Two Teasers

Archery friend Niamh calls by and has to have
a lamb cuddle. This is one of Polly's twins at
9 days.

Another short post  with very little progressing, especially in the fox and the lambing departments. There is just a quick, tantalising tease in each, but more of that later.

Cousin Cathy takes a 'selfie' with Towser. 

Our guests for the weekend arrive safely and we collect them from Knock Airport. These are Cousin Cathy and her daughter (so, presumably another cousin) Danielle. CC would be Elizabeth's closest cousin from childhood; the 2 families shared a house for 2 years

Danielle cuddles the other twin. Note turkey on
chicken shed roof ridge. 

Friends of the Blog will know that Danielle (Mrs Dan) has been here many times before and loves our live-stock filled farm life and is delighted that our ewe Rosie decided to hang onto her 'payload' till the girls got here. They had booked these dates completely unawares that this might be happening and we had not told them anything because we had no idea Rosie was going to 'pop' over these days. Of course we have no idea whether she will - she might equally keep hanging in there till after the guests have left (Monday), just to be a minx.

Lamb takes selfie of the three of us.

This is Cathy's second visit. She'd be maybe more interested in the indoor, 'domestic' side of this life and doesn't go quite so mad for the animals - she's getting Mrs C to show her various cookery skills, and I am teaching her sourdough bread baking. I will send her home with a sourdough starter 'dose'. My starter (Reginald) was the 'son' of a culture in Bridport originally, so now the 'grandson' (or daughter) is almost coming back home.

A duck egg but the purple thumb is a clue
that I have had a lameness problem in
our last-to-lamb ewe, 'Myfanwy'. I hope
she's on the mend now.

But those teasers. I will tell you first, perhaps that Danielle, being over here and loving our animals, has also come to hate our fox with the same passion, and wants rid of him as much as we do. She was very interested in our current 'fox-watch' campaign and the trap and I knew if Foxy showed up, Danielle would be out there with us gee-ing on the dogs.

Alder catkins. They open Mid-March

Well, we didn't see him today but we were all in the Dining Room at about 3 pm, chatting, when that old familiar Guinea Fowl alarm went up, but out on the front lawn. We all charged out and I let the dogs off. We never saw a fox, but the way the dogs shot off on their usual track down through the veg patch and out across the slope fields suggested that he might have poked his face up above the bank in our 'woods' and been spotted by the Guineas.

I love that the buds of hazel break first with this tiny red tassle.
I will have to look up whether this might be the female flowers.

The 2nd tease was a little 'stunt' pulled by very pregnant ewe, Rosie who we are sure will lamb soon. Today I was introducing her to Danielle and joking that if it started to go wrong I'd be looking to see which of the ladies had the smallest hands, roping them in for a bit of midwifery. Blow me if Rosie didn't suddenly arch her back as if straining to poo.

Turkey hen 'Gloria' tries her hand at
weather vane. 

She produced no poo but I am fairly sure I saw at her vulva a small amount of pink membrane and glistening wetness. Cathy also described seeing the contractions going as a slight wave down her abdomen. I was sure we were on, but, no, she seems to have been having me on a again. The pink may just have been (engorging?) vulva and the wet might just have been wee. I kept checking her through the evening and even blew out my attendance at a pub quiz to which all the girls have gone but she has showed no more signs and her back end is back to dry-ish normality.

There is no sign of any more back-arching straining or the great woosh of baggy membrane and amniotic fluid which precedes a genuine birth. That hangs there like a water filled party-balloon while the lambs slide out and only really falls away when she passes the afterbirth. (Sorry, hope you weren't just having your tea!) . Now at 10 pm Rosie is just lying there on her hay looking like a normal relaxed sheep, falling asleep. She has fooled this amateur shepherd again. Maybe more news by the next post.

It's Awful warm...Me Feet are Broke!

Love these lemon drop yellow snap-dragons.

"It's awful warm...Me feet are broke!" This from friend and neighbour, old boy down the road. He says it "warrr-um". He's spotted me walking the dogs early, avoiding the worst of today's heat, as he returns on a tractor from the other side of the village, loaded with empty pallets. He invites me in for a cup of tea and it's only when we're in the living room (turf fire glowing red in the grate) that he takes off his woolly jumper and his wellies (we're dry as dust here now, no mud for miles). It was good and welcome tea, though.

A spare suet pud from the freezer. Hard to beat!

We are having another mini heatwave here with temperatures down in the SE up towards 26-28ºC (UK is even hotter - I am hearing 31 and 33) so inevitably all those sheep owners who have not managed to get their animals sheared yet are starting to get anxious about 'fly-strike'. This is a horrible smelly affliction where the flies lay eggs down among the damp, warm fleece and the maggots eat their way down to and the into the sheep's skin. Not nice.

Supervising baby chicks with menaces?

The answer is to shear them in a timely manner, like in May, so that there is no fleece left for the flies to 'nest' in. However, smallholders have a problem, in that the 'proper' professional shearers get too busy working the large flocks and farms, hundreds or thousands of sheep and cannot be bothered to drive out to your isolated little spot and shear your 3, 4 or 5 sheep. Even if you have booked your man, he is still likely to let you down at the last moment leaving your sheep wilting in the heat.

Broad beans coming ready in the tunnel.

This is one of the reasons I decided to do my own. I am delighted that I love and enjoy this job and it now seems to be spreading, my own ewes first, then Sue and Rob's gang but now more recently a request from a Facebook friend and more to come. The FB chum was asking me to do a few for a friend of hers who was not on FB and who I'd never met, so I agreed to step in if she was stuck. I was passed a mobile phone number and the lady then also provided me with her Eir-code (post code).

New release pen for those Hubbards for
when they get moved to the big outdoors

Eir-codes are now the way we all find each other here - they have been added to the Google-Maps programme so you can ask for directions from Lisacul to, for example, F45E600 and up will come the map you need. Add in the 'Street-view' technology and you can "drive" there looking for landmarks before you make the real journey. No more need for 'directions'.

Southdowns. Oh those fully-woolly faces. Scary for the shearer.

So, there I was, then, headed for the tiny hamlet of Carrowbeg near to the village of Kilkelly over by Knock Airport early on Sunday morning. I was nervous, of course, hoping I'd do a good job for this new "customer" and that she'd be pleased.

One down, two to go.

I needn't have worried (I hope!), the lady turned out to be a real, genuine, salt of the earth East Ender here 10 years now but via Canvey in Essex and a big sheep farm in Cornwall. No nonsense though, so I knew she'd not want me being flippant or over friendly - I was nudged into full cool, professional, competent mode.

The ladies are a lot cooler.

I was desperate not to make any nicks or cuts in her animals so I was being really careful, especially as she told me a 'happy' anecdote about one shearer who had come to her and sliced the ear clean off a sheep. She can still remember the "plop" of it hitting the ground. She didn't get mad, she told me but I gather he didn't get paid or invited back. To add to my worries, these were not 'beginner's' type sheep, so it was not easy.

No damage to ears or eyes

They are Southdown breed, one of the two breeds familiar to we Sussex folk, the other being the Romney (Marsh). They have completely woolly faces with only their lips and nostrils and ear-tips showing. They also have shaggy wool all down their legs to their feet. I had only up to then, sheared sheep with the side-burns and top-knot of Hampshires, or the 'clean' faces and lower legs of Suffolks and Jacobs.  No need to put your clippers anywhere too near ears, eyes or those Achilles tendons.

Rambling Rector against the blue skies

Ah well. It went OK and we got through the 3 of them in about 2 hours with my new friend, whom we will call East Ender (EE) for these purposes), holding onto the dog-lead tied round a gate and trying to steady the rather nervous first-time girls (shearlings) from hopping about too much. Almost inevitably, I did have one faux-pas, maybe as a result of the dancing or just my beginner-ish incompetence, and nicked a small bloody hole in an armpit.

I was quite upset and apologetic and because I do not know EE at all, I *think* she was OK with it and will cope. It is frustrating to know that I will not find out till next year when I either get asked back or not! What ever the case she did not march me off the premises - she gave me a nice cup of tea and I met the rescue lurcher dogs, one of whom has a front leg amputated having been rescued in an appalling state. The nick will soon dry and heal over with or without EE's reaching for the herbal ointments or Vaseline. Ooops.

Daft 'selfie' with smoker.

So, that was EE and her three Southdowns. Next up came a request from my fox-shooting rifle man calling from Co. Sligo. Now they, I knew, have a lot more sheep (18 and a ram, it turns out) and I was seriously worried I'd not be able for it, with my 2 hours per three sheep work-rate. However, my man is in the lurch after having been let down by their 'proper' guy and is happy to work away at my 'method' over several sessions if need be. I can't remember exactly, but I think his sheep are bare-faced and bare legged ones, so we might get on faster than on the Southdowns.

Loving the hot weather and the sunny flowers.

I will let you know in the next post. Meanwhile, it seems to be all go here despite the absence of Mrs C who has now moved from the Cardiff 'AGM' base down to spend a few nights with our good friends Mazy Lou and Airy Fox in Bridport. She's back Wednesday. I will be the one lying there asleep in a pool of sweat and lanolin. It's awful warrr-um... me back is broke!

Lights in the Sky.......

The bees are still nice and active on 1st Dec - it is very warm at 13ºC

At 20 past 8 on Sunday evening, a clear night with a near-full moon, I saw something I have never seen before, a streak of colour-changing flame shoot across the sky. It went west to east and from my perspective seemed to travel from roughly over Knock Airport, to over Frenchpark. It was faster than any aircraft and completely noiseless. It was flaming green to start with but the flames changed to bright red briefly before it winked out and was gone. It was over so fast that I realised that I had no reference point to help me know its height, distance or size. My most likely options were a meteor track (but I have only known meteors to be one colour (bright white/yellow) and always they are a sharply 'drawn' single streak; I have never known them with raggedy 'flame' shaped tails) and a firework, but you generally get a 'whoosh' noise with fireworks.

I had only seen it because I happened to be outside at that time 'patrolling' the dogs for a wee and a poo and had emerged from round the polytunnel looking that way. I was sure no-one else in the area would have been similarly placed and that my meteor would go unrecorded or doubted. It is perfectly possible that I have gone ga-ga out here with these crazy turkeys and bizarre Guinea Fowl and am now inventing alien abduction stories. Meep meep. Nanu nanu. Ah well, in for a penny, I posted about it on FaceBook and got the expected run of comments around whether I was "on the homebrew again" but then was delighted to hear that our friend Rob (he of the piglet catching adventures) had also seen it. He'd been looking out through a French door waiting for their St Bernard, 'Prada' to come back in from her pee/poo stroll in the garden. Then more and more people were commenting and it soon caught the attention of an Irish Astronomy group.

Others of my Facebook friends commented that they were sure meteors could 'do' colours and one (Thanks Pete P) found this spectrum of possible colours. My green may have come from magnesium and the reds from Nitrogen, Oxygen and Neon 'plasma' emissions. It seems that the colours depend on size, height and velocity of the burning object in the heat of atmospheric entry and can also go in phases with different components burning off as the temperature changes. Replies to the Astronomy group had it visible from Killiney, Dublin, Donegal, Mayo and Sligo so I suspect that our thinking it was a Knock/Frenchpark thing was just our low perspective. It was high enough to be seen by anyone across the Irish Midlands. It may also have been a chunk of space-debris returning to earth.

Ah well. They don't last for ever and this washing machine
was so old it didn't owe us anything. We bought it in Kent
we think at least ten, maybe 15 years ago. 

Amusingly, I had just finished posting my witty comments about alien invasions and how the cats are outside so they would deal with it, shut down the computer and gone to bed when all hell broke loose - dogs running around barking, cats yowling. Aliens? Well, one alien anyway, after a fashion. Local wandering stray dog, Bobby had chosen this evening to pay us one of his visits and our dogs had detected him wandering in circles round the house and yard. Regular readers will know that this collie (see 24th Feb 2015 post) is a sweet, painless lad with not an ounce of malice in him who will stroll happily between the chickens and past the sheep with no intent to kill or chase.

Goldie still has plenty of grass. 

Our problem is that the sheep do not know this and to them he is a strange dog, so he can set them panicking and running about which is not ideal if they are pregnant. Not ideal anyway - they can still hurt themselves running at fences or trying to jump over the barbed wire. So we were back on the phone - we have the guy's number by now and we are on first name terms. He apologises profusely and zooms round in his 4x4 to collect the dog who by then I have 'at heel' down at the front gate. I am in my dressing gown and fleece jacket with a head-torch on. The dog's brother apparently has no such wanderlust and stays at home. It is only Bobby who strolls off across the bog-land and pops up either here or at another house just along the ridge top.

Looking promising for Christmas. Polytunnel spuds.

Meanwhile I have almost finished harvesting outdoor spuds and decided to go into the polytunnel and try an exploratory dig. I was delighted to find that the Sarpo Mira planted in there in August are now 'done' - lovely big, mainly clean tubers devoid of any slug or other damage. I do love a baking potato so tonight I tried them as jacket-spuds with beans and a bit of left over belly pork. Lovely and very promising for Christmas. My pic shows 1.9 kg hauled from the first plant (plus a little white 'British Queen' volunteer). Plenty more in the ground. Superb.

Good night then - watch out for UFOs. You never know.......

Mists and Mellow Fruitfulness

At last - some Autumn Fruiting Raspberries which are edible

I'm not so sure about the fruitfulness, but the past week has been solidly high-pressure, clear skies, warm and blue sky sunny afternoons. In Roscommon in late September, though, that means chill nights and usually waking up to a good mist, if not actual fog. The fog does not quickly 'burn off' like it used to in Kent, so it has been well into 2 o'clock or 3 before we got the sunshine. Never mind, we will take what bits of Keats's "bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core" we can take at this stage.

'Golden Hornet' crabs light up in the evening sun

This year that has amounted to a few very late raspberries now coming ready and edible and one or two apples, plus a decent show of crab apples. Through August and September the raspberries had been coming so slowly, at about one a day, that the blackbirds were stealing them and looking at me as if to say, "Is that it?" Finally I am getting enough that if the birds are getting them, then they are retiring sated and leaving me some.

Crab apple tree.

Most fruit trees were stripped of their crop by poor weather or magpies, but I am looking to go and pick the tail end of that tomorrow. The one exception is a Golden Hornet crab apple tree which is looking very good now for a young one. I am not familiar with this variety, so I am sneaking a well coloured fruit off every now and then and cutting it in half to look for dark colour on the seed-skin which denotes ripeness. So far the pips remain pale blond, so we are holding off picking the crop just yet. They look lovely in the golden setting sun. 'Mellow' is not really a good attribute of apples, but these will get used for cooking, so a bit of extra sweetness and softness will not hurt.

Festoons of hundreds of spider webs on these gorse.

The mists have given me some lovely sights in the mornings. When I am down about my cattle feeding business on the far side of the village, there is one particular gorse hedge which has picked up hundreds, if not thousands, of swags of spider web giving it an almost 'Christmas Tree' look when the fog and dew get on it in the morning. This morning I was booked to trim a goat's feet (I know... rock and roll lifestyle!) so I'd taken the camera. In fact I took no goat pics - too busy concentrating on those spiralling horns - but was able to snap a couple of gorse pics.

New shoes!

You may be familiar with the brand of footwear 'Crocs', a light, rubbery type of clog or sandal. I 'found' these when we first came over - I think Lidl supermarket had them on 'special offer' and they have become a firm favourite as knock-about small holdering footwear. They are reasonably waterproof and don't get wet like the suede 'desert boots' I used to wear, and you can easily slip then on or off while both hands are full of dog leads, eggs, the post or what ever.

At last - these flowered on 30th Sept!

They have two disadvantages - they are no good as a safety shoe for rough work being full of holes and very soft-soled, so blackthorn thorns and stray nails will happily some up through the sole and into your foot. Second, because they are just rubber with no lining, any wet, mud or (gasp) other agri products that get into them stay there as a film between skin and Croc, never drying out and giving you very dirty feet, so socks are a must. All well and good, you might think. Crocs, though, seem to be like Marmite in the public mindset, you either love them or you hate them and if you are a hater, then you cannot resist long tirades and scornful outbursts on social media like Facebook. "Crocs and SOCKS?!!!!!" They seem to be a sartorial mis-step way too far. I'll leave that one up to you. My other problem with them is more general - the Irish as a nation do not seem to have size 12 feet, so when Crocs appear in shops they are usually only up to size 11, so I have to order these new ones on line where a pair with postage, sets you back €42.

The wood store almost there. The pale wedgy stuff is the
big fallen black-spruce. 

I am on my own again, as Liz has hot-footed it away on another UK run, this time to the wedding of an internet chum on the Isle of Wight. She is joining forces with our good friend Mazy in Kent and they are running down together tonight, the nuptials are tomorrow. My role was to drop her to Knock Airport at lunchtime with case, passport, sandwiches and bag of Tayto crisps without which no flight would be complete. I am now general cook and bottle washer for a few days but I have plenty to do so I will not be mooping around bored and pining.

Spider web festoons on the gorse

Main task at the moment is filling the log store with the chopped up slices of the big fallen black spruce tree. Some of this splits nice and easily but some is quite knotty and is hard work. Also, despite falling in November, it has not dried out and seasoned much. The lower trunk is still quite sappy and tends to flex out of the way of the axe blade rather than split down the grain. Still, I am nearly there on the full store, so any big discs of tree than remain will be brought up to the yard and can carry on drying out stacked lying on their sides till I get some space in the log store. All good clean fun.

All Growed Up?

We do not claim to be experts in Meteorology but we are reasonably knowledge-able (A level in Geography, Environmental Science as part of the degree, that kind of thing) and we are sure that we had around 3 inches of rain over Saturday night into Sunday morning. This would be quite amazing and I am sure I would think "pull the other one" if it was only being told to me by a "bloke in the pub". I remember that rain guages are all a standard shape and size, with known diameter, knife-sharp horizontal rim, placed out dead-level in an uninterupted air-flow and so on. Well, we don't have that but I did have a vertical-sided bucket which I am 99% sure was empty the day before, and accumulated a good 3 inches of rain overnight. My second witness would be the all night roar and hiss of rain on roofs and windows. My third the huge puddles all around the place on Sunday on what had been only damp ground and I would also draw your attention (M'Lud) to the River Lung under Feigh Bridge being higher than I have even seen it and Lough Feigh being fuller. Under the bridge a large diameter pipe drains water into the river from fields on the west bank and is normally a good 6 feet above the water so that water falls in quite an impressive 'force'. I have seen on previous wet spells, the water half way up this pipe but yesterday (Monday) it was over-topped. Finally in Met Éireann data, Knock Airport had 37 mm on the Saturday, up to midnight and I can easily believe that another 38 mm fell after that (data not yet published - perhaps they are double checking their figures too!)

A first tiny egg from 'OneChick'?

Meanwhile, back with the poultry, all hunkered down in the buildings out of this rain (and me hunkered down playing on t'internet) we think we have had a first egg from 'OneChick'. OneChick was hatched in late May by one of the Buffs in the Tígín, so she is only 3 months old; a bit young to be laying eggs but if not her, then we don't know where this came from. There has only been the one so far, so maybe she is just practicing being a grown up.

OneChick at 3 months.

Actually, we are a little confused by her parentage and as she grows up and starts to look like an adult bird, we are no longer so certain she is purebred Buff Orpington, which had been our first guess. She is losing her Buff-Orp shape and getting a bit longer legged and necked. Also she has a few dark feathers in her wings and one or two dark tail feathers, which I do not think Buffs are "allowed". She also has a dark 'cere'; the flesh where the nostrils come out, above the base of the beak. None of our pure Buffs have that. Her father will definitely be a Buff as these are the only roosters we currently have, but if biological Mum is not a Buff, she might have been either of 2 other red-ish 'breeds' we have. We have the red Hubbard, 'Miss Scarlett' still laying. We also have a couple of hybrids which we call the 'Mini-Buffs'. They were bought as Buff eggs but proved when hatched and grown to be smaller and short-legged like some kind of bantam as well as having dark feathers in the tail and cape, as per Sussex hens. Ah well, she is a delightful little thing and if she proves to be a reliable layer, she is welcome here.

Part of the last joint of the 2014 lamb meat, a leg coated in herby
bread-crumbs and then slow roasted at 100ºC for 6 hours.

Hot on OneChick's heel in the growing up race, come the Two Chicks hatched by the Buff under the elderberry bush. These two are now two months old, fully feathered but not very independent. Up till last night they had all crowded into the little space in the Tígín at night, where OneChick was hatched. Then last night at lock up I found the pair wandering in the yard, cheeping in a confused manner, but with no Mum in attendance. I eventually found her in the grown-ups coop happily settling down to roost with her 'sisters'. She had apparently decided to move house without telling the youngsters or they had not been listening. I had to shepherd them gently into the coop where they continued to cheep on the floor as if seeking permission to sleep in this strange adult world. I checked them a few minutes later and they had worked it out. They were up with the Mums and Aunts on the perching ladder. Poor sweet little mites.

Em-J in the Debs dress

Talking of growing up, another 'Proud Uncle' post - the niece and God-Daughter, Em-J who featured in a recent post as getting good results in her Leaving Cert exams is tonight making that modern Rite of Passage claimed by all young Irish ladies, the 'Debs' (Debutantes' Ball). Best bib and tucker for the lads, glad-rags, hand-bags and the best jewellery for the lasses, with Mums, Grans, Aunts and assorted family friends all converging on the place to help get the Deb ready and to see her off to the posh 'Reception' at 4 pm. Liz has hot-footed it down to Silverwoods to be part of this and to spend the night celebrating at the homestead with the Silverwood parents. She has promised to take some pics and ping them up here via the miracle of the Internet, so I promise in my turn to edit them into this post as soon as I get them.

I am unable to attend (though sure I'd LOVE to spend several hours in female 'getting ready' mode!) because I have 2 other 'growing ups' to worry about - our piggies Mary and Isabelle are now 'ready' and booked off on their final journey Thursday morning. Our experience tells us that the best way to persuade pigs to climb up an unfamiliar wooden ramp into a trailer is to start 3 days earlier, giving them their breakfasts and suppers up there. They soon learn that the trailer is 'safe' and full of food so that, on Thursday morning we can load them quietly and calmly with nobody getting stressed out. That is the intention - in an ideal world the pigs get right up to the slaughter-man's stun-gun (or humane killer) without a Scooby-Doo that they are in danger.

Small Obsessions

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

Goose 'worry-hole'?

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

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

Blue (left) and Rolo at breakfast

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

Bubble with her 'bum' feathers in pin. 

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

50th Food Festival?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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