(A Very Polite) Bollox to Brexit?

Season of open fires in the Sitting Room

Good progress on all fronts for this post.

Progressing especially well, this Help-X 'session', 10 days with Judith and Vicky. I have gone in constant fear that they will use up all the jobs and we will have nothing left for them to do, they are so fast and efficient. Having mowed their way round all the nominal 'lawns' and grassy places, I sent them off yesterday to 'top off' all the old nettle patches in the sheep (East) field. One had the mower set to its highest setting (and no grass-box), the other the brush cutter.

Sheep field mowed in stripes

The brush cutter is quite bad for vibrations into your hands and wrists, so we always advise the volunteers to swap over every hour, to avoid anyone getting coal miner's "Vibration White Finger" (OK maybe not that bad).

A bit lost in the acre field. Our 16" cut mower.

As I said, my intent was for them just to buzz off the old nettle flower-stems, but not only did they run both machines out of fuel, they had started to join up the 'dots' running the mower between clumps of nettles till it was easier to just mow the whole thing like a lawn. We have, I suspect, the only sheep field in Roscommon mowed in neat stripes. They have not, in fact, taken much length off the grass, so we hope they have not damaged our supply of winter grazing.

Towser is in the sink here and has both girls "at" him!

The girls have also fallen more and more in love with the dogs and are now always found with a dog on their lap during 'down time', bathing the three on one occasion and now taking them for their daily walks, either down to the bridge or out across the big local bog, 'Kiltybranks' (a favourite walk of mine before I got sick).

Veg lasagne, Medical Student style! Delicious.

We like our volunteers to cook us a meal from their home-place (if they want to). Vicky and Judith went for a superb veggie lasagne and very delicious it was too. They also expressed an interest in trying our goose eggs but NOT in cooking them as we would for breakfast with toast 'soldiers'. They wanted them 'a bit stiffer' than I had described the 'UK Dippy eggs', so a 12-14 minute boil rather than our ten. They like the yolks to be nearly set.

Goose eggs for breakfast, Cheers!

Then for bread, they had a slice of my good sourdough each on-the-side and in Judith's case buttered and smeared with jam so she could swap between egg spooned out of the shell, and mouthfuls of bread/jam but ne'er the twain shall meet. Each to their own, I guess.

Finally on the Help-X-ers for this one, they took today as a day off going touristing to the coastal town of Westport. I dropped them to the railway station for a 10 am train and collected them again at 20 past 7. Elizabeth and I had an easy, free day.

Brushing the dogs out after their shampoo.

But what of my Brexit reference in the header. When I am not just focusing on this, my own blog, I sometimes wander over to the one being written by the brother, Mark.
  http://caretowers.blogspot.com/
Mark is similar to us in having retired early and now 'living a dream' but his dream (as is only right) is very different to ours. He was never a one for the farming. He and his wife (Susan) spend their days travelling all around the world, cruising or rolling their own holidays, walking nearer to home, seeking out good eateries or interesting shopping in cities. They are an amusing read on occasions, especially knowing Mark well and being able to see how he is seeing things.

His most recent post has them headed to London to see an exhibition of "affordable art" but accidentally clashing with a gazillion other people packed like sardines into the train, headed for the "People's March" for a 2nd Brexit Referendum. The 'madding crowd' had them changing travel plans quite a few times as they tried to get to the art and then later to Fortnum and Mason for some shopping and I was chuckling away at his description of the polite, middle-class, 'protesters' obediently leaving their placards with the Fortnum's door man while they nipped out of the march for a little shopping on the side, presumably to collect them later. Nice one Mark.

Last Logs and First Fixes

The Pulmonaria in the woods start into flower

A nice, compact, portable, user friendly, post today as we are in that quiet time between all the excitement of recent posts, and the burst of activity which is Spring. I have done a bit of planting in the tunnel and we have been buying seeds but the main (outdoor) garden is developing an "Elephant in the Room" status. It is THE BIG JOB this year. Fighting back into control of the 25*100 foot patch of ridged soil which I shamefully lost control of in 2016. I keep looking at it but the frosty weather, the rain and today's bitter wintry showers have so far stopped me getting the knee pads on and making a start.

The last bit of black spruce from the 2016
felling project, finally gets dragged out of
the woods and sliced up. 

If I feel bad about that, then I have been doing some bits outside lately to balance the books. I broke out the chain saw today and went round finishing off some jobs that had been on the list for a while too long. The last piece of black spruce trunk left from the 2016 'trees-on-the-lawn' felling project finally got dragged out of the woods and sliced up. Various fallen branches which had been lying in the sheep field and used as scratching posts and 'mineral' nibbles (sheep will nibble tree bark and twiggy bits when grass is not sufficiently nutritious) were chopped up so that they can be barrowed home as logs.

An elder and its neighbour growing from our boundary
bank at 45º were starting to impede our progress round to
the tunnel. (Base stump arrowed)

There were also a few branches stashed under the log store that needed dealing with - the bits were too long to go into the range (16" maximum) and the last of the "telegraph pole" sections and some big gnarly bits which needed splitting (too big diameter).

The dogs enjoying their daily off-lead time

Finally there were a couple of big, overgrown elders in the hedge by the poly-tunnel which had grown out of the bank at 45º. Each year they delight us with flowers and berries at easy-pick heights BUT they had begun to impede the progress of anyone walking dogs round the 'estate' or trying to get to the tunnel. I took these 'lads' down foot by foot and generated another useful stack of barrow-able logs, all be it elder is not that good a species for firewood.

Kitchen electrics 'first-fix'

The only other news is that we had our new 'Sparks' round to first-fix the electrics in the kitchen. It's not a massive job - we only need a light in the ceiling and a couple of double sockets with the new worktop. Only the latter bit gave the guy pause for a while - the plan had been to run a spur off a Sitting Room socket by drilling through the back of that socket to emerge in the kitchen.

When our original Sparks tried this he had the modern 'SDS' drill but had to buy a 1m long bit to get through our 50 cm walls at a 30º upward angle - he was installing 'carriage lights' out front. Conferring with this guy we decided that rather than buy another bit, we would take our spur from the old kitchen and 'chase' it through at one end of the new. This is now done and K-Dub and I can now proceed with the slabbing etc.

One of the marmalades makes short work of a chunk of
roast chicken pelvis. 

That is pretty much it. If you are feeling deprived (ha!) and in need of more 'Care Brothers' waffle, then let me point you at the blog of my younger bro', Mark. If my version of the retirement dream was to buy the 'farm' and keep livestock, then his was definitely to travel the world. He is a keen writer about these missions and packs his 'travelogue' posts with plenty of lovely photo's of the places he and his good lady have visited.

Most recently they have done a 4-weeker in New Zealand in which they drew heavily on the advice of a 'consultant/guide' for the itinerary. They went pretty much EVERYwhere and did lots of different things, so they have a wealth of pictures - scenery, cities, restaurants and food, a cathedral hit by the recent earthquake, dolphins. albatrosses and sea lions, 4 x 4 driving on dirt roads over the mountains, kayaking, even dropping in on 'Hastings' the town named after our own birthplace. The highlight for me, though was when they managed to do a light-aircraft "Sky Safari" over a superbly beautiful range of snow-capped, glacier-iced 'alps' on what must have been the blue-est sky clear conditions you could only dream about.

Go take a look at http://caretowers.blogspot.ie/2017/01/new-zealand-2017-day-20-day-in-tekapo.html . Nice one Mark!

Safe House.

First Class travel for 5 hens and a rooster

If you had half a dozen chickens needing a babysitter would you pick as your first choice a bloke who has just lost half his flock to the fox through giving them too much freedom? No... I don't think I would either. However, my friends seem to have more faith in me than that and I am currently babysitting the single young hen 'Billie-No-Mates' (whom you met in the last post) for a chum down the lane and now 6 more chickens from another friend - no names no pack drill on that one.

The eagle(s) have landed. Now I just need
to sort out a run for them. 

The latter friends were in a right pickle and we had to move fast. Due to our own foxy shenanigans, we are currently trying to not leave the place un-manned while our birds are out and about, so I have started to keep them in till mid-morning while I race out and do any 'away' jobs. On the morning in question I nipped round to collect these birds at 08:00 and the lady had sensibly also not let them out, so that we could easily wrangle them into my big dog crate and a kitten basket, into the car and home.

A bit tight for the 6 but better than being exposed to the fox.
Our fox trap is just visible in the background. 

I do not have the perfect solution to this as the rooster is quite a big and feisty chap. Hence I can't let these 6 go free-range with my lot for the 2 weeks, but the lady is happy that they live in a rather confined rabbit run which is made from 1 inch 'weld-mesh' so is fox proof. As they wear out the grass under foot we simply move the run a metre sideways to new grass.

Sussex Ponte 'Enda' is not keen on this
being kept indoors till mid-morning
malarkey. She wants OUT.

On the fox, though NO NEWS. Since 'we' shot the young one on 1st Dec I have seen only one fox and that outside the east field fence. It fled as soon as I came round the house corner 50 yards away. I don't know whether I am delighted with this (have we solved the problem?) or sad that we still have a fox at large. Local expertise has it that the weather warmed up, so the foxes had no need to come into risky farmyards. They will be back, I am advised, as soon as the cold comes back. For now we will leave the trap down even though all we have caught for 6 days is the half grown male kitten, Chip, three times.

On the last go today, he went in as it started to rain and got very wet before he could attract our attention. His sister, unhelpfully, came in 20 minutes earlier and curled up quite happily in the warm probably knowing that he was stuck but choosing not to cry for him for a while. With friends like that...... He was very cross, as well as wet! Maybe now he has learned his lesson.

All 4 of our cats assess whether this bed
will fit in this 6 foot trailer. It didn't. 

In my brother, Mark's last blog post, he complains that all the family over there have been struck down with colds. Well, by the power of the Internet (it went 'viral'?) both Liz and I now have the same and we are mooping around waving tissues like surrender flags and dosed up on Lemsip Max. However, no peace for the wicked here and we come to the weekend of the annual village auction.

A 365 picture of a barn at night (dusk, anyway)

All the villagers who have anything spare bring it along to the hall  and then go in and bid for other items, with the money raised going towards the village 'hall' (The "Development Co Centre" no less). There is always a good range of furniture, children's toys, household stuff, tools, electrical goods and 'bric-a-brac', plus a Craft Fair runs in another room and Liz was even selling the calendars.

We took along a put-me-up bed (one divan slides under another so that it spends its down-time as a settee) which Liz tells me sold for €49 and Liz bought some Christmas present bits as well as some furniture for the spare room (pine wardrobe, chest of drawers and a small bedside dresser, total of €15). She then put in a bid of €5 just to be nice and start the ball rolling on a black leather reclining 2-seat sofa. Ooops. Sold to the lady selling the calendars! It is now brought home, cleaned up and in our Sitting Room, looks very smart and feels very comfortable.

Because of the lack of news on Mr Fox, I am going to park that story for now. If you don't hear any more then just assume old Mrs Fox is still at large and I am bored with writing about her failure to oblige us. I am also currently trusted with the baby sitting of 21 bullocks but that's another story.

Joint Birthdays

The "Pop Star" at 3 years old. 

June 3rd, so that nice coincidental date for 3 of the animals in this blog, formerly 4 but we lost Rolo in an RTA. Puppies Poppea and Towser, and cats Blue and Rolo were all born in 2012 on a busy night for animal midwifery down in Silverwood's Land. The dogs we were expecting and, in fact we were all lined up to be on call as pup midwives, but Mum (Lily) was so efficient at that stage that she slid all that litter of pups out just supervised, but not messed with at all, by Mrs Silverwood. We had our name down for a boy and had already chosen his name.

Towser at 3

The kittens we had tentatively put our names down for but did not know the expected date and, anyway, knew that some Aunt of the family was getting 'first refusal' on that litter so we didn't know for sure any of any litter would be coming our way. It was only when Mrs S phoned her friend round the corner to tell her the good news, that friend replied "Well, THERE's a coincidence! Our cat had 3 kittens too!" The 'chickens' were hatched and count-able. We were suddenly on for the pup and 2 kittens, all born in the night of June 2nd/3rd but after midnight.

Blue at 3 looking as if he doesn't actually want disturbing.

Readers who were with me in 2012 will know that, in fact, we ended up with 2 pups. There had been a bit of a silly health-scare over one of the bitches and Mrs S had held back from selling her till she was all clear, she came up to the 'farm' with the family on a week's holiday and played so well with her already-sold brother, that it seemed fairest to just re-unite them and for us to take the two pups to go with our 2 mad kittens. Poor Deefer, briefly an 'only child' didn't know which way to turn. 3 years later, that all seems a long time ago.

Buff chick at 2 weeks old.

However, with Liz not yet back from Greece and no big updates on the story of that adventure yet, and with me having only posted yesterday but wanting to mark these Birthdays, I have little to write about, so this post will be an unashamed photo album, using up some pics which I have not yet found a home for in the blog.

Tom

Huge thanks to brother Mark for continuing to use up his bank balance in coloured inks for his printer - he prints a hard copy of this blog including the pictures to put in the post to our Mum, (Pud Lady) down in Hastings, stuffing it in the envelope of his own blog. We have not yet persuaded Pud Lady to join that happy band of "grey-surfers", internet-savvy OAPs and get on line with a lap top (and some internet provision to the house, of course!) so that she can see these ramblings on screen and, anyway, I think she quite likes to have the hard copy as it feels a bit like we negligent children have actually written to her (!) - sorry Mum. Mark must rue the days when I do one of these and all his colour ink drains away. I am very very grateful.

Finally some warm weather for the bees to get cracking
pulling in pollen and nectar.

First flag iris in the pond.

Here, then, are just a few pics with captions to catch you up on extra curricular stuff.

No pictures, please! The chick flees the paparazzi

Quince blossom

Min the Hin on a high roost.

Goldie and Nugget out in their run. 

Good bud break and some fruit on the
Brown Turkey fig.

Treasure in the Dusty Shoe Box.

Your blogger in about 1959.

I expect that in many families there is, in some dusty corner of an attic or a lost filing system, the "box of family photographs". Blow the dust off that old shoe-box and there are the packets of Kodak black and white prints and negatives, often of long departed and barely remembered relatives who your Mum or possibly Grand-Ma might still be able to recognise as "That's Alison, who used to visit Mrs Conquest, who lived next to us in Pilot Road" (or where-ever). Maybe like us, the number of pictures reduces with each child born - those keen new parents in the 50s keen to click away with the Kodak Brownie and capture every move and new clothes item of No.1 Son, had become a bit jaded by the time No.2 arrived and barely took any of No.3. Our shoe-box contains hundreds of pictures of my 'big brother', Tom, around a dozen of me and only a couple for younger bro', Mark.

All grown up? 1981 by now and allowed out to play in the
Research Station Land Rover

It was Mark though (and fair play to him!) who now has the time and technology to volunteer (crazy fool!) to scan in all these pictures, digitize them and then spread them around the family in the modern way. Liz had this job for all the old slides of the Dublin/Portmarnock tribe, but Mark is now on a mission to create an (electronic?) "photobook" which can be run through the projector at family gatherings now that most of those children and cousins are in their own 50s and the original photographers, if still with us, are into their Autumn years.

A sofa-load of cousins. I am far right.

The rest of us have seen the occasional one pinged out on Facebook for a sense-check. How old were you in this picture? Here is one of all three brothers - anyone know the date/ages? We've also been enjoying remembering all those "Nana-knit jumpers" and some dodgy haircuts. Mark has now assembled the prototype photo-book which he will air at as many family gatherings as he can get at so that everyone can comment, correct mis-captions and so on before he officially goes to press with the finished version. I am looking forward to it. Good luck with that project, Mark. The joys of retiring and suddenly, in theory anyway, having time to do all these things.

Our wooden bowls get the beeswax treatment.

That furniture polish we made from beeswax and coconut oil is proving to be excellent stuff altogether and we are using it all around the place, on furniture, wooden bowls and now also the handles of garden tools and the like. Because it is all food-grade we don't mind getting it on our skin and this is, without doubt, the easiest way to use it. You scoop out a finger-sized blob and briefly soften it with the warmth of your hands, then basically massage it in to the wood by getting palm and fingers all over it. It's a bit like buttering a baking tin but you try not to leave quite so much loose on the surface. Twenty minutes at room temperature sees all the oilier elements soak into the wood grain whereupon a good buff with the cloth gives you a lovely polished lustre

Talking of old family pictures, 2 of the bowls give us a special pleasure as they were made by my Uncle Barrie who got very keen on wood turning at one stage and kitted his workshop out with special lathes and other gear. He made beautiful bowls out of some special woods and then, rather helpfully, used to burn in (engrave?) with a soldering iron (?) the name of the wood and the year as well as his own name. So in the pic of three bowls above, I can tell you that the paler bowl on the right is of "spalted ash" in 1993. Spalting is the confused-grain scar-tissue which trees produce around wounds and broken off limbs.

Liz getting adventurous with the stripes.

Ash didn't mean anything special to me back in 1993 but now, in Ireland where we are cutting our own trees and logs for the fire, ash is the local 'weed' tree that grows everywhere but which I now love for it's bright white cut ends under the chain saw, its dense, hot-burning well seasoned logs and its co-operation under the axe and splitting wedge. It is also the wood used traditionally for the Irish 'Hurley stick' (the 'camán') and is now causing concern by coming under attack from a new fungal disease, Ash Die-Back (fungus Chalara fraxinea). The other bowl pictured is of 'Amazaque' wood about which I know even less - it is a Columbian forest tree, allegedly.

It's raining at ground level, but maybe
if I go out OVER the top of the back door
I won't get wet?

Meanwhile we seem to be in a brief return to winter. Our lovely warm spell of April is almost a lost memory as we wake up each morning to tanking rain and the huge puddles we know so well. The pond is brim full and all the animal feed bowls have to be tipped out of water before I can feed anyone - only the sheep trough stays dry under the shelter and the trees. The cat is very annoyed that we can't seem to find him an exit where it is not raining. He tries the front door (with his mewing and pleading looks) but then when it is opened for him he flicks his tail in indecision and retreats back in to try a different door or window.

Ah well, not everyone loses. My 2015 'Million trees' batch went into lovely wet soil so there is no chance their roots will dry out - they should get away nicely. The return to chill has caused us a return to lighting the range every day which makes the spare room, with its radiator, right above the (Dining) room with the range, the warmest room in the house. We have been able to turn off the infra-red heater-lamp over the Hubbard chicks so that they can now learn about day and night and can get some proper rest and sleep when it is dark. And we are TRYING TO SLEEP. Bless them. If it just stopped raining we are even looking to let them feel a bit of warm Roscommon sunshine on their backs and the grass under their feet (though they'd obviously be rescued back indoors for the nights, they are barely 2 weeks old yet).

Buff Orpington broody hen

And finally our newest 'Mum', the broody Buff Orp is still hanging in there, sitting tight in her chosen location between some concrete blocks and a camping chemical toilet. We rescued her to a seed tray full of hay as she was almost on bare concrete, but she's now on day 11 of her 21 day sit and looking very focused and content.

Good Feedback

Good Feedback. Now there's a business-speak expression I have not used a whole lot since finishing at DHL in Dartford in June 2011. We bloggers write these reports and fire them off into cyberspace hoping that maybe someone is reading them and enjoying what we have written. We cling to the 'site-meter' reports telling us how many hits we are getting and listening out for comments each posting. But I have an additional incentive to keep writing and to try to keep this interesting; this has become, for me, my letter home to me dear aul' Mum, the 'Pud Lady' mentioned in some of these reports.

Pud Lady (named for her marvelous steak and kidney puds) is of that generation (she's 86) that never got to grips with computers (except for word-processing), the internet or blogging, Facebook, Twitter and all that jazz. She does love, though, that we have moved to Ireland and started this small-holder life and she is hungry for news and fascinated by all the goings on. When we were living in the caravan and had no access to the printer, my brother Mark offered to print these posts off (in the UK) and to include them in his own letter home which already contained his 'blog posts' and other news. He has kept up the habit even though we are now installed. Thanks Mark - much appreciated.

Pud Lady is therefore now getting all my news, and probably knows more about what we are up to than when we lived in Kent, just 45 miles away from her, I am ashamed to admit I was never that good at writing or phoning. We know Pud Lady is enjoying it because we also now get old-style 'snail mail' letters from her every fortnight included in the UK-addressed forwarded mail posted on by my other brother, Tom. Thank you for these Mum, they too are much appreciated. Today's has them impressed by the height of our daffodils and comparing gardening notes (we are both keen gardeners), describing their snow and Tom's family's children's off-school adventures, and looking forward to the RSPB's "Big Garden Birdwatch" which we used to do every year. See? Good Feedback. Everybody is happy!

Liz has just described today's weather to Diamond as varying between lashing rain in strong wind, and glorious blue sky, sunny warmth. That's no exaggeration. I am trying to build three tough, fox proof rabbit runs and a tough, fox-proof house for the geese. The rain has driven me indoors, so I am trying to work in the Tígín which is a bit tight for space but nobody wants to be using an electric circular saw in the wet! The 2CV trailer has been pressed into service as a mighty sellotape-dispenser style wire mesh machine. The heavy 30m roll of 1" square weldmesh is threaded through with a pitch fork handle and slung across the trailer box so that I can unreel lengths of wire, hooking them over the back of the trailer while I go along laboriously cutting each strand of wire.

The plywood and rough-cut "2-be-1-and-a-half" lengths are in the car port and the tar-felt is already in the Tígín. Sparks has run power and lighting to the Tígín, so it's not a bad shed to work in. I tend to rough out a plan of what frame and sheeting I will need (mainly so I can go buy enough!) and then start with this but then let the part built frames dictate actual sizes and saw cuts as I go along. The width of the mesh (92 cm, 3 feet) dictated the width of the run and I went with half that for the height to minimize waste. 3 metres length we thought would give the rabbits enough space to run about while leaving the thing light enough for us to move it about from grass to grass. You can see from the picture that I have, tonight, completed one run. This one is for (Buck) Rogers, our bought-in male bunny who is now separated from his ladies. I had a bit of blue fence-paint left from an earlier job, so Rogers's house is painted blue to go with his eyes. Ahhhh.

When the paint's dry we'll drag this one outdoors and get some sunny pictures of it (with rabbit!) to give you some idea.