To Kildare in the Car Boot!

The 2 surplus Buff Orpington roosters, now gone to Kildare

Our advert in the classified ads website 'DoneDeal.ie' to sell our excess roosters bore fruit and a gent promised to drop in to collect both the surplus birds en route home from Donegal to Kildare following a weekend family event 'up there'. He had a long journey in front of him and no real idea when he'd arrive; some time between 4 pm and 7 pm, he guessed. In the event, we had 'company' that evening, with Sparks and his Good Lady down for some good Indian cookery but I had no problem adjourning to the yard for the few minutes it might take to hand over the birds.

Celeriac, surely the ugliest veg, but delicious and flexible.

My man (Derek) phoned at 18:30, as instructed from the local village, to get directions and for me to go and stand in the lane in my big yellow Hi-Viz coat. They actually drove in in a 2-car convoy, it turned out that the birds were not, in fact, for Derek, but his brother in law, in car 2. The cars seemed to be full of people, kids asleep in the backs and so on, but only the 2 guys hopped out. They declined tea. They just wanted to get on with it.

Striking some dogwood whips.

Actually, they did not seem to have much clue; I tried to show them 'round' the birds health wise but they were not very interested. I like to at least do a superficial health check on any bird I'm buying; just the basics like bright eyes, bright red clean wattles and comb, clean legs with healthy feet, good clean cover of feathers and a quick check on the bird's vent (stick his head under your armpit!) for lice and fleas. I had also warned them that I had no box to put the birds in and they assured me they would bring their own box. Maybe I should have thought twice about handing over these birds, but I judged the man to be sound, so I handed over the pair and relieved them of the money. We all walked back to the parked cars, where upon the bro-in-law opened the car boot, empty but for newspaper down to protect the lining, and carefully placed the birds in. It was pitch dark except for my head-torch, so the chickens just settled down there and the man gently closed the boot lid. That was that. The convoy moved off, headed for Kildare where these two roos are promised a life of looking after a flock of Jersey Giants and Buff-Orps which has recently lost its own rooster who, the guys told me rather non-specifically, "met with an accident". I assume fox, but I didn't ask. I guess not the best ever transaction we have been part of but acceptable, we thought. Good Luck boys.

Feste with his new ear tag.

Today, Shrove Tuesday, was the day that our young lamb, Feste, came up to 6 weeks old so was due to be tagged. My 'bible' (the Tim Tyne book) says do not tag till the lambs reach 6 weeks as the ears are just too small to take these rather heavy-duty tags (they work well on full grown sheep). To do this we needed to get him (and the grown ups) into the cattle-race where we could restrict their escapes, so we took the opportunity to give Mum (Lily) a tidy up round the butt, where she had got a bit 'daggy' when she was scouring, living indoors. We both like to get involved in this and it is a whole lot easier with one person holding the sheep while the other roots around under the tail (or in the ears, in the case of Feste)

Grazing on the front lawn. 

I'd been assured by Charlotte that my dog clippers would be no good against a sheep fleece but (you know me) I felt I had to try in order to prove it to myself. If I could even just 'crotch' the animals with my clippers I would be able to produce a nice tidy animal with guaranteed no skin nicks. But no, Charlotte was right of course. The clipper head hit the wall of wool fibres and stopped dead. I was back to my dodgy scissors and, with Liz wedging the sheep against the gate with her knees, I was easing poo-y clumps of wool away from the skin of Lily's bum so that I could scissor them off without risking cutting her. She was quite happy with this till I got down a bit close to her udder, when she started trying to kick a bit, but Liz gentled her and made sure the lamb stayed close to her face (so she'd know he was OK) and we got the job done. You get all the most pleasant jobs, shepherding!

Top of the ditch. This was the easy bit. The ditch vanishes
into the background under the trees the other side of that
fence. It's a bit sloppy down there!

Talking of bad jobs, I was down in the rain gulley today clearing the ditch. The pigs use it as a wallow and had collapsed enough bank down to form a low dam at the fence line, so the rain water coming down our efficient under-yard gulley drains stops dead here and forms a pool. I had to create a slit trench through this clag to a point lower than the bed of the 'pool', so it was back on with the wellies and paddling around in the sucking swamp without losing a boot, weilding my traditional Irish pointy-end shovel. Liz could not resist getting a picture.

And so to Pancake Day! Lemon and sugar is your only man.

Of 'Imbolc' (St Brigid's Day)

St Brigid's Cross made from rushes. 

In these parts the first day of Spring is traditionally 1st Feb, St Brigid's Day. Houses and shops are decorated with square crosses made of soft rushes and we have joined in with this each year; 2015 was no different. St Brigid is one of the three Patron Saints of Ireland (with Patrick and Columba); she covers the female side of things being associated with the first day of Spring, a Christianised version of the pre Christian festival of 'Imbolc'.

An ominous sky brought us another dusting of snow.

Imbolc is Irish for 'from the womb' or giving birth so as you'd expect it has all the good pagan re-birth, new season and fertility associations and if you put up your cross(es) you protect your house, land, crops and livestock from all ills. One version of the legend includes protection from fire, but this seems to be an exclusively pre-Christian story and does not feature in the Christian legend, which is mainly about crops and animals. You would put up your cross at doorways of house and also of byres and barns. Each year, when the new cross was made, the old could be taken down, broken up and spread all around your grounds, the better to spread the straw, by then blessed by St Brigid across all your fields. We've been putting ours on the compost we hope that works too.

The young Buffs like to stand on the terrace table. The boys
are now up for sale through 'classified ads' website, Donedeal.ie

Crosses would also be given to newly weds to give them a good start in life, and might be pinned up into the under-thatch (no ceilings in those days) of the house, where they would add a new cross each year so that you could tell how long the couple had lived in that house by counting the crosses. In Mayo, they put out a piece of red ribbon to be blessed by Brigid as she passes over.We also read that we have been wrong in making the cross on The Day. The festival would have formerly included the 'Eve' before and the family would be making their crosses then, on the 31st January. Ah well.

There are, as you'd also expect, a wealth of stories around St Brigid's life and the miracles she has performed.

Muck spreading for Bob again. 

In one, says 'Wikipedia', "A pagan chieftain from the neighborhood of Kildare was dying. Christians in his household sent for Brigid to talk to him about Christ. When she arrived, the chieftain was raving. As it was impossible to instruct this delirious man, hopes for his conversion seemed doubtful. Brigid sat down at his bedside and began consoling him. As was customary, the dirt floor was strewn with rushes both for warmth and cleanliness. Brigid stooped down and started to weave them into a cross, fastening the points together. The sick man asked what she was doing. She began to explain the cross, and as she talked, his delirium quieted and he questioned her with growing interest. Through her weaving, he converted and was baptized at the point of death. Since then, the cross of rushes has existed in Ireland". 

Spread muck.

In a second she was pleading with the King of Leinster for land on which to build a Nunnery, but he just laughed at her. She prayed to God to soften his heart and then asked for just as much land as her cloak would cover. He agreed. She got four assistant nuns to each grab a corner of the square cloth and to start running north, south, east and west and (Lo! ?) her cloak expanded as if to cover the whole province. "Whoa!" shouts the King, knowing he's been had but relents and gives her good plot for the building. Soon he also agrees to be converted to Christianity.

Bob's trusty John Deere 5310.

In dozens of other stories she does healing or giving to the poor, converting people and plenty of other saintly stuff but if you are interested in that then I'll let you away and do your own research. We are busy here with First Day of Spring type jobs, spring cleaning and the like. I seem to have become JD Bob's mucker-out of choice. I'm not sure how this happened, but I don't mind and I do get to play with the tractor. Getting a mucky barn clean and ready for new straw is a job I love, which may make me a bit odd and it was a chance to give real help to Bob while he had 'flu'.

The range gets a 'blacking'. It's like new!

He's over the 'flu' now but obviously has no problem with his nutty neighbour forking poo about for him even though this year I don't actually want the muck myself as I still have a great heap of 2014 muck not yet spread on the garden and veg plot. This stuff is getting spread on Bob's "medder" (the small 'meadow' field just by the house) the old fashion way, flinging forkfulls across the grass in between short trundles of the tractor or, in the case of the sloppy stuff, letting it dribble off the 'link-box' as I drive along with it gently tipped backwards.

Meanwhile, as well as blitzing the house (possibly because we thought we were going to have a visit!) Liz has given the range a once-over with 'black'. It looks as good as new. Not so good, our ever-faithful little Fiat car may be going sick on us. It seems to falter once in a while as if there is an ignition problem and on Saturday, when Liz went to start it, it fired up on only 3 cylinders and did that white smoke, unburnt fuel thing that gives you the FEAR and makes you dread open-engine type faults like burnt valves and head gasket leaks. It recovered as it warmed up. This morning, though, we have had it down to our marvellous local village garage where Jimmy H has examined it and plugged in his fancy disgnostic gadget. This found a coil/circuit problem but he cleared that code and the engine seems now to be fine. We have been sent off to drive it round for a few days normally and see if the fault comes back. We are re-assured that if the fault can come and go, then it is "probably not" burnt valves or the head gasket. Valves tend to burn out and stay burned out. Fingers crossed, 'Timbuktu' (the car's name, derived from the old UK registration).

Weighty Problems

The pigs under the beech trees

If you have read the link through to Anne's blog in the last post, you'll have seen their little double-take when their pigs stole a march on them weight wise. I have to admit to having had my own confusion around this when I went measure the girls at 4 months. We are using, as you will have read, the 'bust squared' method (see my 18th July post) and had estimated out our pigs at 33 kg-ish by 3 months, and were now showing as 50-55 kg at 4 months. In my head, I had that our 'Bible' (Liz Shankland's (Haynes) Pig Manual) was advising that porkers should be grown to 50-55 kg (about 5-6 months), baconers to 80-85 kg, so I was taken aback by my own measurements. Surely these little babies could not be 'ready' already, at only 4 months old?

Mapp still all baby-faced.

I started double checking and even fired off an enquiring e-mail to Margaret and Alfie, my training course 'experts' and to Therese and Michael in Kildare, where we originally bought the girls. Needless to say, it is all now sorted and I feel a bit foolish. The weights given in Liz Shankland and described as 'ready for butchery' are, of course, the dead, cleaned out carcass weights. My experts tell me that with Tamworths, I should be aiming for around 36 weeks and 90 kg live weight. They vary slightly from the 'bust-squared' figure by being slim of hip and not huge in the 'ham' department, so that you need to subtract around 6 kg from the 'bust-squared' figure. There's a relief.

Buff Orpington chicks under IR light, just because I liked
the colour of the picture!

Incidentally, I spotted that our beech trees seem to be doing very well for 'fruit' (nuts) this year to a degree where I wonder if this might be a 'mast year'. Beech mast was always, since Medieval times, a vital part in the farming of pigs, and the right to graze your pigs under the beech woods to eat the beech 'mast' was called pannage. I am amusing myself with the idea of me, the land owner, granting me the pig farmer, my own rights of pannage.

Taking his meds like a trooper.

We had a little minor hiccup in the Buff Orpington chicks department, when on Sunday morning one of them looked a bit off. He/she (I'll go with 'he' for now) was not running about like his fellows, and was standing with his head up and back, silently gaping as if weakly trying (but failing) to clear a tickle from his throat. Well, there is precious little you can do for these guys if they are going to 'check out' but we isolated him, kept him indoors under the heat lamp while his siblings were outside, dribbled small amounts of water and cod liver oil into his open beak and shut him up quiet to let him think about it.

11 healthy chicks enjoy the August sunshine. They are
well protected from the unseasonable chilly breeze.

Well, this time it had a happy 'ending' and he is now back running around, pecking food, drinking and squabbling with the best of them, to such a degree that we can not now tell him apart. (It was always easy - just look for the one gulping air!). One friend emailed suggesting 'Ribena' rather than water. We had no Ribena but we assumed this was just to get sugar into the patient, so we subbed in a little of Liz's elder flower cordial. Maybe it was that which 'cured what ailed him'!

Post and Rail fencing round the lawn.

In other news, fencing contractor, Paul showed up - we suspected he might just when we were about to have visitors! He is a really nice bloke and quite appreciates me helping him, so that gave me a lovely day of lining up runs of posts and persuading them into our variable soil using the 50 kg 'pile driver' on the back of his ancient tractor. Variable because in one place the post will sink easily into soft, pure Roscommon clay, straight as a die, descending 3-4 inches at each whack while at the next 'hole' it will stop dead at a big tree root or veer off and twist on a huge buried boulder. The former take seconds to put up, you can be half an hour trying to get some of the latter in.

We made good progress working through from lunch-time till 7 pm and getting all the posh post-and-rail posts in place, the tractor roaming around on our lawn on double rear tyres leaving only the lightest of foot prints. Tomorrow and Wednesday, however, we have the Silverwoods up and fencing equipment and children do not really mix, so Paul is off doing some other jobs and will return, we hope, on Thursday after we have rounded up and delivered (we also hope) Anne and Simon's #2 pig. Anne phoned me today; it seems that #1 has now been butchered (by them) having killed out at 85 kg or so. Her estimates of 125 kg live weight cannot have been that far out. 2 of them in my trailer at once might have been pushing the envelope a bit. It's all go!

Mapp and Lucia

Welcome aboard, Mapp and Lucia. 

A big adventure today when we are scheduled to head for Ballymount in Co. Kildare  to collect our pigs, 2 Tamworth females ordered back in February before they were even conceived, to be taken as 8 week old weaners in due course. Due course turned out to be the 5th June and our pig area, house, feed and water were all ready and in place.  It's a bit of a hike down to Kildare from here - 2 and a half hours in the car but Charlotte had asked to come along for the ride so we'd even had to practice fitting 3 people and the dog-crate in the car. Charlotte is an experienced and knowledge-able pig handler so we could definitely use her help and support and then another good reason arrived - she was invited to collect a fancily-marked 'special' Dutch rabbit from a breeder near Mullingar, not far off our route.

Mapp and Lucia cleaned up for the journey. 

The pig breeder is found by typing FreeRangePigsIreland.ie into an internet search but appears as 'Piggy Wiggy' on the website. They (Therese and Michael) are lovely, helpful, cooperative people who could not do enough for us even when our arrival coincided with them taking a delivery of fresh concrete being pumped from a lorry into a prepared hole in the ground - those guys do not stop if you are not ready; you end up with a quickly setting heap to deal with, so it is all hands on deck. We were sent for a wander round to look at the pigs on offer, while they leveled the wet concrete into the shuttering - a new piece of car park. They actually sell Tamworths, Kune-kunes, 'Iron Age' pigs and Berkshires. Only after that were we loaded and documented, our two pigs having been scrubbed up clean for their journey, possibly because they knew we were collecting in a private car.

Back on the road by midday, the two pigs were safe inside our dog crate on the back seat of the car with a dog blanket to lie on if they chose to. They actually lay down as soon as we were in motion and spent the journey home fast asleep, occasionally twitching or moving their mouths in piggy dreams. We had decided to bring a picnic although I'd been worried that the pigs might not enjoy the run and we might have to get home as quick as possible and eat the picnic on the run. No need to worry. We parked under some dense trees to shade the car and the pigs slept on like children in car seats, apparently unaware of the break in the journey.

We wouldn't let Charlotte sneak this tiny
Kune-kune piglet into her pocket.

We made our little diversion to Gainstown to collect the rabbit at an agreed rendezvous outside the National School. Charlotte checked it was the colour mix she'd ordered, checked it over for general health and then quickly sexed it to make sure it was her 'dream boy'. She is a keen breeder and favours the 'Dutch' strain of rabbits, and this boy has Show winners in his blood line. Back on the road then and up through Lanesborough and across the Shannon to Strokestown. Home again we left the still-sleeping piggies in their crate in the car while we relieved the dogs and fed any poultry which was noisily and hopefully greeting us (Hubbards and Geese mainly) and collapsed briefly with a cup of tea.

Snuggling down into the straw.

Next job was to carry the crate down to the new pig house already well stuffed with straw. I had read that if you put 2 tiny piglets into a big area they don't get very comfortable - it is better to put whole straw bales around the edges to give them a smaller 'well' in the middle in which to make their bed. These pigs are not much bigger than our Westie dogs and the ark floor is just under 6 by 8 feet. I had put a bale at either side, intact but with the strings cut and taken out, and then broke up a third bale in the middle.  This seemed to be met with porcine approval and when we left them to it and went back an hour later to check on them, all we could see was straw shaking about disturbed by invisible pigs well snuggled down into it. Charlotte tells us that they are not great travelers and will probably feel a bit queasy and exhausted after the car run so will just snuggle down in there for the night to recover. Tomorrow they will wake up inquisitive and ravenous. Good night little ones. We will come and find you in the morning.

11 keets now dried off and up and about.

Meanwhile, I was going to give you a Guinea Fowl update. We had a burst of 11 eggs hatching over the 24 hours or so of the main event. These guys are dried off and now up and about, rescued to the brooder crate with the Infra Red heat lamp. After a pause, a 12th tried to hatch but came out with a wad of un-absorbed yolk sac outside its body and lost a lot of blood. This one did not make it through the night. The remaining 4 eggs are doing nothing and now, on candling, appear to have the too-big air space which is a sign of a dead embryo. This is quite normal, to have all the 'good' ones hatch in a burst. Any that do not come out then are probably weak or poor in some way. 11 good ones, though, out of 16 eggs rescued from a wet hedge-bottom and incubated in an unsophisticated incubator is still a brilliant result. We are delighted.

We have had a third gosling hatch and this one is doing well, so we have a rather dysfunctional looking family wandering about, with George Junior, at over 2 weeks, looking huge and robust alongside "Very" Junior who is only 2 days old. The other female adult is still hanging in there, sitting on the 6 or so eggs which still remain. It's all 'go' isn't it - pigs, keets, goslings all in the same week, and soon, the bees will be arriving.