Star Gazing

The '3rd Quarter' moon passes within 3º of Jupiter on the
night of the 18th/19th Jan

One of the nicest surprise 'bonus' gifts we received on moving here were the crystal clear night skies and the chance to look at the gazillion stars we had never seen from Kent. No air pollution and no light pollution mean we can regularly see the Milky Way and ever since we were building this place and living in the caravan in 2012 we have been coming back indoors and breathlessly telling each other that "Wow! It is a night of a million stars out there!"

A '365' pic of the church looking fine in the slanting morning
sunshine

I have always been a bit interested in star gazing. Regular readers might recall that I fried the mother board of my last camera while trying to take repeated long-exposure shots of the Perseid meteor shower. A good friend of mine in Kent, John W, may have known this when he advised Santa to send me a brilliant book, the Collins/Royal Observatory Greenwich 2017 Guide to the Night Sky.

Clearing the local river

This is a lovely little paperback in full colour packed with maps, 'artist's impressions', charts and other graphics but is specific to the sky as seen from London. That is close enough; they all work. I have had some fun with it just knowing what the moon will be doing and what events are due. The moon was very closely aligned to Jupiter, for example, on the morning of 19th and on the 24th passes very close to Saturn. Next item on the shopping list is a half decent telescope.

We have muscari coming into flower.

Meanwhile, closer to home and working with a different group of 'stars', Liz has another project under way. This is this year's village play, due to hit the stage on Easter week. The play, 'Cupid Wore Skirts' was written by Sam Cree (who also wrote some 'Carry On' stuff) in the 60's  and was originally set in Northern Ireland in the 50s. The gang here have tweaked it into the 80s and moved it South to the Republic but with very few changes.

Director Tom C advises the actors how to deliver a problem
line

Last year, Liz got involved in theory as "prompt", sitting in the side backstage and watching progress of the dialogue like a hawk, whispering in reminders when ever anybody faltered or got lost. They described the role as "Continuity"  but she ended up doing all manner of other support tasks involving admin, tickets, costume adjustments, props and so on. The whole team thoroughly enjoyed themselves, the play was a huge, sell-out success and the Lisacul Players were back up and running after a gap of a few years.

Pussy Willow

This year, Liz is 'hired' as Assistant Director, so she will probably being doing exactly the same list of tasks as before, this being Amateur Dramatics where everybody does everything anyway. I went along last night just to watch them rehearsing and to take a few pics. I am the (unofficial) photographer. It is early doors at present, so the actors are all 'walking the boards' armed with scripts and Director (Tom C) dives in occasionally to get them to move in different directions or change their hand gestures or expressions. It is going to be quite a ride. Good luck to the whole team.

Rhubarb emerging.

Other than that, we continue to chug gently into Spring with some lovely, calm, blue sky days and some lovely sunsets.

Some lovely sunsets

Snow drops just starting

And here

Your basic tortilla.

The North Wind shall Blow

Cody finds the grass a bit white and crisp

I wake up this morning to our first frost, the grass white and crunchy as I'm going about my release and feed rounds. At this time of year that comes, of course, with clear skies, bright sunshine and, often that NE wind coming down from Donegal at us. The clear skies give us, in this land of little light-pollution, nights of a million stars. You can clearly see the Milky Way, which I never managed while living in Kent and it is actually hard to pick out the constellations you think you know, because they are surrounded and 'enhanced' by thousands of other stars. What I have not yet managed to get is any kind of a photograph of this magnificent star field but one day I am determined to get out there with my camera and tripod and see what I can manage.

This blog quietly slips through the 60,000 page view mark so there are still plenty of readers out there, for which I thank you. It is good to know that I am not just firing these posts off into the ether. I am not writing a best seller here, I realise and most of my readers are friends and family but I know from the 'SiteMeter' reports that there are a few other regulars who presumably just like reading these posts - it is fun to imagine them on the other side of the globe, looking in to this small part of Ireland through the window of Blogspot.

The chilly weather and, of course, the emptiness of the wood-store, have us back on the logging task. This has made me break out the 'new' chainsaw. It's new to me, though in fact is an almost mint condition saw from the 1990's once belonging to TK Min (former resident of this house) and then also Vendor Anne but neither of these owners have ever fired it up or run it for more than a few minutes. That at least, is the opinion of our tame Chainsaw expert, Felix-the-Fix who checked it over for me and declared it to have no wear and tear at all where a used saw would show wear.

Goldie dozes in the early morning sun

I had been a bit wary of this saw for various silly reasons. I had killed my previous one as you may have read, part-seizing the engine and damaging the piston through over-work and possibly incorrect fuel/oil mixture. The problem is, I don't know what killed it and I was nervous of doing the same to this one. Being an older type of saw it also has no rubber 'blister' easy-start primer, so you have to pull the cord 4 times on full choke, then drop down to a #2 position to start it, then quickly blip the throttle to remove the choke and put the lever down to #3 (warm running) position. All a bit fraught. Add to that the Main Dealer had told us scary stories of 'modern fuels' having all manner of highly volatile ingredients so you should drain the tank and run the carburettor dry before storing the saw for more than 3 months.

However, I had been out and treated myself to some Kevlar chainsaw trousers, so I could not just give up and buy wood, I had to steel myself and get stuck in. In the event I needn't have worried, the saw started perfectly and ran well, cut beautifully with its new, unworn chain and only needed that little tighten up which all new chains need after a few minutes of running-in. Liz came out and helped with clearing up the logs I was producing as I dropped three smallish (black spruce) trees in the 'Secret Garden', one of which was leaning at a jaunty 45 degree angle anyway. I also took the opportunity to cut up the pile of old door frames ripped from our outbuildings by K-Dub when he replaced the doors. That was a good bit of tidying.

Goose and Rooster stock

Autumn too, in the livestock dept, so some of the poultry are coming to the ends of their planned careers. Most recently this has included our Jersey Giant rooster who was starting to be a problem both for William the Conqueror (who he was challenging and getting the odd wallop from, so there was a risk of him getting injured) as well as for some of the girls. The JG is a very long bodied bird and was trying to 'tread' some of the hens, especially the mini-Buffs but when he was on board, his bits were a mile away from the hen's and he could not mate successfully. He just held on tight, crushing all the wind out of the hen, straining to arch his back end round. We could not allow this to go on and he was, to us, looking an attractive big bird for the freezer.

He was culled out on Wednesday and had a live weight of (what we thought was..) a huge 4.24 kg (9 lb 5 oz). Liz, who already does all the plucking, decided that he was going to be her first go at gutting out and cleaning, so in she went and created an oven ready carcase weighing exactly 3.000 kg (6 lb 9.75 oz) again, we thought impressive and certainly the biggest chicken so far. It's only talking to Mentor Anne since that we learned that these Jersey Giant variety birds are well named - they continue to grow till they are around a year old or more and can reach live weights of up to 15 lbs which must be some impressive bird! We would have had lots of squashed hens around the place looking like they had been steam-rollered! We are now watching his sister who, at 23 weeks is not quite the size of the rooster, but will presumably grow on too. William is going to be asking for a box to stand on so that he can cope. You live and learn.

As it was, the 'roo' was jointed up by Liz and for our first meal, just the legs roasted, separated into thighs and drumsticks. These were served with chunked Thai-seasoned spuds, artichokes and Romanesco cauliflower and, guess what, we could only manage a thigh each, so the drumsticks are back in the fridge as cold roast chicken. The remainder of the carcase is already portioned up into wings and 'oyster' bits, and breast meat, so we should get 4 meals for two off this one even though he was only half grown.

The bones, combined with those of the La Bresse 'roo' and the recent goose are now bubbling away in our huge stock pot creating what looks like a magnificent stock. The hearts, livers and gizzards are saved in the freezer for later. We don't quite use "every part except the squeal" but we come close.

Getting all Autumnal

It's all getting very Autumnal round here now with a definite nip in the air and, this morning, a genuine frost with crisp grass and a bit of ice on the rabbits' water bowl. The nights are clear which means that here, in this unpolluted air with no street lighting to interfere you can see a gazillion stars - too many sometimes to pick out the constellations you "know" from Kent. The Milky Way is clearly visible and the moon has been full (although now waning) and it is all very beautiful. Mornings can be quite beautiful too with the mist visible over the turf bog below us in the valley. This morning was extra special as a bright red "Shepherd's Warning" sunrise came up behind a bank of mist, filling the whole 'farm' with a bizarre soft pink mistiness. Luvverly!

Autumn, then, so no-one should be thinking of Springtime and producing babies? You'd think not. However, we have a chicken gone broody on the 30th Sept and ever since then sitting on her clutch of now TEN eggs in the centre nest box. Sussex Ponte chickens are a 'mass produced' Utility hybrid rather than a fine tuned Pure-bred variety; they are 'designed' to lay 300+ eggs a year and be healthy and to not go broody, so we have had a couple of aborted attempts through the Summer but they usually last only a couple of days before madam gets bored and wanders off, abandoning the eggs to go cold. Not this time, so far. She has gone 7 days so far. Incubation period is 21 days, so we might, just might, have some newly hatched chick babies to show Niece Madeleine when she comes over on the 22nd. Don't count your chickens, though....

Also, the rabbits, whom we were sure had not 'taken' to the attentions of our friends Anne and Simon's buck rabbit Peter and had given up on needing the Maternity Unit this year have produced a surprise. Mum spotted the black and white lop-eared girl, Padfoot hauling dry hay into a burrow they've made in the old compost heap which is currently part of their run so we took a look today, thinking that if we find any signs of nesting we'll move them all indoors. Too late! We found a nest alright, but this one the text book ball of fluff pulsating with new life! That is all you get to see first according to the books and any attempt to rummage among the ball of Mum's belly-fur will result in Mum deserting the nest, so we retreated in a hurry, returning only to bring a sheet of curved corrugated to put above the compost heap as a rain-shelter. We will have to just wait and see. No end of disasters can befall rabbit kittens, not least being eaten by adult rabbits or predated by rats (or cat kittens!) but if we can get to 4 weeks they stand a chance of having been weaned so we can rescue them to the Maternity Unit then. No such excitement for Padders's sister Ginny, by the look of it.

 In other Autumn related news the fields we own and those surrounding (over which we have permission from Vendor Anna L to walk) have many many blackberry bushes in their hedges and these have yielded up 2.5 kg of lovely blackberries which Dad has supplemented with a couple of Bramley apples to make 12 and a half jars of delicious (says Dad) jam.

We have also had a couple of still windless days and 'windless' round here means "it's OK to use the chainsaw as you can tell which way the tree will fall". Dad has had a chance to top up the big log store, which now contains about 2.5 cubic metres of logs. That should keep us going for a few cold nights! It is made up of 2 big ugly, diseased Leylandii, some hay-barn beams (the rectangular bits), some big elder and plenty of the dead black spruce 'weedings' from the woods.

In Autumn food Mum and Dad have been exploring some Indian cookery (don't worry - nothing you'd call 'hot' or too spicy) from the new Madhur Jaffrey cookbook but also plenty of winter-warmer recipes. Today, for example, lunch was homemade leek and potato soup with some smokey bacon in it and tonight "pork bones". We'd never heard of this in the UK but here it comes from proper butchers as short lengths of pig-spine split longways. One 'chunk' is about 6-8 inches long so contains about 5 vertebrae but band-sawed into two halves lengthways, with the spinal column 'canal' exposed. You slow-cooker these as you would ox-tail, shin-of-pork or lamb-shank, till the meat falls away and all the cartilage goes gelatinous. In Mum and Dad's case they did it in a Chinese sauce (star anise, soy, ginger, garlic etc) and served it with noodles and steamed chard. The left over bones have plenty of interest for dogs, pups and kittens.

The only other thing exercising us at present is the 2CV finally getting prepared for her NCT (= MOT). Dad finally got hold of a windscreen so now the car is in the garage for its idling to be sorted and for a pre-NCT check up, prior to booking the test. We hope there are no problems with this but we have heard, rather worryingly that the NCT demands all tyres be no more than 6 years old even if they have new tread. This could be an issue.

Deefs.