A Million Hens but No Eggs?

This very late cousin of "The Bishop" dahlia sneaks a few
flowers out before the first frost.

As I put out the 'Sold Out' sign on the egg Honesty Box again, I rue the bad timing that had me starting those sales just as, it seemed to me, the egg production dried up. I go round each morning and collect 2 or 3 duck eggs from the ever-reliable Khaki Campbells and then, at the moment, pick up the very sporadic 1-3 hen eggs through the day from the various hidey holes.

An unidentified fungus from the front lawn. 

We are knee deep in young chickens at present. We must have around 30 chickens total but regular readers will know that 26 of these are still deciding whether to shout cock-a-doodle-doo or to lay an egg. The old guard are currently on go-slow, presumably due to the weather.

Egg production stats.

It is not, in fact, as bad as it seems. Way back when we first came over, I used to haunt various Internet discussion groups on the subject of keeping chickens (Fowl.IE was one) and someone on there suggested we all keep score on our egg laying. I have done so ever since. I can see from these data that the current situation is by no means unprecedented and the current year is probably the best yet.

These things go in peaks and troughs. The total eggs produced in 2015 was 1639, 2016 was only 926 and this year we have 1563 so far and every chance of topping 2015's total by Dec 31st. Last year the hens laid fewer than 100 eggs per month from May right round to October even before half were wiped out by our fox attack in November. This year no months have seen hen eggs below 100 and we had 199 in May and 200 in August. Do not despair you poultry-watchers.

The late 'Oveja', bought-in ewe lamb.

Obviously we hope for a smart pick-up around Christmas as these new birds come of age and we are also upping the ante soon with our addition of 2 female Guinea Fowl. Also today, we have decided to increase the number of ducks so we have contacted friends Sue and Rob to arrange to bring them over half a dozen eggs to put in their incubator. These will be Khaki Campbell again though we may, at some point, look at a few more meaty birds - Muscovies for example.

Talking of 'meat' I noted in the previous post that our bought-in ewe lamb, 'Oveja' had come up ready, so we had booked her in for her final journey on Monday. I still hate these days - they feel like such a betrayal - but we have now done them enough that I am more confident that all the feared things that might go wrong, no longer scare me so much - Will we be able to catch the lambs? Will the trailer break? Will the car break down? Will the butcher reject them? Will the paperwork be OK? Will we be able to kiss them goodbye?

First 'fruits' - the offal, which you collect on D+1. Left to right
 here, kidneys still in their (suet) jackets, liver, heart and lungs.
The carcass hangs a week and will be collected next Monday.

We are now almost casual about it. I was determined this time not to drive Liz the usual amount of crazy with my pacing, worrying and drumming my fingers on the table. We shared a leisured tea/coffee, ran the sheep across to the race, separated and loaded our required 'cargo' (just Oveja), drove to Castlerea, unloaded and processed paperwork, swapped instructions with the butcher-guys and adjourned to nearby Benny's Deli for a croissant-based breakfast. Pride in a job well done.

We even 'got away with' that risk of having to drop your one sheep into the lonely empty 'lairage' pen where she would 'baa' piteously at you as you drove away - the pen had 6 ewe lambs already in it, so Oveja sprinted in there to be with her new 'friends'. Safety in numbers... for a while anyway. Today I picked up the offal but I did not see Joe, the slaughterman. I had asked him to check for me whether the lass was pregnant. When ewe lambs are run with their brothers past 5-6 months this can often happen and in our case it might give us an early indication that Oveja's brother 'Pedro' who we plan to keep as our breeding ram, is able for this job. Not very "nice", but one of those hard facts of life.

Village Calendar 2018

Meanwhile, Liz has created the next year's Village Calendar again based upon pictures from the 2016/7 "Lisacul 365" project, our photographic portrait of the 18 townlands as a 'Year in the Life'. Liz decided this time to mainly choose 'nature' pictures, so they are, I am proud to say, mainly mine. The calendar is a lovely thing and, this year, they are selling at only €5 (it was €10 last year) and going like hot cakes. Liz is looking at a 2nd print-run as the supply dwindles. If you want one (or more - they would be great stocking fillers) go to the village website - LisaculInfo.ie .

Hard to beat a good 'Cosyglo' fire. 

Liz's other main project at the moment, the Village Play, is also progressing. The group have been reading through various plays proposed by the 'boss' (Tom C) but have only had print-outs of olde-font play-scripts in PDF format to work with, so Liz has started typing these into her laptop so that they have a live version they can mess with as desired. The first (Her Step Husband by Larry Johnson) was over 30,000 words so it took her a while. To no avail, as it turned out - the players have now settled on 'Anyone Could Rob a Bank' by Tom Coffey (1960) and all the actors have now been cast, so Liz is going to have to get the laptop out again and fiddle another 20,000+ words into it. Ah well. Life is never easy for an Assistant Producer.

While we are on creative writing, I have just completed another week (my 3rd) as curator of the @SmallHolderIRL Twitter account, the 'voice of Irish small holders', if you like. I seem to go down OK on there and it suits my style of chattering and wittering. My Dad would have used the words "Happy" and "Garrulous", I expect, but hey, it works for me. I always get good feedback and also I get asked back to do it again so it can't all be bad.

This is not my picture, but may well have been 'my' buzzard.
Pic is by Michael Bell, who goes on Twitter as @learnnature
and was taken in Ballyleague (Co Roscommon). 

Finally I am in between, currently, the various wild-life recording events to which I contribute, on the (Irish) National Bio-Diversity database. The bumblebee survey finishes at the end of October and we don't start the big bird-watch till the end of November. What I do in the meantime is input any sightings I see of anything note-worthy including roadkill. Exciting, then, to see my first buzzard since I've been here. I am not even sure it was a buzzard (though I thought so) - it was soaring in the blue sky with its wings held in a rather high 'V', so more like a harrier but it was against the sun, so I could only see the black silhouette. It was nice later that day to get a post by Liz re-sharing a pic taken by a guy (Michael Bell, who Tweets under the name @LearnNature ) who had photo'd 2 buzzards soaring over Ballyleague. That town is a good 50 minutes drive east from here, right over by the River Shannon, but I'd seen my buzzard at 10 am and he was making good speed over the ground, so it might just have been the same bird.

....And that is enough for now. Good Luck.

The Eagle Has Landed

The 'Send' button brings an end to Lisacul 365 (for me). 

There's a relief! 31st January, so we come to the end of a big and attention demanding project to which I have frequently alluded for the last 14 months or so, 'Lisacul 365'. If you are new to the blog then you may welcome a brief explanation. This was a project started by the local village through our new website (LisaculInfo.IE) as part of the village promotion and heritage recording; we had to take at least one photograph within (of or from) the 18 townlands (sub-parishes) EVERY day from 1st Feb 2016 to 31st Jan 2017.
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Last check of my final posting before I logged out. Job done.

Liz has been administering the rapidly growing gallery of images as part of her work. I volunteered to be safety net/back stop committing to take at least one pic every day just in case the other photographers failed to and, because I enjoyed it, I determined that this 'one' would actually be at least 3 so that the admin/judging/selection end still had a choice even if I was the only snapper and tried to make my 3 nice and varied (so, for example, a ruin, a cow and a sky-scape rather than 3 goats). In practise we have attracted 30+ different photographers across the year and have, on some days, had dozens of pictures sent in.

For my last days of 365-ing I tried to end on
an up-beat note; signs of spring, newness,
sunrises etc. 

We also went off on a bit of a tangent when the village 'Tidy Towns' group asked us to focus on wildlife and nature for their Bio-Diversity week. With the photographers' work done, the plan is now for Liz to sort all the incoming pics into a format where a judging panel (yet to be decided) can be shown all the possible pics for each day and select their best 366 (leap year, so 366, not just 365). They have given us all till the end of Feb to get those pictures in. You will recall that as well as a very pretty website with, now, galleries off to the side (on Flickr) for each month, for the Bio-Diversity and various other sub-projects, a very fine calendar came out of these photos. Working on a big-town budget, Faversham also produced a glossy 365-page book of all the pictures and had a lovely exhibition of all of them framed. I think we are not in that league, but we are very proud of what we did manage.

The snow drops did not quite make it open
by 31st but these were near enough. 

Everyone at the project will always acknowledge the lady who inspired all this, French-born Nathalie Banaigs who now lives in Faversham, our former home-town. Nathalie started all this in Faversham with the 'Faversham 365' version which then spawned various other 365s in Kent towns. When we suggested doing the first ever one in Ireland in our village, she gave us her blessing and has continued to follow, inspire, support and occasionally advise us. She was delighted when told that we had completed our year. Thank you very, very much, Nathalie. More on this project in this blog when we get all the rest of the pictures in and start judging/selecting

Misty frosty sunrise in the townland of Creevy

Where to now? I am going to miss the discipline of knowing I have to get out there and get some good, original, new pictures every day and not really being able to relax until I have scored - it was always there in the back of my mind. Sometimes I felt I had 'shot' enough ruins, boreens, cute calves and bog-flowers and I was driving round the deserted, misty, country lanes feeling completely un-inspired but something always seemed to turn up; a strikingly marked donkey or the break in a fence where I might sneak into that bit of forestry with the lovely green floor and all those toadstools.

Pussy willow after the rain.

In reality I love my photography and would generally be using the camera every day anyway taking blog-pictures or record shots of the building project(s) or new hatched chicks, so I don't suppose the camera will gather dust for long. Even though the website is through the 365 project, it will still need a supply of fresh pictures to brighten up or illustrate the stories. The camera is generally in the car when I am out and about, or slung round my neck as I walk the dogs.

Long straight grass-track in Kiltybranks bog

Talking of dogs, we managed an adventure worthy of those much-loved children's TV dramas which involved extra-ordinarily clever animals - Lassie Super dog, Flipper (dolphin) or Skippy the Bush Kangaroo. Although Skippy was a kangaroo he always managed to explain to the kids in the tale by wrinkling his nose and smacking his lips that there was a child fallen down the old empty well and in need of rescuing by the gang in time for a happy ending of that episode and the Director's moral message where someone's Dad reminded all the children that it was dangerous to play near the well. All good stuff.

So, there I was walking my gang down across the Kiltybranks bog-land, square miles of open space criss-crossed by hard paths but riddled with ditches, holes and soggy, sinky bits of sphagnum peat/moss. I'd turned right up a side turn and the dogs had dived down off that path for an explore of an interesting ditch. I whistled them up and strode on - it always works - they do not want to fall behind the 'pack' so they race back out and are soon nudging my calves with their noses, 'asking' me to pull over so they can pass.

Hubbard chicken thighs and stuffed peppers with couscous

Not this time, apparently. A few minutes 'striding' and I was 100 yards further on and noticed the lack of dogs. Looking back I could see the two 'pups' (Towser and Pops) in the distance on the path, but no Deefer. I called and whistled but those pups were not having any of it (which is unusual)  and when I shouted in annoyance and started back they turned and ran away from me (which is unheard of) a few paces and stopped again. I realised that I was being called back and had also still not seen Deefer so I realised that something had gone wrong and all the 'Skippy' stuff came into my head. Were they asking me to rescue Deefer?

Tray-bake haggis with neeps and tatties
for our Burns Night. A wee dram too.

We got our happy ending - the pair showed me where, much further back up the track I could just hear a repeated single whimpering yelp from the ditch to the side and then spotted the white of an ear down among the heather. Deefer had got herself down into a ditch which was empty but had overhanging heather and sides so soft she hadn't been able to clamber out. I had to lean down on my knees to grab a chunk of collar and haul her out, unharmed but very relieved that we'd not left her behind. Lots of praises and fussing for the pups, of course, they were not going to get any from old curmudgeon Deefer! We carried on with the walk and then related all to Liz as we towelled the dogs down from the rain.

Directions into deepest Sligo. 

Our only other mini-adventure had us exploring into deepest Sligo, off to visit some new friends whom we met via Facebook. CT is the guy who came and helpfully shot our fox back in November and his partner, AW is chief admin on the Facebook "West of Ireland Smallholders" group which I co-admin. They have a lovely set-up out there on a slope looking across a valley at an impressive, cloud-capped mountain.

Their big interest is horses and they have built a 40 x 20 m sand-school where they could, in theory, hold proper dressage competitions. They have 5 collie-sized dogs, one (Ivan the Terrible) of which is officially the "guard dog" who doesn't like people and never lets anyone (or any foxes!) in. Well, Ivan amazed and delighted both of them by taking to me like his new bestest chum. He came and laid his chin on my lap and 'asked' to have his hair ruffled and his ears fussed. I obliged, of course and only then did our hosts express amazement - he'd NEVER done that before to ANYONE. Perhaps I smelled of 'Skippy' dogs or curmudgeonly old bog-bitches.

Stirring It

The 100-400 mm 'pap' lens I use for the moon close-ups
and some of the wildlife pics.

A short-ish post, this one and another where the photo's bear little relevance to the main story. When you know what that is about you will understand, I am sure. The pics in this one are some of these final '365' project shots saved from the dying embers of the 'year'. There are also a few 'snow scenes' from the rather pathetic flurries of wet sleety snow that we have had over the last day or so. Who can resist a Christmas Card scene after all?

Candle Snuff fungus growing in our front lawn.

My "Stirring It" title comes from the main task today. In my youth, our family in-jokes and clichés frequently had us accused of "stirring it" and family members were occasionally awarded the 'wooden spoon' for stirring above and beyond the call of duty. The job, which I volunteered for before I knew the detail of what was involved was to help a friend re-start a fancy septic tank system which had become a problem.

One of our favourite Irish cookery books, Theodora Firzgibbon

Our septic tank here is the basic one, a single tank where digestion happens (if you're lucky and you don't put too much bleach down it!) followed by a big pit filled with broken stone and beach pebbles which drains away sideways into the half acre field as a whole. This one today was a much more fancy affair; a real eco-bio-digester arrangement with 3 formal chambers and then the stone-filled pit but followed by 3 beds which take and use the nutritious clean 'water' outflow.

The first beer that came to hand as I came in from the snow
and North wind; Shepherd Neame's 'Summer Sizzler'

The first is yellow flag irises, the 2nd tall bull rushes and the 3rd is willow which, I am told. puts up 20 feet regrowth every year and which they can harvest for making hurdles, wicker work or even, if they wanted to shred it, bio-mass for solid fuel fired heating.

First snow flurries.

Their problem was that after a particularly warm and busy weekend in August (lots of guests leaving...um...deposits), the digestion process in Tank #1 had been over-whelmed and the solids were now acting as a dam. We needed to re-mix this crusty mass and get everything gently flowing again in a down-hill manner. Ah well, in for a penny, as they say. We had to ignore the fact that the first snow of 2017 was all over the ground. I had made it there after all. These guys live up on what is called an 'upland bog' here. They are at the top of a mini mountain but that does not result in the good drainage you would expect. Their land is basically bog or forestry with only a few acres round the house 'improved' to grassland or hard standing.

The full moon sinks towards the snowy
ground

To cut a long story short, an hour or so of stirring and scraping the deposits off the sides of the tank had it all chopped up and converted back into a flow-able "slurry" which we could now see was starting to move downhill to the next tank and the lady suggested we wash our hands and come indoors for warm sausage sandwiches. Job done. I wish they were all that easy.

Snow in the lane this morning

The snow had been forecast since Tuesday and I was yearning for it like a child. This not because I wanted to rush out and start a snowball fight with the neighbour's children or build a snowman, but for the '365' picture potential. I am almost at the end of the year of photography now and seriously short of inspiration on what to submit for 'today's three photo's'. There are only so many pictures of ruined barns, cute calves and pretty flowers that you can get away with and some Christmas Card snow would give me an easy ride for 24 hours.

Hey ho. Just like when you were a child, snow always seemed to let you down, flurrying down in disappointingly small quantities and failing to "stick" (we used to say "settle" in Hastings) no matter how many times you looked out of the window. Well, it is no different for 59 year old '365' photographers and I was not to get my Winter Wonderland. I had to try to make the most of the dusting and a convenient full moon.

I have to be careful what I wish for, of course. The year before we arrived here (so 2010/11) they had a brutal winter with temperatures down in the -10ºC area and 18 inches of white stuff. People were nipping off to the village PO in tractors because there is no gritting or snow ploughing round here. You just have to stock up on supplies, shovel your drive (and the neighbour's) clear and wait for the to-ing and fro-ing of farm vehicles to make the roads drive-able again when a thaw comes.

We don't want too much of that. I'd sooner do without the 365 snow scenes. Stay warm.

Never Ending

Some local horses make the 365 album

With the coming and going of Hallowe'en (and All Souls' Day, I guess) we realised that we are now three quarters of the way through the 'Lisacul 365' photographic project. This year-in-the-life photographic record of all things within the 18 townlands, started on 1st Feb (that pic Liz took of our St Brigid's Cross seems a long way ago now) and runs through till 31st Jan 2017. It has (touch wood) not missed a day yet and has accumulated around 1000 pictures at this 9-month stage. There are roughly 85 more days to go.

A common sight locally. Abandoned farm buildings now
used (if at all) as barns. 

Regular readers will know that I function as 'back-stop' or 'safety net' committed to take at least 1 (normally 3) pic(s) each day so that on the days when none of the other 20 regular contributors take any, the show must go on. Hence as well as the 1000 pictures stored by Liz on the project website (awaiting final choice of THE ONE for each date), I have my own 1000-shot collection which overlaps to a degree.

Shaggy Ink Cap

By now I have pictured most of the area - I have shot scenery, farm buildings, ruins, flowers, trees, animals, birds and other 'bio-diversity', people where I could, highways and bye-ways, the weather, sunsets and sunrises. night time pictures, food and drink, events and seasonal stuff. It seems never ending. I am not trying to impress anyone here (go look at the pics and then decide), rather explaining why I am running out of steam a bit and will be relieved when it is all over. I can see myself putting the camera down on 31st Jan 2017, determined to give it a rest for a while.

These babies blundered into the 365 project when they escaped
their field and went for a stroll on the tarmac. Their Mum was
giving them hell from the field to my left but they hadn't a bother
on them. 

We will all be immensely proud, of course, of having stuck it out and 'landed' the thing but now that we are through the 'autumn colours' blaze of photo-genicity, I am looking down the barrel of 80+ days of grey skies, rain-swept muddy fields, no new plants, baby chicks or lambs. I am feeling a bit uninspired. Still, no-one said it was easy and, if it was, then we'd all be less proud of it.

Pond frozen for the first time this winter
on Monday 7th Nov

Also in the 'Going on for ages and now finally nearly done' Dept is THAT election in America. Liz has, you will know, always been a fan but I am only this time finding myself drawn into the drama and intrigue, listening to pod-casts and punditry on the Internet. Well, they all went to the polls today and I am reverting to my less-interested 'tell me in the morning' mode while Liz is about to pull one of her all-nighters, simultaneously watching news feeds, Twitter hash-tags, Facebook and her own private chat-forum groups. Tomorrow has, of course, already been taken off work as a holiday.

Snookered today by having to wait while the People exercise their democratic right, she was reduced to ironing, going to Knitting Club and Drama Group and, very nicely, feeding K-Dub and I tea and buns whenever we took a break from 'doing' the new kitchen wall. When she returns from drama-ing (about 11 pm) the polls will have closed in US-time and things might be starting to move for her night-owl surfing. By my next post, presumably, it will all have been decided, the winner 'crowned' President and the loser, just maybe, conceded with good grace.

Tell-tale blue turf smoke. 

Meanwhile, Monday saw us with a first frosty morning of this winter and the pond frozen over. I am not 100% sure, but I think that ram-lamb Silas, may have been having a little go with our Jacob-cross ewe, Polly. I think she has the faintest waft of smokey blue colour across her rump. What we need is a great wet slapped dollop of the stuff so that we would know for sure, but this might be an early teen-age fumbling. Polly's wool is quite dark anyway and can appear a blue-ish grey in some lights, so you'd not swear that it was raddle-grease on her but we remain hopeful.

Thank You, Whelan's of Limerick.

Sussing out the new toy. Yes. This IS a picture
of a man reading the instructions!

We had never heard of Whelan's of Limerick or how good they are until our fortuitous evening visit to the Acorn Photographic Society (Balla-D's camera club) on the evening when I was trying to find out what ailed my old Canon EOS and what I might do about it. A lady club member recommended Whelan's of Limerick and I was away. I have since had some nice long informative chats with the shop experts (John and Brian) there, bought the new camera and found out a lot about how one does close-up and macro work nowadays. I must admit that I have not used it properly yet in anger and no pics have appeared in these pages but bear with me. We are time-rich round here and the little faithful Sony Cybershot I used to fill the gap is a lot easier to always have in the car or a coat pocket so that tends to get used for the Lisacul 365 pictures. A couple are included in this post.

365 shot of a local lane.

Farewell, then, to our friends Dawn and the girls (plus dog Romeo) who sailed away early this morning, calling a halt on their try out of living in Ireland, off to see how they get on back in the Cheltenham area of England from which the family hailed. One of the girls, Kitty, was a student of Liz's and excellent times were had teaching and learning, so Liz will particularly miss that. We hope that the History and English Kitty gained from Liz is useful in her English school onward education. The family were also the source of our black and white cat, Soldier, and of the Billy goat we currently have as a guest from Carolyn of the Mini Horses. Good luck with that, ladies all.

Lily's twin lambs a few days old here.

No major stories in this post, just plenty of bimbling along 'between' things. Lily's lambs are thriving and are currently in their cossetted week 1 of being out of doors if the weather is good during the day but rounded up to their nice warm dry pen in the shed at night and if it starts lashing hail on them as it did on Tuesday. Moving them involves me carrying one under each arm with Lily trotting along behind apparently pleased that "my babies are getting a LIFT!" This way I know they are growing at a good pace - they seem noticeably heavier each day.

The geese have come back into lay.

Hot on Lily's heels is now Polly who is, we think, about a week off her own lambing date but has started to do the sitting away on her own thing and is, I detect, starting to bag up in the udder department. Our friend Charlotte was round this week (college half term) and came to admire Lily's children but also took a punt of a singleton for Polly, twins for Myfanwy. I am the other way round (twins, I think, for Polly) but I am still only going public on easy lambings and healthy lambs. Numbers are less of an issue. Either way we do not anticipate any problems as these are all experienced mums (in Polly's case this will be her 6th season) but you don't always gets that lucky.

One of this year's females will be a 'keeper' or 'replacement' to keep the flock going. We already have a rolling group - an 8 year old (or so), a 5 year old and a 3 year old (Myfanwy). The plan is to keep one of this year's who will be with the flock through this winter but will not be let with the ram (she'll be too small) this autumn. That way (our advice goes) she can watch the grown-ups go through the process and learn her mothering skills by watching, hearing, smelling, seeing and being there so that, when her turn comes in Spring 2018 it will be less traumatic for her. That's the theory, anyway.

Mark One Guinea Fowl Deterrent (wires)

With Lily and the lambs indoors at night, an unforeseen problem arose to do with some of the poultry's habit of roosting up in the rafters and among the strip-lights in the shed. Not to put too fine a point on it, they were pooping on my sheep! I decided to borrow an anti-pigeon-roosting idea from my warehousing days and stretched wires across a few inches above the roosts so that the birds could not settle comfortably on the timbers and would (I thought) go elsewhere. I have no problems with them roosting in the rafters or horizontal beams or even the other light where they'd not be directly above the sheep-pen.

Well, the best laid plans, as they say. I went out at lock-up to find a determined Guinea Fowl and our #2 rooster 'Captain' up there anyway, one looking very uncomfortable straddling a wire with the cold steel splitting his difference, the other hunkered down tight to the wood somehow ducked under the wires. In version 2 of this structure chunks of old political poster liberated after the Yes Equality campaign last year served as vertical "blades" sticking up from the perches into the roof. I saw a Sussex Ponte 'hin' trying to sashay into the perch from the electric cable on the left but she soon gave up and at lock-up there were no birds up there. A clean night for Lily and the twins, then, with no little gifts falling from heaven.

Frosty trees reflection.

That is about it for this one except for a sympathetic thought to some friends of ours in Kent who have split up and been forced by that to give up the small holding game and sell off all the stock. I know you read this guys, so I don't need to go into any more detail except perhaps to say that this was the holding I visited before Christmas where I met the heavy horses, Wiltshire Horn sheep and Dexter cattle. Sad for both of you. Hope you both find a new happier situation soon. I know from talking to you that you are both a bit devastated and heartbroken.

Biker Boy

Our first 2016 'clocker' goes broody in a completely useless
place. And sitting on NOTHING. No eggs. Nada.

In the last post, in all the excitement about the Lisacul 365 project, I managed to completely forget to note 2 good signs of Spring. The first is that lovely burst of realisation when your eye falls on a 'new' clump of crocus which you obviously planted at some point last year but then promptly forgot. I have two nice ones in the bank beside the driveway. One is nicely backward so may do OK but the other came out into the teeth of the last named storm and it's little retinue of fronts.

Barbara on some hay bales.

Crocus should (and like to) push their flowers up through the warming grass into the Spring sunshine where they can open the top part of their flowers nice and flat and bright. These poor things emerged into a howling gale and lashing rain, so they have sat and sulked, firmly closed, for the last week and I fear are being knocked about so much they may never open properly before they rot off. Our other spring note was our first 'clocker'; one of the Buff Orps went broody in the worst choice of place ever - in the car port. Yes she was well hidden behind the wheel of my pushbike and she was on the remains of a good, dry bale of hay. She was also slotted in between the 2CV and the hay-barn wall but she was, too, exposed on 3 sides to Brer Fox.

Progress on the Sligo house. The pale upper walls in the centre
are 'scratch-coated with a pale clement. 

We think from her subsequent behaviour that she is the one from last year who was fiercely determined to go broody under an elder bush and had to be protected in situ becuase we couldn't persuade her to move or quit. No option to do that this year and anyway she has gone broody on nothing - not one egg, so I am reduced to gathering her up at lock up time and carry her, chuntering angrily to herself, back to the safely of the main coop. When we release her in the morning she makes a beeline back to her little slot and humpily sits down on the empty nest for another day. Idiot bird. I expect when we want her to go broody on some pure Buff Orp eggs she will have lost interest.

The porch - I get to lay some blocks!

Good progress out on the Sligo house rebuild and, for me, 2 new experiences. The exterior is coming on well with 90% of the fancy stone work done and now the upper 'half' of those new walls given their 'scratch coat' (rough plaster) of special pale cement made with crushed granite sand and white cement powder. This looks gorgeous and sets off the darker stonework beautifully. The outer finish coat will be the same pale buff colour and will not need painting. The chimney stack has now burst out through the new roof and is being dressed with a stone capping and that same pale cement covering. The roof is now 99% covered with membrane and battens ready to take the natural slate which was delivered today. The 99% thing is due to the old western chimney still having the original electricty supply lashed to it and needing that removed (by ESB) before we are allowed to take down the stack and finish off that gable.

The way that day worked out found K-Dub minding his poorly young son in the mobile home while Mum shot off to the shops, giving us an enforced, rather long lunch break. I'd finished and was ready to go back to work but was on my own. We were all set up to lay blocks up into the gable of the new porch so the boss suggested I just start on my own. Never laid a block or brick in my life but I've (now) seen quite a few laid and anyway, if I made a complete Horlicks of it, it would have been the work of minutes to tear down and start again. I did OK. When I step through that front door now and look up, I will know that up there, above the 'head' (lintel) stone are 2 courses of 4 inch "solids" that were all my own work! "There's kudos in building porches!" said K-Dub. My work stood and he carried on up when Mum returned to look after the boy.

An old gravestone for the 365 Project

My second treat that day was to be given a lift home the 20 minutes riding pillion on K-Dub's 'serious' motorbike. This, I am told, is a BMW 1150 RT, a cruising bike with saddles like armchairs, built for comfort rather than racing performance. I have not been on any kind of bike since the 70s (I was asked to ride a moped home from the hay fields to the home farm) so all the leaning was a bit of a surprise (a thrill, if you like) but K-Dub was very gentle with this rookie who was hanging on tight round his waist. I survived and was delivered safe home intact.

Dead now, my faithful Canon EOS D1000

Finally, who knew that you could fry the mother board of a Canon EOS digital camera by taking too many long exposures of night sky in succession. I managed to make my lovely, faithful but old camera go sick while photo-ing the Perseid meteors (or, rather, failing to capture any on film). It was suddenly unable to stay turned on and would power down at the first hint of work (auto focus or the need to use the pop-up flash). I parked it and have been using a little 'compact' ever since but with all this 365 photography going on I decided to disinter it, find out what was wrong and whether it could be fixed. Liz was off to the local camera club to do a presentation about 365 to them, so I asked to come along too in support and might as well bring the EOS and see if there were any experts in the club.

To cut a long story short, long exposures can warm up the mother board on "some Canons" and successions of long exposures overheat the board. They only have a design life of about 10 years anyway so my 7/8 year old one is now not economic to repair (it would be €250 touch). This  thought-process and research has now led me to a rather unwanted conclusion and , combined with the imminent need to acquire archery equipment, to making a hard decision and a life-changing move BUT, that is for another post so you will have to hold yourselves in patience till next time. Mean, huh?