Live 'Trad' Music.

Live music at the Village Inn, Lough Glynn

I have always loved Irish music. It is one of the reasons I love this country and its culture and people but I have always hankered after finding "real" music. Finding a music session laid on for tourists with the musicians paid for by the pub is easy enough; go to any pub in a decent sized town and you will see a chalk-board outside proclaiming "Live Music" or "Seisún ceoil anocht". We went to plenty when we were courting and living in the UK but back then when we came to Ireland I, at least, was a tourist. They were nice enough and I also went to a few proper concerts where Christy Moore, for example, was doing his thing but I still dreamed that one day I'd happen upon a genuine spontaneous 'session' in some pub or other. Anyone could turn up with their instrument(s) and just join in.

An army of instumentalists fill one end of the pub - flutists,
squeeze boxes, guitar, fiddle, bodhrán, penny whistles and
a banjo.

Well, we may not be quite 'spontaneous' (the pub announces them as being every Tuesday through July and August but "all musicians are welcome") and John Deere Bob tipped us off rather than us just happening upon them, but we have come pretty close at the Village Inn in nearby village, Lough Glynn. This being Ireland, they don't start till 9:30 pm but they do go on till 01:30 (on a legal bar extension, this is not some dodgy, clichéed "lock-in").

2 squeeze boxes and 2 penny whistles kicked it all off, the
banjo player turned up later.

The start is a bit low-key; at 10 pm when we got there the line up was just 2 squeeze boxes and 2 young ladies playing penny whistles but these were soon joined by a superb banjo player. Then at more like 11 pm all manner of other musicians arrived - flutes, a fiddle, a guitar, harmonica and bodhrán (hand drum). There were 12 of them in the end plus contributions from singers not at that end of the pub (which they filled). The format seemed to be that you arrive, unpack your instrument, the land lady brings you a drink, you wait for a pause to tune up and then just everybody knew all the tunes/songs. Nobody needed sheet music. One player would be invited to kick off a song or group of tunes and you could see everyone clock it, work out what their own part should be and dive in. On the livelier, foot-tapping stuff all 12 would be giving it their all, but then when a more sensitive passage was the order, players would pause or go really quiet to let the main featured instument do his/her thing

As well as the tunes (jigs, reels, airs etc), there were songs including one beautiful un-accompanied song by Landlady (Tina), "Bright Blue Rose" originally by Mary Black. Also what are known as "Recitations", a word which everyone seems to say with a kind of delicious loading and the announcement greeted by ironic cheers from the pub customers as a whole. These are long stories or doggerel poems on all manner of subjects, funny farming tales, long 'shaggy dog' stories about local characters or (last night) a moral tale about the dangers of over spending during the 'Celtic Tiger' years and having to pay it all back now we are back in the economic doldrums.

John Deere Bob and Liz enjoy a photo Liz has taken on her
phone. Sorry about the 'finger on lens' beginner error - this
was not my normal camera. 

There is even one old boy, a local character who likes to get up and do a rather random, clumpy dance, a bit of Irish Jig crossed with clog-dancing. The whole pub has taken this guy to heart and he is cheered, woop-wooped and wolf whistled as he launches into it full of beans but then gradually slows (he is quite an old lad) as he runs out of breath, till the 'muso's eventually take pity and come to a crescendo halt and he can go and sit down again. It is all excellent fun and and the atmosphere is definitely within that well known Irish must-have, "great craic".

We had actually been to a couple of these sessions a few years back, when we'd only just finished the build but then they seemed to dry up and we've not been able to find a similar event locally for ages. Well, now, for a few months, we can and JD Bob tipped us off, so we offered him a lift. Liz agreed to drive, so it even meant I could enjoy a couple of pints of Guinness (another reason for enjoying Ireland, though I've had remarkably few pints in the 3 years we have been here).

Red currants ready soon but we need to
fend off those turkeys.

Meanwhile, back at base, what else have we been up to. We have settled the new guinea fowl in with baby turkeys #1 and #2. #3 and #4 are thriving upstairs in their brooder crate with the 'electric hen' warming plate as 'mother'. We had another big pulse of interest by bees in the swarm box and I thought for a while that we might be getting that beekeeper's bonus, a free colony. There seemed to be enough bees going in and out to represent a new swarm moved in or at least some house-hunting scouts from elsewhere looking for a home. We have now looked inside during a lull and now think it is just opportunist robber-bees, robbing out the old, hard dry, set ivy-honey from the old frames with which I loaded the 'bait lure'. You should not really allow or encourage 'robbing' or your stronger hives may start attacking weaker colonies but we only have the one hive, so I am happy to leave the bees to clean up the old comb so that I can re-use it all spruced up.

Quick and cheerful 'Spanish Tortilla'. A long way from the
real McCoy but a good way of using up eggs. 

Then today we had a bit of a flap on when I saw a small but roaring cloud of bees coming up the 'allotment' moving south, away from the hive. Swarm on! I raced to fetch Liz and we donned bee suits as the bees moved up across the pond, past the car port and down towards the driveway. They went, we think, across the lane and into the feilds opposite but we do not now think that this was a bona fide swarm. It was too small - maybe 500-1000 bees in a spherical-ish cloud about 10 feet diameter. We think this might have been a new queen out on a mating flight - they will generally go a-wooing accompanied by a group of (hopeful) drones and a retinue of protective workers hoping to decoy any swallows or house-martins trying to pick off their queen. Safety in numbers.

Either way, it is an interesting development because our original queen is/was wing-clipped, so she aint flying no-where. We wonder has she faded or got lost and is now being replaced by a new queen, or possibly the hive is doing that natural, painless thing, a "supersedure", where the old and new queens are both allowed to lay eggs in the hive for a while, till the old, exhausted queen is 'removed' by the workers. Talking of new breeding females, we think we have now found our third breeding 'yow'. This lady comes with a young (June 2015) ram lamb at foot. We have agreed a price though we've not even seen the sheep yet. We just need to get that trailer tow-hitch fixed to the 'new' car, and we can go collect them. More on this story when it happens.

Up All Night (to get 'Lected)

JD Bob and Liz pore over the laptop, checking out election results

...with a few apologies to 'Daft Punk' I guess. I am not a huge fan of politics; I tend to assume that politicians are all self-seeking rogues and who you get does not make much difference to you. As Roger Daltrey of 'The Who' sang, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss". However, I do always vote, given the chance. It is a different matter for Liz who passionately loves all of this intrigue and manouvring. the manifestos, the press analysis and the opinion polls.

Post Election analysis

Election Day(s), be they in the USA, UK or Ireland are a high point in each year and Liz will generally stay up all night with the TV running the BBC coverage, the laptop checking out websites and the smart-phone jangling away with the chat, feed and comment. She is glued to every seat gained, lost or swinging. On the big Labour Landslide (1997) , she had got bored and gone to bed just before Portillo lost his seat, so she missed it and has regretted it ever since. She is even more determined to go the distance than before that. Last night was a classic - glued to the screens from about ten pm right round to 07:30 when I was up an about again doing livestock and first cups of coffees.

In this pursuit, Liz has found a firm friend and staunch ally in John Deere Bob who we quickly came to realise was equally passionate about politics; he's a bit of an activist for his local branch of the party and will always bring the new candidates round the village to meet everybody. Bob is delighted to have found, in Liz, a like-minded colleague and even more delighted that Liz has a laptop and the internet savvy to go hunting for the latest info and opinions, which Bob has presumably not had up till now. Bob comes round regularly to discuss this with Liz and has her nipping around in websites and newsfeeds asking all his detailed questions about voting results by party, by area, by breakdowns and, today, going over what actually happened compared to what the two of them 'predicted'.

Cuckoo flower or 'Lady's Smock'
(Cardamine pratense) self seeded into
the margin of our pond. I've not seen it
growing round here, so we know not from
where.

It's lovely to see it happen, to watch them in action and to know that the democratic process is in good hands and well analysed and watched over. Bob does not do the over-night thing with Liz and I'm with him on the line he takes on that - "An hour's sleep before twelve is worth two after". Yes. I need my beauty sleep, so I set the 'onesie'-clad Liz up with a good hot fire in the range, coffees and a goodnight kiss and catch up with all the results in the morning, at which point she takes herself off to bed leaving me with the main headlines written down in case Bob should call and instructions not to disturb her till 2 pm. Mid morning, Bob does phone and I give him the headlines but he asks lots of questions around that and I get the distinct impression he is not all that taken with my 'patchy report' and we know he will be back this evening when the proper expert is awake!

Meanwhile, a quick update on the poor Marans hen who was bitten by the mink. The mink has made no reappearance and the dogs 'tell' me he has not been around; not a sniff of scent and certainly no interest in the baited trap. We assume he is long gone, not fancying the odds round here. The hen is back with the gang and looking a whole lot less swollen. She is able to wander about, scratch and peck with the rest of them, gets plenty of food and water and is still laying eggs and receiving the attentions of the rooster(s). Hopefully she will make a full recovery, all be it, possibly minus one eye.

Chicken for dinner, Mr SL? That's me top left. 

We had a lovely visit yesterday from the Parents-in-Law, Steak Lady and Mr SL who fancied coming up to look around the place and the livestock and take a bite of lunch with us. Liz laid on a superb meal of that family favourite "Black Spring's Nan's Pork Hock" (our own pork, of course). Mr SL was very impressed by the size of the pigs which he saw recently but who have grown fast in the mean time. He's not so hot on his legs these days, though, so for him to meet the 'baby' Hubbard chicks, I brought a couple down from their brooder-box, for a wander around on the dining table (after lunch, of course!). He was intrigued, petting them and calming them down. Liz snatched a few pics with the phone-camera.

When it was time for them to go we assembled a goodly box of produce and garden cuttings - eggs, purple sprouting broccoli, lovage, cheese and chilli biscuits, honey, beeswax polish, seedlings of foxglove, Creeping Jenny, violets and Tiarella. We then drove in convoy to our nearest and improved-out-of-all-recognition garden centre where she filled the car-boot even more with purchases as well as buying us a couple of bits as a Thank You. I think we'll call that a successful visit!.

Enough Foxes, Already!

I promised you a few pics of us scrubbed up for the wedding.
Here are a couple taken by other guests and posted on
Facebook, l-r Liz, Mr and Mrs S and the author.

I am thinking I may have been obsessing on our fox issue lately and the blog has become "all about the fox". Vulpes vulpes and his/her kin have rather taken over to the detriment of stories on all the other many aspects of this story of a small holding. Our foxy adventures may also have taken over the village with even wife of Mike-the-Cows reporting to us a fox she saw "by the bridge near the crossroads".

Liz and I with J-M (left) and Em-J (right)

John Deere Bob was down at his kesh (a concrete bridge over a drainage stream), half a mile downstream from ours, this morning and reported "so many fox tracks in the snow" as well as rabbit tracks, hare prints and pheasants. "There must have been half a dozen foxes", he declared, "there were so many I'm amazed they'd not 'swept up' all the rabbits!" Even Mentor Anne is riffing in the comment section of my last post that the place is "teeming" with foxes. The word must have gone out that we are running a "Fox MacDonalds" Enough, I say! I will make no more comment on the fox story unless something amazing happens, at least not for a while.

I quite liked this rather bizarre one.

You, the reader, will know there is all sorts going on behind the scenes (sightings, hunts, killing, insults and mild effronts and even (gasp) the blackening of names) but I will , from now, only post up the body count as a post-script.... Fox #2..... Bridget Jones style, when/if it changes. I will leave you with just one of JD Bob's tongue in cheek pearls of foxy wisdom. Chickens, pheasants and any other bird, he tells us, are safe as houses at night from Brer Fox because they perch in trees. Not so (allegedly) the turkey. Bob, in one of those stories he has told us several times as he sometimes forgets he has already shared it, says that the fox knows to walk round and round the turkey's tree so that the turkey, looking down and trying to keep his eye on the fox, twists his neck round and round. The turkey then gets dizzy and falls off the perch into the waiting jaws of the fox. "Did you ever hear that?" says Bob as his cheeks and eyes crinkle up and he rubs his hands together, chuckling his breathy giggle. That's it. No more fox-bore.

I like a good drive on snow - always have since I was a young fan of Motor Rallying. I enjoy the (rather tame) risky feel of barely having grip and feeling the starts of mild slides on corners, quickly corrected of course (this is the family car on standard tyres, after all!) and knowing that you need to drive with extra anticipation and alertness. I love the headlights peircing the gloom and the optical illusion of the 'star-field' of blizzard flakes parting in front of the car to whizz by all around your 'trajectory'. I had some fun, then, last night, heading for 'Bee School' in Longford in the dark. There was a good covering of snow on the minor roads all up through Moyne and Fairymount to French Park, though the main roads from French Park were clear on the outward journey. On the way back I met a blizzard between Termonbarry and Strokestown and there was laid snow on some of those bends from Strokestown back through Ballinagare. All good fun.

Our first goose egg of 2015. The 'use first'
egg is a first from a chicken with a soft
shell one end.

This 'Bee School' is my studies towards the Intermediate "Written Practical" exam at the end of March. Written in that it is a written paper, 'Practical' because questions will be on practical hive/apiary tasks and management, honey extraction etc, as opposed to the 'scientific' paper which is on bee biology, anatomy, diseases, honey chemistry and all that jazz. This is a whole different ball game to last year's 'Preliminary' paper which was an easy, entry level, half hour, 20 questions, single (or few). word answers. Name 3 major parts of the bee's body (head, thorax, abdomen). Name 4 substances bees bring back to the hive (nectar, pollen, propolis and water). What is the main problem with honey from oilseed rape and heather? (It sets hard quickly in the comb).

The kitchen gets knocked about a bit.

This paper is 3 hours long, 5 questions of at least half an hour of writing asking for lots of detail on (for example) aspects of a main disease (hive signs, symptoms, effects, risks, legal side (i.e. is it reportable), remedies, apiary recovery). It's going to be fun - the pressure is on. Liz has opted out of this one; she is happy to own just the Preliminary Certificate and slowly build up her knowledge and experience hands-on in our own hive(s)

Our other news is two simple bits. The plumber has come and installed the new dish washer, which involved also swinging the sink round by 90º to 'look' out of the kitchen window at the setting sun. We have just about managed to get the fridge back in, which looked likely to need a new home in the corner of the Dining Room for a while. Liz ran the washer for the first time last night and is delighted with it. She won't mind me admitting that I have always been a bit jaundiced about these machines and my default setting would be to do the washing up by hand; in my head I see them using more water and energy than you need and pumping out more waste chemicals but Liz has long dreamed of this day and she's just handed me a drink, so I will keep quiet on this one! Meanwhile, I had a nice surprise  this afternoon when I spotted a goose egg in the nest compartment, our first of 2015. We may have 4 females this year (one is a bit 50/50 at present and may prove to be a gander) so we should do OK for eggs. We are not allowing any broodiness in geese this year as we don't want any more goslings.

Smallholder Buys Shop Eggs! Shock!

The shame of it! Shop bought eggs. 

Yes, all the girls seem to be in moult or sulking through the short length days and misty mornings and we are currently down to one or zero eggs from the 9 hens (plus guinea fowl) each day. We are just about supplying John Deere Bob with his half dozen but today, when Liz needed 5 for an extra gloopy chocolate fudge cake for some visitors we had to submit to the inevitable and buy half a dozen like 'normal' people do, in an actual shop. We have not bought eggs since our first batch of Sussex Ponte hens came into lay yonks ago.

The solid clean chap formerly known as skanky emaciated
stray with bits missing, Pirate the cat.  

We are not alone it seems. Anne, I know is also a bit quiet at the moment and friend Dawn was telling me this week that she had also had to buy half a dozen for the first time in years. Ah well. Don't get too excited, though, Lidl. You do not have a new income stream. Your free range eggs were OK but not a patch on our own for freshness or for the rich full yellow colour of the yolks. We will be going back to ours as soon as the girls decide that spring is round the corner.

Sorting the lamb meat out. Roughly 104 kg from the 4 lambs

Monday 17th saw us down at lamb butcher, Ignatius G (Victualler) of Castlerea Main Street, to collect our lambs and watch them being butchered up. They have been hanging in his cold store 'relaxing' for 7 days. We love Ig-G; he is an absolute joy to do business with. A well padded (but huge and strong) traditional looking butcher with a happy, smiley face, he is definitely a 'front of house' type bloke, bantering with the customers in his butcher's apron. His No.2, Joe, is maybe a bit quieter and seems to have his days for the banter but sometimes seems to prefer the quiet of the back room and his vicious-looking band saw.

Bagged for the freezer

That day was an out-front day and we had a great laugh with the two of them as they prepared our order to Liz's specification; we needed one of the lambs split between Mrs Silverwood and Steak Lady but also some parts of the order done as a million chops, while others needed to be in racks of ribs, some big joints but some half-leg or half shoulder. The guys don't mind, you can have it as simple or as complicated as you like. They have even bagged each individual portion for us before now, as they went along, printing labels on the 'till/weigher' for us describing the cuts (lamb chops, gigot chops, half shoulder etc). We get the distinct impression that they appreciate anyone who knows about meat and respects their work and their business.

Local grown!

While we are on meat, we have been delighted to find that sometimes now we can do a Sunday roast or a main meal and see that everything on the plate has come from this holding. On Sunday we had the first leg joint from the pigs and spotted that the meat, potatoes, sprouts, turnip and even the apple sauce was from here. Our apple harvest was a bit of a flop but the few we got we guarded jealously. Liz made the (single) Bramley and one of the James Grieves into apple sauce back in September, freezing it to be kept for the occasion of our first pork Sunday roast. Our only 'oops' of that meal was that Liz, without thinking, 'nicked' one of the rabbits' cheap carrots; we have carrots in the ground but I'd not brought any in that day. All delicious and succulent, laced with that added pride of having grown it ourselves.

Leg roast. Excellent.

We are very pleased, in particular, with the flavour of the Tamworth pigs and this leg cut was even a bit less fatty than the shoulder. Liz was able to make very good crackling with the skin still on the joint; for the shoulder she had stripped the skin off and blasted that separately.

We have sneaked through our little hiatus of freezer space. Sparks was down today to collect his lamb, he took away a bit of pork too and tomorrow Liz is off down to the Silverwoods' with theirs and Steak Lady's plus the pork for those 'customers'. By that time we should be able to freeze the 'overflow' which we have put into the 'fridge' parts of those fridge-freezers for safe keeping and we will not have needed to buy either the 5th freezer or to borrow the generously offered freezer space at Dawn's. A narrow squeak but we got away with it. Next year, as I said, we will be sure to de-synchronise the lamb and pork harvests a bit better.

Pirate.

Finally just a quick update on the stray cat, Pirate. You can see from my top picture that he is now quite a solid (OK fat!) chap but his body is now beautifully cleaned up and cleared of all the scar tissue, scabby stuff between the fur and places where he had been gnawing on itchy skin. Also nicks and cuts inflicted by, we presume, barbed wire, brambles or dogs and cats chasing him off. Only his face is still a bit 'mashed', his nose always seems to be a bit red and scuffed, or dried up and scabby and his eye(s) are generally a bit weepy looking. He is a very affectionate young boy and loves to be picked up and fussed (though not carried about, curiously, he gets very fidgety if he thinks you are "taking him somewhere"). He has pretty much taken over the Utility Room and owns it to the exclusion of our other cat Blue. He has the freezers in there pushing out heat and a radiator. He has an old cat bed lined with one of my old fleecy jackets and he is brought regular food - at least a tin a day plus the odd sliver of ice cream when I go out there to help myself. We see him come out to pee or poo somewhere in the yard before nipping back 'indoors'. He seems as happy as Larry and is definitely improved in health out of all recognition from the poor emaciated, cut about, battered and bruised little mite who first showed up driven to steal our cats' food by hunger, bravely coming in through the open kitchen window braving the wrath of our dogs, cats and, for all he knew, us. Fallen on his feet, has Pirate.

If the Weather's Middlin'......

"If the weather's middlin'...", says John Deere Bob over the weekend, "I'd like you to cut down a couple of ash trees for me...." meaning on Tuesday (21st); he knew we were doing all the pig transport stuff on the Monday. Well, the weather was nowhere near "middling" as the tail end skirts of Hurricane Gonzalo roared through lashing us with a Sou'westerly gale and massive rain, which then veered to the North West and kept whacking us with squalls. The North West is our least favourite direction for winds, and the one which scares us most with its worrying rippling of our old out-building roofs. It has me racing around trying to think of new ways to shore up the weaknesses and lash down any potential flappy bits with wire and concrete blocks.

SW winds come at us all across Galway and finally come up against our massive black spruce trees in our 'woods' out front. The house itself is (we sincerely hope!) sound and the roof itself looked to us like one of the strong points in the property as purchased. At 2 storeys high it does a good job of shielding the outbuildings from the SW. It is the NW winds, thankfully not that frequent, which roar at us out of Clew Bay and in across Mayo, Kilmovee and the fields on that side of us, that have us having these conniptions. They hit the big concrete and rock gable end of the goose/chicken house and are pushed up and over like the wind on the leading edge of an aircraft wing. This puts all kind of lift on the dodgy corrugated iron and corrugated perspex sheets that make the South-facing roof slope, if not tied down, ripple along like (as Liz described it) like the keys on a cartoon piano.

I have shored them up to a degree but it is real bodgery, and if we ever win the lotto, we will be replacing that roof with new. Failing that I need to buy and install about 12 feet of some nice strong two by one and a half, which I can screw all the panels in that area to as a kind of 'not-fixed-down' top plate. That will replace what is there, in bits, mostly rotted out. You can not, of course insure these out buildings without the man from FBD wants to come and inspect them; I am sure any sensible insurance risk-assessor would take one look at ours and laugh like a drain. I wouldn't blame him! Anyway, Hurricane Gonzalo, as I write this, seems to have largely passed through leaving us with our roof panels shaken but not stirred. We appear to have gotten away with it this time.

Meanwhile, the Longford Bee Keepers group hold another of their monthly meetings, where a speaker will talk to us about swarm control but also about the training and exam for the next stage of our 'Bee School'. Coincidentally, they will also be able to give us our smart certificates for the last stage, our "Preliminary" certs. Most of 'us' got them last month but we missed that meeting, it being the day I flew home from the UK. Apparently there was an official photographer an' all, but we won't be in that one!

Extreme gardening - trimming brambles around the bee hive

Liz has already decided not to proceed on to the intermediate stage, which comprises three exams in a lot more depth than the first step, a written bee-science 'paper', a written method/process paper and a practical exam taken at your own apiary. She is happy, she says to stay on the nursery slopes. I am in two minds. I like the idea of going on, climbing through the official levels of 'expertise' up to the grand sounding "Bee Master" but some of these beekeepers get way more involved in their hives, more interfering, more 'control freak' and more fussing than we like to be with our own hive.

Liz gets to grips with our first
'pork' output.

We listen to our 'Two Marys' advising us to stop fussing, to leave the hive alone and let the bees get on with it. A lot of the fussing, the weekly (or even more frequent) cracking open of the hive to inspect it, is all about trying to squeeze every drop of honey out of the task. We are not that fussed about honey or maximising production, squeezing the assets as it were. We are more focused on the 'green' gardening, ecosystem, healthy population of pollinators aspect. I worry that to pass these exams and certainly to show sufficient experience with hive manipulation to convince the examiners that I am skilled enough to get the ticket, I will be forced to 'fuss' more than I am comfortable with. There's a conundrum for you.

Pig liver and heart. 

We dropped by the butcher today to collect our livers and hearts. The kidneys, apparently, one is still in each the carcass, the other gets cut about extracting samples for the trichinosis tests (which we have apparently 'passed' (i.e. negatives). The meat hangs in his fridge till Friday afternoon. Not having seen this before we were both amazed by how big an entire pig's liver is. They weighed about 1.75 kg each! They have now been cut up and bagged up as 9 sensible portions.

Finally, I am delighted to see that 'our' Whooper Swans are back, the first half a dozen have arrived at our local lough for their winter stay. I can now hear their fluting calls drifting up the ridge as I supervise the dogs in their off-the-lead session in the orchard. They must have flown in last night, so they have presumably had their own fun and games with Hurricane Gonzalo's skirt-train. Unless they were over on the Mayo coast, which would have given them quite a tail-wind, they would have been either skirting or battling into the storm. Autumn is definitely here.

Pig Race

Pale purple Phacelia is now enjoyed by the bees just 30 feet
from the hive.

Liz is away on Phase 2 of the parental house move. The first stage got them as far as all the boxes moved in to the new house but there was a hold up on the paperwork somewhere else in the 'chain' so they had to wait a week before they could claim the keys and start opening boxes. John Deere Bob has a brilliant local expression. "Ah, those solicitors always manage to turn it to shlobber!" That is all now sorted ('de-shlobbered?) and they are all down there this weekend to unpack. Meanwhile Steak Lady has been cheering up all the local shop keepers by buying stuff for the new house; 2 new double beds for starters.

New 'race' from pig-gate up to the trailer 'socket'.

I have been bimbling away doing tidy-up type jobs, weeding and readying bed for broad beans (which seem to do best here in over-winter mode, planted about now and getting a few inches of growth up before the frosts, then getting an early start in Spring), extending trellis for the climbing roses, gathering more dry turf from the "mine", a bit of fencing and a bit of 'fedge' weaving.

I let the geese out for a bit of an explore in the sunshine.

As the piggies approach the end of this year's 'project' (yes, that is a euphemism) we are getting the exit ready in terms of creating the 'race' that we will use to bring them up from the gate of their pen, to the waiting trailer, which will be on higher ground so that I do not get a problem pulling it out, loaded with pigs, if the day proves to be wet. I have built a fence 5 feet or so from the main orchard fence and running up to the orchard gate so that I can reverse the back of the trailer into this gap creating a pig-proof joint. With the trailer 'plugged in' to this and the ramp down, the plan is to coax the pigs up the race and in to the trailer, bravely clippety-clopping up the unfamiliar ramp coaxed by tempting food in the trailer. We have actually practised this manouvre already and the pigs slowly but calmly explored the new set up so we are reasonably confident this will work on the day. The day is currently looking like soon after October 10th. They will be 6 months old on the 10th and, we think, 'finished' (i.e. heavy and big enough).

Sorry for the poor picture - my woven willow fence/hedge

The 'fedge', for those who have not met this expression, is a living, growing, woven willow fence/hedge. Most people start these with willow rods cut to length and stuck into the ground at perfect angles to do basket weaving on the way up, with rods already leaning at 45 degrees left or right so that they can be woven. Typically we didn't do anything as well organised as this, instead planting a long line of prunings about 6 inches apart, planning to do something with them once they were rooted, established and growing.

Jam labels, did not quite work as intended.

Needless to say the prunings took or did not and then grew at different speeds and with differing amounts of branching all along the line. My weaving is therefore a bit rough and ready and you would not call it 'art' but it does look nicer now than before I started and it will hopefully improve with age and be a good wind-break for the orchard.

Also in the 'not quite as beautiful as planned' category, we had a go at designing some jam pot labels using the old image we have of the house in 1900 with the two pony and traps loaded with smartly dressed family. The plan was to fade the image, already lacking in contrast as it comes from a photocopy, into the background as a watermark, and write the jam name across the top. You can see from the picture that this works OK close-up. Unfortunately when you look at the pots from longer range, the grey house picture just looks like a dirty inky grey finger-smudge, which rather spoils the effect. Back to the drawing board.

Our new 'visitor' this stray collie.

Meanwhile Carolyn of the mini horses pointed me in the direction of that rare thing, a brilliant company giving speedy and efficient service. This was for the periodic sharpening of my dog grooming clippers which eventually go blunt battling through the furry coats of Deefer, Poppy and Towser. In Kent we got very lucky with this, with the European service centre for the company 'Wahl' (who make the clippers), being a ten minute drive from where we lived. Here in the West of Ireland I guessed we might have problems but no, step forward "Clipsharp" who live on Achill Island, just off the western extremity of County Mayo. Carolyn assured me that there would be a 2 day turn-around and that proved to be the case - I posted them off on Tuesday and they were there, cleaned, oiled, sharpened and packed in individual sleeves, in my post box on Thursday morning! I was very impressed, especially as I had visions of some poor bloke taking them out to the island in his boat; I am only slightly less impressed now I know that Achill Island is so close to the mainland that it is linked by a bridge and has been since the 1887 (there is now a newer bridge, built in 2008).

My final picture is of a lovely, friendly, soft-coated male collie who has been hanging around. We have had him before and he apparently comes from north of the bog-land which is between here and Ballaghaderreen. He is good natured and affectionate and just seems to want a fuss making of him, he has not, to date done any harm, eaten any chickens or chased the sheep. Last time his owner eventually came a-hunting for him, saying that the dog's brother never strays, but they are not strong on 'under control' or 'on the lead' with dogs in these parts. I had the man's number but have since deleted it from my phone, which is not now that useful. Perhaps he just wants a hair cut?

Slugs with Chainsaws?

Bee's Lemon Kniphofia

After many years of gardening and searching, having seen one in a book, we have got hold of a nice example of a 'red hot poker' (Kniphofia) but in the less common colour of pale lemon. We have been searching for the variety 'Bee's Sunset' for ages; well this one is Bee's Lemon so it will do for now. It stands proud in a half barrel full of a goodly mixture of our good loam and some muck from the mini-horses and after spending the summer as a tuft of leaves, has now produced an excellent stand of flower spikes. So far so good!

Slug damage to a Kniphofia stem.

Maddeningly though, the early spikes were being knocked over by something and being full of sap and brittle, they appeared to be almost snapped off. I suspected clumsy chickens but then noticed that at the 'break' there was not an actual break in the stem, but a 'cave' dug out, starting as a small pit in the skin of the stalk but then being hollowed out till there was just the skin at the 'back' of the stalk. The skin on its own was not enough to support the heavy flower head, so my 'vandal' was felling them. Pale brown slugs were quickly found to be the culprit. They were felling a stem and then getting bored (or full up?) and leaving them. They were proceeding through my stand of 'pokers' like a logging gang with chainsaws, felling a stand of forest. We are trying to be a bit organic and wildlife-friendly here, so I could not reach for the slug pellets; I am reduced to sneaking out at night with my head-light on, picking the little devils off and either flinging them as far away as possible or stomping on them on the gravel yard. This battle seems to be working reasonably well and I have, at time of writing, almost a dozen flower stems now starting to open.

These flies are everywhere, confusing me by looking very
like our bees. You are OK once you get your eye in; the
flight and eyes are wrong and only one pair of wings.

On the tenth of this month, the pigs reach 5 months age, so needed measuring again for the 'bust squared' weight estimates. They have now reached 66-70 kg so they are fast approaching 'ready' We are going for pork weight (carcass at 55 kg-ish) rather than baconers (80 kg) so it is looking like our 'bible' (Liz Shankland's (Haynes) Pig Manual) could be spot on with her 6 months estimate. Liz is already eye-ing them up in terms of joints of meat and recipes; she has an evil glint in her eye as she compliments their 'magnificence'. I need to get organised on creating the 'race' up from their field gate to a place I can get to with the trailer so that we can get them used to exploring, finding the trailer and enjoying the treats and straw there-in. That way the final journey will not be too traumatic of difficult for either us, or the pigs. We are not looking forward to that day, but it comes with the territory.

A possible white cornflower from an 'insect friendly' seed mix.

We had a nice treat today. John Deere Bob needed driving to nearby town Ballyhaunis to collect some money from the meat factory where he had sent 5 bullocks. He wanted to thank us for our help and invited the two of us to join him for lunch in a pub in the town. You never know exactly how much money you will get for cattle, he tells us, as it depends on a variable pence per kg figure and on the final, cleaned carcass weights of your beasts, but he was very happy today and proudly showed us the paperwork. He is not 'rich' for long, though, he joked; on Thursday he has to go to Castlerea mart to shell out for ten replacement 'weanlings' he has bought.

Californian poppy (Eschscholzia)

The pub was excellent. Called 'Val's Bar and Deli' it is a lovely pub with excellent service and delicious food. We three all had the fish but with differing choices of veg and salad. The lady saw that we looked like a hungry crowd and threw in a great bowl of chips for us. For me, too, a rare chance to get some Guinness down me with Liz offering to drive home. I love the 'black stuff' but amazingly I have now lived in Ireland for over 2 years and have probably drunk fewer than a dozen pints in that time. It is a pub drink (the cans or bottles are just not the same) and we are rarely in pubs as one of us would have to drive home. It is lucky, I guess, we did not buy a house within walking distance of a Guinness pub!

Finally a picture of Pirate enjoying a bit of sunshine in the yard - we are enjoying a week of 'Indian Summer' which is much appreciated after our rather wet chilly July and August.

The Loneliness Of......

Friends will know that neither Liz nor I have a whole lot to do with jogging, running, athletics or other sporty pursuits but today we managed to get involved a bit in a Half Marathon. We had no idea such an event was to puff, sore-legged and aching of lungs, past our front gate, till a red car pulled up and a lady hopped out to drop a letter into our post box (and set off the dogs a-barking). This note told us that the 'Ros go Run' Half Marathon and 10 km were happening today (Sunday) and subtly asked that we, the locals "ensure our pets are safe and secure during the run" which we took to mean "please don't let your doggies chase our runners!"

The note's writer also thought we might like to join 'Ros go Run' on the day as a participant (unlikely!), by cheering on the runners or by 'leaving out bottles of water'.  Naturally they had a Facebook presence and there was also a website where we could see the route and found that it passed us at nearly the 12 mile mark, almost home, and was going eastbound, so would crest the hill at Una's, just up the road, and then relax (comparatively) with the long down-slope to 'Shannon's Cross' junction. We decided we could have some fun setting up an impromptu water-station with a sign 20 yards out, our table full of cups of water, and then our wheelie bin for the spent cups a few yards further on.

I had a go at recreating the font of the logo and added 'Downhill from here'; green fence paint and red gloss on an old (unbleached organic cotton, no less!) duvet cover. We woke up and got organised on the day so that we could do all the morning jobs, walk the dogs and be through lunchtime sandwiches by the time the first runners, on their 11:30 am start were likely to pass (about 1 pm, in fact). We had lots of marshals and organisers 'bibbing' us up and throwing thumbs-up signs as they drove by and the Parish Priest even stopped to chat and to thank us for "such encouragement". Most of the 60 or so runners accepted a drink, some just up-ending the cup over their over-heated heads and many exchanged banter and joked with us as they jogged by. By the 12th mile they were well spread out so that we only had one or two in view at any one time and I could not take my hoped for 'knot of runners' picture. The loneliness of the long distance runner? Fair play to them; by the time they reached us they'd run about 11 miles more than I could manage, and were raising money for MS Ireland, the Éire Óg GAA Club and Lisacul Community Development ltd. We could hear the cheers and tannoy noise going on at the GAA Club just down the road as the runners started to pull in, their Half Marathons completed. Eventually, about 2 pm, the course closing car came through to tell us we had 'had them all now'.

At last, colour break on the beef toms

We enjoyed the event and we assume our little bit of volunteering was appreciated by the club and the locals; it certainly was by the thirsty runners. This was the first such run organised by the Ros go Run team and is described as 'inaugural' on the website. They were pleased with their 60 entry as the event clashed with a bigger run in Westport which was thought to have maybe drawn 'the Mayo lot' away, and today was also a huge day for the GAA sport 'hurling', with the All Ireland Senior Final happening in Dublin. Just in case they come this way again next year, we will keep the sign.

7.2 kg of blackberries in about an hour and a half.

In other news, John Deere Bob invited us down to pick the blackberries in his home fields. It's a job we both like and it was a lovely warm afternoon, so we wandered down and picked 7.196 kg between us in a leisurely hour and a half. In some places the berries were so close packed on the ends of branches that it looked like there was a 'super-berry' made up of a dozen or so berries and in others individual fruits were better separated but very big, approaching the size of the top of your thumb. Thanks you very much, Bob.

Onions tied into ropes in the car port

Pirate the Cat is settling well now in his 'compromise' accommodation, our Utility Room. Although not part of the indoors, it is an indoor style room with dry-lined and plastered walls, lighting and a central heating radiator. It is also warmed by the 'exhaust' from the three freezers one of which, at least, will be extracting the heat from all those blackberries. We have pegged the cat flap half-open and he is happy nipping in and out through that. He does not like the cat flap to be closed as he bonks his nose on it, failing to see the transparent flap.

One of our apples and a slice of Liz's apple cake.

Now that we know him better, we are sure he has only around 25% of normal sight and walks into things which he does not know or realise are there. He will come in through the front door and then try to walk out through it even though it has been closed - it is dark red so we think he assumes the opening is still there for him. If I move the bits of sheep wire around to manage sheep movements, he will walk into any new barriers I create - sheep wire is fairly thick gauge but a 4-6 inch square mesh so I guess does not cast much of a profile on clouded cat-eye retinas. However, the Utility Room will stay unchanged for the foreseeable future, so he will get to know where his bed and food bowl are and the access 'hole' so he will be safe and sound, as well as warm and dry.

101 uses for an old barn roof. Shoring up the pig defences.

Finally, those who predicted I might need electric fence for the pigs might have a smile at this paragraph. Although the sheep wire with its ground level strand of barbed, has worked everywhere else, down in the ditch/wallow I have not been so sure of it. The ditch started as a nice 'V' shaped 4 feet deep cut, about 6 feet wide with the East Field fence a good 2 feet from the edge of the ditch. But the piggies have enjoyed the wallow and have expanded the width of it by rootling into (and undercutting) the banks, so that it is more like an 8 feet wide 'U' shape, with the edge now creeping up on the bottom of the fence. I am in the UK soon for a short while and I did not want the pigs to decide to break out while Liz was in charge, so I have shored up the bank with some of the curved corrugated sheets which came off the hay barn (see, sometimes we 'hoarders of junk who keep old scrap because it might come in useful some day' get it right!)  so that the pigs cannot rootle any further into my banks and pop up, butter-wouldn't-melt, among the sheep!