Allowed Out

On the fourth day, Mayo-Liz decrees that the new lamb should be allowed out of the Maternity Unit (we'll give it the proper name of 'bonding pen', where you keep Mum and lamb in close proximity to make sure lamb gets a good dose of colostrum and the pair get well bonded before being released into the bigger field where they might get separated now and again). Saturday morning, then , we were delighted to find that the recent burst of vile wind and rain was done, the warm air-mass shouldered aside by some cold air; we had blue skies, little wind and bright, drying sunshine. We pulled the pallet 'gate' out of the way and carried the lamb at ewe-nose height across the yard, closely followed by both ewes, setting the lamb down in the shelter in the East Field to get his bearings (and snatching a few pictures).

You are advised to keep the indoor time to an absolute minimum. Sheep man Kenny actually does not do it at all - he lambs out of doors with just big round bales dropped into the field for protection from the wind. I assume he is fox proof. Although you are doing everyone a favour in terms of warmth, dryness and safety from the fox, what you are also doing is potentially upsetting the sheep by enclosing them in entirely new and unfamiliar surroundings with a complete change of diet - green grass to hay and 'nuts'. In our case, even the 'nuts' were changed because it coincided with me running out of the old left-over "fast sheep crunch" and moving onto ewe-and-lamb ration. These abuses can upset the sheep's digestion and lead to diarrhoea (sheep-folk call this 'scour(s)' ) and Lily was, indeed, starting to scour in the pen, so needed to be got back out onto grass.

Well, the move all went well and all three sheep seemed to be delighted at the new space. The lamb, we had only seen moving around in the 8 foot square of the pen, so we were delighted at his speed and agility once released into the field; no problem keeping up with his Mum. He looks, to us, a fine, healthy lad and Charlotte (who knows a lot more about sheep than we do) also pronounced him fit and strong. He is 'big' anyway on account of being a singleton (no twin to share the space with) and will now benefit from all that milk to himself and Hampshires are known to be good milkers. He seems to have enormous feet anyway, if that is anything to go by!

The clear, dry skies, though, were not to last the morning and the forecast predicted that we would get bands of snow-squall cloud through the afternoon. I checked with Mayo-Liz that this release, once achieved, did not have to be permanent and it would be alright to round everybody back up at 'bed time'. She thought that a perfect solution (we have all seen enough film of poor Welsh mountain sheep farmers digging their flock out of snow drifts). The gang are on a day-release programme, then, shepherded out in the morning and back at 4 pm, like the geese for a few days. We have put off the brave hour of letting them stay out over night. We may be being ridiculously soft. We had a few flurries of snow but it came to nothing.

Lily motoring down the field with Feste keeping up easily.

The 2nd ewe, Polly seems happy to stay 'Auntie' at present and is keeping her gunpowder dry. We are fairly sure, based on the comment Mayo Liz made that she was immediately very keen to see the (proper) 'tup' (ram) in November that she had not been got at like Lily. There is a good expression locally to describe ladies of loose morals  "Ah, she's no better than she should be!" and that is now how Lily gets described but I say it takes two to tango.

There you have it then for this post - all quiet, the way we like it. Maybe Polly will go the distance to the end of March and it will all break out again but it never does to count your chickens before they hatch. Lily is sorted on the scours.

The 'Ramones' Final Gig

George Junior with his swollen neck. 

The "poorly goose" of my last post (George Junior) did not make it, but passed away quietly in standard goose sleeping position (beak under wing) in a box of hay and tucked under a blanket. We found him on the 2nd morning, so just 48 hours from first spotting that he might have a problem. Frustratingly, we have no idea what went wrong or what killed him. He had that swollen neck or crop but that seemed to be mainly full of air - when I gently massaged it at the bottom end the bulge moved up into his neck like playing with a part-inflated balloon.

Oven ready version - 2.2 kg

Finding him dead yesterday morning I hung him up head-down in the shed to relax into an easier 'shape' to pluck him and over the next couple of hours quite a lot of clear liquid (water?) drained down out of his mouth, so that by the time I plucked him the swelling was gone. The crop and gut cut open told us nothing - just some part digested food as you'd expect, small wads of 'chewed' grass, some grain. No obvious blocked places or torsion, but all of that could have relaxed away due to the head-down hanging. Ah well, some you win..... We decided to eat only the carcass (2.2 kg) and to bin the 'offal' we'd normally keep (gizzard, liver and heart). He was only a young lad so he is not really filled out enough to look like a proper oven-ready goose and does not have the usual thick layers of sub-cutaneous fat. The other 5 geese seem fine to us, behaving and eating normally. We remain completely in the dark as to what 'took' this fellow. Unusually, my on-line support (the poultry discussion groups) were also disappointingly silent on the subject.

What no sheep?

The open gate pictured, and the empty field tell the tale of this year's store lamb quartet having gone on their final journey, off with a one-way ticket for their appointment with Ignatius G (Victualler) in Castlerea Main Street. I did all the 'shock horror' pictures last year and the year before of hanging carcasses and of Liz dealing with the 'crop', so I will spare you that this year. These 4 were named 'The Ramones' after the punk-band by a friend (a pun on the fact that they were all, allegedly, going to be male (Ram lambs)) though in fact one was a ewe. The real Ramones (the band) had a song called "I don't want to be buried in the Pet Cemetery". Don't worry, you guys, that is no part of the plan.

The trailer is left open while the
chooks pick it clean of spilled food

They were easily the simplest and most trouble free batch we have had. Nobody escaped, nobody got their head stuck in the fence, they were all dead easy to bucket-train and then, in the 'practise runs' and today for real, they obediently followed me from field to cattle race and thence into the trailer. We had them loaded, literally, from field to ramp-shut in under 3 minutes. Yes, of course it feels like a betrayal as reward for their good behaviour but it does confirm that they are not scared or distressed at all by the loading and transportation. Trusting to the end, poor lambs, which in our case is when we encourage them out of the trailer and into one of the clean, straw-strewn holding pens at Ignatius's lairage while we chat to the happy butcher-man about his recent holiday in Canada and the birth of his newest Grand-daughter, Blaithín* (also in Canada).

Christmas Cake ingredients get an overnight soak
in apple juice

These lambs were two Texel x Suffolk Down and two Texel x 'mule' (the mule being a cross between a mountainy sheep and a lowland sheep). They may also well be our farewell to doing business with sheep-man Kenny, as we are moving now into in-lamb ewes and keeping sheep year round, rather than just buying Kenny's store lambs in Summer to 'finish' them in November or December. We've done it the 'Kenny' way for three years and 12 lambs and he deserves our thanks. It has been a good grounding in what was to be a new species for us. We feel ready now to get involved in all that shearing, foot trimming and dosing for liver fluke that 'proper' shepherds have to do.

Follow the yellow brick road to the spot marked 'X'

All around this sheep-work we have continued the sneaky 'drift' of the young Buff Orps' new house, down the cattle race and into the yard. We move the house a couple of feet each day and the chickens seem to be untroubled by the fact that their house each evening is in a slightly different place. We are both reminded of my mother's (Pud Lady's) wartime anecdote. Living at the start of the Blitz in Bromley-by-Bow on the River Thames, she and her 'big sister' were evacuated as children several times down to Somerset. Every time the Blitz eased and they could come 'home' they had actually moved house because their previous house had been bombed out in the intervening period. By the time we boys came along, Pud Lady had a framed map of the evacuation village on the Living Room wall as a momento, but amusingly the framing job had been done by 'cropping' a bigger map to remove the huge first S and last ET of the county name, so I grew up thinking Mum had been evacuated to a place called 'OMERS', The framed map is still there in the Hastings house.

Blue looks balefully at the metal duck

Finally, as cats do, Blue has adopted a new favourite sleeping place, on top of our Living Room dresser. This, of course, involves evicting any inconvenient "junk" he finds there (trophies, plaster kingfishers, a posh 'Moet' insulated sleeve for your champagne and egg boxes - this after riffling through the stack of open 'nested' boxes like a professional card-sharp). In this picture he has cleared himself a good space but doesn't look too happy about the metal duck ornament eye-ing him up from stage right.

*Another good Irish name for the British readers, Blaithín is pronounced 'Bloh-heen', the 'Bloh' having a short vowel like in the word 'Blo(ck)'. It translates as 'Little Flower'.... ahhhh!

Tag, Dag and Weigh

It's not meant to hurt 'too much'.
The sharp end of the tag is pushed
through the ear with special pliers.

At long last, sheep man 'Kenny' arrives to ear-tag my lambs. We love him dearly but he is the most disorganised lad and the most unconcerned about time keeping and deadlines we know. Last year we got lambs with no paperwork (which is no longer allowed) and this year he passed us the lambs and the ear-tag fronts separately, promising to swing by in 'a week or so' and fit them for us. That was August 2nd. In both cases, I would also be in trouble of course for having accepted the lambs in this 'condition' but we muddle along and it all sorts itself out in the end. So far we have not been inspected by any Dept officials.

Contained in the cattle race. 

Kenny texted first to say he'd be with me in 40 minutes (and he was!) but did not bring his son Oisín (a useful and expert sheep-wrangler) and I do not currently have Liz on hand, so the job was down to the two of us. I was a bit concerned that we might have problems persuading the lambs across my yard and into the cattle race; they had never been there. They were as good as gold, following my rattled bucket of grub. Once in the race they were easy prey, with only a confined space and no place to run. We just needed to catch each one in turn, tag them and "weigh" them. There was also one I needed to 'dag'.

All legal now - yellow tags on the right ear.

Kenny let me tag one of them with the pliers. The two halves of the tag fit one into each 'mandible' of the pliers, then you crunch them together forcing the sharp point of the one half through the ear and into the socket of the back of the tag. You try to avoid any obvious blood vessels and the punch must sting them a bit (they jump!) but it is supposed to not hurt them much or for long. They certainly seemed OK and unconcerned very quickly after we did the damage.

The messy end, reasonably clean after
having been 'dagged'.

While we had them contained, Kenny gave me a quick master-class in assessing sheep 'condition' (as in fatness or readiness for slaughter). Push 4 fingers into the back of the lamb either side of the spine. If you can feel the spinal 'processes' sticking up like the knuckles of a tight-closed fist, then we are too thin - the spine needs to feel like the knuckles of an almost open hand. Probe with your fingers either side of the tail - you should not be able to feel any bone here. Push a hand into either side of the lamb just behind the ribs as if trying to make your fingers meet inside the lamb's abdomen. If you can't get in at all you are fat, of you can get a little way in you are 'middling' and, Kenny tells me, if the lamb is in very poor condition you can almost meet your fingers 'through' the lamb's body. All our lambs were declared 'mighty fine' and only days or a week or two away from being 'fit' (ready).

The young Buff-Orps out and about. They will hit 21 weeks
('point of lay' for many chickens) on about Christmas Day!

The official hi-tech way of weighing them today, though I will leave this to Kenny who is way younger, fitter and stronger than I am, was to lift them and declare "Ah... he's ready". Kenny grabs them around the chest from above and hefts them off the ground clutched to his own chest as a child might clumsily lift a younger brother or sister. They want to be about 8 stone he says. I'll take his word for it!

Mapp and Lucia at nearly 6 months.

The final job on the lambs was that I needed to 'dag' one. Dags, for the uninitiated, are the messy, poo-ey 'cling-ons' which dangle behind some sheep, where the poo has not cleared the wool and is all stuck in between the fibres, unable to fall to the ground. Dagging is a regular part of sheep husbandry but (I am told) applies much more to some breeds, such as Suffolk Downs, than others (Texel, Mules etc). They are not 'scouring' (having diarrhoea) in any unhealthy way, they just do loose 'stools'. This may only apply to lush Roscommon grazing, I do not wish to impugn the Suffolk Down breed in general, which may cope perfectly well on the Suffolk Downs.

Mapp

I have 3 lambs this year who all produce, all the time, hard pellets of poo about the size of marbles which rain down harmlessly from bum to grass, leaving the lovely clean wool of the lamb's rear end pristine and clean. No 4 lamb however has a 'softer' approach to life and always has had, so his bum is always in a terrible state and while Kenny had him in a firm grip, I was able to get round him with a pair of scissors cutting away as much dag as I could. He must weigh a few kg less now but Kenny didn't re-weigh him, he just commented that it was me that had the shi**y hands because I was the 'rookie' sheep wrangler. Thanks, I think.

Bust 1.07 m. Nice one, Lucia!

Kenny then stayed around for a while chatting. He fancies a couple of our Buff Orpington 'hins' because one of the farm dogs has recently killed 2 of his own girls, so I'll do him a deal when we can sex them with any reliability. We were also talking about our sheep for next year, when we rather fancy getting into year-round sheep, so we might buy a couple of in-lamb mothers. That way we can be there for the lambing and then have the lambs right round to this time of year. The only issue with this is that breeding-age ewes as a going concern are way more expensive than store lambs for fattening, more like €180 than €85. Hmmmm.

Meanwhile, the pigs are fast approaching their 6 month birthday (10th Sept) and are looking a lot like they, too, are "fit". I measured them today and they have now both aligned their weights - they are both 1.22 m from between the ears to the base of the tail, and they have bust 1.07 m, so by the 'bust squared' method of estimating weights, we have reached 90.8 kg live weight. They also, to our rather novice eyes, look big enough; we just try to imagine what that shoulder joint would look like separated from the glossy, ginger-haired lively young porker who currently owns it. I will soon need to be a-visiting that butcher-man.

Underfed?

Snout in the trough....

I was getting a bit concerned there for a while. I am feeding my pigs with what seemed like a decent amount of food, based on the "by sight" principle of "do they hoover it all up in 20 minutes?" If it's all gone then you may not be feeding enough, if they leave some then you are feeding too much. Well, these young ladies seemed to be hoovering it up in about 15 minutes and are always ready (often squealing their desire!) for each meal. I was feeding by the 1 litre yogurt tub, one each for breakfast, one split between them for lunch and one each at supper. At each meal there is also fruit, so for example an apple and a tomato chopped up between them.

A contented Tamworth almost 4 months old?

There was nothing for it - I needed to refer to 'The Bible', Liz Shankland's (Haynes) Pig Manual. Liz S advises that you feed pig nuts by weight according to age, basically at 0.1 kg per pig per day per week of age, so that a 16 week old pig should be on 1.6 kg of nuts PLUS any fruit or veg you can add to that. She does not advise substituting fruit and veg for the nuts and hoping that your pig will put on weight based on a bucket full of knackered old cabbage and potato peelings.

I love the ginger bristles on these ladies, glowing in the sun

I needed to check the weight of food I am feeding, so a quick experiment with the yogurt pots told me that a pot is equivalent to 850 g. On that basis, Mapp and Lucia's 2 and a half tubs per day is over 2 kg of nuts! I am over feeding, if anything and the girls squealing for more are just lying (telling me porky pies?). In fact, Liz Shankland has pork animals (rather than 'baconers') on the 1.6 kg only UNTIL they are about 20 weeks old - after that you actually cut down to 1.4 kg to avoid the pig laying down that thick layer of fat all round. I am going to have to sneak the volume down a bit without Mapp and Lucia raising a written complaint to the Management!

13 healthy babies

Did I ever give you a final score on the Buff Orpington babies?  13 chicks was how we did; all now in the brooder box under Infra Red (though for the picture, I carried them to the sunlit window so that they could admire the front lawn and you could see them in the natural light). When I say 'final' score, I refer only to the hatch, we expect about half of these chicks to turn out to be roosters who will not be added to the flock, but the hens are very much part of our future as small holders, all being well.

In an earlier post, I was possibly a bit disparaging about the "lacks-a-daisical" time keeping of Kenny, our sheep man. I think it would be safe to include our "fincing" man, Paul in that category too. We have done a lot of business with Paul and we have long ago learned not to hang about waiting on his returning calls, coming up with quoted prices, or showing up to erect fencing when he says. When he arranged to have the woodwork for the post and rail fence round the front lawn delivered "on Monday" we fully expected it to arrive on the Thursday, and when he left us on that day saying he'd be "back next week" (now this week) to put the fences up, we both mentally decided to believe that when we saw him arrive with tractor, fencing wire, rammer, monkey strainer and all his other gear.

The geese and goslings race home to supper,
from orchard to their house

In fact, it has not been a problem, because a) time is a commodity of which we have plenty here and b) it has given us a chance to take advantage of a cheap offer in the Irish DIY chain 'Woodie's' for some 'Forest Green' fence paint. We have been able to unpack the rails and posts, dry them in the sunshine, and larrup a good old layer of this paint onto them prior to putting the fence up. Painting downwards onto fence rails when they are all in one place is always easier than working your way along 54 m of fence painting the bottoms of rails 'upwards'. If some of the rails have to be cut, we can always nip round and paint the grain ends after the event.

There are not many apples in our orchard this year but
this Bramley cooker is looking good so far.

What else is there tonight? Young 'Pirate' is now well settled and getting quite cheeky with his waiting out front of the house and sometimes yowling for attention. He can hear us when we retire to the terrace furniture for a coffee and a chat and will come round and jump up on the table, un-bothered by the objecting shouts of the dogs indoors. He then finds a lap and gets himself comfortable; the only problem being that he is one of those cats who 'knead' you with their front paws while purring, so your belly gets a bit lacerated by those claws through the thin summer clothing. That's about it for this one.

An Occasion of Sin?

Class of 2014 try out the 'new' trailer.

On Friday the 1st, out of the blue, comes our long awaited text from that elusive Scarlet Pimpernel, Kenny, our sheep man. It seems he has broken his phone and lost a lot of contacts (Mmmm...) and has had to get back in touch via his brother Joe and our brother, Sparks. Kenny and Joe were part of the amazing stilt-walking plastering team of brothers who did such a good job on our rebuilt house. He was now back and offering us up to 5 lambs 'tomorrow' (Sat 2nd) and also suggesting that we meet him halfway at a car park in Ballyhaunis to transfer them from his trailer to ours. We asked for four. Kenny describes them as 'boys' so we put up on Facebook a jokey competition to name them and got back some very amusing sets of four names, everything from Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, through the Ramones names, the Four Horsemen, the Rat Pack, the 'A' Team, the Goons, "Uncle, Tom, Cobley and All" to Eeny, Meanie, Miny and Mo, various recipe lists and even, cleverly "Post, Prey, Poon & Asted" I'll leave you to work that one out!

Eyeing us up through the vent gap on the trailer.

I have to admit I was a bit scared of the trailer-transfer thing and had visions of sheep sprinting all over the busy town of Ballyhaunis an a Bank Holiday Saturday afternoon, with us in pursuit but that bit, at least proved that these sheep people know what they are at. However we suddenly had our Saturday now driven by the schedules of sheep-man Kenny. As well as a plasterer, Kenny is a small scale sheep farmer with a flock of one ram and about 30 'Mums' plus whatever singletons, twins and triplets he has managed to produce that year, and we have fallen in love with him over the years and use him as sheep supplier, mentor and source of sheep wisdom BUT (and it is a big 'But') he is a bugger for the lacks-a-daisical timekeeping and he will surely drive us mad.

Liz lets the sheep out in the East Field

He will text you one day promising to call back first thing tomorrow to confirm arrangements, but then he'll not text back, or it will be 'definitely around 2 pm'. Then as 2 pm approaches you will inevitably get a call saying he's fallen behind. Woe betides if you are hanging around waiting and putting off other jobs 'in case he calls'. One of our deliveries finally arrived at 11 pm and we were shepherding new sheep around in the dark with torches. It all somehow hangs together, though and we've not lost a sheep yet. This batch we finally got a firm rendezvous for the car park of pump-supplier 'EPS' in Ballyhaunis (which would be empty at the weekend and is nicely surrounded on all sides by fences but with an easily 'defended' open main gate). We backed our two trailers up tight together and guarded the side gaps while Kenny's son Oisín strong-armed the first sheep from A to B (the remaining three happily followed, as sheep do). The lads talked us through the sheep, which are an interesting mix of Mule and cross breed all with the same father (a Suffolk Down x Texel). Three ram lambs and a 'Yow'.

These Mayo-born babies taste Roscommon grass.

The 'Occasion of Sin' thing in my subject line? For the non-Catholic readers and anyone who was not schooled by the good Nuns who 'police' sweet little Catholic school girls, Liz tells me that as well as filling the girls with knowledge, a good part of the day was spent protecting them from bad influences and anything which might put at risk their purity and innocence. (Sounds like hard work to me, so fair play to the Nuns!). In this world, anything seen, read or come across which might give the girls a frisson of excitement or make their ears prick up and might cause a SIN to happen (gasp!) was referred to as an "Occasion of Sin". Liz tells me that Kenny the sheep man, with his devilish handsome, Wild Irish Rover good looks, dark curly hair, fine features, twinkling eyes, strong hands (swoon) and fit farmer's body is definitely an Occasion of Sin and would have been kept out of the school by Nuns armed with pitchforks and flaming torches.

Aren't these ear-tags meant to be attached to the sheep,
Kenny?

Ah well, the sheep are all home now and safe in our East Field, recently vacated by the last mini-horse to leave, Cody. There is plenty of grass there and the gang are patrolling around now seeing what it tastes like in all parts of the field. We have not settled on names yet - the choice was too huge! This was the first use of the new stock trailer in anger and we were delighted with how it all worked, all be it we lost the spare wheel from its mount at some stage and had to retrace our steps to go and rescue it in case it was lying in the road causing an accident - it wasn't, it was well hidden in a grass verge. Ah well, we've done all the paperwork and Kenny has given us the strip of ear-tags which he has promised (faithfully!) to come round and fit to the sheep in the next few weeks. Brace yourself, Lizzie!

Pirate after his most recent Vet visit

Meanwhile a quick picture of our old soldier, Pirate the Cat, now all goo'd up again with medical fluids, new stitches and scabby stuff. Poor aul' soul. We hope this is the last visit and now he can get better properly, put on plenty of weight and clean himself up a bit. He has effectively taken over the caravan now and won't let our other two cats in. It's his territory now. Our two cats don't actually mind, especially now that it has turned a bit autumnal and wet, and they are allowed indoors (Ha!). They are currently both stretched out luxuriously on a bed in the spare room. We daren't let Pirate indoors, as the dogs would try to rip him limb from limb. It's a shame, because he is so obviously an 'indoor' cat. We are secretly hoping that one of our guests or visitors will fall in love with him, one who can give him a proper indoor berth with no terriers. Meanwhile, though, we will keep him safe in his new life based around the caravan.

Silence of the Lambs

Today the lambs went off on their final journey, bound for the slaughterhouse. It's never a happy day and it's one we dread but we cope with it and readers will know our arguments around the ethics of this stage of sheep keeping and lamb production so I wont go into that now.

This time it nearly came off the rails but for a very valid and unrelated reason. Our 'sheep-man', Kenny was back from his broken collar bone, he had inspected the sheep and declared them finished and was all lined up to help us catch them, load them into his trailer and haul them for us to the butcher, Ignatius G. Then a young lad and farmer he knows over in Mayo was tragically killed in a farm accident involving silage machinery over the weekend and he was suddenly tangled in the funeral and in helping the wife left behind with three young children and a farm to run on her own. He was, understandably, suddenly all 'up in the air' in his planning. I was waiting on him Sunday afternoon till he texted me saying we'd do it today (Monday), and then waiting on him again till 11 am when he texted to say he'd have to let me down today.

I sympathise - it can't be easy but my butcher had now been waiting all morning for my sheep and now it was 11 am and I had no transport. I phoned Ignatius to apologise and he saved the day by offering to nip up and collect the sheep in his own trailer. I met him in Lough Glynn and guided him home. He reversed the trailer into the top end of the cattle race forming a cul-de-sac and Liz and I were able to quickly call the sheep up from the far corner of the field and then bribe them across the yard and into the race, and then trailer, with a bucket of food.

That, specifically, is the bit of this job I don't like; it feels like such a betrayal. The sheep have only known this calm, gently spoken, quiet human to be the bringer of food and water and the tickler of ears. They have come to trust me and quite often nuzzle around my legs as we walk, in a group, to the food troughs. Suddenly, after 4 months I am opening the gate wide and encouraging them across the gravel of the yard where they have never been and into a trailer which they may only vaguely recall from the day they were delivered. They trust me though they are a bit confused and nervous.

Lichen grows vigorously on the hawthorn. 

Then with a creak the trailer gates and doors are closed and they will not see me again. My job is done, my responsibilities towards them are realistically over. Liz and I hang onto the almost cop-out story that we did our bit to the best of our ability and gave the sheep the best possible life while they were here, but the betrayal thing still nags a bit. I prefer the spring time when everything is new and young and has a future. These autumn 'harvests' can be quite trying. Now we just have to get used to NOT being shouted at by hungry (or at least cheeky!) sheep every time we show our faces in the yard or return from a trip in the car. The Silence of the (departed) Lambs?

Brawn cooling.

Talking of 'harvests' we are some way into processing the pig products. We have 'done' the brawn - an unavoidably gruesome process which I will let you look up if you need to know what I mean. It involves a lot of cheek meat. We also roasted the pig's ears as a treat for the dogs. These are now gone, scrunched and schlurped deliciously as only dogs know how. Also in process are the pig's trotters. This is an old fashioned recipe which recalls jellied eels and other less-affluent city market stalls but which was much loved by Liz's Dad.

Some Tete a Tete daffs put in an early bid for Spring 

We have tried it before but not really knowing what we were at we produced an almost inedible, tough, flavourless gelatinous 'ick'; not one of our most successful cooking efforts. However we now have "the POARK book" and have found a nicer looking recipe involving a mango chutney glaze with tomato purée, cider vinegar and garlic so watch this space.

In the tubs out front (actually old 'cauldrons' we inherited from the TK days) we notice we have tete-a-tete daffs shooting out of the ground already ("Well! That's not Right!" objects John Deere Bob in tones that suggest we are cheating in some way; he also says this about the fact that we still have that goose laying eggs in December).

Sheep movement paperwork

With the sheep now gone from the field we can invite mini-horse Cody back to use our field for the winter. He's been confined to Carolyn's yard since he took on one of our ram lambs, but has now pretty much lawn-mowed his way through all their grass, so he's welcome to our acre and a half of sheepy aftermath.

Trailing Home (Tail Between her Legs)

There she comes, then, trailing home with her tail between her legs, poor old Clara Bow, 2 weeks overdue for her NCT re-test and her owner's wallet €280 lighter. We called by the garage today having heard nothing, to see if she was finished, to find that they had just finished putting her back together and cleaning her up before they phoned me. Not brilliant service this time but I do sympathise. They had taken her in to do some easy tweaks on the carburettor which weren't going to cost much and would be done by garage owner Keiran who'd taken over the task from son Aaron. They knew I wanted the car back for the 14th and knew not to spend too much on her.

2CV carburettor (pale grey, centre of picture)

In the event both K and A jazzed off to the USA to mechanic on a Kart race (in which their other son, Andy, was driving for Ireland) having first posted the carb off (without asking me) to a specialist in Dublin. At this point it all went a bit astray. The carb needed €280 worth of work and was no way going to be back for the 14th. Hey ho, I asked them to just re-assemble the car and I'd either drive or have it towed home, end of job, end of hobby, car officially booked off road on a SORN notice. Unbeknownst to me, the specialist guy had already fixed the carb.

I wasn't happy, but these are old, unfamiliar cars and the guys left on site were doing their honest best. They were very apologetic and offered to charge me only what the carb guy had charged them, no labour on their part and no VAT. It would have been unfair to hurt the Dublin guy so I bit the bullet and paid up thinking, philosophically, that at least it will be the final spend on the car. I drove home enjoying the feel of the repaired mixture and smiling a wry smile - I was probably driving a perfectly good car which might well breeze an NCT but, No, we have made our decision and this baby gets to sit in the car port, SORN'd and getting used only within the 'farm'. Maybe the law will change and the statutory age for 'classics' exempt from NCTs will hop forward from its current 1980 date; cars have to be 33 years old here to be exempt, mine is only a youngster at 27 years old.

Christmas Pud

But enough of 2CVs for the moment. We have progress on the sheep front at last! Sheep Mentor Kenny is almost fixed from his broken collar bone and is able to drive his enormous 4 x 4 if he takes it carefully. He texts me out of the blue to say he is coming to see if our lambs are ready. I round them up using food bait and he gets a chance to grab some thighs and press down on some spines checking for the chunky muscle blocks of Beltex sired lambs and the right amount of fat along the spine, covering the tops of the ribs. He pronounces himself happy; They are 'Finished' he declares and can go to slaughter. He will be OK doing the haulage, he assures us. Book them in.

Hollyhocks still in flower on 27th November

Our job now is to contact the small slaughterhouse -stroke-butcher who we use, Ignatius G in Castlerea. This proves easier said than done, as he is either engaged on the phone all afternoon, or he is so busy he has taken the thing off the hook. We are in town tomorrow, though, so we can drop in and make arrangements face to face. Kenny quickly threw another couple of complications my way, but that's Kenny. "See if you can get carcass weights," he asked "by breed and sex" This is just for his own interest, but it should be easy enough. We have, in the group of 5, 2 rams and 3 ewes. All are sired by his Beltex ram, but there are 3 breeds of 'Mum', one out of a Texel, 2 out of Suffolk Down ewes and 2 out of Galway ewes. I had to note down breed and sex against their ear tag numbers, so when I fed them tonight and their noses were safely in the trough, I was sneaking around tickling ears till I could see the ear tag codes and then looking under the tail of each for dangly bits. They all carried on eating but they were a bit fidgetty at all this weird invasion of their supper time! Kenny's other 'complication' was that he has a hospital appointment in Galway at 13:00 on the Monday, so we need to be in, sheep delivered nice and early.

And finally, Andy and the Kart race? Apparently they were doing OK and enjoying themselves but in the big final race "some Mexican guy" punted Andy up the back end on a corner and knocked him off the track. Andy's OK, but the kart was wrecked, so no trophies this year.

"Our" Pig

Regular readers will know that, so far, we have not got involved in pigs. Never say never; it is an idea that flickers away in the back of our minds and we have the perfect place to 'do' them should we decide to. It is the escapist skills of pigs and the fact that they do not graze our nice free grass, but need actually 'feeding' which have put us off so far. The perfect place is the area known as the 'secret garden' which is already well wooded and actually has fencing to sheep proof standards down either side.

Meanwhile, as we dilly dally over deciding to keep a couple of our own (or even pregnant female with piglets due) we have gone into an informal partnership with our friend Carolyn down the lane (she of the miniature horses) who had decided to rear 2 Gloucester Old Spot pigs this year as we decided to 'do' 5 store lambs. The plan was to simply swap carcass for carcass after slaughter so that they could have a pig and a lamb, and we'd have 2 lambs and a pig. We actually have 5 lambs, but 2 of these are already spoken for by hungry in-laws.

Carolyn has done pigs in previous years and, as well as the frozen joints, belly pork and so on, has started to explore into making sausages, salting some of the pig for bacon and even got a bit into the dry cured foods like chorizo sausage and 'Parma' style ham. We may well try out some of these processes and have started to pick Carolyn's brains on such specialist subjects as 'covers' (skins) for the sausages and 'starter cultures' for the Lactobacillus that goes into chorizo.

Excellent, then to receive from UK friend Mazy a book on this very subject as an early Christmas present. This came to us via our excellent local couriers, wrapped in its Amazon packet, so we had to contact Mazy and see whether it was a Christmas gift and should not therefore be opened till the 25th Dec. Mazy, though, had been clued in on the fact that these pigs are due to be slaughtered on Monday next (25th Nov), so told us to open it early. Thank you very much, Mazy, you are a present buying Genius!

Our own contributions to this meat fest, the lambs are easily 'ready' now and possibly even over-fat, but we have had a slight hiccup in the proceedings, in that sheep mentor (and plasterer), Kenny O'C fractured his collar bone 5 weeks ago and has been out of the picture in terms of sheep wrangling. In theory we need him to come and check the sheep and clear us for booking them in for their final journey, and this needs to be soon, because our slaughterhouse and butcher, Ignatius G gets very busy come early December with Christmas meat. In the absence of Kenny we may need to blag a local neighbour with access to a stock trailer who doesn't mind doing a bit of haulage for us or, failing that, keep the sheep through Christmas and 'finish' them in January. Watch this space.

Talking of button-holing the locals and persuading them to work for us, we got a nice result with the local hedges and verges trimming contractor on his big red tractor. Alerted to his presence in the lane by the dogs barking, I sprinted out and found him stopped chatting to John Deere Bob. Asked to do our hedges for a small fee, he agreed that "Sure, I'll give them a lick for you!" Not only did he top and face our privet hedge along the front of the house, he also trimmed the hedge of the East Field and, swapping attachments on his hydraulic arm, mowed the verges on both sides of the lane all along out frontage. It's very tidy we look now, out front, as well as being able to see cars coming as we nose out of the gate.

In terms of food, we are definitely going over to autumnal veg. We love that we change our vegs round the seasons rather than just going with Supermarket style, everything-all-round-the-year produce. Tonight I cut the penultimate Romanesco cauliflower head (all be it, very tiny!), pulled another red beet and cut a few more of our nice fat sprouts. We are currently in egg glut mode after spending spring and early summer scrounging around for eggs. One of our adult female geese is, amazingly, still in lay, giving us an egg every other day and this morning we had half a dozen goose eggs and over a dozen chicken eggs in the kitchen. Liz's response to an egg glut is usually to start baking, but today she has gone all adventurous with a chocolate mousse dessert, and a salmon kedgeree with hard-boiled goose eggs. Life's tough in austerity Ireland, but we'll manage!