A Bunch of Weirdoes

Troughing but in a strange order. 

This season we seem to have accumulated, by chance, an odd bunch of weirdoes for livestock. Friends of the Blog will recall that I was mildly worried about the pigs' lack of enthusiasm for food. Well, they are hungry enough now and wake up and trot out to receive their breakfast or supper and they leave none in the bowl by the next meal but I am amazed by the order in which they take their 'courses'.

Pride sniffs a slice of galia melon

I give these snufflers mainly a commercial pig ration which is a grey/brown pellet looking a bit like the Layers' Pellets, poultry keepers would be familiar with. Worried that this looks just plain boring, I shake the ration up with a handful of flaked barley and throw in on top any cut up fruit I can get really cheap in the supermarket 'reduced' racks. It makes a nice varied meal for them while still giving them all the nutrients they need.

Empress checks out the breakfast potential.

All the pigs I have known or owned so far have taken one look and piled straight into the choicest items first, squabbling over the tomatoes and apple, and only eating the boring old ration when there was nothing else left. Not these two cherubs. They are first at the pig-nuts, shoving the lovely cooked new-potatoes and chunks of melons to the side of their bowl with their snouts the better to avoid accidentally biting the "dessert" course.

Kitchen progress. We pick out some floor tiles.

I have got bored and left by the time they must eat the fruit - it is certainly all gone by the time I return with the next meal but I have never seen more than a tentative exploratory chew on it. Never any enthusiastic schhhhlurrrping and dribbly, juice-leak, chewing like with previous piggies. Ah well, happy enough that they are eating and thriving, I guess. There is no rule that says pigs must eat melon.

These chooks have taken themselves off to 'bed' on this
perch 5 feet off the ground. The rabbit is on the bunny
'Maternity Unit' roof next to them.

Next up on weird-world, those rabbits. Having escaped their apiary pen they are now free range but if you expect them to run for it and end up eaten by Mr Fox somewhere 'out there' then worry not. These guys seem to naturally gravitate towards the house and yard and the out-buildings and prefer the grain thrown down for chickens to the 2.5 acres of good green natural grass and herbs (plus precious flowers and young trees!).

At 'bed time' for chickens as it gets dark, the chooks all take themselves off to their coops and their perching ladders in the out buildings. The rabbits go with them and one even climbs up somehow onto the former rabbit Maternity Unit roof, 4-5 feet off the ground so that he can "perch" alongside the chooks. They get locked in safe from the fox and are always sat just inside the doors when I go to let the birds out in the morning. They chase out to be first at the chicken feed and then go back to being grass-eaters once they've had their fill of breakfast. See? Weirdoes (or should that be "Weirdos"; I guess as it's only a made-up word I can do which ever plural I like).

Egg laid in the laundry pile.

Then there is the chicken who has taken to laying eggs in the 'waiting' laundry pile in the Utility Room. That room has a split door "stable door" style and in summer I generally leave it with the top half hooked open. One rainy day I was in and out of there and left the door fully open and returned to find all 5 of the new hens and their rooster (Herme) sheltering in there from the rain. Not wanting chicken poop on the 'dirty' clothes, I hooshed them out and shut the door and only later found an egg had been laid down in there on an old towel in the corner.

That scary looking Spanish goat cheese in the previous post
was nothing like as alarming inside and proved to be a lovely
strong flavoured crumbly-soft, pale cream coloured (slight pink
tinge) delight. "You know you've had cheese!" said our visitor

Well, it seems that the egg laying bird has now locked onto that site as a GOOD THING and goes back in each day to lay her daily egg even if I have the bottom half of the stable-door closed and she must have to fly up over that to get in. Determined lass, that. I will just have to be careful when sorting through my laundry for the machine - coloured, whites, delicates, woollens, eggs...oops!

The bugle from Charie Moss gets planted into the side of the
driveway. Pick-axe gardening. 

That's it for mad in this post. What else have we been up to? We have started into planting the various goodies from our trip to C Moss Perennials. This has meant getting the pick-axe out again; the bee-friendly plant, bugle (Ajuga reptans) is going in at the side of the drive to do ground-cover but needed a start-hole "drilled" into the compacted gravel there. That should get away nicely.

Waiting for planting. Pick axe at the ready.

This week we play host to the last in the current series of house guests, this one being our most excellent friend John, husband of the late Diane (Diamond, to this blog), who lives in our previous town, Faversham in Kent. If there are guests who are "difficult" and those who are less so, the John is definitely at the 'easy' and 'low maintenance' end of the spectrum.

Gifts from "home" - Micro-brewery beers and some Deep-South
Cajun flavourings from our old favourite world-deli and farm shop
 'Macknades Fine Foods' plus some new Kent gin flavours for Lizzie

Not only does he call to check whether there is anything from home we might be pining for (Gentleman's relish, Marmite etc), he arrives bearing gifts and there is nothing he likes better than a chance to help me in MY garden with the weeding, planting veg and other allotment-type work because he'd be away from his own plot for a whole week. He also loves a craft-beer and would regularly nip round for some of the 'take-away' (Tetra-pack 2 pint style) guest beers from local pub 'The Elephant' when ever we were round to Diane's for supper.

That gives me a chance to indulge here - Ireland is seeing a real flowering of the craft-beer, micro-brewery market and even the standard supermarkets like SuperValu stock a huge range with great long racks of display showing them all off. John and I headed for the SV in Balla-D and came out with 9 different beers to try (not all in one night!).

In the interest of research, you understand. 

I was intrigued to find that they even had a little promo-display for a new supplier, Sligo-based "Lough Gill Brewing Co" who seemed to be doing cans rather than bottles. A fun aspect of this trend is some of the funky funny names they dream up to make the beer more memorable and eye-catching; in the UK we are well used to the Hobgoblins, Old Speckled Hens and 'Waggle Dance'. One of Lough Gill's beers is called "Thieving Bastards" Pale Ale. How could you NOT pick one of those up? Blimey, we nearly have as many different beers in the house as Lizzie has types of gin! Sláinte!

Diamond RIP

Diane and Ragwoth

Very sad news today, I am afraid. Good friend to this blog and Liz's best friend 'Diamond' passed away yesterday afternoon after a long battle with cancer. She died peacefully at home in her own bed having just waved off another good friend who had come down to visit, and seen husband John off to walk the family dog, Ragworth. Diane was a lovely, lovely person and we will all miss her terribly. She was a huge part of our lives for the 20 years or so when we lived in Faversham and has remained so now we are in Ireland, she was actually our very first overnight visitor at this 'new' house.

Mazy, 'Diamond' and Liz in Feigh last year. 

Farewell then, Diane. We will never forget you and we are pleased that this place is full of memories and bits and pieces passed between good friends over the years. Sympathies to anyone who knew Diamond (real name, Diane Walsh (formerly 'Riches')) or has come to know a little of her through reading this blog. Our thoughts are also with John, Ragworth and the 'Kent crowd' who were all so supportive and generous right up to the end. Diane was just coming up to her 58th Birthday.

Rest in Peace, Diamond.

Though She be but Little, She is Fierce

Liz's Aer Lingus flight descends into Knock Airport

The eagle has landed. Liz is home and we are together again for a brief while. Other friends are looking after our good friend, Diamond for the moment, though Liz will probably return for another stint in a couple of weeks. She got on well 'over there', they successfully moved Diamond and John into the new house and set up all the rooms ready for Diamond, though she was for the last part of the week not actually present, being briefly admitted to medical care for some treatments. She has not actually moved in yet or indeed even seen the new house furnished. Liz also enjoyed catching up with various UK friends from our Kent days.

While in Kent she also got a chance to call in at everyone's favourite deli, farm shop and purveyor of all manner of foreign foods and drinks (Italian, Deep South, African, Greek and many many more), that being Macknade's Fine Foods of Faversham Kent. Macknade sensibly have a presence on modern Social Media, mainly Facebook and Twitter where they do some of that advertising which attracts a big group of people who "follow" their posts, "like" their stuff. They run competitions where if you re-post (re-tweet) their stuff you can win Macknade's goody bags and it was in one of these that both Liz and Mazy not only re-tweeted but then got into an "outrageously flirty" (Liz's words) riff with them, but whether it was that which won them the goody bags, they do not know.

Kent Cob Nuts - we planted a few here just to see.

Either way Liz was able to call in and collect her prize when she went shopping in there for stuff it is tricky to find over here - Patum Peperium, Angustora Bitters, Bloody Mary Mix, Zatarain's (Deep South) mixes for 'Dirty Rice' and 'Red Beans and Rice'. The prize itself was well worth while and not to be sniffed at - one of Macknade's new jute bags stuffed with packets of nice things - Earl Grey tea bags, Kent cob nuts, a goats cheese 'Camembert', fruit, chutney, fruit juice, beer and so on.

Is Liz trying to tell me something?

Liz also inherited a nice variety of unexpected and very generous presents including a lovely scarf which features pink piggies which is now in the wash - I will photograph that for the next post; I have claimed that one! Also a very nice bangle for Liz which carries the Shakespeare quote "...and though she be but little, she is fierce". You can get away with that, Diamond. I will refrain from comment. Naturally with all this new 'stuff' it was necessary, but worthwhile too, booking her luggage into check in (we normally fly with just carry-on luggage which restricts you to 100 ml of any liquid and 10 kg total). Amusingly half a dozen eggs is allowed because each individual egg (a well know terrorist device?) has less volume than 100 ml.

That bangle. Don't worry; that 'damage' in the pic is only
to a plasticky waxy protective coating.

Well, now Liz is back here and has her feet back under the table for a couple of weeks at least so I've had to hand back the kitchen after my welcome-home meal of chilli which I cooked on the Tuesday night. I do like my cooking and enjoy the chance to get in there while Liz is away. I also quite enjoy the shopping and when I am in, for example, a fishmongers, I will always look to see whether they have anything 'new' (to me); something I have never tried or tasted. They say, do they not, that you should try everything once except, famously, Incest and Morris Dancing.

Pangasius (white fish)

So there I was at the fresh fish counter in a nearby supermarket (Supervalu in Ballaghaderreen) looking down at some white-fish fillets labelled 'Pangasius' at only €2 per fillet and asking the assistant what they were, fully expecting a look of confusion and a blustered apology that she didn't know, was only covering for the butcher, has never heard of it either. Fair play to 'SV-Balla', the lady proved to be helpful and knowledge-able. Pangasius is a freshwater fish (actually something called a 'shark-catfish') commonly farmed all over Asia, eaten a great deal in the USA (where it is in the top ten on tonnage) all be it mainly used by the 'service food' boys (so, I guess, disguised as fish fingers, scampi etc) but also sold intact as 'Basa', 'Tra' or 'Swai'

Surprised that this hugely 'popular' fish had slipped my attention for 57 years, I put this to some of my friends in the USA and, to a man, they either denied all knowledge ('Someone else must be eating all those tonnes!') or advised me to not go there because this fish was cheap and unpopular, and also known as the 'Vietnamese River Cobbler' (I can see why SuperValu would not be using that name). I will speak as I find, though. I baked the fillets in a wrap of tin foil with just butter and slices of beef tomato so that I could be sure to taste the fish, and served it up with ruby chard and salad potatoes. It was OK. Quite a mild flavour, like whiting, so you'd not want to be blasting it with any spicy sauce, but fishy enough and with a good firm, meaty, flaking texture.

Guinea Fowl Feather

Well done SuperValu for risking putting that on the display; the Irish do not generally do much in the way of unusual fish, sticking when they do fish at all, to the well known salmon, trout, mackerel and so on. At €2 per fillet or €4 for 350 g it is also quite a bit cheaper than most Irish fish. I'd buy it again, anyway.

Windfall

A bag of windfall apples

One unexpected surprise, an unforeseen fringe benefit of Steak Lady and Mr SL buying their house down by the Silverwoods; this big bag of windfall apples. The garden which came with the house turns out to have some very productive apple trees and, this year anyway, the owners of the house had no interest in picking them, so they were just all windfalls on the ground beneath the trees. Liz picked them all up for 'us'. Initially she was helped by the 'smalls' who were amused by the idea of being able to feed the pigs from long range but one little hand grabbed up a squelchy rotten one and withdrew in horror, and the 2nd found one (he had been warned) with a wasp inside and that was enough for him, so all help evapourated at that point. These kids. We will make ruffty-tuffty farm children of them yet!

The Buff-Orp 'roo' investigates an apple

I was, of course, a bit careful feeding these apples to the pigs - too big a change of diet can upset their digestion, so the whole bag thrown in would not have been good. They did get decent sized portions though with each meal and now all the apples are gone. Diamond was reminding me of a pot-belly pig which was kept near our local farm shop in Kent which was once fed a whole bushel-box of over-the-top strawberries in one go and was later found lying on its back among the fruit, groaning and moaning that it couldn't face a single fruit more, it was soooooo full! The pig survived and was back on its feet next day.

These striped beef toms do not seem to do 'bright' red;
they stop at this mid-pink, but they are juicy and  very tasty.

We have heard from some "experts" (everybody round here claims to "know" about pigs because their Grand-dad kept them or the bloke next door has a couple) that the pork takes up the flavour of whatever you are feeding them most recently. Guinness, for example, is supposed to infuse the pork with a beery, marinaded flavour, though Liz would not let me give ours beer when I asked, saying that maybe they were a bit young for starting the boozing; they were only babies! We wonder whether these windfall apples will give them a pre-apple-sauced twang. However all this talk of marinading could just be a flight of fancy. Carolyn of the mini-horses (and also Gloucester Old Spots last year) tells us you'd have to be giving them so much beer to make any difference, you'd give them liver failure.

Neighbour-bull, Felix (centre) has a lie down with his
wives and children

Well, I am on my own again with Liz away on her third (and planned final) mission to assist with house moves, this time over in Kent where Diamond and husband John are moving from one side of our former town to the other. John has been completely renovating this new house over the last few years, as well as battling with the local planning committees (it's in a 'Conservation Area') and having a hip replacement operation. Now, though, it is ready, the carpet crew were in on 30th Sept and today the removal van and its crew of packers, humpers and shifters were due to turn up at 08:00 a.m. It's all gone very quiet in the Lizzie text dept. so I assume they are all hard at work. Both are not enormous houses (basically 2 storey terraces) but have steep and narrow stairs, so the removal men will not be rushing at either end. Liz believes these guys do best on copious supplies of tea, muffins and bacon butties, so they are probably all quite happy.

It is looking like a good year for sloes.

I am 'over here' holding the fort, mainly doing autumnal tidying jobs. I like the fact that when you prune or cut anything in the garden or the grass at this time of year it is likely to stay cut. If I move the rabbits off a bit of grazed-out lawn, I know it will not have sprung back to the same height within a week. Brambles cut, docks and thistles pulled and any areas cleared of weeds will stay that way going into winter.

The bees are still busy in the October sunshine

We have also been investing in some plants. A local small scale nursery and cut-flower grower divides up her perennials at this time and lets Anne know that now is a good time to descend upon her with a 'shopping list'. We bought some delphiniums and 3 colours of bergamot to add height and more bee-food to our big raised bed. Bergamot is not anything we have grown before but I am told it is loved by bees so it is welcome here. I am also waiting for the 'bare-root' tree season so that I can buy some European Lime trees (Tilia x-cordata) which I am told flower in a useful gap between the early spring flush and the start of the bramble flower. Lime are also beloved of bees.

In terms of tidying, on my dog walk today, I noticed that the Office of Public Works (I think that is what they call themselves here) are clearing the banks of the local river (River Lung) near to our local picturesque bridge (Feigh Bridge). A massive digger is smashing up all the riverside vegetation (mainly willow) and pushing this in a heap, back into the trees further back. Behind the digger a bare (if very efficient looking), twenty foot wide shelf ends at a bare 45 degree slope down to the water's edge.

The start of autumn colour; this creeper on a barn roof ridge

Subtle it is not. The little kingfishers I watch in the summer flashing along this stretch have presumably moved somewhere else. I guess if anyone knows what is needed for efficient land drainage it is the OoPW for this wet old county but I do feel for the wildlife so brutally evicted.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles......

The house in Hastings where I grew up.

"Just write about what you did in your holidays" - that clichéd old instruction in English Composition classes at school when you were first back from the summer break. Once a year I get the urge to 'go home' (all be it 'home' now feels very much like here, rather than Hastings or Kent), to catch up with Pud Lady (now 87) and my brother, Tom, to drop in on Kent friends and, of course, to get a fix of the 'Thames Sailing Barge' drug. I do all these in one trip, leaving poor Liz in charge of all the livestock. She asks for a check list in case she misses anyone, and gets handed one running to 4 pages of a note book this time (!). She tells me she loves it for a couple of days but by night-5 she is missing her lay-ins and cups of first-thing-in-the-morning tea and she is happy to hand the gang back,

Pud Lady cooks up the next cheating
devious manouvre in scrabble!

In these days of cheap flights it is all reasonably priced and we are delighted to be only 25 minutes drive down country lanes from Knock Airport. We both remember with horror those traffic-clogged trudges to Gatwick (and hour and a half each way on a good day) and some nightmare runs all the way round the M25 to Heathrow (2 hours if you were very lucky). I fly Aer Lingus to Gatwick, hire a small car (VW Polo this time), and trundle down to Kent always in awe of how many cars there are about; I am used to my quiet roads of the 'Wesht' by now. This time I dropped in on former neighbours, the 'Angel Betty' and Jim for a lovely chat and a coffee, then headed for Diamond's with John for supper, a visit from Mazy and a comfortable night's sleep.

Sailing Barge Cambria at night in St Katharine Docks

Thursday saw me down in Hastings catching up with Pud Lady and Tom, helping with and then sharing lunch and then being beaten badly by PL at Scrabble. She will read this, of course, so I can't be too rude, but we do have a good laugh with the Scrabble because she is always dreaming up devious cheating manouvres which she tells me are allowed when you are over 85 years old. There is a rule somewhere, apparently. You can write words upwards, diagonally or even detached from the rest of the grid, plus you can use shamelessly foreign words like "quinze" (15) or initials like 'TT' (tee-total) if it means you can lay your cunning word alongside an existing one in order to put your 'X' or 'Z' on a triple word. Who am I to argue? Just the obedient son........ To be fair in her defence, I should add that she also got lots of genuine and very clever, high scoring words without breaking any rules, 'Friezes' for example across a treble letter, completing 2 other sizable words into the bargain.

Those famous poppies at the Tower of London

From Hastings, back to Diamond's via Mazy's near Faversham for another lovely chat and to collect a cake and a jar of tomato chutney for the barge folk. John and I bought fish and chips (Ahhh the nostalgia) from our old favourite outlet, the Park Fish Bar in Faversham. Diamond is, as regular readers will know, not at all well and did not feel up to the fishy feast but she enjoyed us enjoying it. Local pub, The Elephant also operates a draught beer take-away service, where you can buy 2 pints of any of their guest draughts in a 'Tetra-pack' style container to bring home. We chose the mild Kent stout 'Canterbury Ale' and the paler (Rother Valley Brewery) 'Boadicea', both excellent.

Boozy reception and boaters' prize giving on board Cambria

And so to London to hand back the car at Gatwick and find my way through to St Katharine Docks to "join my ship". This was the Sailing Barge Cambria which was in town as part of Boris Johnson's "Totally Thames" festival and St Kat's "Classic Boat Weekend". Cambria is always a big attraction at such things - she is huge and tall so she can be seen for miles, she is free to enter (donations welcome!) and because she has no engine or terribly 'dangerous bits', parents and kids can come on board and go pretty much anywhere, up and down the three companionways.

Raffle prize - a nice jeroboam of red in
a hand painted bottle.

We make sure there are plenty of volunteers about to act as guides, to man the boarding stairs, to work the shop and, this year, the teas, coffees and cakes. I love to do the guiding and I am told that I have a natural gift of the gab (Blarney?) and often get a rapt group of listeners as I waffle on about 170 tonnes of cargo, 11 inches of free board amidships, lee boards and sprit-sail rigs. We opened the barge on Friday afternoon, plus all of Saturday (where we saw a record 1705 souls come through and hosted a gang of shanty singers who wanted to raise money on our behalf by passing round the bucket used for sluicing down our deck) and on Sunday till 4 pm (1125 people). We were exhausted, aching of foot from standing up all day and sore of throat from speechifying.

Former Mate on Cambria (in trade), Dick Durham (left)
judges and presents the champagne prizes. 

At 4 we closed the shop and became Reception Venue of for a fun and lighthearted prize giving for the boat owners at the festival (71 more people!). There were all manner of daft categories as well as the 'best dressed' (with bunting) award - fizz went to the best fairy lights, a 'travelling light' award to a Belgian guy who had left his clothes behind, to a bizarre combination of best dog and deck furniture, and to the 'spirit of the Festival', a guy who found some lost jewelry in the Marina washrooms and managed to return it to its owner. It was all a bit mad and great fun. Judging, invention of categories and prize giving were done by friend and former in-trade Mate of the barge, Dick Durham, now a writer for Yachting Monthly magazine.

St Kat's Marina is now all 'done up' and renovated as chi-chi posh apartments, cafés and restaurants and the Marina had arranged for boat owners to get a discount card, so we ate in the evenings, in those eateries, sipping our house red and watching the marina's comings and goings and the beautiful lights on the craft, reflected in the water. They were all warm, sunny days and balmy evenings; we were very lucky with the weather.

Mapp and Lucia kill a blown cabbage

My journey home was going to be another 'innocents abroad' job. Although I had traversed London calmly enough on Friday to get to St Kat's, that was at lunchtime with no frantic commuters about, just me and a thin selection of ambling, confused 'tourists'. An early flight on Monday meant that I'd have to travel home during rush hour. I had visions of me clinging to an underground walk-way wall, face like a rabbit caught in the headlights, watching the torrent of determined and unsympathetic 'suits' flow purposefully past me.

My Bee's Lemon survived the slugs

No such drama in the end. I'd set the alarm for 06:45 and walked to Tower Hill tube by 07:15 with nobody much about yet. My District Line train to Victoria filled up but I'd bought my Gatwick Express ticket on Friday, so I marched through the crowds in Victoria to grab my seat on that, made Gatwick with half an hour to spare before I needed to check in, so checked in anyway and went to find some breakfast.

Roast Guinea fowl 'welcome home' supper. Not one of
our birds!

It was a nice easy flight home with the plane only 1/3 full, so nobody next to me in '25A'. Liz met me from Knock and delivered me home. I love the trip and the Cambria stuff but it is always lovely to be home to Liz, one of Liz's welcome home meals (Guinea fowl roast followed by raspberry and blackberry 'cranachan'), to the livestock and to our own bed. Happy, weary traveler.

Small Obsessions

Back before we actually bought these geese we had read that they have nice, amusing personalities with their own idiosyncratic and funny ways. Simon had told us that they get funny little obsessions for no apparent reason which they then cling to like a terrier with a stick, returning time and again to that specific place and thing. If it is a particular fruit tree and maybe a loose flap of bark, they (or maybe just one of them  who has got the idea into his/her head) will worry and worry at it making the tear bigger and bigger till, potentially, they have ring barked and killed the tree. We have tree guards round our orchard trees for that reason. Many trees now have thoroughly chewed lower branch tips.

Goose 'worry-hole'?

We have also had them nibbling and nibbling at a particular bit of ground which looks, to me, like any other. Maybe there we a worm there once which they fancied. The work away at it from all angles till they create a little conical hole in the mud, roughly goose-head size and as deep as they can reach. Obviously when it rain the hole fills up with water and they seem to leave it alone but when it's dry they are back. In the case pictured it is right where I throw down their breakfast grain so, inevitably, some falls down the hole and then there's great excitement as they gather round, heads lowered over the hole, honking loudly.

We love their personalities, too. They are a tight knit group. The 'goslings' have now grown up to the point where they are difficult to tell from the adults. We know, of course, that Goosey and Goocie have black markings in particular places and Gander is the big, wry-tailed, upright boy, usually at the back, but the only real way to tell them now is that the grown ups have that saggy belly between their legs which older geese get, while the 'babies' have tight, smooth under-carriage.

Blue (left) and Rolo at breakfast

These guys, regular readers will know, are our first attempt at breeding geese and all has not gone well because the 'parent birds' we bought as a breeding trio turned out to be, we are sure, fully or recessive 'wry-tailed' as well as being, almost certainly, a sibling group, i.e. brother and two sisters. Unfortunately, therefore, we have been wickedly in-breeding and our first batch have, in many cases, had hatching or subsequent developmental problems and have either died or been culled out, leaving us with only these 2 'babies' from 17 eggs. Not a good score! We have been a bit dispirited by this and frustrated by our "inability to keep them alive" and have doubts about whether we want to be 'in' geese at all. We have a possible option on replacing the gander with one named George, hand reared by our friends down the road (if he turns out to be a boy) but if not we may just keep them for the eggs. Apart from anything else, I am not happy having to slaughter them. I'm not 'happy' doing rabbits or chooks, to be truthful but I can manage it well enough when it needs doing. I think maybe I love geese in a more complex way and cannot, in my head, see them as just food. My problem, I guess, not anything I should be unloading on the reader.

Bubble with her 'bum' feathers in pin. 

Ah well. Enough of this. Today Liz is back from the UK having done her stint of house-minding for Diamond and John. I must walk the dogs now and then grab some lunch before nipping out to Knock Airport to meet her from the plane. It will be good to have her back in the fold.

50th Food Festival?

Here we are, then, all quiet again on site after having just dropped our latest group of visitors back to Knock Airport. It is always lovely to have good friends stay and enjoy the place and these had the added plus-point of it being a chance for us all to celebrate a 'significant' birthday together for Liz. These were long-term and very best friends from the Faversham days, Diamond and her husband John who you may recall were married in Greece recently around the famous "Happy Webbing" cake and not-quite-so-long-term friend, Mazy-Lou.

This, rather superbly, brought together three ladies who are amongst the best cooks we know, so the holiday event was always likely to turn into a foodie extravaganza and so it proved with everybody chipping in marvelous recipes and some beautiful eating. John and I were reduced to 'service and supply' roles and largely evicted from the kitchen but you can hardly complain about being asked to gather and prep veg', make 'tay', wash and dry up, lay tables, chop wood etc when you are being fed and 'watered' so handsomely, can you?

A HUGE thank you too, to Mentor Anne and Simon on the 'supply' side in this case by giving us a gorgeous haunch of venison. We gather they had tried it and found venison too 'gamey' for their tastes but it was definitely a case of 'their loss is our gain'. Thank you very much, A+S! The venison was just one in a series of superb meals coming, in this case, as "Roast Venison in Red Wine Gravy" - the meat was marinaded in olive oil, peppercorns, thyme, juniper berries, red wine and orange peel for 36 hours. The gravy is similar but has redcurrant jelly and beef stock.

Dessert on that occasion came from Mazy who tried us out on a new recipe as a birthday cake, a chocolate mousse 'Genoise' sponge, this one off page 453 of Darina Allen's Ballymaloe Cookery Course (pub Kyle Cathie). Genoise sponge, in case you did not know is one used in many French gateaux recipes. It was a great success and we have plenty of it left over. Diamond did her gorgeous mashed spuds. All veg were from the garden, of course.

This quality and effort set the standard for the visit and has us remembering it as a Food Festival which will be hard to top. Other days saw us taking on an enormous roast pock shoulder and an elabourate cheese board which included Cooleeny (Tipperary Brie), Cashel Blue, a goat's cheese and a Crozier Blue as well as the Camembert, Cheddar. There was a superb coq-au-vin which featured our 'late' 8-ball Sussex rooster, "Son of William" and a delightful, genius sticky-toffee pudding with caramel sauce.

Breakfasts were light and 'roll your own' yogurt and toast style affairs except for the final morning when we have now established a good tradition of sending folk off to their planes or cars with a belly full of "Irish Fry" - sausages, rashers, white pudding, black pudding, Mazy's scrambled eggs, beans, mushrooms and 'tay' or proper coffee. Even the 'down-times' and non-special lunches were rendered a bit 'foodie' - one day we had cold pork sandwiches, but the bread was actually special rolls (more like individual loaves) and Mazy knocked up a delicious sweet spicy BBQ sauce to smear on them.

In between all this food there was plenty of time for catching up with old friends, relaxing, enjoying the 'farm' and the livestock and sipping the occasional wine or Bloody Mary (or indeed Bushmills). There were outings to local towns and to Knock Shrine and Basilica. John loves chopping kindling and I was more than happy to let him work away - I now have a big Curver bucket and 2 coal sacks full of neatly chopped and lengthed kindling wood. We had a play at the pick-axe earth bank. He also come with me on the dog walks. Diamond fell in love with the geese and chickens and was fascinated to see that the chooks take themselves off to bed as it gets dark, while you have to shepherd the geese home to their night time quarters. Our only regret was that firm local friend John Deere Bob did not drop by. He is busy with 2nd cut silage and bale carting. The visitors had heard so much about him and Diamond met him last time she was over so we had hoped to get everyone together for a chat but it was not to be.

And so, another successful and very enjoyable bit of 'hosting' comes to an end and peace returns to the 'farm' disturbed only by the crowing of William, cheeping of Hubbard chicks, baa-ing of lambs, honking of geese, roar and clang of a nearby silage baler and the busy hum of the fridges as they try to keep the gourmet and bountiful left-overs in fit condition... you know how it is. We will not have to shop or cook for a while.