Where there is Livestock there is Dead Stock

Gandalf's end. The stock pot.

My title this week is that hackneyed old trope much used by we smallholders as a form of tough, fatalistic sympathy (not good to show too much emotion - these are not pets after all!) when we or colleagues lose an animal. We'd love to be able to keep them all alive and healthy for ever but, no, as Shakespeare would (nearly) have it,

"All the farm’s a stage,
And all the birds and animals merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances......."

New Sheriff in town..... "Lucky"

So on Monday 3rd Dec our lovely 'alpha' rooster, pure-bred Marans "Gandalf the Grey" died for no discernible reason. He was in the coop and fell off his perch in the afternoon, found stiff and flat on the ground (but not fully cold) by Elizabeth at 'supper' time. He'd be about 2 years old, hatched in July 2016 from eggs we bought from Mayo-Liz's farrier and has been a fine rooster, beautiful looking and an excellent minder of his ladies. He was also very fertile and his DNA is in most of this year's hatch babies.

This made us smile - a gift of 6 cushions depicting cats on bikes.

Ah well, he ended up in the stock pot and his replacement, as far as we can tell (for now anyway) is a honey-coloured 6 month old youngster whom we are calling 'Lucky". Now THERE is bird who deserves his name and has had a very interesting life. He is lucky to be still with us. We are fairly sure "it was him" anyway. Back in May (22nd or so) he hatched under the hen we were then calling 'Cat Basket Lady' but got left out of the nest one 'nap time' and could not hop over the lip back to Mum's warmth. We found him 9/10 dead and cold on the concrete. I cupped him in my hands to get some warmth back into him and over 10-15 minutes he slowly came to, kicking and wriggling with increasing strength till I thought he was back with us. I slipped him back in under Mum and he lived to fight another day.

Plenty fruit in the diet now.

Weeks later he managed to hop up into a bucket, half filled with water and then jumped down in. The water was too deep for him to touch bottom, so he couldn't jump out again and was doomed to tread water, squeaking pitifully till he got waterlogged and sank. When you have tiny chicks, never leave them able to access water deeper than about 2 inches. Luckily I happened to go into the yard and heard him so was able to save his little life again and put him back with Mum. Since then he has survived all the fox attacks and also our culls of excess roosters. So, here he is now, promoted to the New Sheriff. Big boots to fill, Lucky. No pressure. He may only be 6 months old but I saw him 'nail' a hen this morning so at least he understands that part of the job description.

The fruit for the Christmas cake sits overnight steeping in an odd
mix of booze. Mum-in-Law had had a de-clutter of the dog-ends
from her drinks cabinet from last year.

What else is new as we bimble gently in towards Christmas like ski-ers on the gentlest blue run? Stir-up Sunday finally arrived on the Tuesday and all those part-mixed bowls of goodness were moved on to become cooked pud or cake. The cake is sitting a few days to mature before I will get amongst it with marzipan and icing. I have a good idea for the design but I'm keeping that under my hat for now.

Village Christmas Party

There was a very successful Christmas Party for the villagers down at the Village 'Centre' (Memorial Hall). Everyone works really hard to make these happen. The hall is laid out magnificently with all the festive napkins and what-not and the ladies all bring along great bowls of the various foods. You pay for the food and (if you like) bring along your own booze and something to drink it out of. The place was satisfyingly packed and everybody was very happy with the evening. A good success.

Lisacul 2019 Calendar.

The 2019 Lisacul Village Calendar has also been designed and printed and is now being sold. Once again it is mainly based on photographs taken for the '365' project but this year has a nice refreshing theme running through it. Each month has a village scene but also an inset picture of some local refreshments - tea, cake, soup etc and the front cover says "Will you have a cup of tea while you're here?" It is a lovely thing to have. If you, dear reader(s) got one from us last year then, do not worry, you will get another this year. They are nearly in the post. If you would like one, the the Village website is the place.

https://www.facebook.com/pg/lisacultoday/posts/?ref=notif

Getting back into the sourdough making.

Meanwhile, lest anyone forget that I am still soldiering on, a martyr to my suffering (OK I'm basically OK and pain-free but bear with me while I indulge myself in a couple of amusing 'sick' stories). Fluid retention. It's gone decidedly weird on me. This, you will recall is due to the general inefficiency of the current version of my heart (leaky valve) which is failing to move fluids properly around my body. When I was in hospital back in July, this was all about swollen ankles and we all watched with interest as they swelled or deflated day by day. Then a few weeks later this problem went away and it was all about knees. Now that version is also no longer in fashion and I have a taut band of 'swollen' around my gut but very high up; liver/diaphragm level. I have always had a bit of a 'beer belly' down in the standard place, bulging gently over my trouser waist-band, but this is like a high-up 10-pints a night thing. It seems most unfair given that I have not touched beer for months and am eating precious little. I offer up a fervent prayer that the heart surgery, once complete will sort all this out and move all this fluid (if such is what it is) on and out.

We are both impressed by this tin that
came around latest gin. We think that,
with the (plastic) lid off, it will make a nice
Christmas candle holder.

Finally I am mercifully nearly through my month of iron supplement tablets. I hate those things with a passion. They upset my system in too many ways. Everyone gets the unpleasant black sticky poo, I think, but I also suffer a month of farting, belching and feeling a continuous, low level nausea. It is just on the edge, there, of nearly but not quite starting to feel sick. I never have (vomited, I mean) though I've had a few episodes of dry-retching. It's all very unsettling and depressing of appetite. I approach every meal wondering whether it is wise to eat it. Ah well, only 5 more days to go on that one. I will then keep a low profile and hope that the GP does not remember she put me on it and needs to see whether it worked! :-). Not really - I will, of course follow all the medical advice as best I can.

Enough for this one. Till the next time. Good luck now.

Touch Wood

We spread these tarps out when we took them down from the
shed roof, hoping they'd dry in the sun. It hasn't stopped raining
since. The geese love them - permanent puddles!

This is possibly the shortest and least pictorial post you have seen in a long time. The relentless pace of shed fixing, 'harvesting meat' and trying to get better from the recent illness, has finally eased leaving me with a proper slow-news Friday. I promised myself long ago that I'd never reduce myself to posts which said "I'm bored - nothing happening", so in that spirit, no news is a short post.

One story I do need to catch up on is that fox. He/she has been a regular, but not particularly frequent, daytime raider since January (Yes, I know, seems longer). He has left us alone since the 10th of this month, Touch Wood! There is always hope that someone else, in the neighbourhood, has 'got' him. I decided to go back through the blog, the diary and the social media posts to try to add up exactly how much damage has been done, so here goes, month by month.

January (2018): Failed attack (2nd), spotted by guineas and chased off by me.

Feb: 8th Female duck taken
        17th Goose killed but not taken (fox could not get goose through sheep fencing)
        26th Buff Orpington rooster.

March: 2nd  Buff Orp hen
             24th Female duck
             31st Black hen (Beeblebrox)

April: 5th Grey hen taken but let go to walk home (Walk Home Wendy)
           13th Female duck
           15th Attacks turkey Gloria but only wounds her. She dies 6th May from wounds

May:   13th female Duck

June: 28th Takes final female duck.
          29th Failed attack - repelled by dogs

July: 7th Black hen (our last Marans pure-bred)
         16th Hen ("Shtumpy")
         21st Hen with only one chick. Chick is successfully fostered with "The Bumbles"

August: 4th Failed attack
              9th Half-grown poult taken
              10th Smallest gosling taken

Also, at unknown dates, the following birds have now gone missing, presumed victims of the fox

1. Walk Home Wendy
2. Tail-less buff orp hen 'Floofy'
3. Guinea Hen while sitting on eggs out in the hedges somewhere.

There you have it. In total this year

• 5 female ducks
• 1 turkey
• 1 goose and a tiny gosling
• 1 Guinea fowl
• 1 rooster
• 1 young (chicken) poult
• 7 hens

Total 18 birds so far in 2018. We are no nearer to trapping him or shooting him. He remains unpredictable, wary and very careful.

Pimping Two Babes for the Lads

Diane (who died on 21st Oct 2014) and her disreputable
Border Terrier cross, 'Ragworth'. 

Ignore that dubious title for the moment. First up today we remember that most excellent Friend of the Blog, 'Diamond' (Diane Loraine Walsh). Rest in Peace, lovely Lady. Today (25th) would have been her 61st Birthday. The thoughts of this Blog are with her husband, John, Her Family and all those readers who knew and remember her. I am also told that today is the 602nd anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt and the 75th of the Dedication of the local village church here (Lisacul village), but maybe more on those later.

4 young poults. From the colour of them, almost certainly sired
by our Marans rooster, 'Gandalf'.

With the majority of this year's young chickens having hatched in June, a whole bunch of these are starting to come 'of age' (poultry keepers frequently use 21 weeks, or "point of lay" to denote maturity though that varies wildly between varieties.) from now through November. We had 19 chicks across those early batches and have since added another 7; the 'Manus' and the ABs, bringing our total to 26. The place is fair heaving with young poults. The law of averages tells us that we are likely to end up with 13 hens and 13 roosters though that, too, can vary wildly.

Existing alpha-rooster, Gandalf

In the hard-hearted 'business' world of small-holdering, we would generally keep or sell as going concerns, all the hens, especially if they start laying good eggs but have to dispose of the roosters. If you are lucky you might sell, or give away a few and you might keep one good one if your hen/rooster ratios can sustain it (you want about 7:1, so if you are adding 13 hens to your flock there should be room for one more roo', if not 2). If we can, we will make the(se) keeper(s) either pure-bred Marans or Buff Orpington. 

Our #2 rooster, sex-change 'hen', 'Herme'.
See earlier post
 http://deefer-dawg.blogspot.ie/2017/04/
mazy-lou-and-airy-fox.html

The rest of the roosters will be for the pot and you need to identify and cull them out as soon as they become a problem, fighting with each other or challenging your existing lads. As the girls start to come up to point of lay and (we hope) start popping out the good eggs, the boys cannot help but give away their own sexual identities by squaring up to one another, flaring their cape feathers and bowing down beak to beak preparatory to a few, beginner-ish flying 2 footed kick-outs. If you do not sort them it can get bloody and injurious very fast. What we will do between now and Christmas is to 'sort' them before they become a problem.

We love the colouring on some and we hope they are hens. This
one is optimistically called "Silvergirl"

That's probably enough on chickens. I said "If you are lucky" above (selling roosters) because just when you have your glut of spare males, so does every other chicken breeder you would know. It's like having too many courgettes and hoping other veg-fiends might not have grown courgettes this year.

2 Guinea Fowl boys in search of some female company?

Friends of the Blog may recall that our story of owning and trying to breed Guinea fowl here is not a happy one. We currently have, and have had for many months, two cock birds who are happy enough and tend to wander about like 'the management' minding any turkeys they can find or piles of food. In our Guinea story these guys are preceded by our first pair (Henry and Min; 2013) who tried to breed but we lost H in an RTA. This left M to desert her impressive stash of 16 eggs in the hedge on the far side of our lane. We incubated these and hatched, I think, ten. We managed to sell 5 as youngsters but then had the other 5 stolen by Mr Fox. So far, no roast Guinea fowl for the table.

Dillisk biscuits. 

Henry was briefly replaced by a white bird we called 'Blondie' but he/she was famous for his/her unwillingness to stay here and need to hike off Eastwards. Blondie eventually deserted for good. Subsequently we bought 2 boys (2015) from Sue and Rob (called Apollo and Belvedere) hoping that at least one would pair off with poor, lonely Min, of the heart-breakingly continuous 'buckwheat buckwheat' calls. Belv' did so and all was quiet for 2016. However we never saw more than one or 2 eggs and there was no breeding success. This year, Min fell ill and stopped being able to repel the attentions of our rooster, Gandalf. Before we knew he had nailed her well and truly, flaying all the skin off her 'saddle' with his spurs. We tried to isolate her (not easy to catch!) but she went downhill fast and died within a few days.

Cheesy fish pie. We missed this while we hosted Augustin
who professed a loathing for fish and cooked cheese. 

So in 2017 we are left with the 2 lads, Apollo and Belv' and, although we think they are OK, we think they might enjoy some female company. We livestock keepers are, after all, meant to keep our stock to the "Five Freedoms" (freedom from starvation and thirst etc), one of which is "Freedom to Express Natural Behaviours". In my opinion, that includes being able to mate, breed and bring up young if possible.

Growing fast, the young turkeys. This one is male.

Step forward, then, our newest friends who I mentioned a few posts back, who happen to own a goodly flock of Guineas and are happy to find me 2 hens of sure-fire female-ness (Guineas are notoriously hard to sex). They have promised to get the birds to us by early next week. I have, I hope "pimped" some lovely ladies for the lads. Watch this space.

New limbs for the archery bow.

I will finish with a completely random waffle, the fruits of an addled mind left out watching over dogs on the front lawn today. I said that today was Birthday for the late Diane and also the anniversaries of both Agincourt and the Dedication of Lisacul Church. Agincourt is 602 years ago and 602 (cc) is also the engine size of my beloved Citroën 2CVs. So today handily brings together all manner of "my favourite things". Diane represents friends and Kent, the 602 brings in France and 2CVs as well as archery (Agincourt) and Lisacul Church stands for the local area and the Community here whom have made us feel so welcome here in Ireland.

No Blue! It may BE fish on the menu but we are still not giving
you any even if you try to take up station on the Dining Table.

Sorry about that. It just kind of bubbled out of no-where.

Pedro the Ram is in Love

The sloppy plum jam goes in for a re-try.

I knew even as I was posting those pics in the last blog story, of sloppy plum jam and typing. rather apologetically. that it would 'do', that it wouldn't. "Ah well", I said. "It'll get used up". I was just being lazy. A few days later a friend on Twitter's @smallholderIRL account was tut-tutting that it would spoil and I should boil it again, reduce it considerably and get it to set. True of course, so on Sunday morning, back it all went into the pan. I got a good 20% of the water/volume out of it, it went darker in colour and is now potted up properly. You can tilt the jars to 45 degrees and nothing moves.

Chinese pancakes. 

That turned out to be quite a busy 24 hours for me in the kitchen because, Friends of the Blog will remember, Lizzie's Birthday came round and in this house the Birthday Girl (or boy) gets to choose the stay in/go out, the menu and the chef-du-jour. We'll eat in, she decided, you are cooking and the menu is Chinese Crispy Duck and the pancakes, spring onion, cucumber and the rest.

Chinese pancakes.

That was an enjoyable challenge. I had never cooked duck this way before and certainly never made the little, thin pancakes which are not really pancakes at all. Well, not in the sense of pouring batter into a frying pan. They are, though, not available locally. You can get all manner of wraps and tortillas, pitta breads and poppadoms but not these (unless one of my readers knows different) so we were onto the Internet for one of those American accent 'how-to' videos.

Crispy duck should not need carving under that honey-glazed,
crisped skin. It should shred easily with a couple of forks.

They are great fun but a lot of faff and fiddling. You basically make a sticky-ish dough using flour, sugar and boiling water. You knead that gently like bread-dough, rest it and then roll it out like pastry to half a cm thick. You cut that into 3" discs with a biscuit cutter. Every other 'biscuit' is then brushed with sesame oil and they are stacked in pairs like little dough/oil sandwiches. The pairs are then rolled out "paper thin" (says the recipe - I got them pretty thin and about 6 inches diameter but I'm not so sure about the 'paper' aspect). Each thinned pair is then 'fried' with no oil in a hot frying pan, one and quarter minutes each side, so that they blister up like pitta bread.

Liz took this pic of the main event. 

My only way of timing 75 seconds was using the stop watch function on my olde phone and there were 20-odd pairs to fry, so I was there a good 45 minutes slapping them in and flipping them over. When you lift them off heat, you can open them a bit like a pitta bread and peel the two halves away from each other. You end up with a goodly stack of very thin, single-layer pancakes to either use straight away, or fridge over night or freeze for later.

Choc fudge brownie from local artisan baker, O'Hehir's of Sligo

The rest of the meal went very well too and was much appreciated by the 'audience'. The duck meat was tender enough (as it should be) to tease apart with a fork under that honey-glazed, crisped skin. I had shredded spring onions, cucumber and salad-peppers and Liz had already made, a few days ago, that lovely plum sauce. We had bought a special bottle of white wine. I did a starter of simply-cooked jumbo prawns with wedges of lemon and lime. 'Pud' was a choc fudge brownie from nearby artisan baker, O'Hehir's of Sligo. We'll call it a success. I was delighted to battle through the mountain of washing up and clearing away and to hand the space back to the Chief-Chef.

Where Lily goes (left) you will always find Pedro.

Meanwhile, new ram-lamb 'Pedro' is showing every sign of growing up and finding out what he is here for. We noticed him on Friday almost inseparable from our old ewe, Lily. He was close by her, sniffing her with his top lip extended (the way sheep do when the sniffing is 'amorous'), rubbing his nose and shoulders along her flanks and around her rump. All the other girls were abandoned as his focus increased so she was almost certainly coming on heat.

Then last thing at night, as I took the dogs for their last "comfort stop" patrol of the grounds, I am 99% sure I saw him mount her three times. It was dark and all I was looking at on the front lawn were silhouettes. I couldn't even swear it was Pedro and Lily I was seeing and the 'mount' was just a barely visible rising of the head and shoulders of one silhouette over the back of another but the next day Pedro had lost interest again. We are hopeful that he 'tupped' her and she is now pregnant and therefore back off heat. That would mean a possibility of lambs from Lily on 25th January, 5 months away. Watch this space.

We are enjoying the colours on some of this year's crop of hens.

If Pedro is, indeed, doing the business and things go as they did for Sue's ram 'Rambo' in 2015. Each ewe will come on heat in succession (in their own good time, of course) stimulated by the scent of a ram among them. He will fall madly in love with each in turn (nothing if not fickle!) and we might get lambs out of all four including first time Mum, last year's baby bred here, 'Rosie'. If Pedro can do all that without turning aggressive to me (or any other humans) he's a 'keeper'. Patience is the thing.

Finally, we are quite enjoying the colours of some of this year's batch of young hens. We think they may be the variety 'Marans' (as were Bubble and Squawk of yore) as the rooster, Gandalf, and our one layer-of-dark-brown-eggs, Miss Black, are. They are greys and silvers and are either 'barred' (dark bands running round the body across many feathers) or 'laced' (a dark margin on each individual feather). They are a delight to watch and to see scratching about or perching up on fences and gates. As long as they stay female and don't go off down the big-tail, tall neck, big 'cape' cock-a-doodle-doo, rooster route, they too are keepers.

Donaldina of the Trump-esque wig. 

One has caught our attention by growing the most ridiculous looking top-knot, which would make her at least part the Araucana breed. Reminiscent of the Leader of the Free World, she has been named "Donaldina".

Start harvesting spuds and clearing away the foliage here and
you are likely to find the odd stash of secretly laid eggs.

And that about wraps it up for this one. Good Luck now.

Not 100% Convinced.....

On the left our pure-bred Cuckoo-Marans hen. On the right a
'possible' youngster. 

Followers of this blog will know that we are slowly trying to 'evolve' our chicken flock to one of pure bred Buff Orpingtons and Marans. This from our starting point of Sussex Pontes and via our current motley collection of weirdos which include some bizarre Araucana x Game birds and some hybrid, bantamised Buffs with odd, clumsy, short legs but who were/are, none the less, prolific egg layers. Those we called our 'Mini-Buffs'. The 'evolution' is being done mainly by natural wastage, just not bothering to replace the unwanted types and trying to hatch probable Buff or Marans eggs. Please draw a veil over the fact that we slid the 2 blue Araucana eggs under a Buff broody this spring to keep her sweet and then let her hatch 2 'black babies' - see earlier post.

Those young 'Marans' at 3 months.

For the Marans breed, we had only had our geriatric Cuckoo-colour hen, 'Squawk' and no Rooster, so we purchased 12 of the dark brown, speckledy eggs from the farrier who looks after the horses of our friend and sheep supplier 'Mayo-Liz'. We put them in the incubator we were 'keeping' for Charlotte while she moved house. With permission, of course. The farrier had said that he could not promise that these would be Cuckoo colour Marans, but they were definitely Marans, possibly of his other three colour options - Copper, Blue or Golden.

One of the geese fires up the new season
with this 179 g whopper.

Well, those babies are now 3 months old and we are not 100% convinced that they are pure-bred Marans. We do not claim to be experts, never having reared the breed before, but they seem so long in the leg and so upright that we worry that they will never fill out to the Orpington-style, rounded, Mumsie shape of Squawk. I even texted Mayo-Liz to check that Mr Farrier does not keep a few game cocks running around his place who might have been sowing wild oats but she assured me that he doesn't. In their favour is that the eggs were definitely Marans, so at least the Mum must have been. We have 3 grey-ish birds who I could believe could be the 'Blues' and the 3 darker birds are all starting to get a coppery hue to their cape-feathers, so they might be the 'Copper' Marans. Ah well, they will get the benefit of the doubt for now and we will try to ignore their upright, tail-erect, Tottenham Hotspur badge, fighting cock looks.

The Corporal's dark-tailed lacy lady. 

Meanwhile we also have a possible issue with one of the three hens from the 'Corporal's group. Although she is a perfect pure-bred (pb) Buff-Orp shape, she has a few dark tail feathers (with brown edges) and the feathers on her back each individually have a pale edge. This 'lacing' (as they say in poultry circles) and the dark tail are, I think, not allowed in the breed standard for Buff-Orps and may indicate that Mum was one of the mini-buffs or possibly our old Sussex Ponte, 'Enda' (both of whom lay the buff-coloured eggs).

Our young Golden Hornet crab apple tree
gave us almost 3 kg of good fruit and a few
splits for the piggies.

Outside of chickens we are more certain that we are on track. We have re-started our goose egg season with 2 found on the same day, and Liz has already had one of these as her breakfast 'dippy egg' - it weighed 179 g. I cleared the rest of the standing crop from the polytunnel and was delighted by some huge Sarpo Mira red potatoes. I struggle to get enough water into that part of the garden and generally expect light crops on the spuds, but these guys must have been growing near enough to the edges that they pushed some roots out to where the rain runs off the sides.

'Baker' sized Sarpo Mira from the poly tunnel.

We have been enjoying these as beautiful baking potatoes with stews etc or as mashed potato. The are a fairly resistant variety Blight-wise, anyway but growing them early or late in the tunnel helps you miss the worst blight weather. These were as clean as a whistle.

Soldier the Cat checks out the jelly bag.

Our little, young crab apple tree pleased us with a yield of 2.994 kg of good fruit plus a few splits and bruised one for the piggies. Liz combined this with an equal weight of our nice local blackberries and gave it all a good boil up. I then strained it through the 'jelly bag', added sugar and boiled it to set point. I say that as if it is easy - I have NEVER been good at getting jams and marmalades to set.

Crab Apple and Blackberry Jelly cooling.

The recipes say boil for 10 minutes, test for set point and, oh if it is not set, try another 5 minutes. I just assume it is going to be more like 30-45 minutes. This time I even didn't bother putting the Kilner jars into the dish washer for their 36 minute wash/sterilise till I'd started the brew. Happily I did eventually get a set point and the crab+BB jelly is cooling and setting nicely out in the kitchen on the worktop even as I write.

Log Rat nailed from 30 yards away

Finally in the archery department I am happy to report that in our (most likely) final outdoor shoot of this year I finally nailed that elusive sneaky target 'Log Rat'. That after 5 months of trying. Those arrows on the ground in the picture are NOT all my misses, by the way, they are arrows I have retrieved for other archers (we helpfully do that for each other). Mine are the ones fletched in a rather fetching (fetching fletchings?) bright orange and green. It was good to finally 'get' that pesky rodent. Now we move indoors and go back to target practise in the big Badminton hall at Castlerea's "The Hub" sports complex. The poor, much-pierced animals get a holiday through the winter.

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.