A Drop of Rain

A drop of rain overnight freshens up these "Red Robin" leaves

A drop of rain last night, and more forecast over this weekend, brings much needed relief to the dry-as-dust gardeners and a hope of grass growth to the hard-pressed farmers. More importantly its a chance to relax for the local fire crews who seem to have been on continuous alert or in action for a couple of weeks, battling those bog, scrub and forest fires.

These big dark tubs were part of my Birthday present and are
now covering the post-daff and post-tulips gap out front. 

No such life-or-death drama here, of course but it will be nice to put the watering can down. We tend to go in for a low-maintenance style of gardening and only grow stuff that can survive without being carted gallons of water but even so human mercy says you still have to look after the new stuff, the poly tunnel and the seedlings. The sheep grazing can definitely use it; we're well into May now and there is little grass for them to eat. I keep swapping them from East Field to front lawn as either recovers a bit from the last cycle.

Those pigs take breakfast in the early morning sunshine

While I'm on sheep, we are now closing in on May 25th which, on the calendar at least, is the last likely day for any lambs to be born. On 31st Dec we hauled Silas-the-Ram's lazy butt outta there and sent him home. We have no reason to think he scored a big fat zero for 7 weeks and then suddenly whipped round all the ewes in the final days doing the job intended. We are forced to admit that we are very unlikely to have any lambs this year, a decision which moves us naturally into 2 more plans from 25th May.

First, the ewes need shearing which we can do on any (3rd) dry day. You should not shear sheep when they are wet (electrical hand-set) and it takes them 3 days to dry out after rain; hence the "3rd dry day" rule. People with bigger flocks sometimes even bring them indoors 3 days out from shearing day lest they get rained on.

Second we need to buy in some store-lambs or we will have no meat for the freezer this year, so I've been back in contact with our original ewe-supplier, Mayo-Liz, to place my order. Her babies are still "on their Mums" at present so we need to wait while they wean. While we were at the livestock buying we also stuck in our order for turkeys from Sue and Rob. That should do us. We don't NEED any more chickens at the moment but if one of the girls were to go broody (stage whisper) we'd look kindly on her and give her a good clutch to sit on.

Snuffling

The pigs are in and well settled by now, all be it rather nervous and not piling in to food as much as I remember previous pairs have been. I am going through that stage of sitting quietly in there with them to get them used to me and they have started some very tentative approaches. They are nothing like as 'tame' as last year's; I guess because new breeder Adrian is not as hands on as our 2016 man, Dermot.

They do not polish off food anything like as keenly either, which is slightly worrying; I am not used to bowls still having some of last night's supper in when I turn up with breakfast. No need to panic yet, though - they are up and about, chasing around the paddock, bright of eye and curly of tail (straight tails are bad news on pigs; a sign of stress or unhappiness). No sign of 'scour' (diarrhoea) either - nice firm stools.

The River Lung at Feigh, as low, weedy and sluggish as anyone
can remember

Maybe they are just a bit out of sorts having been separated from their Mum (and in the case of 'Pride' also castrated on Sunday. He might be a bit sore still!). They may also be finding more natural food (incl. grass and herbs) in our wooded paddock than would have been the case in their bare field in Boyle. They may not need my offerings of commercial ration and apples. We'll have to see how we get on. More news on this in future posts.

Our hostas are doing well around the pond.

Our friend and neighbour down the lane finds himself tractor-less after the machine threw a sickie. One door is all bent out of shape after he got a bit close to a hedge while driving with it open and now it won't close. Also, his power-steering hydraulics have gone wonk to the point where they are quite lethal - there is a full half turn of steering wheel at the 'top' before any directional adjustment is detected at the tyres!

The lilacs are finally in flower after several
years of waiting patiently.

So that beast is in the menders and I am occasionally taxi once again as well as doing some runs out to check on the guy's animals. "Those down in the bog field", he advises. "How many should I be looking at?" I ask. He tells me there are 8 but I need to check whether this group include a bullock who has recently been treated for an eye infection. "So if I have 8 and no bad eyes, I'm OK then?", I ask. "Ah, sure, just rise 'em and make sure they all get up" he re-assures me. Easy.

Our young lime (Tilia) trees are doing well

I love these local expressions. The weed 'dock' is referred to as "dockin's" and last night's rain was "quite a good dash". You ask your neighbour whether he/she knows any new gossip or news with "Anything strange?" You often bid farewell with "Good luck, now"

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.

Chivers Marmalade

Love the old beans tin protecting the exhaust on this old
bog-hopper but I can't help thinking that protection is a bit
late in arriving.

One of those days today that seem to be so full of "stuff" that you get to the end and say, "Wow! That was quite a day!" For Liz too, though she managed hers totally out of synch with everybody else by pulling an all-nighter. Brexit of course with its BBC coverage all through the night as the results rolled in and hacked off at least 48% of the nation. The referendum is now done and dusted, of course, and you will know the result unless you have seriously been trying to avoid it. We are not sure what happens now and how it might affect us in Ireland either from the 'Brit living abroad' aspect or from the Northern Ireland border angle - all we really know is that David Cameron is baling out by the October Tory Conference and the replacement (BoJo? Gove?) will be left to lie in the 'bed' they have just made. Good luck with that, lads.

A picture for Liz's boss of one of the
planters currently being built by the
scheme lads, at Lough Glynn church.

Locally it meant that Liz stayed up all night to watch the results coming in and had taken today off work to recover, as is her normal wont at anything election-based (Ireland, UK or USA). This gave myself and Charlotte (of the mini horses) a clear field to put into action a cunning conspiracy which had been a few weeks in the planning. I have not been able to say anything on here yet, obviously, but the plan was to secretly find a new kitten and bring it home to Liz. The conspiracy had involved a number of friends all sworn to secrecy but all putting feelers out to find someone with kittens they were trying to re-home.

Marmalade kitten - "Chivers" of course (pic by Liz)

Our little mission over to Mayo-Liz's place to collect the Marans hatching-eggs bore fruit first as a volunteer-led rescue centre based around a Claremorris vet had suitable youngsters and the timing could not be better with Liz possibly needing cheering up after the Brexit thing. We managed to appear with kitten as she was waking up from her catch-up slumbers

Honeysuckle growing in our hedge - we didn't plant it.

She was as delighted as we were sure she would be so we got all brave and put Phase 2 into action. We had found out in Claremorris that this little marmalade lad was, in fact, one of a pair of 'left over' kittens, all that remained of a litter of 5, and by taking one we were splitting up 2 siblings. We guessed that when we told Liz this she would agree that we should take both, which she did, so a quick (pre-arranged) text to the vet's confirmed us returning to Claremorris tomorrow morning to gather up marmalade #2 and bring him/her back to his/her brother. We suspect these 2 marmalades will get named Chivers and 'Little Chip' (which unbeknownst to me is another brand of the orangey breakfast delight.) More pics in the next post; Chivers is not that keen on us yet or getting his pic taken and we don't want to stress him out.

Guinea Fowl 'Belvedere' shouts from
the top of our road gate.

The cat-wrangling, though, was fitted into a full day. K-Dub is now sporadically back from working in the big smoke, so I am back into the buildering. We are currently filling and sanding (K-Dub) and painting (me) the place. I had also taken my foot-trimming shears over with me so that we could trim the feet of the three goats, Billy, Nanny Óg and 'Henno' the kid (him for the first time). Then after all the cat-based fun I needed to run Charlotte back to Sligo but via nipping into Supervalue for kitten based supplies (kitty litter, food, kitten-milk, bowls) before whizzing home to do long-overdue dog exercising etc

You're a funny colour for a Buff Orpington chick. Are you SURE
you're one of mine?

On the calendar, not only was there written "Brexit Vote" and "Brexit Count" but also "Day 21 for box #4 Broody". This hen had done a marvellously consistent job sitting in her quiet nest box in the proper chicken coop (where they are ALL meant to lay and sit but the word does not seem to have gone round!). All around her hens were trying to sit on fresh air or getting hooshed off nests while other poultry wanted to lay eggs in the nest like a cuckoo, eggs were getting trampled and broken, or thrown out of nests with half-formed embryos in them.

Black babies. Nigel Farage would never approve.

Box #4 broody, once we had dropped in 3 blue eggs from Sue and Rob just to try her out, sat there serene and did the job properly for 21 days and came due on Brexit day. We think she hatched at least 2 of these on the day because those babies were buzzing around, as dry and fluffy as day-olds this afternoon. They look like they will definitely need letting out of the box (it has quite a high lip) tomorrow. They look quite cute in their black (Araucana) fluff next to their huge golden Mum. More pictures of these guys soon along with the kitten pics.

Pork Pies (A Passion for Pig)

Stately procession led by a vintage hearse. 

On Saturday an unusual commission for me from the 365 project; could I snatch a few pictures of the funeral of one Paddy Lavin (103), late of Ballaghaderreen and our local village, Lisacul. Not a proper invitation from the family, you understand (I knew them not), more a "you should come along to that; we're going". Well, I did it and I got some passable photo's but I felt very awkward doing it, and worried that I was intruding on the family's grief in a sensationalist, rather callous, journalistic way, sneaking around with a long-ish lens praying that I'd not get spotted, challenged or (worse still) invited in 'properly'. I would have died of embarrassment but I have been told since that that was silly, nobody would have minded and they would all have been quite proud to have been 'zapped' for the 365 project. Ah well, I guess I am not yet fully integrated into the local ways.

Pork Pie filling - shoulder pork, bacon rashers, apricots, sage,
allspice and nutmeg.

I was 'home alone' again over that weekend as Liz had headed off to Silverwood land to spend a few nights en famille and celebrating niece Em-J's 18th Birthday. They did the girl proud, it is reported and her 'special meal' of choice was "proper fish and chips like we had at Grandma Pollards (Todmorden) when we were narrow boating".

10 ml sheep-meds syringe (clean, obvs) used to inject trotter jelly
through the steam hole of the cooked pies.

That, we all remember, included, local (to Yorkshire) speciality 'dabs' - a thin but complete slice of potato covered in beer batter and deep fried, plus huge sausages for the non fish-eaters. No cooking challenge too great for Mrs S and the sous-chefs; it all looked delicious. There was also a 'grown-up' sherry trifle from Liz (no jelly, posh fruit soaked in orange juice, and custard made properly with eggs. Also a goodly quantity of cream. Bellies were groaning and many diners needed a lie-down. Liz stayed down there to recover and then, when it was time to return to these parts accepted a lift from Steak Lady and Auntie Mary who had both decided they would quite like another 'sleep-over' here.

The finished pie with a dollop of Liz's mango chutney. 

While they were all gone and I had the kitchen to myself I decided to try a recipe I had been looking at for a while, that for 'proper' Melton Mowbray style pork pies. These are made with a special "hot water crust" pastry and are injected after cooking, with that greyish jelly that aficionados of pies love to have, cold and solid in their pies. I went with a recipe from our Johnnie Mountain cookery book, "Cooking with a Passion for Pig". I had trotters in the freezer from 2015 and hauled a shoulder joint out of the freezer to thaw so that I could lop off the required 7 ounces of lean before slow-roasting the rest for that day's supper.

A lazy cop-out day on the home-alone menu - pizza and a beer. 

I was delighted with the results which not only looked great but were delicious. Unfortunately in our big muffin tin, the recipe only made 6 pies and I only got to eat 2 of them - I was so proud of them that I was inflicting them on any passers-by and drop-in visitors ("Here - you have GOT to try these!"). Liz and the sleep-over ladies used up the last of them at lunchtime on Tuesday and I have been instructed in no uncertain terms to make them again, only with 3 times the recipe so you make 18. I will need 2 more muffin tins for this. We only own one. I have also been toying with the idea of making those pies with egg up the middle (Gala pies?) so I suppose I could use one of the bigger loaf tins instead of little muffin trays.

Soft goat's cheese with an interesting
"spongy" effect, like bread but the holes
were, of course, filled with whey, not air.

I also came by another 6 litres of the goats milk from Sue and Rob, so I tried another version of the cheese, called simply "soft goat's cheese" in our (Strawbridge) book. This recipe was a piece of cake to follow - warm the milk to 30ºC, add starter and rennet, leave 12 hours at room temperature to curdle, scoop curds into cheese-cloth/colander, hang up to drain for 12 more hours. It worked well and tastes correct but when I had finished draining it and took it down to cut it open, I was curious to find it had a spongy texture and looked a bit like bread - full of spherical cavities.

I had seen these cavities when scooping my curds across (at which point they were filled with whey, of course) but assumed they would collapse as the curds drained leaving me with a professional looking, rather fudgy textured, solid-ish cheese. The recipe says nothing about cutting up the curds before scooping them, or pressing the cheese, though it does say that you can do the draining in a cheese mould which you would turn over a couple of times during the 12 hours. Both the cutting and the moulding (and certainly the pressing) might help to deflate this cheese for next time but this time I will just mash it into plastic pots or boxes before I refrigerate. We are also getting a bit over-run with cheese so I have put a chunk of this one into the freezer to see if it can realistically be frozen and thawed without damage.

The neighbour's cattle. 

Nothing else to report except that my attempts to get nice significant pictures for 365 of the Solstice sunset (20th at 22:00) and sunrise (21st at 05:00) both failed as ugly grey cloud banks obscured the sun both times and gave us no colours at all except slate grey. Also, more cheerfully, we have now secured our dozen hatching eggs of Marans chickens, which are now in the incubator, due to hatch on around the 12th July. These came from our sheep-supplier, Mayo-Liz's farrier, who is called Roy, via the lady herself. I nipped out to their place with Charlotte who wanted to see Liz again after a long gap.

Roe deer (I think) in the local deer farm.

It turns out that Mayo-Liz may be down-sizing the livestock operation including selling some of the horses and most of the sheep which means that she may be trying to find "nice homes" for a couple of elderly ladies who have been more like pet ewes than any commercial sheep. We already have sheep of 7 and 9 years old and these two may be even older but are still sound and pushing out single lambs each year even though technically retired. I am tempted. I find I love these gentle old girls and we could probably absorb 2 more without too much trouble.

I am thinking about it. Maybe I am going soft in my old age, myself.

Allowed Out

On the fourth day, Mayo-Liz decrees that the new lamb should be allowed out of the Maternity Unit (we'll give it the proper name of 'bonding pen', where you keep Mum and lamb in close proximity to make sure lamb gets a good dose of colostrum and the pair get well bonded before being released into the bigger field where they might get separated now and again). Saturday morning, then , we were delighted to find that the recent burst of vile wind and rain was done, the warm air-mass shouldered aside by some cold air; we had blue skies, little wind and bright, drying sunshine. We pulled the pallet 'gate' out of the way and carried the lamb at ewe-nose height across the yard, closely followed by both ewes, setting the lamb down in the shelter in the East Field to get his bearings (and snatching a few pictures).

You are advised to keep the indoor time to an absolute minimum. Sheep man Kenny actually does not do it at all - he lambs out of doors with just big round bales dropped into the field for protection from the wind. I assume he is fox proof. Although you are doing everyone a favour in terms of warmth, dryness and safety from the fox, what you are also doing is potentially upsetting the sheep by enclosing them in entirely new and unfamiliar surroundings with a complete change of diet - green grass to hay and 'nuts'. In our case, even the 'nuts' were changed because it coincided with me running out of the old left-over "fast sheep crunch" and moving onto ewe-and-lamb ration. These abuses can upset the sheep's digestion and lead to diarrhoea (sheep-folk call this 'scour(s)' ) and Lily was, indeed, starting to scour in the pen, so needed to be got back out onto grass.

Well, the move all went well and all three sheep seemed to be delighted at the new space. The lamb, we had only seen moving around in the 8 foot square of the pen, so we were delighted at his speed and agility once released into the field; no problem keeping up with his Mum. He looks, to us, a fine, healthy lad and Charlotte (who knows a lot more about sheep than we do) also pronounced him fit and strong. He is 'big' anyway on account of being a singleton (no twin to share the space with) and will now benefit from all that milk to himself and Hampshires are known to be good milkers. He seems to have enormous feet anyway, if that is anything to go by!

The clear, dry skies, though, were not to last the morning and the forecast predicted that we would get bands of snow-squall cloud through the afternoon. I checked with Mayo-Liz that this release, once achieved, did not have to be permanent and it would be alright to round everybody back up at 'bed time'. She thought that a perfect solution (we have all seen enough film of poor Welsh mountain sheep farmers digging their flock out of snow drifts). The gang are on a day-release programme, then, shepherded out in the morning and back at 4 pm, like the geese for a few days. We have put off the brave hour of letting them stay out over night. We may be being ridiculously soft. We had a few flurries of snow but it came to nothing.

Lily motoring down the field with Feste keeping up easily.

The 2nd ewe, Polly seems happy to stay 'Auntie' at present and is keeping her gunpowder dry. We are fairly sure, based on the comment Mayo Liz made that she was immediately very keen to see the (proper) 'tup' (ram) in November that she had not been got at like Lily. There is a good expression locally to describe ladies of loose morals  "Ah, she's no better than she should be!" and that is now how Lily gets described but I say it takes two to tango.

There you have it then for this post - all quiet, the way we like it. Maybe Polly will go the distance to the end of March and it will all break out again but it never does to count your chickens before they hatch. Lily is sorted on the scours.

Brush Up Your Shakespeare

Guzzling Mum's colostrum.

Our little "miracle baby" is thriving so far and this morning he was amusing himself with some first of those springing jumps off all 4 feet, that they do. He is alone so far and, unless his 'Aunt' Polly was also 'got at' by the youngsters with whom these ladies were running up till Aug/Sept, then he'll presumably have to wait till March 25th to get any playmates - he'll be looking a bit less lamb-like by then, all being well. We will just have to see he gets extra fuss and TLC so that he doesn't miss that side of life. He has already had his first admirer come visit, a friend from down the lane brought her 8 year old daughter for a look and a cuddle.

A 12th-Night clown?

But what to name him? We had put out on the usual internet discussion group circuit that we needed a name which might evoke any of the following: Surprise, very early, unexpected, wind-blown wet acres or even first-born. They'd only come up with 'Heathcliffe' (from the windy-wet thing) but then I spotted that the little guy had actually been born on Twelfth Night at which Liz's ears pricked up!

Liz is this family's literature expert and learnéd well-read Shakespeare scholar so she was straight into the Bard's play 'Twelfth Night'  and found the name of the clown/jester character, which is 'Feste' (I am told you pronounce this 'Festay'). I have to confess to not knowing this play well but we do have a DVD of the Trevor Nunn film version starring Helena Bonham Carter. Richard E Grant, Nigel Hawthorne, Mel Smith, Imogen Stubbs and, as Feste himself, Sir Ben Kingsley, no less. I love this film  and I can remember that the clown has a regular, repeated singing part which goes...

"Hey, ho, the wind and the rain, and the rain it raineth every day"

That seemed particularly appropriate for our little lamb just now; it seems to have rained every day since I managed to scrabble in the last of the spud harvest. As I was harvesting I was looking about me mentally listing all the other garden jobs that need doing (mainly tidying, cutting down raspberries and so on). I have been able to do none of these! Feste he is then. He is indoors today but, weather permitting, the family will get some outdoor exercise tomorrow, (Maternity Unit Matron) Mayo Liz has advised "Saturday or Sunday".

We have also been having some fun in a related area suggesting I might need to "Brush up (my) Shakespeare" which you may know is a very good song from the musical Kiss me Kate and given to some devilish rhyming as the song builds on the theme that the way to successfully charm your gal is to quote at her from the Bard

Just declaim a few lines from Othella
And they'll think you're a hell of a fella
If your blonde won't respond when you flatter 'er
Tell her what Tony told Cleopatterer

and

With the wife of the British ambessida
Try a crack out of Troilus and Cressida
If she says she won't buy it or tike it
Make her tike it, what's more As You Like It

(Ah well, maybe you had to be there! - if you fancy a listen to a good 'original' try

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-CSb3Xe06s

or similar)

It stains well, this lamb-medicine. Apparently it is how proper
shepherds recognise one another in shop queues and pubs; either
brown of iodine or the purple of foot rot spray!

Meanwhile, even though pinned down indoors by the rain, work goes on. Our chum JD Bob is a bit under the weather lately with flu so I was down there yesterday on cattle feeding duties, shoveling wads of silage to his indoor-housed twenty bullocks (always amused by the fact that locally "cows/cattle" means just the females, so if you ask a farmer does he have cattle, you are likely to get the trip-up answer, 'I don't; I only have weanlings and bullocks') I have also started culling out the young Buff Orpington roosters who have started to cause trouble with their battling with each other and aggression towards the smaller of our existing adult hens. Liz is plucking and dressing the first one even as I type this. Being a big breed, these guys are not fully grown even though they are at 22/23 weeks, so they make rather small carcasses (certainly compared to the meaty Hubbards we were doing most recently!). The first went 'oven ready' at 1.984 kg. Not bad.

Polly and Lily

In a shed, awaiting collection.

At last I get the phone call from Mayo Liz to say that my ewes are ready, separated from the flock, shut into their shed and waiting for collection. The original plan had been to collect them back in early December but this plan was scuppered by Mayo-Liz having to put in some extra pre-Christmas shifts and the husband and son(s) who had been about to help handle the sheep and separate off my two were always 'on a roof' (one son is a roofer) or 'taken to his bed' (which can mean ANYthing in Ireland).

The shepherds outnumber the sheep here - 4 people help
to 'gently' load the precious and delicate cargo.

We had to wait through Christmas in a sheep-less condition and I was beginning to despair of getting them before New Year. On our trip down to Silverwood's to do our present exchange, Christmas visit and consumption of a superb roast beef rib lunch laid on my Steak Lady, I had taken to jokingly shout "I want my sheeps!" which just had Liz helpfully pointing out all the fields of sheep on the 2 hour drive... "Look! He's got HIS sheep.... and so has he!" etc.

Safely home to Co Roscommon, Polly on the left, Lily
on the right. 

Today I was happily going about other business - actually doing a bit of logging in the 'apiary' (bee hive paddock) taking advantage of the frost to keep the bees hunkered down in the winter cluster and not keen to come out and investigate the buzz and bark of the chain saw. They stayed put as I was 95% sure they would, but when you are using a chain saw it is best to have 100% concentration on not chopping your leg off, not 95% watching for that and 5% keeping an eye on the hive entrance to see if anyone sticks an antenna out. We survived anyway.

Sad wet slew of Buff Orp feathers.

There was one other drama before the call - I spotted a sorry tuft of buff coloured feathers in the East Field and rushed to count my 'Baker's Dozen' young buffs, already down to 12 after a natural-causes death. Only Ten! Liz came out and helped me do a search and she found a suspicious animal track through the frost diagonally across to the eastern fence, where a sad wet slew of more feathers told the tale, Brer Fox had snatched at least one but I have to admit to not having counted them in or out last night, so I cannot say whether this was yesterday or the day before. I then took the dogs for a walk and when nearly home saw a big dog fox on McG's lawn (neighbour) which then nipped through a hedge, crossed the lane in front of us (the dogs were trying to dislocate my arm by then!) and loped off down to the lough. This in broad daylight at roughly mid day. Later, Bob told us he had also seen a fox yesterday and he could clearly see something pale in its mouth, which he thought was a hare but could well have been our other missing young hen. We think that these birds may have been snatched on separate days and possibly both in the East Field where at least the chooks will not now be able to go with the sheep gate closed but we will be upping the patrols and outdoor activity and double checking the evening lock-downs. I will also wait till full daylight before releasing the birds in the morning, I've been letting them out at 08:30 when it is still fairly gloomy here. These things happen, I guess, in a fully free range system. Annoyingly, it is 2 hen birds that our red bushy-tail chum has taken - why couldn't he grab a young cockerel? - they are coming up to the age where we need to cull them out anyway!

Lily takes off down the field.

Anyway, we got our call, I fired up Charlotte of the Mini-Horses (who wanted to go with us), and we headed for Mayo Liz's place with the trailer. We had a nice long chat, tea and biscuits, did all the paperwork and reversed the trailer up to the shed. You have to be gentle with these pregnant ones, they told us, so we stood back a bit and let the 'experts' at it. This looked to involve a rugby scrum with 2 bodies hanging onto and steering each ewe - they weren't going ANYWHERE but my trailer. We bade each other farewell and very gently drove home before unloading the sheep into our field - no man handling this time - we dropped the ramp and stood back blocking exits while the ewes slowly and warily explored the ramp and then the field entrance. We gently swung the gate shut behind them and there we were. I have since nipped in to photograph the new girls and we will now leave them to settle. The names, Polly (for the darker, Jacob x Hampshire Down) and Lily (for the pale, Suffolk x Hampshire) were provided by a literary chum of Liz's. When we were buying them and needing names back in October, she spotted that it was the 100th Anniversary of the birth of Dylan Thomas (27th Oct 1914) so decided we should name them for the entertaining "leading ladies" in 'Under Milk Wood', Polly Garter and Lily Smalls. We wanted names evocative of fecund female good health, appetite for... um.... loving, and easy production of babies. Polly and Lily it is then, Good Luck ladies, may you by now be successfully in lamb and 'cooking' ready to lamb in late March or early April.