The Ever-Extending Task List(s)

One of my favourite pictures of Auntie Mary. It is fairly old at
this stage - Friends of the Blog may recognise the little girl here
as (now) University Student, Emily Jane. 

Just 2 posts ago (9th Oct), I noted that Auntie Mary (The Nun) had been causing a little concern with her health. Just prior to her 90th birthday she was taken quite ill but then had rallied well. Ah well, the rally was not to be and Mary passed away peacefully in her bed this afternoon with Mum-in-Law (Steak Lady), friends and members of staff and co-residents of the home at her bedside. The funeral will be on Thursday up there in Drogheda. Elizabeth (and many other family members) will be there but I regret not myself. RIP Mary. You were a lovely Lady and will be much missed.

Storm Callum clears away so the sheep
get to rest on the good grass in the sunshine

Even without the funeral, this back-end-of-week is turning into one of those whirlwinds where the jobs, events and appointments add themselves to the calendar at a faster rate than we can cross them off, and a lot of them involve some lengthy car journeys, especially for Elizabeth. Even the weekends are no longer free. This workload at present is mainly being picked up by the Woman of the House, so I need to re-iterate my gratitude both to her and to the 'Health Gods' - they laid me low but at least at a time when help is at hand.

Work has gone a bit mad-busy for Elizabeth lately and she already had her Horticultural Course on Thursday and a voluntary work shift on Friday, both of which are now sidelined.

Did I mention that the goose egg season
had started?

Tonight (Tuesday) is the Lisacul Players meeting to read the 2nd possible play. I have no idea what they are reading tonight but I can, at least, update the previous post with what last week's choice was, being "Love Thy Neighbour" by local playwright Jimmy Keary.

The small-batch gin makers are getting
a bit lairy with their branding. The gin is
very nice, says Elizabeth but definitely
pre-lemon'd. 

Our main man, Tommy C knows Jimmy quite well and Jimmy has volunteered to come and sit in on one of the readings or rehearsals. Even better, if our cast man/woman balance cannot be made to fit and we need to have a woman play a man's part, Jimmy may be able to help us with a re-write. Naturally we all hope it will not come to that, but the Players need young men to come and fill the likely vacancy.Thursday evening, of course (funeral mission permitting) is furniture restoration evening class.

'Parma' ham leg now sleeved and air-drying

My contribution to the 'to do' list is definitely easier. I am off to the Doc's tomorrow for a catch up. I need to re-assure myself that "we" (Doc and me) are doing all we can to make this heart surgery happen and to stop my occasional bad nights of coughing and losing sleep. Have we chased paperwork and responded to all contacts between the hospital and the GP? Nothing we've missed? Nothing she is thinking I've covered and me vice-versa? I am 12 weeks out of hospital today and it's all gone worryingly quiet.

Lamb leg (plus a whole bulb of garlic in the wee 'tagine' thingy)

Talking of which (quiet), we were homing in on the arrival of our next pair of Help-X volunteers, Vicky and Judith, German medical students. They had gone very quiet too, such that I was just starting to think we might be victim of another blow-out, like with our French lad for August.

In the down-time, such as it is, Mrs C gets on with some
furniture restoration 'homework'

No need to worry on this occasion; an email and a text had them 'awake' and responding. They were all excited, packing, booked on flights to bring them into Dublin at 12:20 on Wednesday. Collecting them from Castlerea station at either 5-ish or 8-ish is just another task on the list.

Completed piece. Elizabeth always was THE
BEST gloss painter I know.

We will settle them and then Mrs C will head off to 'Sparks' for an overnight much nearer to Drogheda than here, to ease things in the morning. I will look after them that night and for breakfast and then give them some jobs for Thursday, plus feed them round till Elizabeth returns.

I hope that by the time I write again, we will have ticked off a lot of these jobs and be feeling a little less 'buried'.

Callum Comes a-Calling

Storm Callum

Named storm 'Callum' arrives heralded by the usual colourful wind maps and weather warnings from Met Éireann and (National broadcaster) RTE. He looks from the first predictions, that he will split up either side of the island's SW corner and will mainly be a coast problem. Co Roscommon is a land-locked county, so we only got a 'yellow' warning (for rain).

Upholstery "stuff" will need an official
storage place.

And so it turned out. We'd taken all the normal precautions (hives strapped down, lumps of concrete on hutch roofs etc) and we have our new chicken house roof, so we felt safe enough but no-one here was complacent and we all saw the sorry pictures of the devastation caused by Hurricane Michael which took out great tracts of Florida. I was woken by heavy rain at about 3 a.m. and then again at 6 a.m. and there were puddles but we got away with no damage.

Rooster Gandalf (right) minds a group of hens sunning them
selves and preening. 

We had even got away with a 2 day "Indian Summer" prior to Callum, with the south winds bringing unseasonably warm air up from Spain. We'd been able to sit outside, in my case with the camera, and take a few pics of the various birds relaxing in what might be their last warm days this year. For 2 days we did not light the range (I have now!). There was plenty of bee activity in both the hive and the swarm box.

Despite appearances, we think this may be a hen.

I noted in a recent post that we did not seem to be able to produce here, a white coloured hen despite having Sussex birds in the flock for all the 6 years we have done chickens here. All our white babies seemed to grow up into roosters, way outside the Law of Averages.

Rooster Gandalf has had enough of being magnificent and full
of breeding season glory. He goes for the moult.

Very recently we 'offed' the last youngster as it started to shout Cock-a-Doodle-Dooooo! and grew an impressive long tail and the big facial features (wattle, comb) of a cockerel. He also started trying to jump/rape women belonging to Gandalf and Herme and was getting a good kicking from those two boys. It was not going to end well.

Now, that lad was one of a small clutch of babies hatched in spring, a 2nd one of which was also white, and we watched anxiously as the two white "boys" both grew up, were seen play-fighting one another and seemed to be heading for similar tall stature. We were sure they were both roosters.

Pretty hen enjoying the sunshine

Then a month or 2 ago, the 2nd bird suddenly stopped growing and never developed the tall tail or big face, never crowed and did not start harassing the 'sisters'. She(?) is a bit rangey and long limbed so she will be a big bird but we think we might just have a hen, there.

Turkey hen, 'Deo' seems quite happy solo.

We have been keeping a close eye on the turkey hen, 'Deo' after we had to cull out the 'tom' ('Excelsis' - there was a bit of a Christmas theme developing there, for a while). Turkeys can form very close pair bonds and can pine away and die at the loss of their partner. Deo seems to be OK and happy enough hanging with the three Guinea Fowl cock-birds. So far so good anyway.

In line for some culling action, these two "spare" Appleyard
drakes.

Also in this inadvertent tale of culling and death we have 2 'spare' drakes quietly getting on with enjoying a bit of a stay of execution. They were due to go on their final journey back at the end of our Help-X visit by Sonja and Asbjörn but that was when the turkey-tom decided to lose the plot and attack me. He stepped into harm's way and the processing department had enough on its plate. Never mind, the Lady of the House will not be that busy for ever and their turn will come.

I can never see how this is comfortable.

Did I say 'busy'. Oh yes, I have not yet mentioned that that other big 'time-suck' that mops up our free time each year, is about to re-start..... The Village Play. The Lisacul Players wake up about now each year and start planning the next Easter's production. The 'wake up' meeting was on Wednesday and involved a big gang of them (13) reading one of the (3) plays short-listed by main man and Producer Tommy C. I went along as the reading started late enough that I had all the birds locked up safe from Mr Fox. I am sorry I did not make a note of the play or writer but it was by a well known and prolific local play-wright.

Plenty of bee activity round the swarm box in the warm days.

The Players have to try to find a play that suits their male/female cast balance and they also prefer plays where there is not just one major spoken part. We prefer well balanced 'ensemble' plays. The one we read was very good and very funny and may end up being "The Play", but the Players are going to read another one next week and another the week after, and then decide. I will keep you posted.

Finally, we came to time for the big 'Parma' ham legs of pork to come out of their dry salt/sugar cure and to move on to the next phase: 4-18 months of air drying hanging up from the ceiling in a nice airy, well ventilated space. This change involves having to scrub off all the encrusted salt using cider vinegar (or the odd splash of hot water which you must quickly pat off once the salt is gone).

Legs scrubbed clean of salt

They get wrapped in a muslin sheath or a pillow case to deter the flies but they should not really need that, being so salty and vinegar-y by now on all the cut surfaces and skin. I could not actually find the muslin when I went to do this but pending a rescue, hung them up naked anyway and I have seen no flies on or around them, so we should be OK. They hang for 4-18 months gently drying out and maturing, and losing around 30% of their weight.

That must be about it for this post so I will wish you Good Luck and hope you all survived 'Callum' as painlessly as we did.

Oh - one last thing. We have had our first goose eggs of this season

Dress Rehearsal

The three would-be bank (un)robbers rehearse a scene.

This evening feels like a welcome, if lonely, night off, all on its lonesome in what feels like weeks of play rehearsal nights and hosting visitors. That's me speaking and I've only been to a few of the rehearsals; Elizabeth has been to every single one and to the extra ones slid in on Sunday afternoon. Yesterday was the final Dress Rehearsal, before the 'Players' get tonight off followed by the First Night tomorrow (Wednesday). There are performances on Friday and Saturday too, and then it is all over for this time.

'Badger' gets 'Windy' ready for the action

I have said before that I will not do 'spoilers', so no detail till after Saturday but it is looking really well and promises to be a great success. The players are veering between elation, excitement and total panic as you'd expect. I know from previous years how the (2) debut actors will be lifted but also knocked a bit sideways by the crowd reaction, having to pause while the laughter dies down and getting that instant feedback from the audience. All the players comment that by now, having rehearsed the thing to death, they are numb to the jokes and surprises and they start to doubt whether this is funny at all. It is, of course. They will do fine.

Dan and Sarah about to do justice to a roast and some ratatouille

Meanwhile, as you will know, we have seen our first visit to its end and enjoyed the first half of our other visit; the former being Dan with his thesis writing break and the latter a one night stop over by first time guest Sarah M who is wrapping a week of touring round a midweek wedding way down on the south coast.

Sarah tales her turn at bottle feeding the lamb.

Sarah was with us over Easter Sunday night. She has hired a car at Knock for her touristing but I nipped out to Knock anyway to 'collect' her and guide her home. Simpler than trying to give directions through these lanes. Sarah is a long-term friend of Elizabeth through the Internet and they have met several times.

Elizabeth really is the Yorkshire Pudding Queen of all Ireland.
These may have been the best yet - they were tall, light, fluffy
 and golden and "shook from the tin".

I'd know her from Facebook but had never met, so we were able to enjoy that 'thing' where you finally meet the person you feel like you have known and been friends with for ages, and to find out they are just as delightful as you thought they would be. She was a lovely guest to 'host' and loved everything here, from us and the livestock, to the superb food served up by Mrs C. Very easy to talk to as well and the conversation flowed really well. She is now off on a 5 hour drive to the south and will return next weekend for another stop-over on the way back through to Knock. She is already promising to return for a "proper" stay when she can sort out more time off.

Beef rib roast.

We dropped Dan to the airport this morning in the pouring rain. He'd not quite completed the thesis but assured us the end bit was do-able within the deadline even with taking Mrs Dan to a promised "5th Anniversary" (of being together) Dinner. He has until 8 a.m. Thursday, (he tells us) so he will work all night after the dinner if needs be. What ever the case he made sure we knew how grateful he was at giving him the space to get stuck into it, saying that he'd never have got so near the end without us. Good luck Dan.... get that submitted and knock them dead. I am sure you will get the high marks and Distinction you are striving for. Dan has promised to let us know how he gets on and, like Sarah, has also promised to come back soon, with Mrs Dan, but without the laptop, for a proper holiday.

Meanwhile, little else note-worthy is happening (that's actually a relief!). The pigs, the lambs and the baby chicks are all thriving. The fox has taken only one more bird, unfortunately our ace broody and chick-rearer of the 7-chick family last year, 'Beeblebrox' (see for example post  http://deefer-dawg.blogspot.ie/2017/08/los-chicos-estan-despiertos.html ) This was a very quick attack as Beebs must have been right close to the boundary bank and Brer Fox nipped over the bank and ambushed the hen without being spotted (in time). The fox trap has now caught our own cat 'Soldier' but nothing else. Patience is the thing. More on all these stories in the next post.

The Struggling Writer in his Garret

Welcome aboard, Dan

We accommodate all flavours of holiday maker here. Our current visitor is (Mr) Dan of  'Dan and Dan' fame, frequent visitors and Friends of the Blog, married last year on that cruise ship off Italy. 'Mrs Dan' is famously the more enthusiastic about our livestock and was here with her Mum (Cousin Cathy), if you recall, a few weeks back, narrowly missing our ewe 'Rosie' having her twins and failing to see any ducklings hatch.

The best kind of 'struggling writer' came
bearing gifts. Thanks Dan!

This Spring, the couple had decided to visit separately because Mrs Dan wanted to treat her Mum to a birthday break, while Dan's visit needed to give him a week of total peace and quiet in which to write up a thesis as part of his final marks on his University "Masters" degree.

The writer in his garret. Also known as our
spare bedroom.

The 'Uni' in this case is London School of Economics, the Masters is in Business Management and the Thesis is in "Supply Chain Resilience" That subject is one close to our hearts as it was my bread and butter for most of my working life but is also currently quite topical and timely following well publicised failures in Danish shipping giant Maersk and in my own company, DHL's abortive attempt to take over chicken distribution for KFC. The former was as a result of a massive cyber 'hack'. The latter was just a dog's breakfast comedy of errors.

Emerging now and again for food.

So, Dan is here for a short week, closeted in the spare room where we have borrowed him a desk and given him a chair and even 2 turkey feathers for quills. He works away in 4 hour+ bursts emerging only occasionally for tea and stopping (otherwise) for just his meals and to sleep. He has 6000 words of brilliance to create by Tuesday and has already done a lot of taped interviewing with people in the business, which he is able to upload to a voice-recognition website which transcribes the audio and gives it back to you as text. Sometimes the text is even quite accurate but he still has to spend hours proof reading it to make sure his thesis makes sense. At other times he has to go on conference calls for his 'proper job'; this course is only really an allowed study-sabbatical. He also works well into the evening after supper, so we leave him alone for three hours or so when we nip off to the latest play rehearsal. He is getting on OK and is still on schedule to complete by Tuesday.

A tangle of lambs round his legs as Dan tries
to line up the bottle on the correct lamb's mouth.

He allowed himself one little 10 minute distraction when he decided to tease Mrs Dan by being caught on camera, bottle feeding the little ewe-lamb which she was so fed up to have missed being born. We were a bit concerned that this could be the end of a short but happy marriage but Dan happily pinged them across to Mrs Dan on 'messenger' and within seconds (he said) drew out the expected jokey/angry phone call.

The brilliant play-set created by the guys at the CE scheme.

Other than that, life has been all about The Play which is now getting scarily close. Dress Rehearsal is only 2 days away on Monday evening, and the performances are on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. By now, of course, they have the set built on the stage and everyone is mightily impressed and delighted with it. It features a 'Rayburn' style range made from the real, metal front and top but built to a wooden carcass as well as an old dresser for the 'good china' which had to be given 2 new doors made to look in keeping. Elizabeth stepped from 'Producer' to 'props' dept for an afternoon to knock out some matching curtains and cushion covers out of an old duvet cover, on the sewing machine.

The Players rehearsing a scene from "Anyone Can Rob a Bank"

The Lisacul Players are now in parachutists "ground-rush" mode, cramming in rehearsals every evening and even a couple to fine tune one of the acts on Sunday afternoon. No spoilers on this blog, of course, suffice to say it is all frantic hard work as the deadline looms, but "The Show will go on" and I'm predicting it will be a superb, funny success which will delight the audience and leave the team all exhausted but elated. Watch this space for progress reports.

Liz jointing up a turkey.

(Typing is interrupted at this point by the Guinea Fowl kicking off their alarm, and me letting the dogs loose just as the Heavens opened and a huge hail storm comes down. The dogs may or may not have found a scent-trail but they give up half way across the 5-acre field and race back to get under cover from the hail. Their route home crosses that of dozens of hens and roosters fleeing for cover too and I even saw the whole flock of ewes and lambs racing for the shelter. If Brer Fox was indeed on site and snatched a bird, then I suppose we should leave him welcome to that one.)

Clearing out the 'office' under the stairs.

...Which rather distracted me from my train of thought. What else is new? With the loss of my trusty old PC, the house lost the need for my own 'garret' - the little cubby hole under the stairs which had become an office and glory-hole. The Interior Design Department feel there are far better (and more attractive) uses for this space including, possibly, a comfy chair for herself, so the area is being dismantled for all my bodged shelving and the accumulated junk found better homes (or consigned to the wheelie bins in the best tradition of de-cluttering).

The late Cathy Chapman, featured in the
previous post (plus dog, Kes)

I suspect that is enough for now.

Meet the Grandchildren

That play poster. Rehearsals are coming along
really well. It promises to be a superb production.
If you are looking to go, buy your tickets soon .
Some of the days are selling out already.

Bit of a mixed bag today and the first post on the borrowed laptop where I'm not 100% yet on the very sensitive keyboard or some of the options. If this post looks a bit ropy compared to normal (or better!) then bear with me and I'll wear it in like a new pair of boots. Elizabeth will probably never want to use it again and already does a good line in laughing at my typing rhythm. I use only first fingers and the occasional thumb on the space bar. I'm reasonably quick but will obviously never get as fast as a proper, 8 fingers and 2 thumbs typist.

Last knockings of the Christmas leg of ham. It has been splendid
throughout and the skeleton is now being turned into the best
stock for pea+ham soup EVER. 

To slow me down even more, the 'caterers' have just passed me a superb plate of our own 'Parma' (style) ham and wee dice of galia melon. This has been a superb product throughout and only now, in mid March, am I nibbling the last few scraps off the bones with my fancy, long-bladed, special Spanish ham carving knife.

The tiny cradle that takes the '2032' lithium battery.

But back to the sudden need for a laptop. The PC has finally died and will no longer load Google Chrome. We had read on the Internet that these "imminent death" warnings are just an artefact of the tiny, euro-coin sized lithium battery in your Mother-Board going flat. Like us, you may not have known that such a battery existed but may I assure you it does.

Flowering currant just starting.

Do not rush to stock up on these 70 cent batteries, however, because I fitted my new one this morning and I can further assure you it made not 70 cents worth of difference. Ah well. Our 2nd 'fix-it' option is that Mrs C buys a tablet and I inherit the laptop. That's the next move.

Some early uncrossed buns. They were lovely!

A minor rant, then. We wish that the companies that made medicine for sheeps, would cater better for we small holders who only have half a dozen sheep to treat,

The turkeys and Guineas were starting to damage the Spring
bulbs. We rescued the pots to a strawberry cage.

I needed to buy a fluke-drench for my 4 and the smallest quantity I could buy was a 1 litre bottle. The dose per ewe is 5.25 millilitres, so I have 190 doses here and the product only has a 2 year shelf life. We smallholders end up trying to buy co-operatively between a number of us, or risk throwing 9/10 of the stuff away. The bottle was €29.99 which is not a killer, but I'd love to have been able to buy the  25 ml bottle at a tenner. How about it big-pharma?

'Shawn' the dog? Deefer, post clip

The dogs got their long overdue clip. They were all three very shaggy and Deefer, especially, tangles her hair into dirty 'rat's tails', so I chose the first warm day and had at them. Deefer got done slowly, using my 3mm clipper head sliding slowly under all that tangle. All three came out looking like new lambs. Their hair was as short as a Jack Russell and they were sparkling white. Also soft and felty to the touch rather than 'ropy' and reminiscent if dreadlocks.

Daisy 'Dook' looking as cool as....

On the Thursday night, I went along with Elizabeth to watch the latest rehearsal of the village play, "Anyone Can Rob a Bank" and to take some pics for the website. No spoilers obviously, but it is looking very promising for a real fun evening. The Lisacul Players have put together a superb production with some superb farce, belly-laugh action in it. It's going to be GREAT. Tickets are 4th, 6th and 7th of April and are selling fast, so if you are thinking of going, don't leave it too late.

Out walking the dogs, I have got talking o some 'new' people - well new friends to us, anyway. Hi Joe and Olivia. They were very interested in our pigs and we are very interested in the fact that they have Dexter cattle, so some reciprocal visits are in order. Today they dropped in on us and came to admire Bo, Luke and Daisy. They proclaimed them very clean and healthy looking, plus enormous for their 10 week age. I gave them the number for our breeder and they are off hunting down some Oxford Sandy and Blacks very soon.

The entire flock muster on the front lawn.

Meanwhile, the newest lambs came up to the 2-week age this weekend and it is more than warm enough for them to go outside 24/7. So Mum 'Rosie', her suckled ram lamb and our bottle fed ewe-lamb 'Bábóg' all got shunted out onto the front lawn this morning where they were joined by the rest of the gang (being Lily with Tigger, Polly with her twins and slowcoach Myfanwy who does not know whether to be pregnant or not yet). It occurred to me that we therefore have 3 generations out there - Lily is Mum to our newest breeding ewe, Rosie and she has twins. Meet the Grandchildren, Lily?

Did you sneak in there trying to nick the bait, hen?
Not at all - what made you think that?

Sadly, I am going to finish on a down beat. At some point while we were either showing the visitors round or moving sheep, another female duck vanished, presumably snatched by Brer Fox. We saw nothing of him this time, nor heard anything and neither did the Giineas, unusually. Ah well. These things happen, but why did it have to be a female. We only have one duck left laying eggs now. The fox trap has caught only chickens!