One Woman Went to Mow

Laura is quickly adopted by Towser.

Welcome to our humble abode, then, newest Help-X volunteer, Laura-D. She has settled in well and is already into an impressive work-rate. She is great - happy, relaxed, friendly and dead easy to host. My family will understand when I say she'd have you reminded of our cousin Jo when we were all that age (22) - outdoorsy, hiking, travelling, bursting with energy, health and enthusiasm, hungry for new adventures, places, culture and experiences. Keen too, to improve her English, which she is already good at; we have been enjoying some of the charming 'mistakes' and also reaching for the Collins Dictionary when smallholder type words come up that are not in anyone's French vocabulary ( Guinea Fowl = 'pintade', shear (of sheep) = tondre, etc).

Mowing round the pond.

She managed to avoid a possible adventure just getting here. Planned to arrive on Monday, which would have been easy for one of us collecting her from Ballaghaderreen bus-stop, she opted at the last minute, to journey down from Sligo town on the Saturday. I was car-less as the Woman of the House was down with Steak Lady enjoying the Royal Wedding but Laura was confident she could knit together a hitch-hike door to door.

That's exactly what happened, much to our amazement and she pitched up at 3 pm. She'd done the Sligo to Balla-D bit in two 'legs' with very little waiting, paused for lunch in Balla and then, walking towards the road out, was picked up by a lady who recognised Laura's description of us - our names, the 3 white dog-eens and the egg Honesty-Box out front. The lady, who we *think* may be named Mary, dropped Laura right to our gate. 60 km in 3 lifts with no waiting. Only in Ireland, I think!

I am always impressed when a Help-X volunteer turns up
with some decent, 'stout' boots.

New experience for me, then (Elizabeth usually does this one but she was absent), I had to show Laura to her room, the guest towels, how the shower worked and all that 'hospitality' stuff, plus feed the guest their first supper. It also meant she was landed and ready (keen) to start work on the Sunday. It was a good enough day, so I decided we might do some mowing. I anticipated we'd share the job, few 'laps' each, take turns to empty the box and move obstacles etc.

Pulling nettles (ortie) helped by various poultry.

Not a bit of it. Laura was straight into the groove and, after a quick training/safety session she was away. She tells me she LOVES mowing and "in the 'Ouse of my parents, this is my job ALL SUMMER!" Fair play. She mowed all around the pond garden (about an hour and a half), paused briefly to say 'Hello' to the returning Elizabeth and take refreshment but then asked for more. The orchard, by then, had been well grazed by the sheep and I had topped off the docks with the brush-cutter, so we moved them off onto the East Field and Laura mowed all that, too. We are so tidy, and all 2 days before I thought we'd even start.

Enough rhubarb to keep you going there,
Elizabeth?

So, that was Laura in and installed and now very much part of the picture for 2 weeks. "What else have we been up to?" I hear you ask. There was an interesting pig-related adventure which was, like greeting the new guest, a new one on me. The Guinea fowl had kicked off on one of their alarm shouts, so I raced to the kitchen door and let the dogs go streaming out free. They took off in the usual fox direction, to the 5-acre field. The Guineas, I immediately saw, were in a completely different direction, up on the walls of the cattle race and the chicken-house roof, so our problem was down by the pig-run. The dogs were out of it.

We found our first Guinea Fowl egg.

It was immediately apparent, too, that a magpie was shouting its head off too. Running round there I could see a floppy magpie shape down on the ground among the pigs and a magpie jumping up and down on the back of the gilt (female piglet), pecking her furiously and shouting like crazy. I *think* a young magpie had fallen out of the nest up there, landed among the pigs and got rapidly chewed despite a valiant defence by Mum.

Always a risk but worth it for the grazing done to the orchard
grass. Sheep damage to the bark of a young Bramley tree.

I raced for apples with which to distract the pigs while I rescued the baby but only 2 pigs came to greet me, Pig #3 turned up a few minutes later and spat out the half-chewed remains of a magpie wing so that there was room in that mouth for the apple. Thank you very much. Internet friends say that this is a frequent happening and reminds us regularly that pigs are, in fact, omnivorous and with a gut and tastes very similar to our own. Fresh, raw, tender baby magpie. Probably a delicacy somewhere!

Genevieve and Jezebel

On the Monday it rained 'cats and dogs' (Laura's expression!) but we were unconcerned. We mainly had indoor and car jobs lined up. We briefly 'owned' 6 cats, with 2 kittens joining the ranks for a couple of hours. These were 2 little cuties 'bred' by our friends Sue and Rob but destined for a life with 'Sparks'. We just had to collect them, sex them and hand them over when Sparks came to lunch.

We almost certainly saved this little mite's life when she fell out
of a nest-tray and could not get back in to Mum's nest.

Sue's kittens can sometimes be a bit feral, being born in one of their barns and only really seeing humans at feeding times. In this case, a black and white fluff-ball was actually quite friendly and welcomed a cuddle. It's sister (a grey fluff-ball) was a bit more feisty and will need some handling to get used to people. The first is now named Genevieve and the latter Jezebel.

Happy first breakfast

Yesterday, we came round to hatch-day for the hen which had gone broody in the spare cat-basket in our Tígín. Right on schedule, we could tell that she had at least one baby hatched - loud cheeping was coming from under her skirts. She is a first time Mum and this nearly went horribly wrong. Early in the brooding she had kept losing eggs out from under her, so I'd slid a garden-type seed-tray in there to make more of a compact 'bowl' for her nest. All good so far.

This is how you do it, baby.

When the hatch started, though, one little mite fell out of the tray into the basket as a whole and, unable to clamber back in got very cold. She would almost certainly have died of hypothermia had Elizabeth not gone out there to show her off to Sparks, and found the limp, very cold body on the verge of expiring. In our third 'new one on me' experience of this post, I took the chick into my hand and wrapped her up in the warmth of my skin. At first I could feel the coldness of her through the chick-fluff, not quite as bad as a lump of meat in the fridge, but well 'down there'.

Some first asparagus.

However, in 45 minutes I could feel the little body coming up to my skin temperature and then she started cheeping. We had almost certainly saved her life. When I was happy enough she'd made it, I took her back out to Mum and slipped her back under those skirts. I also moved the tray and wedged a piece of wood down the gap to avoid any more 'man overboard' accidents. This story does not end here but I will save the overnight survival, first feed and the addition of a second, and possibly a third chick or more?) for the next post.

All Good Things

All good things, so they say, must come to an end, and we are now at, or coming to, the end of some crackers. Once again, I do not have many pics specific to these subjects (at least, not ones I haven't already used), so I will fill in with some nice '365' pics. That is one of the "things" anyway, so it works... ish. The other two are Christmas itself and my week of being curator on 'that' Twitter account.

We would normally dismantle Christmas here at some convenient weekend between New Year and 12th Night, demolish the tree, pack all the 'stuff' away into its crates but we were both enjoying this one so much that we had decided to do the job on the 5th (the 12th Day and all that). However, one of the delightful kitten-cats (we think) did a very smelly poo, we thought, under the tree and Liz, faced with a pot-holer style elbows-down crawl under the low branches to locate and remove the offending item, unilaterally decided that enough was enough. Demolition day is today!

Some of the hens are coming back into lay at last and the
surviving Marans hen has started (dark brown egg)

This afternoon, then, we have been finishing Christmas including me going back over the rooftops etc and all along that 48m fence you have heard about in other posts concertina-ing up the fairy lights. We're done. We both agree that this has been our nicest and most enjoyable Christmas for a while though it is hard to pinpoint any specific reason. Everything about it seemed to go off well from the start - planning, lists, preparations, the visit and everything we wanted to do. The food and drink were well judged and superbly executed, the present buying/giving was a success and the subsequent wind-down has been beautifully relaxing. Peace and good will to all reigned. We are all still smiling even as we pack the paraphernalia back in its crates. May we have many more as good as this one was.

Horsehair caught on a fence.

I noted in the previous post that inter-leaved through the back end of this Christmas was my week of being curator of the @smallholderIRL Twitter account. That too went very successfully and well and seemed to hit the right note(s) and has met with widespread thanks, approval and praise. That is always nice because you are always aware that you are firing off these soundbites that you think are funny, wise, appropriate, pithy or what ever but the 2500 followers out there are 99% unknown to you. They might vehemently disagree with your opinions, not find your quips funny, be irritated by your timing or tone. Some (we call them 'trolls') are just miserable gits who get their kicks by saying rude, nasty or provocative things just to see if they can get a rise out of people. All life is there and it can be tricky finding the right approach.

First 365 pic of 2017?

Lovely when you do though. I was fortunate in my assigned week running from St Stephen's Day (Boxing Day) to New Year's Day, so I had a couple of rich veins from which to draw my 'copy'. I had all the 'Wren Boys' tradition on St Stephen's Day, all the leftovers cookery, cold turkey sandwich jokes etc and then I came up with an inspired plan for New Years. Again, no idea if it would work - it might have fallen flat. I decided to 'First Foot' any followers who might not have a bloke to do it, or might not have heard of this Scottish tradition.

Happy New Year! First Footing 'treats' for the
Twitter account

I had set the account up during the day, telling them what to expect and all about First Footing, told them they needed to have the back door open before they open the front, to let the old year out, then I'd "arrive" (on Twitter) to greet them and hand them (a picture of) the plate containing the bread (signifying food), coal (warmth), salt (savour) and whiskey (good cheer). It was easy enough to do and went down OK - there was a reasonable smatter of comment, 'like's and thanks, though I did get the impression that most were a bit flummoxed and plenty had either gone to bed early or were at a 'proper' celebration with real First Footers. Ah well.

Icy Puddle

Nobody boo'd me off stage anyway and I woke up that day to run the account till 5 pm. when I had to hand in the 'keys' so that boss-lady (Margaret Griffin) could set it all up for this week's curator, a lady who does her small-holdering in up-state New York (would you believe - the account does 'foreign' guests now and then). This lady is currently amazing us all with tales of farming among her neighbouring 'Amish' folk and lovely pics of the area with snow on the ground and all those lovely Amish horse-drawn carts and buggies trundling through it. She tells us that they sometimes see bears and moose strolling about. They are, I think, only 'small' by USA standards - she talks of 100 head of cattle including a 60-70 head milking herd of Holsteins. They are within spitting distance of (I think I have this right) a National Wilderness Park called the 'Adirondak Park' - a MILLION acres of wilderness!!! Makes my week seem quite pedestrian!

Incoming female Mute Swan. I thought for a while she'd
land on my head but luckily she veered off. 

Also now in its final month, a project of which I have spoken countless times since we started back in February 2016 (and before it was actually born). This is our '365 Lisacul' thing, a photo 'diary' of the year (actually 366 as it was a leap-year) in, of and from the 18 townlands around our village. This was Liz's 'baby' really; she had borrowed the idea from our good friend Nathalie Banaigs who was in charge of the one done by Faversham, the town we lived in in the UK. This with Nath's blessing, of course.

I agreed to be the safety net / back stop. I would take at least 1 (actually always 3) usable picture EVERY day without fail from 1st Feb 2016 to 31st Jan 2017. I am delighted to be able to say that, so far at least, I have delivered this with no missing days. It has had its moments and frustrations and I have been unable to make some of the pics I had dreamed up work but over all it has been a blast. I have learned a lot and certainly hunted down all manner of nooks and crannies in the 'patch' which I would probably never have been to without the incentive.

I guess I know more bridges, lanes or corners where one townland finishes and another starts, than do most of the locals. I have also met lots of lovely people whom I would not otherwise have encountered. Plenty of them stop in their cars when they see me nose-down in a ditch trying to get just that angle on an orchid or something, or trying to pick my way through a bog where they know there is no safe path! Oh, so YOU'RE the camera guy!

New Year's Day sunrise through the trees.

Well, just 28 more photography days to go on that one - wish me luck. I'm not out of the woods yet. Then Liz and the team have the fun job of selecting which pics go in for what day. She has 30 contributors at this stage. It would be quite fun to be a fly on the wall that day.

Roast lamb, sprouts and chestnuts.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we are now settling into the New Year and starting to think about 2017. 2 livestock issues are pressing. We are off to meet our prospective piglet supplier in a couple of days. This guy is a new breeder of Oxford Sandy and Blacks (OSBs) who was setting up last year when we got our pair of gilts from our man in Kildare - you may recall that we had only to do the short drive to Boyle because he was driving up here anyway. It was to this new guy that he was going, to retrieve a sow, to take her back to Kildare to get her 'in-pig' (pregnant) by one of his home boars. Secondly, we have some duck eggs in our buddy Sue's incubator. These were laid by our surviving duck and we hope, fertilized by our surviving drake. Those two (William and Mary - some kind of connection with the 'of Orange' royals due to the Duck and Orange thing) are now our "parent generation" thanks to Mr Fox removing all the competition. The slap of tiny webbed feet is expected any day now (5th to 8th -ish). This will be our first Christmas (Re)Stocking. Geddit? OK, sorry. I'll save the witticisms for Twitter.

Trou Normand

Mussels fresh from Howth Harbour that morning.

Let's hear it for the 'Trou Normand', the 'Norman Hole', that deliberate gap between courses in the huge meals of Normandy which give you and your appetite a chance to recover. We discovered this excellent idea while on holiday years ago in our first 2CV doing a run round the WW2 Normandy Landings sites. You over indulge on courses 1,2,3,4 etc and then to avoid you actually bursting, you can retreat from the meal table for a sit in the easy chairs before saying 'Once more unto the breach' to tackle courses 5,6,7 and so on. We don't often eat as much as that but yesterday was an exception; we seem to be guilty of having over catered.

Three by 400 g sirloins.

This was to be our celebration meal with Sparks after 2 years living in the house. Sparks had volunteered to bring the starter, some fresh mussels from Howth Harbour collected that morning and brought down in his in-car electric chiller box. What we didn't account for was that he took a look at the 1 kg net and decided we might need 2. Liz had already been out shopping for steak and had done a similar thing with Lidl's 400 g Sirloins; shall I get 2 or three? Sparks had also been a bit later arriving than intended, so that we had had the lunch (home made bread and home made paté) only 5 hours earlier.

"Flump's Almost Flourless Chocolate Cake" to be
eaten with ice cream and ginger syrup.

The mussels were eaten with a lovely white-wine based sauce with tomatoes, celery, courgette, red onion and thyme. The steaks came with our own chestnut mushrooms from the poly-tunnel, plus oven chips and corn on the cob. None of us actually managed to complete the steak, so we have rather luxurious left overs today Next was the Trou Normand, then a house favourite known as "Flump's Almost Flourless Chocolate Cake" (Flump being the nickname of a chum of Liz's) which was lubricated on its way with ice cream and ginger syrup. We were done. We adjourned to the real fire in the Living Room for a good old sit down, chin-wag, reminisce, remembering all the buildering adventures and happening since and from way back. I don't think you can beat good food, nice wine and excellent company. We have sent Sparks on his way this morning well rested and after a light breakfast of bagel, scrambled eggs and bacon, though he was woken at 06:00 by one of the roosters kicking off. They do that.

Meanwhile, back on the 'farm', Goldie the Rabbit has now kindled, giving birth to her kittens overnight Monday. All we see for now are the puffs of plucked out belly fur on the grass of the run, which clue you in to take a peek into the 'bedroom' and there, sure enough is a bigger nest of the fur in among the hay. If you are lucky you may see the fur move as a result of tiny wriggling within and you will know that there is at least one naked pink blind baby in the nest. You must not touch yet or poke an exploratory finger in, as there is a risk that the mother rabbit, upset by the smell would kill and eat the babies. You must wait a week or preferably two by which time the bunnies are furred and probably visible having trampled enough of the fur nest down that there is no longer a furry 'roof'. During this time the Mum will pretty much leave the babies to it and spend 99% of her time out in the grassy run. She only nips in now again to suckle the youngsters and then quickly comes back out again.

Horse Chestnut from a 'conker' gathered
from by Cambria's Gravesend Moorings in 2012

We have now completed the 'Bee School' with our 6th training session on Monday, basically a session of Exam Revision which also included a visit by the Two Marys who came with a van load of hive bits, smokers, bee-keeper suits and honey frame parts for the members to buy. Liz had prepared for this a complete list of all the questions asked in both the 'Head Office' (Gormanston*) and the 'Provincial' rounds of exams over the last 3 years, so we were able to chug through those and nail down any subjects where any student was uncertain. Although bee keeping can be a complicated craft, ours are only the Preliminary (=Beginners') level exams, so we hope that we can cope with these basics on the day.
*The only difference between these two papers is in the questions which ask what plants the bees are currently foraging "in your area".

Sunniest seat in the house.

The exam is made up of the 25 questions 'written' paper, but also a practical session out at the apiary where the examiner will ask you to name parts of the hive. open the hive, lift out a frame, identify the various types of cells in the 'honey-comb', find the Queen and so on. We hope we will do OK and both receive our certificates. We are, anyway, both really looking forward to finally getting our bees in June (we hope) so we can do it all for real.

Sweet Chestnut from a Christmas 'nut'.

Other than that we are just enjoying the unseasonable burst of weather hot enough to weed in wearing shirtsleeves and to walk the dogs without coat or hat. All the squishy mud and the puddles are history now. The horses kick up dust as they run to the gate to meet us, instead of slithering about in the slop. I can wear crocks again instead of the wellies. We can kneel on the grass to peer into the pond without getting sopping wet knees. Surely summer can not be far away.

Cherry blossom.

Doubling in Size Each Week

We were told when we first started with the geese that goslings grow amazingly fast and 'seem to double in size every week'. You'd take that with a pinch of salt, wouldn't you, but we can report that it is very true. Ours are now two weeks old and seem to have suddenly put on a growth spurt in leg and feet size, neck length and body length. Their little wings have not grown yet and now seem to have been left behind in this race for size so that they now look like tiny vestigial stumps such as you'd expect on a flightless bird.

They continue to thrive and we are hoping they are leaving behind the 'vulnerable to hooded crows' stage. One little one continues to worry us a bit. We seem to have 5 big bruisers and one smaller one who seems to be always lagging behind, off on a world of his own, still pecking at grass when everyone else has moved on, or still dawdling round the pond when everyone else is out, dried off and preening. Yesterday at midday-ish when I went out to check I could see only 5 goslings so we feared the worst and went into 'search' mode, both Liz and I combing the grass, ditches and bumps in the ground. We gave up the search and thought him lost, gone for good.

Then at about 3 pm I was out there again and there were six again, so we assume he was off dawdling, got left behind but then, fortunately, the parent birds passed his way again and he heard them and came running.

We have had two small tragedies in the rabbit department, both maybe related to the hot weather and, maybe also to my inexperience and bad husbandry. You will recall that I found 4 of Padfoot's litter outside the nest box and wriggling in the dewy grass. I rounded them up and gave them a shallow 'tray' (the bottom 3 inches cut out of a box) to contain them. It did not occur to me that there might be other babies scattered about the 'bedroom'. On Saturday there were actually 5 in the tray, so either Mum had found one and brought him into the fold, or he'd crawled there. Unfortunately there was a 6th now lying in the gap between the back of the tray and the outside wall and this poor little mite had died of lack of Mum's milk. His little corpse was all slack and loose-skinned. I could kick myself.

Meanwhile I had looked into Ginny's box and her kittens seemed to be safe enough at the far end of the hay from the 'door', so I had not given them the tray and 'Berlin Wall' treatment. One of these little ones had managed to escape the nest and had gone on to escape the mesh run too (small gap underneath where the ground was not 100% flat) just before we, unawares, let the dogs into the orchard for their off-the-leads romp. Towser had found it and had it in his mouth when we rescued it. It managed a few gasps but then expired. I suspect that the sweltering heat is what is making the babies move about, to try to find somewhere cooler, so we have now put 5 inch high 'walls' in each box to stop escapes, moved the runs to more shady spots AND covered the tar-felt roofs with a good layer of cut, tall grass to stop the intense heat. Everybody seems to be sleeping happily and it is much much cooler in those hutches. I should just say that this, on the latest count, leaves Pads with 5 babies and Ginny with 5-6.

Meanwhile, the horses have been moved, by means of electric fences, to the front lawn and primrose path. They seem to prefer this kind of grass - regrown mower-aftermath to the long straggly, not-yet-cut stuff. Suits me - less mowing of lawns for me. It is also quite fun that they can now come right up to us when we are lazing at the terrace table on the front terrace and we think it looks very picturesque from the lane outside to see three horses on the lawn, swishing their tails or rolling luxuriously on their backs in the sunshine.

Three Strikes and You're Out

The pups are growing up fast and, we have to admit rather shame-faced, they have rather overtaken our management of them. It seems only 5 minutes ago that they were small, harmless bundles of fluff easily contained within these 2 and a half acres and more mischievous and cute than deadly, destructive or damaging. I suppose, too, if you accused us of it, we'd also have to admit that we were pretty much allowing them to absorb good behaviour (by osmosis or something) from Deefer and not really imposing any discipline out of doors.

Indoors we were OK, so they have rapidly learned what is allowed and what is not in terms of bodily functions, chewing, not fighting kittens etc, but out doors they have been allowed to run about where they could. They were told off if they chased chickens but this seemed to be only playful fun so it wasn't enforced with an iron fist.

Weds 14th Nov saw Liz scheduled to fly from Knock Airport to England to spend some time with Diamond (and, now, new husband JW) helping to paint the house and also meeting former work colleagues and friend Mazy-Lou. The puppies pick this day, as we are starting to think about the need to drive to the airport, to vanish. We are a bit worried but they've never gone missing before, so we start off walking round the house and garden shouting, whistling and clapping. Deefer is with us but there is no sign of pups. We widen the net. Liz walks the 12-acres boundary and I walk up and down the lane, with the vivid image of poor Coco hit by the vehicle still a bit raw in my head. I jump in the car and drive further up and down the lane where-upon I get a text from Liz. "I have them", she writes. "Butter wouldn't melt". They have somehow appeared from the Primrose Path - we assume they were across the lane and down in the fields to the south. You are never sure whether to beat their brains out or be delighted when they return. That was 'Strike 1' but we didn't know it.

So, the afternoon came and I dropped Liz to the airport and began my single-handed supervision of the 'farm' for the three days, hoping all would go smoothly. The sheep nearly behaved OK, but at one stage did decide to explore beyond our land into the Three Sisters' bit - there was a hole in the fence I'd need to shore up in the morning. The next day I fixed the fence and had a problem-free 'Sheep Watch' and then took the dogs round the 12-acres loop. We were right across the 5-acre field West of us where the Three Sisters' land butts up on John Deere Bob's field and the McGreal's house and garden, when Deefer suddenly led the pups through a hole in the hedge and then went chasing away for 2 fields and out of sight. I couldn't get through the hedge so I could only watch helplessly as they ran off. I whistled, shouted and clapped but I was wasting my time.

Eventually Deefer came rushing back across to me but not the pups. I could hear the McGreal children playing in their garden and I fancied at one stage the playful shouts turned to anxious wails as might happen if a pair of pups suddenly raced in and started jumping up like they had when those same kids came Trick-or-Treating but I could see nothing so I might only have been imagining it. After a while I gave up on whistling from the field and decided to walk Deefer home and then go out again in the car. Who should I see when I am half way back across the 5 acres than the two pups appearing from our garden through the field gate. They can only have got home first by getting into the lane and overtaking me by running along the tarmac, which doesn't bear thinking about. As we meet mid-field a lady's voice behind me hails me across the 200 yards of field, "Hellooooo! Have you lost your dogs?" I think it might be a McGreal Mum. "I had, but they've just found me!" I shout back. "They found us too!" she says. "Sorry!" . That was Strike 2 and a picture was beginning to form.

Strike 3 involved our poor aul' rooster, William the Conqueror, but he's in the next post along with the Pups arrested, tried and convicted.

A Proper Session

Monday 16^th sees us all mainly ‘swerving hard work’. It feels like that kind of a day.  We played indoors with Mum and Dad on the computers, catching up with the finances, whacking some kitten pictures up on Flickr and cracking off a soda bread loaf and a couple of yeast-bread loaves, breaking in Dad’s new loaf-tins. Mum and Dad declare these breads “Very nice”. The soda bread is so delicious they have eaten most of it already.

Mum was maybe a tad more productive, constructing a couple of IKEA flat-pack CD rack/shelf units and Domestic-Goddessing bathroom and downstairs. Other than the indoor stuff, Dad was supervising chooks who DISGRACED THEMSELVES by climbing onto one of the raised beds (only the one with Dad’s seedling leeks in it!!!!) and laying it waste with their scratching. Dad’s own fault really - we've been saying for a while we should fence them "out" of that bit. He even have the wire sitting in the shed, but heh, mañana and all that.

As Dad describes it, the campaign to “try to make the 6 year old Westie bitch, Deefer, (that’s me!) learn to love the new kittens. Deefs is a natural "only child", (says Dad) fiercely jealous of anything that might come between her and her Dad, and also with a divil of a killer instinct when it comes to vermin and prey animals. We have worked our way through new (cat-friendly)dog-Coco, Charolais cattle and then chickens, all of which she got used to, bored by, and is now hearing our instructions not to kill. She's now on rabbits which are still worth a chase round the outside of the run and a shout at though the wire and we, foolish humans, have now introduced another prey species and this one IN THE HOUSE!” That sounds about right, Dad!

 
“There is no doubt at all that Deefer” continues Dad, “left to 'play' with kittens unsupervised, would do that shake-rat thing and we'd have two corpses in a few seconds. We are therefore trying to give her 30 minute sessions with her on the lead in the room where she can look, sniff, hear us trying to instruct her and see us doing "we love this kitten... it is a member of the family... it is a pet... part of our pack... it is not vermin" at her”.

On Tues 17^th July, the main event is undoubtedly that Mum and Dad find, at last, a proper Irish Traditional music session. This is happening (and does each Tuesday night) in the Village Inn pub in Lough Glynn and was told about to us by John Deere Bob who goes to it most weeks even though he is Teetotal. It was, after 25+ years of searching and chasing down tips, finally a real traditional session, not some kitsch laid on for tourists and not a formal 'gig' where you go to see a specific band or person. It’s just a motley collection of blokes and a couple of young girls in a pub, grouped at one end of the bar behind a balustrade thing. It started off fairly 'formal' (probably because the team from the “Comhaltas” National Archive were there video-ing), so each of the regulars got their turn on camera if they wanted - as I said, mainly old boys dressed in dark suits, some with old venerable hats on (flat caps, but also a baseball hat), ties, black shoes and in one case wooden soled clogs. One had a superb Dubliners style bushy beard and a pink, Father Christmas face. The two gals were young teenage local 'celebs' having won the Roscommon Fleadh (Music Festival) with their squeeze box playing, but were demon penny whistlers too. As well as music there are “Recitations”.

The 'recitations' were something to behold, tales of missing home and eventually returning, tales of ganders which were no good at stud, tales of some Cockney trying to fool 'Paddy' in London that his ass (as in donkey) was actually his brother etc. The musical group even indulged a couple of local 'characters' ("a bit-een simple" was how one of them was described by our own John Deere Bob after the event) by allowing them to sing or 'clog dance'. To be fair, one of them was a good singer and parodied a well know song by bringing in local JCB contractor Noel R (Our own “Poetic Plumber”) who everybody knew and changed the lyrics to suit all the local landmarks, towns and pubs. The other was a bit of a dire singer and his clog dancing was the subject of Mum reporting to have been  "in awe" when describing it to friends. Loud, certainly but having a rather loose relationship with the rhythm of the reel. 

After the National Archive people packed away their kit it all went a bit more random and the group was joined by several more including extra bodhrán players, spoons and a bloomin' good banjo player, young lad. Mum and Dad report that it was just an absolutely meltingly brilliant event which they wouldn't have missed for anything.

Also on that day, Dad strings a length of chicken wire across the kitchen garden to fence the chooks out of the raised beds. He also clears the felled elder round to the shredder heap. This is now getting rather big and ‘we’ need to hire a shredder to process it through into suitable path material for the kitchen garden, between the raised beds.

KIttens Arrive

Our main event for Sunday 15^th July was to head for Silverwood’s to collect the 2 new kittens. These little mites are only 6 weeks old which seemed a bit young to us but apparently that is OK for felines. They are called Blue and Rolo and were ‘bred’ by daughter of Tommo the Builder (though I’m surte that bher only involvement was to own the bottle-brush tailed cat, Bailey. Mum and Dad managed to wrap the 2 hour each way 'zoom' around a lovely roast pork dinner including Mrs S’s best ever crackling. It (the zoom) was preceded by the usual unleashing the chickens of war but we have now developed a handy rounding them up process involving going to fetch grain from the clangy dustbin in their shed (they hear and come zooming over to see if there's food on offer).

The drive itself was made slightly more scenic and less zoomy by us being diverted off the main road by the Guards (Police) to avoid 'Match Traffic' - some kind of GAA big match in Roscommon. So now we have 2 kittens who are doing ‘cute’ in a very thorough and professional manner but whom I am not allowed to eat. This message is being driven home very forcibly, as it was for the chickens, this time by a series of ‘training sessions’ in which I am kept on a lead and introduced. I am allowed enough lead to sniff, watch and chase them some of the way round the furniture, but never quite enough to poke them with my nose or worse. I think the plan is that we all end up one big happy family.

Oh and Dad’s Rotovator is sick. Something to do with the ignition, possibly as a result of him forgetting to cover it one rainy night, so that is off to the 'garage' this morning.

Pups,Kittens and Bunnies

We seem to be accumulating animals (or at least potential animals) at an alarming rate. Mum and Dad have been looking to bring the dog count back up to three after the passing of Haggis. I am told I am a 'natural only child' rather resentful of the intrusion and jealous of my Dad's lurve, but I get no say in this, I just have to put up with it. I am told it is good for my soul and makes me a more rounded character. Anyway, there was talk that new dog 3 might or might not be a westie, and that Dad might finally take a look at long haired Golden Retrievers despite the mud of Roscommon, although Mum was looking a bit askance at this suggestion.

Then, 7 weeks ago or so, into heat came the Silverwood's young westie bitch, Lily, and into the job vacancy stepped their young boy dog, Maxwell. One thing led to another and soon young Lily was showing some obvious signs of being with child. My top picture here is Lily at her widest and most barn door, taken on Sunday when Mum and Dad had headed down to Silverwood to collect J-M's two rabbits, Ginny and Padfoot (but that's another story). That night, the Sunday 3rd June of Bank Holiday weekend  in Ireland (Jubilee Weekend in UK) Lily decided she was fully cooked and tonight was the night. Between about midnight and 0600 first time mother Lily slid 7 new pups into the world almost with not a bother (a brief howl at the first one's exit and then one afterbirth getting beaten into the canal by a quick pup so that we had pup, pup, afterbirth, afterbirth which caused palpitations for the Midwife (Mrs Silverwood covering the night shift)

Mrs S helped break the membrane around the nose of pup 1 but after that all was plain sailing with Lily proving to be an excellent Mum, licking all the babies clean, slurping up the afterbirths as per textbook birth and nipping through the cords very neatly on all of them. She accepted all 7 onto her (conveniently 7 in number) teats and let go her colostrum and milk to beat the band. We now have 7 plump, wriggling contented pups, a happy, healthy mother and poor aul' Maxwell banished for the moment to a life of pacing the corridor outside the Maternity Ward, wishing he could nip off down the pub to wet the baby's head, baby's head, baby's head etc

Whilst all this westie production was going on, Mum was also getting a hankering for some kittens or cats back in her life like we had in the early days of Faversham, before I was born. Mum has quite often had cats in her life and loves a kitten, but had abstained after their last cat (Felix) passed away because 'we' had three dogs.

So, stepping into the fray in a timely manner came the Silverwood's builder Tommo and his wife Sylvia who have a pair of fluffy cats described as having "bottle brush tails". The female was with child and due to give birth at roughly the same time as Lily, so Mum tentatively put her name down for 2 kittens.

And so it happened that the cat decided that her kittens were also fully cooked on the same night as Lily, and on Monday morning we heard that she'd had three and that we could have, if we liked, a boy and a girl "bottle brush kitten". This will be in about 6 weeks, so about mid July. Everyone is wondering what I'll make of kittens, given that my default setting is to chase anything that runs away, but Kittens are more likely to run at you and mug you. Could be interesting. Do I have any kind of maternal instinct or not? Kittens? Pups? Where will it all end?

Deefs