Enough Foxes, Already!

I promised you a few pics of us scrubbed up for the wedding.
Here are a couple taken by other guests and posted on
Facebook, l-r Liz, Mr and Mrs S and the author.

I am thinking I may have been obsessing on our fox issue lately and the blog has become "all about the fox". Vulpes vulpes and his/her kin have rather taken over to the detriment of stories on all the other many aspects of this story of a small holding. Our foxy adventures may also have taken over the village with even wife of Mike-the-Cows reporting to us a fox she saw "by the bridge near the crossroads".

Liz and I with J-M (left) and Em-J (right)

John Deere Bob was down at his kesh (a concrete bridge over a drainage stream), half a mile downstream from ours, this morning and reported "so many fox tracks in the snow" as well as rabbit tracks, hare prints and pheasants. "There must have been half a dozen foxes", he declared, "there were so many I'm amazed they'd not 'swept up' all the rabbits!" Even Mentor Anne is riffing in the comment section of my last post that the place is "teeming" with foxes. The word must have gone out that we are running a "Fox MacDonalds" Enough, I say! I will make no more comment on the fox story unless something amazing happens, at least not for a while.

I quite liked this rather bizarre one.

You, the reader, will know there is all sorts going on behind the scenes (sightings, hunts, killing, insults and mild effronts and even (gasp) the blackening of names) but I will , from now, only post up the body count as a post-script.... Fox #2..... Bridget Jones style, when/if it changes. I will leave you with just one of JD Bob's tongue in cheek pearls of foxy wisdom. Chickens, pheasants and any other bird, he tells us, are safe as houses at night from Brer Fox because they perch in trees. Not so (allegedly) the turkey. Bob, in one of those stories he has told us several times as he sometimes forgets he has already shared it, says that the fox knows to walk round and round the turkey's tree so that the turkey, looking down and trying to keep his eye on the fox, twists his neck round and round. The turkey then gets dizzy and falls off the perch into the waiting jaws of the fox. "Did you ever hear that?" says Bob as his cheeks and eyes crinkle up and he rubs his hands together, chuckling his breathy giggle. That's it. No more fox-bore.

I like a good drive on snow - always have since I was a young fan of Motor Rallying. I enjoy the (rather tame) risky feel of barely having grip and feeling the starts of mild slides on corners, quickly corrected of course (this is the family car on standard tyres, after all!) and knowing that you need to drive with extra anticipation and alertness. I love the headlights peircing the gloom and the optical illusion of the 'star-field' of blizzard flakes parting in front of the car to whizz by all around your 'trajectory'. I had some fun, then, last night, heading for 'Bee School' in Longford in the dark. There was a good covering of snow on the minor roads all up through Moyne and Fairymount to French Park, though the main roads from French Park were clear on the outward journey. On the way back I met a blizzard between Termonbarry and Strokestown and there was laid snow on some of those bends from Strokestown back through Ballinagare. All good fun.

Our first goose egg of 2015. The 'use first'
egg is a first from a chicken with a soft
shell one end.

This 'Bee School' is my studies towards the Intermediate "Written Practical" exam at the end of March. Written in that it is a written paper, 'Practical' because questions will be on practical hive/apiary tasks and management, honey extraction etc, as opposed to the 'scientific' paper which is on bee biology, anatomy, diseases, honey chemistry and all that jazz. This is a whole different ball game to last year's 'Preliminary' paper which was an easy, entry level, half hour, 20 questions, single (or few). word answers. Name 3 major parts of the bee's body (head, thorax, abdomen). Name 4 substances bees bring back to the hive (nectar, pollen, propolis and water). What is the main problem with honey from oilseed rape and heather? (It sets hard quickly in the comb).

The kitchen gets knocked about a bit.

This paper is 3 hours long, 5 questions of at least half an hour of writing asking for lots of detail on (for example) aspects of a main disease (hive signs, symptoms, effects, risks, legal side (i.e. is it reportable), remedies, apiary recovery). It's going to be fun - the pressure is on. Liz has opted out of this one; she is happy to own just the Preliminary Certificate and slowly build up her knowledge and experience hands-on in our own hive(s)

Our other news is two simple bits. The plumber has come and installed the new dish washer, which involved also swinging the sink round by 90º to 'look' out of the kitchen window at the setting sun. We have just about managed to get the fridge back in, which looked likely to need a new home in the corner of the Dining Room for a while. Liz ran the washer for the first time last night and is delighted with it. She won't mind me admitting that I have always been a bit jaundiced about these machines and my default setting would be to do the washing up by hand; in my head I see them using more water and energy than you need and pumping out more waste chemicals but Liz has long dreamed of this day and she's just handed me a drink, so I will keep quiet on this one! Meanwhile, I had a nice surprise  this afternoon when I spotted a goose egg in the nest compartment, our first of 2015. We may have 4 females this year (one is a bit 50/50 at present and may prove to be a gander) so we should do OK for eggs. We are not allowing any broodiness in geese this year as we don't want any more goslings.

Out-Foxed

Hubbard chicks at Day 21

Either our bushy tailed red 'friend' got wind of our evil intentions for him or he's way too cunning and wise to return to the same place the morning after when you might be waiting for him. He has failed to show on the last 2 mornings and the dogs have had neither scent nor sound of him and none of us have seen him. Nor did Mike the Cows who came to check on his cattle with a shot gun (broken) under his arm see anything.

All cleaned up, his fighting days done.
Our current alpha-male, Buffers.

Mike tells me that strolling around at 06:30 is no way to 'get' your fox anyway. You never see the chap, never mind get time to un-break, aim and fire. 'Round here' they would tend to go out as a gun club of a night 'lamping'; using powerful searchlights mounted on 4 x 4 trucks and shooting the yellow reflective pairs of eyes. It is unpopular though and many residents object to the engines and gun shot noise in the fields at night, so the more common method is to set snares (they say 'shnares' here). Mike happily explained this all to me, telling me where I could get good 'shnares' for 'a fiver' and how to set them in the little nip-through holes that Mr Fox uses in the hedgelines; preferably where there is a drop down so that the fox, having caught his neck in your wire, then hangs by his neck on your shnare over the drop with his feet unable to touch the ground. Nice.

Goldie's kittens are now exploring the grass. 

Well, I am sorry, but I am not about to start snaring (or even shnaring) any kind of animal. I do not mind despatching them in a quick and clean way, but the thought of a fox being slowly throttled from 8pm or so when I set the snare, to 6 am when I check them does not sit well with me. I suspect even Mike may be spinning me a yarn about how frequently they use these deadly methods. He has told me on another occasion that he bought his gun (which looks like a good one, though I've no idea really) 8-9 years ago for €2200 and has only fired it about 10 times in that period. Also that unless your cows with calves are well used to the gun noise (and he suggested that very few are) then they get really upset by the noisy intrusion. No over-loaded gibbet of corpses dripping fresh blood there then!

These later quince flowers only got a little wind-burned

So 'our' fox remains at large and seems to be staying away, at least during daylight hours. I did see him today, however, nipping across our lane at 4pm in front of my dog-walk, so we are not complacent and we are being very careful to lock everybody down as early as we can get away with it. We wonder whether he might be able to explain the disappearance of 'Blondie' but he's not coming forward to volunteer his testimony.

'Goz-1' on his hot water bottle before we rigged the heat lamp.

Meanwhile, I left you at the previous post (in a comment, anyway) with our first hatch of a gosling. This should be an exciting and happy time but sometimes these things do not go quite to plan. I had a dream of a little row of a dozen goslings following Mum to the pond for a sunny photo-shoot. Sadly we have only had the one so far (despite Black Feather and her original 12 eggs now being 8 days overdue; of which more in a later post) and that one has been ignored by the Mum and Aunt.

It floats!

We did not see them actually eject it from the nest, but they were definitely not helping it back in, so twice on its 2nd day we had to rescue it and try to return it (which got us soundly hissed at and pecked by the sitters, though they did 'allow' the baby back in to the nest edge but did not draw it back into their warm skirts). The third time it was shivering in a corner, so we rescued it and Liz had the idea of sneaking it under the broody Buff hen. That seemed to work.

Cuckoo Marans 'hin' strolls on the lawn.

We fancied we could see a new contented look come over her face as the unaccustomed warm wriggling form moved under her breast. I sat and watched for half an hour and then all seemed to be well; we left them to get to know one another. Half an hour later though, he was out on his ear again and this time Mrs Buff was not letting him back, and she tried to peck him. Well, now we were out of birdy options, so to cut a long story short he is in the brooder box under a heat lamp and we are trying to hand rear him. Thank you to Anne for the advice on this one - there is plenty to worry about.

Evening, 3 Westie romp in the orchard

If your 'chick crumb' feed is medicated for coccidiosis (many brands are) then it can be lethal to waterfowl. (Ours isn't, luckily). You need to worry about the baby 'imprinting' on you the human, thinking you are parent and then not being able to socialise properly with geese. We seem to have got away with that one - this baby spent the vital first day and a half in the goose house and met both females and George the gander. Today we showed him to George while safe inside his crate and the pair bonded gently through the bars - George seeming to be 'showing' Goz-1 how to pull and eat grass and chuntering at him, Goz-1 trying to touch beaks with 'Dad' through the wire. No-one tried to kill anyone else. It was a touching scene.

The old apple tree almost swamped by the beech and ash.

We are hoping that if more goslings hatch we might be able to sneak him back into the clutch. It can also help to suspend a mop head over the pen so he can sneak under and feel like he is being mothered. Ah well. He is drinking plenty of water and from today (his day 3) taking plenty of food from a tea spoon and from the ground, so there is more hope currently than there was when we rescued the little mite, his pathetic body wracked with spasms of shivering, while still wobbling in that half-co-ordinated way baby birds have who are still too young to have left the nest-bowl yet and should be just flopping around between the unhatched eggs, all warm under their Mum.

Hairpin bend in the apple tree trunk, the 'elbow' leaning
on the big ash. Bottom arrow shows main trunk. 

It's not all worry, mind. We have made a rather nice discovery. An old apple tree dating from TK Max's day, right down on our North border by a collapsed corrugated iron toilet-shed, is in bloom! This tree was first remembered by John Deere Bob is a gnarly old bent and ancient thing. Only about 8 feet 'tall' it actually has a main trunk perhaps 15 feet long but it grows from a bank almost horizontally till it leans an 'elbow' on a big ash tree and turns back droopily to get its branches and foliage almost back into our new pig-patch. This tree was so bent and broken looking that we assumed it was lost in the hedge, 'buried' under beech and ash growth and well over-topped by the black spruce. But today Liz found blossom on it, so we wonder whether it might bear fruit and, even if we can't rescue this tree, we might be able to take a scion and graft it onto a root-stock to save the DNA and the potentially old variety. Perhaps this old fellow has out-foxed its historic, neglectful human keepers?

Put Salt on His Tail

It's a hullabaloo from my dog 'Towser' which has us suddenly wide awake at 06:30 on Saturday. The window sills are low enough upstairs for a small dog to jump up onto them and we let him keep vigil up there where he can see out across the front lawn out out of the back where he can see across the orchard. The other two dogs were joining in from the bed and floor - something was amiss in the front garden. It was a fox! A big, fully grown, fit and healthy looking animal standing bold as brass in the middle of the front lawn looking about him, not 30 yards from Ginny's and Goldie's rabbit runs. Both of them were out in their wire mesh bits looking back. I had enough time to call Liz over to look before I flicked one of the front windows open, which startled him into a lope off across the grass and out of the front gate into the lane.

I was wide awake by then so I got the dogs all onto leads and we went out on a 'patrol' and the dogs were going ballistic trying to get on the scent and the smell was obviously everywhere; they were pulling this way and that in zig-zags trying to be everywhere at once, noses to the ground, anxious to be "there" first even if they did not know where "there" should be. But Mr Fox had scarpered by then and I doubt whether my short-legged crew would keep up with a fleeing fox across these fields and hedges which he would know but mine would not. We ticked it off to experience, thanked Heaven that our birds and rabbits are locked up safe at night, and didn't really think any more about it. Later that day I even went on line to record the fox's existence on the Bio-Diversity database.

Generally, given that we are fully free range here, we are both amazed at how few (touch wood) big predators we have seen in the 2 years we have been here. No mink so far and just the one very young looking fox a year ago which fled at the sight of me and was never seen again. I have been told that it was probably a young cub leaving 'home' and trying to find a territory of his own. We lost just one of the original Sussex Ponte hens within weeks of first getting them and that when we sat talking indoors late into the dark evening and didn't know to lock everybody up at dusk. We are amazed and delighted that we have not really had a fox problem, when we are sure they must be about. Until now, maybe?

This morning he/she was back. No hullabaloo this time - the fox was undetected by the dogs but as I took them out for their first 'patrol' (I walk them round the place on leads to do their toilet because otherwise they would be away through a hedge, totally out of control, harassing the neighbours' calves or worse) I spotted out of the corner of my eye, the fox's russet shape nip along the side of the pond and out into Vendor-Anna's 5 acre field. He looked like he was coming from our yard up the cattle race, and this was 07:30 this time and broad daylight. The dogs, hidden down below the wall had not seen him and only discovered his presence by scent when we got round that far on our walk. I could see him again in the 5-acres obviously not having run off that far yet, but seeing me again he turned towards the bog field and, I thought, fled.

I hoped he was away home to his earth. I finished my patrol and started to do my feed and release of chickens and geese, hopeful that now he really had gone, but was appalled and surprised, 10 minutes later, to see his tall narrow triangular red profile just outside the front garden gate into the lane, sitting there as if somebody had trained him (...and SIT!), peering in at me. Liz, now awake upstairs had seen him too. I headed for the gate and lane but he now did flee and I could see no more of him in the lane. We've been around all day and we are sure he's not been back, but it's a nervous time.

Our nearest 'man-with-gun' happens to be Mike-the-Cows (who is also, according to Bob, a member of the local gun club) and I was reasonably sure this is his week on the cattle minding. The three brothers rotate the task week-about. I texted him to tell him about our fox and invited him to come and take a pot one of these early mornings. By then it was quarter to 8, so Mike replied with "Yes, it's a bit late this morning but I will put salt on his tail tomorrow morning". This expression struck a chord and tickled me, bringing back from childhood long forgotten memories of, I thought, possibly a childhood book. I could even see in my mind's eye, an illustration of a small boy chasing after a chicken, trying to pour salt on its tail though I couldn't for the life of me remember why. I was especially intrigued at how such a long forgotten image could be a phrase still used by the local farmers.

Step forward, Google. Liz tracked down the expression which gets frequently discussed on 'childhood memory' sites and 'things I used to believe'. It is a thing many people can remember being told as children by grand parents - if you chase a chicken (or other birds and animals depending on whose memory it is) and can manage to pour salt onto its tail it will stop running and you can catch it. John Deere Bob remembers it as you having to pour salt on the cat's tail to make it run away. In the course of all this internet searching I also remembered that it was not, in fact a book, but was the logo on a table salt pot. I thought 'Saxa' but we have now nailed it as 'Cerebos' table salt, where the 'see how it runs' is not only a reference to the chicken chasing but also (It's all coming back to me now!) to how freely Cerebos salt flows from the shaker. Ah, the nostalgia.

Brooding goose eggs in stereo.

Meanwhile, far from simplifying things in the goose brooding department with a nice, final and decided hatch, we are, sadly back in the world of confusion and uncertainly. This is Day 38 for the proper first batch of 12 eggs, brooded so well and faithfully by Black Feather, so we are past the expected hatch date and into waiting patiently and leaving well alone. We know that the other female goose (Smudge) is both getting 'trodden' by the gander and laying eggs into the nest at night, but we have not wanted to disturb the sitter this late, so we decided to wait for the hatch, when we'd then be able to have a good old clear out, rescue the more recent eggs and clean up. No such luck. This morning, Smudge decided to go broody too on the same nest, so we now have 2 geese sitting on an indeterminate number of eggs, some 38 days 'cooked', some for fewer days. The Gander is out in the rain on his own in the orchard. We are now very uncertain of the future. We hope the old eggs will still hatch whereupon both mothers will proudly put 'their' babies on display (as they did last year), abandon the rest and we can clear up and Smudge will wonder at the 'express' hatch rate - 2-3 days on the eggs and, look!, I already have goslings! Or we may have to wait till day 48 or so and the give up on the original 12 eggs, junk them and let the girls carry on with any newer eggs for what Black Feather will surely think is a marathon sitting session. We were going to get it right this year but it seems we have lost the plot once again.

Up at the Crack of Sparrow's

This morning I have an alarm set (rare these days!) and I'm up at the crack of sparrow's while the morning is still cool, to put in a solid hour of weeding in the poly-tunnel. That is just not possible in this sweltering heatwave. I was all done by 07:00 and able to release the chickens, move, water and shade the rabbits and put the geese in the orchard by about quarter to 8 before sliding back in to bed to wake up 'normally' at a sensible time and bring Liz up her 'tay'. Other than that impressive burst of heat-avoiding labour, I achieved precious little today, taking my Old Father Time scythe to some nettles, gathering up our second batch of made hay and a bit of weeding among the spuds later on when the hedge gave me some shade.

My little hay-making efforts are made laughable by the outside activities which are announced by a roar so loud we think that maybe Knock Airport have sneakily extended their runway, and a Boeing jet has landed in Vendor Anna's field over the road. No. The "contractors" have arrived to roar, crash and bang a field into hay for Mike the Cows. It's all BIG equipment compared to what I have known and worked with; big powerful tractors which make an impressive racket when revved up to power the big hay-tedders, balers and wrappers.

I understand that this is something called 'haylage' they are making. The silage is mowed, left to wilt for just a night, then baled green and still fairly damp, so it is baled tight to exclude air and wrapped airtight so that instead of rotting it does (I think; though I do not really know silage; we only ever made hay) a short ferment to use up the oxygen, and then is preserved by its internal chemistry till the winter when it is needed. This haylage is much dryer, so it has to be dried and tossed about with the tedder for a couple of hot sunny days before baling.

As well as the heat, dust and noise, the roar of revving diesel engines and the caterpillar-track noise of the baler belts and the booming clang of the back hatch opening to eject the completed bale, we are impressed by the sheer speed of the operation. This field is only 2 acres or so, but the convoy rolls up, roars about for less than an hour and then moves on to the next field leaving a naked 'aftermath' and a tidy row of wrapped round bales. Quiet, tranquil country sounds, though, they are not!

As our pond is intended to be a wildlife pond, we are always delighted when a new species turns up and today we were really pleased to 'get' our first dragon fly. He seems to be quite happy and gives the impression of having taken over, thank you very much. He rests on the top of a pond-side hosta flower-spike and then flies circuits around the pond and, later, the front lawn. He was settled enough for me to snatch a couple of pictures using the 200 mm lens, so I was able to post these on the Facebook pages for Irish Wildlife and for Kent Wildlife Trust asking for an expert ID. Both came back very quickly with the answer that he is a male 4-spot 'Chaser', (Libellula quadrimaculata) so I have added him to the Irish Bio-Diversity data base for our map reference.

But now it is 9 pm and I must nip out and shut my Marans hens up, who are still the last to go to bed. Liz is out at 'Knit and Natter' with Carolyn and back soon. In other news we now have a date for the arrival of our lambs, the last week in August. This means that the holiday here that the three lovely mini-horses have been enjoying, growing fat and sleek on Roscommon grass must come to an end. One of them, Bob, does not get on with sheep, apparently and tries to run them over and, anyway, our poor, shaved grass needs a few weeks to recover between the horses and the sheep. Carolyn has agreed to take them away by the end of July. We'll be sad to see them go as they have been excellent fun; they are great characters as well as being very picturesque and a beautiful sight grazing the front lawn or galloping madly round the East Field in the early morning dew. Still, once we are through to December and the lambs 'finished', maybe they can come back for another holiday.

Goldie's Due Day

Pregnancy day 31 for our big, meat breed doe, Goldie, a cross between a Flemish Giant and a Californian white, now mated to another meat breed buck. Right on cue she has started plucking out her belly fur to line the nest; there are small piles of it in the run and the hutch is white with it. This is usually all you see and, as we have said before, you are wise if you do not go exploring further as the doe may eat the babies if put under stress. Our approach is just to leave well alone for at least 2 weeks and wait for babies to start exploring and come into view that way.

My second pic is of Goldie 'upstairs' in the hutch with a great tuft of white fur in her mouth, looking like she has a beard. We think she is nesting upstairs and ignoring my nice downstairs nest box. Last time we changed the hay up there (a few days ago) she suddenly stopped using that room as the latrine and changed to poo-ing outside on the grass, which is much more convenient. This, we are told, may be another sign as rabbits generally keep the nest very clean. So, roll on 2 weeks or so, and the 27th.

After that scare a couple of days back where gosling No 6 vanished for 2 hours, we thought we were having Déjà Vu this morning. I let the 8 young chickens out as usual and fed them. There was then a fair amount of noise and excitement as Mike the Cows and his brother(s) came up to round up the group of 20+ cows and calves to walk them down the lane for sorting out the sell animals for today's mart in Castlerea. We had vehicles, men shouting, cattle scampering about in the next door field and up and down the lane. When I went to look again I could see only 2 of the 8 chickens, one of the dark buffs and a light one, happily scratching on the new bed but lacking their 6 companions. These 8 have formed such a tight group that you only ever see them all together like a tight-knit street gang. 'Only 2' spelt trouble!

I started searching but as I checked more and more areas I started to fear the worst. I could hear in my head a post one of the poultry keepers had posted on our discussion website yesterday about a disastrous fox attack which had lost him 20-30 rare and unusual ducks. His son had left a gate ajar. I was clinging to the fact that I had found no feathers, no carcasses or evidence, plus that there had been no noise from dogs or geese and, anyway, I doubted that a fox or a mink would come visiting while all the cattle racket and men shouting was going on and calmly stash 6 fully-feathered (i.e. not wing clipped or pinioned) poults into his carrier bag undetected. But where were they?

Liz came out too, and we started even checking sheds etc in case they'd wandered in and the wind had blown a door shut on them. Liz was even heading for the caravan to check when I saw all 6 stroll back through the field gate from the cattle field. Imagine our immense relief as the 6 reunited with the 2 and the 8 went back to gang-mode. We imagine that they became separated during the cattle move but, like with Gosling 6, we will never know. This time it had a happy ending.

Unfortunately I need to report a sad story, this time for our two sick goslings down in the 'hospital' at Carolyn's, 'Lucky' and 'Dip'. The ladies had become very concerned for these 2. Lucky, as he got heavier was becoming more and more unable to use his left leg, the one damaged when the gander (?) hurled him a cross the room on that first day of hatch. He now sat on his breast with his leg sticking out behind, unable to walk, and shuffled himself along the floor, pushing on the other leg. His sibling was able to walk but had one foot all curled round like a Chinese bound-foot and had very unco-ordinated control of his neck and head. Charlotte had been persevering mercifully with his physio-swims but he could not swim unaided and he still tired so that his neck would then flop his face under water.

I went down to check them today. Poor little mites were obviously quite happy and oblivious, cuddled up together, the best of buddies in their rabbit hutch. I discussed it with Carolyn and then decided that enough was enough. As the weights of these birds started to increase, these leg issues would only get worse and the geese would start to suffer. So I am sad to report that I put these guys down, obviously as quickly, cleanly, quietly and respectfully as possible and without either seeing the other. Where you have livestock, so the saying goes, you have dead stock. I would like to go on record here and thank both Carolyn and especially Charlotte who has borne the brunt of all the 'nursing' and physio. Without you guys these two would certainly have not gone on this long and between us we gave them every possible chance. Unfortunately, you can't save them all. Thank You for trying.

Down the Rushy Glen

Keen to stop all this lovely rain water going to waste, we decided that it would be a good idea to invest in a couple of the huge (1010 litre) water 'butts' that everyone uses round here. These could be a reservoir for refilling the pond and also for irrigating the poly tunnel but also to supply drinking water to a drinker on our East Field for the horses and soon the sheep. These come from Coca Cola in Dublin originally and are for sale at anything from about €45 to €75 but have lately been in short supply. We have clubbed together with Mentor(s) Anne and Simon who can possible get them, delivered, at the €45 end of the scale, but their supply has dried up, so we nipped out and got a pricier one locally, collecting it with the trailer. We want to start accumulating water now so that we have a full tank by the time we finish the pond.

We have rigged up a bit of 2nd hand guttering (also, partly, from Anne and Simon) to collect the water from the car port roof. These tanks are only made from plastic and aluminium, so are nice and light when empty, so that Liz and I could easily lift it between us and wrangle it into position. After a bit of rain over night it is already 5-6 inches deep in water. We find that we are now ahead of the curve. Keeping your rain water separate from the sewers is the LATEST THING in eco-warrior terms and is called "Blue-Greening". Get us!

Look at any picture of the East Field we have printed up to now and you will see a mess of rushes tall enough to tickle the bellies of sheep and horses, tall enough to hide them if they lie down. These grow easily here-abouts as soon as the land is allowed to get wet and neglected. The cattle will not eat them, so they just get worse and eventually take over the fields, rendering them useless as pasture unless the farmers bother to spray them and mow the fields; not many do unless pushed, as in this year, by serious shortage of fodder, or forced contractually by their landlords.

We do not want to be negligent managers of our grassland, and the sight of all those rushes was preying on our minds. I was going to have to hire a brush cutter for a day and have at them. I was talking about this to our fencing guy, Paul M and, generous guy that he is, he offered me the lend of his meaty, 'professional' strimmer to try out. This turned out to work like a dream, scything through the clumps like a knife through hot butter. The field is one and a half acres, so it took a few hours (about 4), some replacement "string" (tough nylon cord in the strimmer head) and 4 tanks of petrol but it looks very good now.

The rushes were sprayed last year by Mike the Cows when he was using the field for his cattle, so they are possibly weakened, and some have grass growing among the rush root-plate, but the theory is that the soft rush regrowth can be eaten by horses and sheep which should finish the tufts off and grass will win the grazing war in the end. Our pasture will be like a rush-free garden lawn (!). Liz fancied a go at this strimming game so we kitted her out with her best pink wellies, and my Husqvarna chain-saw gloves, helmet, mesh visor and ear defenders and she was away. It is not on record who she was thinking of as the whirling string zipped through the tufts sending a spray of mashed rush fibre flying in all directions and the decapitated stalks whipping away in the wind.

Meanwhile we have sought (and gained) permission from John Deere Bob to go newt surveying on the little pond at the bottom of his bank field. We explained that we might have to go look during daylight but also at night with a torch. Looking a bit twinkly eyed at Liz as if calculating how much he might get away with as a tease he warned us to be wary of the faeries in the dark down there as there were known faerie-forts (raths) near that water. I am remembering Pud Lady's little rhyme from when we were all small

Up the airy mountain
Down the rushy glen
We daren't go a-hunting
For fear of little men.......

Rural Depopulation

You don't have to spend much time in this part of Ireland to realise that a key issue in local history is that of rural depopulation - the "Flight from the Land". Nothing unusual there; it is a common part of population change in many countries and has been going on here for more than a hundred years where farm sizes were very small (a few acres). The abandoned farm house is a very common feature in these parts. There are easily half a dozen in our lane alone and a dozen within very easy range, commonly of 2 basic designs; the 2-storey, chimney at either end, stairs in the middle style as pictured here, and a single storey longer building based on 3 main rooms.

Some are only recently vacated, including ours of course which had been abandoned 15 years ago, so still had a good roof. Others go back decades and are long given over to self sown ash trees and ivy, their windows gone, interior floors fallen in and rooves collapsing.

I am no history scholar, so I will not even try to give you a factual lecture but I understand that the flight from the land is a result of the younger generations being attracted to jobs in the cities and towns - better paid, warm, dry, sensible hours and not arduous physically; plenty of access to social life and entertainment. Farming can be a lonely existence and has never been a great payer and you are frequently cold and wet, sloshing about in the mud, lashed by rain or worse. Modern Ministry stats confirm that many farms are owned and run by old folks who are probably the last in their line willing to do the job, so that The Irish Farmers' Journal (2012 Land Price Report) says that 48% of farmers do not know who will succeed them in their holdings.

Liz is a City Girl from Dublin where they tend to take a bit of a jaundiced view of country-folk and call them 'culchies' but she can also remember from her youth that they eyed the incoming farm-leavers with suspicion, easily being able to identify them with their shorter hair and less 'sharp' clothes compared to the 'Dubs' they were used to. They came to be known as red-necks but not for the sun-burnt reasons of the American Deep South. Their necks were red, so the saying went at the time from their Mammies giving them a clip behind the ear and the shout "Would you not get yourself off up to Dublin and get a job?"

It's not all a tale of woe, of course. The abandoned farms are sold off to neighbours, often quite cheaply as they have been allowed to run down with nothing getting spent on them in terms of drainage, fencing or buildings maintenance, so the lucky neighbours can end up with decent sized holdings and stand a chance of making a living. Our own Mike the Cows has 130 acres including forestry and the McG's down the road have enough to make it worth investing in huge tractors and equipment.

With many farming families having been here for ever, memories are long and these are not just anonymous buildings. Our friend John Deere Bob knows all the local ones and can tell you who lived there, what the people are doing now, if still alive, how the sale went and so on. The house pictured here with the daffodils, for example, belonged to a Michael Moran (they say it 'Morn') who moved out 20 years ago to live in Lough Glynn. He regrets it and wishes he could move back to our 'townland', of Feigh but he sold the old place as a wreck to one of the local 'big guys' for a song and the guy is locally regarded to be not easy to buy land back from (!). So he makes do with visits to Bob armed with a chain saw and does log cutting jobs for the local older folk, his former neighbours. The daffs are a rare example of evidence of these places as houses with gardens. Some have a particularly vigorous and red type of dog-rose but most are now, as I said, just rough grasses, daisies and ash saplings.

Sad but sometimes picturesque and for us, of course, an opportunity to rescue one and delete the word 'abandoned'!

Bull and Barrel

Feeling a bit sorry for the guy (Mike the Cows) who rents the fields next door because he only had a scrappy warning sign up (faded felt pen on old hardboard) I decided to do him a secret favour, nicked his sign and painted him a decent one. He won't know it's me, and I don't even know if a) he's putting his cows in there this year and b) running Felix the Bull with them. I have now sneaked the sign back up and we are wondering whether anyone will comment, or suss us, and if so how soon. Hee hee! 

The sign looks very smart and quite professional. The white is just some exterior woodwork undercoat. The red gloss was left over from painting the Utility Room door and the dark green was just a small tin of wood preserving stuff useful for the rabbit hutches. The red was dabbed on using a half inch gloss brush salvaged from my jar of old brushes. The finer stuff was done with a set of kiddies 'art' brushes got from a local shop for €1.99. No expense spared! The design was just scratched out in pencil and then lashed in free-hand; hence it is a bit wobbly in places. 

Mike, though, does need to attend to his fences if he is going to put Felix and the gang back in there. I don't think I've ever seen such a rat's nest of scrappy barbed wire, rotting posts and baler twine set to hold back 800 kg (or so) of Charolais bull (and his wives and children).

I have now made and installed the Mk 2 version of the goose bath. The geese, you will recall, were using a temporary arrangement made from 4 lengths of timber and old plastic sheeting. This worked OK and the geese enjoyed it, but geese, although they have webbed feet, do still have claws on the end of each toe, which are reasonably sharp. The geese eventually puncture the sheeting and the water drains away. 

All around here, in almost every field, the locals use a type of blue barrel cut in half as food bowls and drinkers for cattle, sometimes plumbed in with loo-cistern style float valves and standing in posh frames. I tracked a supply of these barrels down to a local agricultural supplies place in Castlerea. They are 25 gallon capacity and nice tough plastic. 

They are empty but sometimes have the last 'dregs' of what ever was in them, still in there. Unfortunately (and rather alarmingly) few still have their labels on them, so you have no idea what this might be. One barrel in 'our' pile said simply 'flouride' and the shop guy had no idea what was in them. His attitude seemed to be 'buyer beware - at your own risk'. We believe they may be 'food grade' as an embossed mark on the plastic says "Do not refill with Food Grade product". The huge number of them around the local farms made me wonder whether they might be an ingredient in the local animal-feed milling industry. 

Ours proved to have a small amount of a white, milky, odourless liquid in it which diluted down with my rinse-water and was 'lost' as safely as we could. The insides of the barrel also seem to have some kind of wax protection, presumably to stop the contents picking up plastic taints, or the contents attacking the plastic of the barrels and becoming contaminated with residues. We scrubbed this off as best we could with hot soapy water. It then remained just to sink the half barrel into the ground and fill with water - three buckets in the barrow three times. We have sited the new 'bath' near the bottom of the orchard so that when I have to bale it out to clean it the water can run off harmlessly under the hawthorn hedge, though this made for a long walk with the water-laden barrow. We then steered the geese down past it so that they'd know it was there. 

We will see how it goes. That was yesterday. Today I fed the geese some sprouted wheat close by the bath and saw them drinking and head-bathing in/from it but we have not actually seen them climb in for a paddle about. If they do, this will be, we think, the first time they have ever been in water deep enough to swim on so it might be a bit alarming for them. 


Finally, just a quick picture of me on the sofa surrounded by the dogs. Poppy is on my lap, Towser on my shoulder and Deefer sitting by my side. We'd lit the Living Room fire that day, so we were as warm as toast and recovering from the jolly gardening and dog-walking. 

Environs

Readers will have seen plenty of photo's taken from our new place looking outwards but with the pups now big enough to take it, and the Charolais cattle (and Felix the bull) now moved off the land surrounding ours, Dad decided we could all go for a nice walk around Vendor Anna's parcel of land. Anna's bit surrounds ours to the south, west and north, running down to the stream (amusingly named the River Suck, this is the Suck's upper reaches where it is just a 6 foot wide, peaty coloured drainage stream). We bought the 2 and a half acres to the centre and east boundary, giving us a good shaped square with the house at the centre. Anna has given us permission to stroll at will as long as we don't upset the cattle of her tenant (and our chum) Mike the Cows.

 Anna also owns the tract of turf-cutting bog, now abandoned and overgrown with rushes to the north of the River Suck, reached by crossing one of the concrete or railway-sleeper "kesh" bridges. My first picture shows the view out NW over the main 'kesh' out past Ballaghaderreen and on towards western Sligo, eastern Mayo, Castlebar etc. The sandy coloured vegetation is the thigh-high rushes in the abandoned bog. Dad was thinking of going to dig a bit of turf for a laugh here but John Deere Bob tells us you'd really need a huge excavator to chop off a yard or so of rushes, roots and top rubbish before you got to any meaningful cut-able turf.

My 2nd picture is again looking out across the bog but more to the NE, so into Balla-D and on to Lietrim and (eventually) Donegal. This is all Anna's land (Well, actually, land owned by the Three Sisters, but it is Anna we deal with, so we tend to think of it as hers, as opposed to "Ours"). 3rd pic is one of the keshes, this one with a small weir under it and a very beautiful westie on top......(coughs modestly).

It's nice too to be way out there and to look back at how our house and its surrounding trees, which are  mainly the tall Black Spruce trees they call 'Dale Trees' round these parts, how it all sits in the landscape.

My 4th picture shows the view from the kesh back up (southward) the slope to our house. On the skyline central are the trees which were planted around the 'Secret Garden' with our house behind them from here and the trees to the left are those along our SE boundary with the lane, the 'headland' of our east field. This is one of 'Anna's' fields, our land starts at hawthorn hedge at the top of this slope and goes on climbing for another 15 or so feet.

My last picture is from the 5 acre field out west of us (the Charolais' favourite) looking eastward back along our ridge to the house which is among those trees. Just left of centre on this pic is the gate through by our hay barn. To the right on skyline are the spruce trees of our 'wood' in the Front garden, and the spruce trees of the Secret Garden to left of centre.

So now you've had the tour. You must be exhausted from all that ridge-climbing. Come in. sit down and have a cup of 'tay' and a scone.

Deefs.

Tsipouro! Yammas!

Mum returned from Greece with a small amount of a drink which was new to Dad, it being the local fire-water, "Tsipouro". Absolutely clear in colour this is 'pomace brandy', pomace being "the solid remains of grapes, after pressing for juice. It contains the skins, pulp, seeds, and stems of the fruit". It is around 47% proof, so not quite as lethal as good old Irish over-proof Poitín (Potcheen) and, it will not surprise you to know, was first produced by some Greek Orthodox Monks (weren't all these dodgy spirits?) up a mountain. According to Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsipouro  ) " Depending on the time of year, tsipouro is used either as refreshment or as a hot beverage, and depending on the time of day, it replaces the drinking of coffee or wine. Tsipouro and tsikoudia, as with all alcoholic beverages in Greece, always seem to coincide with various social gatherings, as their consumption had a festive and symposium-like quality.

It is usually served in shot glasses, very cold, often with meze, walnuts, almonds, raisins, feta cheese, olives, or accompanying halva or other desserts in restaurants.

In 2006, Greece filed a request to recognise tsipouro as a PDO (Protected Designation of Origin) product.

We say 'Yammas' (Cheers) to that!

Much to everyone's amazement, I reach my 6th Birthday (on Monday 17th), and so, too, do my sister, Ellie, back in Faversham, and my Brother Archie, back in Maidstone. The word is that I have matured into a very sensible, capable, well balanced dog and a good 'Auntie' to the kindergarten. Cynics say that this is because I was always wishing I was a favourite only dog and I am happier that way so that I just had to contrive to remove Megan, Haggis and Coco from any position superior to, or threatening, mine and I'd be home and dry. All I have to do now is make sure Blue, Rolo, Towser, Poppy, assorted rabbits and poultry and any other arrivals stay subservient and I should remain well adjusted to the end of my natural puff. Yammas to that, too.

Mike-the-Cows's herd have now pretty much eaten off all the grass on Vendor Anna's land and on our bits so, yesterday, were moved off to give the grass a chance to recover and for them to get some grub on less grazed turf. Dad loves that the local farming mags talk about something called the 'rate of thrive' which is basically the rate at which cows put on weight in kg per day. These are beef animals so success is all about the weight of the carcase at slaughter. The farmer either buys them in at a known weight or breeds them himself, but then has to spend x amount of money on grazing or on concentrates per day, hoping that at the end the weight will have gone up sufficiently that they have made more in carcase value (weight) than he has spent getting them to that weight. I gather it can be a bit knife-edge at the moment with a poor Summer having given them poor grass growth and a lot of them having to eat into stored silage which was meant to see them through winter. Also, says Mike, with cows being worth anything from €700 up to and over €3000, you've only got to lose one to sickness or an accident and you may have no margin left this year at all. Mike seems to be doing OK, though he'd never admit that!

Yammas!

Deefer

The Comings and Goings of Cows

We are now, to all intents and purposes, surrounded by land grazed by Mike the Cows's Charolais herd. Well, mainly Charolais, the nearly white beef breed, but the group of 20 or so does include a couple of black Angus and some more Hereford-y gingery beef animals with the Hereford white face. Those are Charolais crosses. The bull, Felix, is purebred Charolais. Many of these girls have calves at foot, and/or are in calf at the moment. They will be taken back to Mike's Grand-dad's farm to actually have their calves, which won't be long now. They are very broad in the beam.

You'll already know that I drive Mum and Dad nuts by my regular chasing out across the fields to the west of us to shout at the cows if I think they are coming too close to our gate. I get up quite close to the cows. They mainly ignore me but occasionally I have to nip back a bit quick because one of the Mums has a little go at charging at me, especially if I'm a bit close to one of the calves.

We have now (on Monday) opened up the gap at the bottom of the east field now that we have the new cow-proof fence keeping the beasties off the garden and the lane. The grass in the east field, not grazed at all this year, is nice and long, if a little infested with docks and rushes but it's a welcome bite for the cows who were struggling a bit on the short, over-grazed land around us owned by Vendor Anna L and grazed almost continuously through the Summer.

The pups are getting quite interested in all this cow activity and I have sometimes tried to lead them astray into the cow fields but they are not that brave yet, and seem to take my barking as a cause for concern, so they don't come that far into the field and nip bacvk a bit smartish if Dad does his "Pupuppuppuppup!" shout.