-pen, dog house, green house and path(s).

That lovely old digger - a Massey Ferguson version of the JCB
mainly used by Councils back in the day.

When the helpful professional digger driver originally did the ground works for the house/extension he carefully sorted the 'waste' into piles of mainly one substance - topsoil for example, or rocks, or subsoil or turf-waste or 'rubbish-soil-with-boulders'. This is unusual, I gather - you normally inherit a great big mountain of general "spoil" and it's up to you to sort it out. In K-Dub's case there are mini-mountains dotted around the restricted space.

The trees out front getting rocked about
by the recent stiff NNW breeze

All this concrete work involves bringing lots of '804' gravel (sub-base) and several 8-wheeler concrete lorries onto the site and needing somewhere for the 804 to 'land'. K-Dub's solution is to move the mountain of top soil and, rather than double-handle it, to create several big, deep raised beds for the future veg garden. We do this by barrowing the stuff over into the beds but to fill the barrows out comes my favourite toy, the "JCB". It is not actually a JCB, but the Massey Ferguson version made in the 70s and very popular with council fleet buyers back in the day.

Plenty red currants up out of rooster-reach

K-Dub, being younger and fitter than me and a nice kind of boss believes that if he is not actually paying the 'help' then they ought to get the easier job (digger-ing) while he does the barrows. Suits me - I get to sit there for the hours twiddling my 6 levers with only the uncomfortable, tired seat and the chilly breeze blowing through the open-backed cab to complain about.

Mullein. Another 'wild' species we are
 trying to self-seed up a sustained population

I am reasonably good at it - I am tidy and I have not killed anyone yet but I have to confess I was delighted when the aforementioned professional digger driver (Jimmy, who lives next door to K-Dub) crept up behind me while I was working, stopped us working for a quick chat and fancied a 'go' on our old rust-bucket. He has long since moved on to the huge multi-ton turf machines but would have learned the ropes on these old MF work-horses back in his (relative) youth. He was a pleasure to watch - such control and deliberate movement. Poetry in motion. I must have been paying attention to this involuntary "master-class" too. K-Dub was amazed at the "improvement" after I'd watched Jimmy - "You are much neater and you're filling the barrows perfectly!" he said.

"Big Red" with her 4 now out and about.

Meanwhile, back at home, after all the excitement of that job I am refraining from talking about in this post (pssst... haircuts for ovines) we are enjoying a bit of a relaxed week bedding in the new chicks. Big Red has now started bringing her 4 chicks out to join white hen 'Connie' and her 3. They have little run-ins with other hens now and again and the ginger cats seem fascinated by them but too scared of the bossy hens to actually have a go.

Hubbards at 25 days get moved to the release-pen. 

They are thriving. I get good chick crumb and my finely-chopped hard boiled egg mix into them by periodically going to find the groups and, if there is no competition about, dropping little piles near them which the mother hen dives on clucking her bass-y "Food here children!" cluck. We thought we'd lost one of her black chicks - he was suddenly all slow, wobbly and woozy but he has recovered.

Release pen. They get a few days and nights to get used to
going to roost in the house, then let out into the 10 m by 10 m
pen itself. 

Maybe it was a chilly, wet day and he'd taken a 'puck' from an adult hen's feet (or beak) and got a bit cold and shocked. He got left behind a couple of times but we rescued him back to Mum and he seemed to improve after a few of their 'nap-time' hunker-downs. Mum-hens do that. They go exploring for a while but then decide it is nap time, gather the babies back under their skirts and settle down for a rest where ever they happen to be.

That first sour-dough loaf.

The Hubbard "babies" who are now as big as a pigeon in body-size despite only being 25 days old have been moved from their 2 square metres rabbit run, to their 'grown-up' 10 m by 10 m pen via a release pen I have built. Previous years I have had difficulty getting them to go to bed safe in the house - they started camping out UNDER the house and I had to rake them out and carry them to bed. So I built them a small training run which excluded them from 'under'. When they've done a few days and nights of going to bed properly, they can come out into the wider pen.

Welsh Cakes

In the new kitchen we are enjoying the sour dough bread making. I have had 2 reasonably good loaves (both been eaten) and I am creeping up on 'perfection' with a 3rd attempt tomorrow. The "sponge" is bubbling away now. Liz got inspired by some Welsh-Cakes brought by one of the guests to their recent AGM in Cardiff. She has had a go at them here. Again, they were OK but she was disappointed by the slightly scorched colour and that they were too thick and a bit sticky to handle. I expect there will be a 2nd prototype along soon.

Funny Old Season

We are coming at last to the end of this very unusual, frustrating season in the garden. Everyone round here (and further a-field) has had the same cold and wet as we have done and have commented that it has been the worst year ever. We, though, have also had to live with the fact that we did not finish building the house till the end of April so that (with the exception of a few spuds from the 'Secret Garden') nothing even got sown till May and in the Kitchen Garden 3 of the raised beds did not exist till June. Dad says he would not normally have the nerve to be publishing this stuff. We are only now, in September, able to pick our first few sweet peas and harvest our first chard and "Summer" squashes.

Roses here seem to come from the Garden Centres forced into flower outside of their normal season so that you buy them and plant them and the shop flush of flowers dies off. The rose then sorts itself out and consolidates its root system before eventually, producing a proper flush of flowers. In our case this is now, in September as for the Joseph's Coat climber above. In the garden we are more concerned with getting ready for Winter than 'first flushes' of bloom.

On that score we have had another result akin to the discovery of buried coal and anthracite in that heap in the Pond Garden (formerly the 'bit we don't talk about'). That is the discovery by the side of the drive of piles of buried and overgrown gravel for the drive. The drive as we bought the house was graveled with very nice round small pebbles, all be it well buried under 15 years of spruce needles and now bearing a fine layer of turf. The gravel seems to be of a type now described as 'decorative stone' and therefore commanding a premium. Whenever we have bought gravel since it is called "804" grade and is crushed, sharp-edged pieces of stone which bare feet do not enjoy walking on. These piles have presumably been scraped off the drive at some stage or were delivered and never spread a round but we have decided to use them to do the paths around the kitchen garden. Some of these were starting to muddy up as we head into winter and we don't want to be puddling around when picking veg, so some nice free draining gravel is the perfect solution (more shoveling for Dad, though!).

We have two more good results to report, as well, of gift plants. First the tiny lupin self-seeds donated by Vendor Anna have finally got into flower, just in time, hopefully, to set some seed which we can use in 2013. As we come into the end of the season we are already, like good gardeners, thinking and planning about Spring and how we'll do things differently given a proper 12 month long year to go at.

And the fig tree below which has pulled through a time of great trauma and is looking good going into winter. This is a 'Brown Turkey' fig tree obtained as a cutting from Pud Lady a couple of years back and grown successfully in a half barrel (also a gift) on the back terrace  in our old house in Faversham. When we came to start packing to move we knew we had to root wash it as you are not allowed to import soil, so it was brutally decapitated, uprooted and root-washed and then taken to Hastings, where Dad and us dogs lived for a few weeks. It spent the time sitting in a bucket of water till it could be moved over in a car with us on 10th Dec 2011. From there is was heeled into the front terrace here, but it showed no sign of growing. Only the thumb-nail dent showing green sap-wood saved it from the scrap heap.

Then one weekend while we were not about the JCB came to dig out the trenches for our drains and his chosen way in was across the terrace and then to bulldoze through the end of the terrace, the hedge and the bottom of what became known as the Primrose Path. I suppose it all looked like a rough old building site and the driver will not have even seen the 12 inch naked 'trunk' in among the stones and herbage. Poor old Brown Turkey, bulldozed, we thought and gone for ever. We looked around in the piles of spoil but to no avail.Then Mum decided to look at pictures Dad had taken of the area and including the planting site and worked out that the JCB must have missed the fig and it might just be 'here' under these waste boulders. A scrabbled dig and removal of 'over-burden' proved that this was true and the poor buried flattened fig trunk was persuaded back up to 45 degrees from horizontal and now protected with a ring of big boulders making the site obvious. Slowly slowly a couple of tiny buds started to expand and now, a month later, we have 2 short side branches and a couple of true leaves! One tough fig tree! May it go on to great things at the end of our terrace!

Deefs

The Poetic Plumber

Our campaign to get onto mains services marches on. We've paid the money and signed all the forms for the ESB (Electricity Supply Board) and have been given a 12 week predicted lead time. Sparks thinks this is nonsense because they are assuming we are a brand new connection which would involve erecting telegraph poles and digging up roads. He thinks if he has a word in the right ear someone will realise that all the hardware is actually there and only a new fuse is needed plus an official turn-on. It might be far fewer than 12 weeks. Meanwhile though, we are buying a 3kW generator to see us through and to be there after the build in case of power cuts.

Broad band and telephone are on the way, but need power, obviously.

Water starts off a bit more complicated. The address has only ever had an "agricultural" feed, so we are liable for the €1600 (gad!) fee of a new connection. We must also engage a local approved contractor willing to connect us up out in the road and also insured to the tune of €6,400,000 as demanded by County Roscommon Water Services. We contact our Estate Agent (and now friend) John C who suggests a local man (Lough Glynn) whose name is the same as a poet in a famous Irish poem, so he becomes "The Poetic Plumber" in our cast of thousands. He's a brilliant bloke, silver hair, quiet spoken and with an accent to die for and both Mum and Dad fall in love with him. He knew our former owners (TK Min and TK Max) and went to school with the "Three Sisters". He knows our 'vendor', Anna L, quite well. He lives in a similar house to ours and is impressed by the hard work we have put in so far. He comes up to the house to see the job and even volunteers to come back after dark to see us in the caravan to stamp and sign the application, suggesting that we take the paperwork into Castlerea on the Friday morning to pay the fee and we could be connected as soon as next Saturday (he almost whispers the word, with the accent on the 'Tur'). He has a JCB, of course, and we are keen to engage him in also digging some french-drains for our roof run-off.

Progress!
Deefer