Half Way There

New feature in the nearby village - this splendid stone unveiled
on Sunday.

I was posting last time about the Celtic Festival, 'Lughnasa', the start of the Harvest. This used to be held on the morning of August 1st but inevitably got hi-jacked by the Christian church and now moves with the 'last Sunday in July' and is famous locally for the huge (10,000+) "pilgrimage" hike up local Holy Mountain, Croagh Patrick or "The Reek" (764 m or 2507 feet in old money). Down in Kerry they have the popular 'Puck Fair' which has to do with crowning a wild goat caught for the occasion among all the more usual modern show/fete attractions.

Castlerea's brass band play us in. 

Here, you'll know that archery instructor Con, holds his Lughnasa Celtic Games but for our nearby village of Lough Glynn, a much more local and recent celebration. They chose that Sunday to unveil the new Centenary Garden, memorial to the signatories to the "Proclamation of the Republic". My UK friends may not know this piece of Irish history and, being no historian myself, I would hesitate to describe events here - if you would like to know more then go off and research Easter Rising or 1916 Ireland.

There was a good turn-out of local politicians. On the right is
one of our TDs (=MPs), Michael Fitzmaurice (Independent)

Very (and inadequately) briefly, a huge step in the journey of Ireland from British Colony to Independent State took place at Easter in 1916 when a small band of Irish men and women rose up under arms and took over some bits of Dublin, most famously the GPO building. From the steps in front of the GPO they proclaimed the new State and themselves as the 'provisional government'. Obviously there could be no hope of these few revolutionaries winning this one and the British Military crushed the uprising quickly enough including shelling the GPO with Howitzers.

The CE scheme which Liz helps to administer, gets the credit here

The 'rebels' surrendered and were carted off to jail. It is widely said that most of the country were not involved and thought that all the events far away in Dublin were just the acts of 'poets and dreamers'. Then, however, the Brits made a bad move and executed all 7 signatories to the proclamation plus 9 other leaders. Suddenly those "un-involved" folk were very much involved - these lads (and lasses) might be poets and dreamers but they are OUR poets and dreamers. A huge movement kicked off which put Ireland through dozens of events and stages, a War of Independence and a Civil War and the establishment of the new fledgling state in 1937. There, see! 100 years of very complex Irish history in 2 paragraphs. HUGE apologies to anyone reading this and shaking their heads in disgust and disbelief.

Chivers and Chip are getting curious

Anyway, what ever the case with the following events, this year is the Centenary of that Proclamation and our village did it proud. A marching band from Castlerea played it all in (and stayed around to play the hoisting of the tri-colour and the National Anthem), The MC made a short speech, the beautiful stone was unveiled, an aged Monseigneur did the blessing bit, 2 local school children read out the Proclamation itself, 2 of the 'Tidy Towns' committee ladies hoisted the flag and a local lass sung, very well and unaccompanied, popular local patriotic song "The Woodlands of Lough Glynn". An impressive turn-out lined both sides of the road (at least 200 including 5 local politicians) and clapped, cheered and sung the National Anthem appropriately, before the event broke up for photographs and a goodly spread of refreshments in a marquee set up at one end of the garden. We thoroughly enjoyed the event.

At the "smutty sausages" with Sue. 

Our other main event over that weekend was  a 'Sausage Fest' over at Sue and Rob's. They have a decent sized, powerful meat-grinder and sausage stuffing machine which we have been planning to use shared between us to make sausages and Sue had checked her freezer(s) and found a mountain of pork joints she had forgotten about.

We got quite good at it with time and produced
some quite professional looking 'links'.

If you have never done sausage making then you may not know what a rich vein of 'toilet' humour lurks there what with the need to keep everything wet and slippery, to carefully slide huge lengths of sausage skin up (we used natural gut, rather than the modern 'plastic' stuff) and then to draw full sausages off the end of the filler spout, squeezing the continuous bead of meat into individual sausage lengths. Well, there is if you have that 'naughty school boy' inside you trying to get out. We had a great laugh with it all, almost crying with laughter at some stages. Phnarr phnarr, tish tish. We got the job done though - pushing about 15-20 kg of mix through the two sizes of 'blade', making 2 different mixes (Cumberland and a Lincolnshire with added apple) and stuffing half of each into skins all in about 90 minutes. Teamwork.

Beef is the traditional Lughnasa fare.

We broke for a lovely lunch (Thanks, Sue and Rob!) of baked spuds, salad and (of course) both flavours of sausage, followed by 'Millionaire's Shortbread' and then had a masterclass in goat milking. I struggle with that, being unused to the small teats on a goat (compared to the good 4 hand fulls on a cow! ) but Rob assured us that they were as slow and rubbish as we now are originally. They used to take an hour for each of their 3 goats with the bucket getting sent flying by the animal's hoof, or Sue getting impatient with the goat. They now work as a team with one of them sat either side of the milkee doing just one teat each and taking no more than about 15 minutes per goat. The goats have also learned to love this process and stand co-operatively as long as there are a few bits of fresh carrot in their bucket of grub. They get about 9 litres from the 3 animals (total) per day.

365 Picture - a dog walker in Creevy townland.

But why my 'Half Way There' tag? In this house, July 31st may have been Lughnasa but for Liz and I it marked an important milestone on the 365 photographic project, our photographic record of the village's (and surroundings's) everyday life captured by local photographers. The project had launched on 1st Feb 2016, so 31st July was the half way point. It is going OK but it has, of course, had its ups and downs. Most importantly, we have not missed any days. We have a dozen or more contributors so we now have around 700 pictures. You can see some of these by clicking on the links to 365 "Year so far" from the village website (LisaculInfo.ie) where there are also a couple of thematic albums (Bio-diversity, the Village Play etc) up there on photo sharing website 'Flickr'. My role is as 'backstop' to make sure that there is at least one (preferably 3 plus) shot(s) for every calendar day, so I was delighted to pass the half way marker and start taking August pictures - it feels a bit like the run-in to the end, even though that (31st Jan 2017) is ages away and 700 more pictures.

Work(s) in Progress

Those beautiful floors made of Indian limestone slabs and
skimmed skinny-size scaffold boards. 

This pic does not really do justice to the intense torquoise
colour of the hand made kitchen

I got so carried away with my bats in the last post, I completely omitted the biggest news story that week, the (near) completion of the Sligo house rebuild to the point where K-Dub and the family were able to finally move in. 'Near' here is just because there is a small amount of the inevitable de-snagging - touch of paint here, connect up something over there, plumb in the hob, that sort of thing. But we spent most of Thursday scrubbing those floors to within an inch of their lives so that K-Dub could spend the evening sealing the woodwork and lacquering the stone, leaving them overnight to dry.

The "we" here as with all these Sligo house posts, you will know by now to mentally add "Mainly K-Dub" to every time I use it - we built this, we moved that, we painted the other. I have helped, but I am only the part-time labour. All the skilled stuff and the lion's share of the man hours are definitely due to K-Dub himself and I know he is as proud as he has every right to be, of the house "we" have built, as are the ladies (who have also helped). I have moved endless amounts of rock, shoveled and swept tonnes of sawdust and wood shavings and run a gazillion 'mixes' through the cement mixer, but in the house itself I have laid at most half a dozen blocks (mine are above the front door!) and stuck a few stones in the exterior stone-masonry. I have 'held' some stuff while the boss screwed it into place and that kind of thing but, as I said, 'we' is definitely K-Dub for 99% of this house.

I love these stairs also built from skinny
scaffold boards. 

So on the Friday (22nd) the buildering paused and we turned our minds to humping furniture about. The family have all the 'stuff' from their old house stored in a single storey abandoned building over the road and in our spare room here. We got into a good rhythm with K-Dub and Charlotte pulling the stuff out of the store, me bringing it across the road to the new house and Carolyn blitzing it with cleaners and furniture polish before it could be assembled , the cushions added or it be moved into its final position. Finally K-Dub and I, 2-handed the heavy stuff (Welsh dresser etc) across before we started on boxes of kitchen gear, bags of bedding and all the other bits that anyone who moves house will know all too well.

K-Dub and Carolyn feeling like they are in. Young H (4) is there
too but has curled himself into the easy chair in such a way that
you'd miss him if you looked quickly.

The family were looking at a fairly mad weekend - no gentle getting moved in, unpacked and sorted out for them. K-Dub's best mate from Dublin was down on the Friday night (there might be drinking involved with that one) and then K-Dub's sister and her little boy are down from the Saturday round to the Thursday (28th). It all sounds a bit hectic.

'Medieval' tented round houses. 

Meanwhile, in archery land, I have been helping with a completely different 'build'. Instructor, 'Con', is a man of many talents. As well as a former army weapons trainer and now archery coach for us lot, he is an ace leather-worker and respected national expert in the construction of medieval footwear (for which he makes 'repro' copies for shows and museums) but is also a knowledgeable enthusiast on all things medieval, Celtic history, Druid-ing and the like.

Inside one of the round houses. 

At his place near Castlerea he has created the earth-banks for various forts and encampments and every year he hosts a "Celtic Lughnasa Games" (Lughnasa being a Celtic festival which happens at the end of July into August). Families can come, camp the nights, socialise and then try their hand at the 'taster sessions' on games like spear-throwing, axe-throwing, knife-throwing and, of course, archery all in a controlled and safe, strictly managed (and sober!) environment. For obvious reasons Con forbids the mixing of booze with dangerous sports; he also (maybe more tongue in cheek) forbids discussion on Religion or Politics while anyone is armed!  

We got the car through the NCT at the re-test stage.

In the centre of all this - the public and socialising areas - he creates a tented 'village' a bit like the space for a jousting tournament, with wooden framed (and skirted) round houses and stripey 'viewing tents', plus a big fire-pit for the evening storey-telling etc. That was our bit - a couple of Saturdays spent as volunteers banging in posts, fixing planking, erecting the middle post and the 'rafters' and then wrangling the tarpaulin canvas 'hat' over the whole thing. Con and co kept us supplied with breakfast, cups of tea and a bit of lunch and we all had a great deal of fun and happy banter throwing these buildings up and getting to know each other. Different but brilliant. I assume we will all reconvene after the event to pull it all down again but I have not heard of that yet. Good luck Con over the weekend. Hope the rain holds off and you get a good croud of reasonably well behaved 'students'.

Meanwhile we chug along through a very wet July, making progress in some other departments, too. The Hubbards continue to thrive and put on weight. At 70 days they are looking decidedly edible and we are looking forward to starting to 'harvest' the big ones (mainly the three roosters). The ducks are also definitely starting to look adult and, so Charlotte tells us, we should definitely start to consider a couple of them who are getting a lovely dark green 'Mallard-ish' sheen to their heads, as drakes.

Note dark green 'mallard-ish' sheen on the heads of the
two rear-most ducks here. Drakes, maybe?

Houdini Duck continued to escape every day through the sheep wire of the orchard and would go on the pond but as there was only one of him he seemed not to be doing much damage and the pond was starting to recover. Then H-D made a fatal mistake and showed one of the others how to get out and invited her to join him on the pond (or poss her/him/her). I have had to nip out today and invest in some 2-inch-hole, 2 foot tall chicken wire to run along these fences to stop the rot. I seem to have settled their hash for now.

One of the Hubbard roosters at 70 days

The very-baby Marans chicks are coming on well too and are getting well feathered despite being only 14 days old. They spend their days out in the rabbit run, all be it able to retreat into the nice, dry, warm, draught free 'bedroom' bit if they fancy a break from the fresh air. We bring them back indoors at night and they can huddle under their 'electric hen' warming plate but on these very warm nights we are looking forward to thinking about risking them outside. It won't be long (maybe 2 weeks?) before we scratch our collective chins and say.. "No...... I think they're done" and pack away the brooder boxes and the elctric hen. Our breeding season will be over. The year is flying by.