Original Features

Newly cleaned out roadside ditch. The white
in the bottom of there is snow.

Yes, we currently have a light dusting of snow on the ground and yes, we still have light snow falling but overall we are definitely drying out. All the puddles are gone or nearly so, and the mud under foot is now sticky, rather than wellies-sloppy. The tarmac lanes are dry and the ditches either side of the road are mainly empty. Long may this process continue.

Original feature? A lot of the road-side culverts are still these
tunnels with stones for the 'walls' and a big flat stone across
the top. 

We have had a couple of contractor lads with a lorry and a mini digger, working along the road digging out the ditches and re-instating the drains and culverts where they pass under people's drive-ways, if necessary. They have even cut across the lane if they need water to flow from north side to south side and laid big new plastic pipes under the road.

Spot the heron.

A lot of the culverts along these lanes are still what an optimistic estate agent would call "original features". They were made by building in the bottom of your ditch a series of arches like mini-Stonehenge arches (dolmens?) with tall stones as the walls and big flat ones across the top. We have a similar structure buried down just outside our yard wall where would have run the right of way for all the locals using the main lane, to access their turf-cutting bog.

I wish the cats wouldn't kill the 'cute' and unusual ones. This
female bullfinch got it in the neck this morning. 

We are told that back then, anyone who had a chimney in their house would have 'Turbary' rights - the rights to cut turf for home fuel. They would have brought their donkey and cart down what is now our land to get to their 'stake'. When we bought the house, the Estate Agent told us that as no-one had used this right of way in 27 years, the route was now redundant and we did not need to allow any donkey carts down there!

Nobody's favourite livestock task - getting a wormer
tablet down the throat of each of your 4 cats. Liz's hands
are shredded!

Be that as it may, the contractor lads were obviously not re-instating these ancient structures as they went along, just burying modern concertina style water pipes and back filling with the stone and clay in what ever order it came available. They were also building up the immediate verges with the dirt and stone from the ditches. They have made quite a neat job of it and the new water-flows are obviously working. The ditches are empty.

The ewe (Lily) and lamb are still brought indoors each night
as the weather is still too cold for a baby to be outdoors. 

Meanwhile, after much deliberation I decided to cull out our bought-in ram, Pedro. It was not an easy decision. I never want to get into killing animals just because they are no longer convenient - if I ever do this then it will be a sign that we should not have bought in, or bred the animal in the first place. This lad was bought in, as regular readers may recall, last Summer, because we had produced no lambs of our own in 2017 and the freezers were almost empty of lamb-meat. He came as one of a pair, his sister being 'Oveja'.

When the time came to send Oveja on her final trailer ride, I decided to keep the brother (Pedro) as our 'stud' ram to save me having to borrow in a ram. I knew that we could always send him to the butchers later if the new set-up did not work out or if he became human-aggressive. This "sort of" worked and we think that all four ewes may well be pregnant, though I only saw him mounting Lily and Polly. Time will tell on that one.

Pedro offal. Oh, and a couple of nice
steaks! Well, I was in a butcher's shop.

As to the aggressive thing, I did take a couple of 'pucks' from him but I think these may have just been argy-bargy trying to be first to any food I was taking to the food trough. I'd get a thump from behind at thigh-height but not really know if he'd squared up on my derriere and done an adolescent head-down charge, or had just run clumsily into the group following me and my feed-bucket. Whenever he squared up facing me, I was always able to deter him by swishing a stick back and forth in front of his nose. It's the lack of trust that decided me. I could no longer enjoy communing with the gentle ewes if I had to keep one eye on Pedro.

The peach tree, housed indoors for the Winter
needed a tree-guard when the cats started
using its main trunk as a scratching post.

I did, though, see him banging the ewe 'Myfanwy' about. Whether she is pregnant or not, nobody likes to see our gentle ladies getting T-boned in the midriff. He was also a bit feisty with Lily and the new lamb when they first met but we put that down to him reminding them who was boss in case they'd forgotten while they were in 'confinement'.

So, the decision was made and Pedro was taken on his final trailer journey on Monday (yesterday). That gave me another interesting reversing task - the butcher's back way was part blocked by a big trailer one side and a shiny 4 x 4 on the other. I could not get to the 'lairage' pens (holding pens)  so the slaughterman (Joe) had me back in the shorter distance to the slaughterhouse door. Elizabeth tells me that the lad was 'offed' almost before his feet hit the concrete - she'd heard the 'pock' of the humane-killer and had seen the main butcher nip in there straight after with the big knife, while I was closing up the trailer and pulling out. He (Pedro) certainly spent no time in the unfamiliar lairage pens wondering what was going on or stressing about this new turn of events.

That was that. I collected the offal (liver, kidneys, heart and tongue, this time) today and picked up a couple of lovely (beef) steaks as I was in a butcher's shop. He hangs the carcass for a week before cutting to allow the meat to "set" so we go down on Monday morning to collect the main meat. I feel as though I have been given my sheep back. I can go into their field and speak to them, tickle their noses and under their chins, pull bits of twig and bramble out of their wool and generally enjoy contact with them. There is no ram there bashing them away from the breakfast food trough or trying to get between me and the girls. A whole new relaxed, calm, stress-free atmosphere has returned. It was the correct decision. This year we will borrow a ram just for the 'tupping' season AND nothing like as early as August - more like December or January. Lambing in January is just daft.

Water Meters (and other unpopular charges)

Road Works for a Water Meter

The Water Meters are coming! The plan is to install a meter on every domestic property in Ireland and then (gasp) to start charging people for the water. I feel a bit presumptuous posting a blog which gives my opinion of what the Irish might be thinking (Been here 5 minutes! Presumes to.... etc) but I think I can safely say that the people are not, in general happy about this. They have seen the fleets of GMC Sierra (The contractor) white vans, trailers and mini-diggers who have worked their way along the streets of the main towns (Ballaghaderreen and Castlerea) stopping at every house to erect a little fort of red barriers in which they rattle a hole down through the pavement or tarmac and install their special housings and lids which will take the meter; whole streets at a time, gangs of them in their Hi-Viz jackets

Now the locals have seen this start to spread out into the countryside. A month or so ago we had a man with a metal detector and clip board knocking on doors to see did the owner know where his stop cock was. For all I know he may have had dowsing rods too. Many water pipes have long since been buried under tarmac or paving. A few days ago we started to get yellow painted numbers and arrows on the tarmac and GMC Sierra vans whizzing up and down and now we have had the mini diggers and red barriers. Our house has so far seen none of this but our water installation is so new (2012) that the Water Board guys presumably KNEW meters were coming and did not bury ours. It is sitting there in full view among the verge grass with its housing and its 'Uisce' (Irish for Water) capping.

Meter cover. Uisce is Irish for 'Water'.

People are not, as I said, happy about this and the new charges for several good and understandable reasons. First these charges are new, water has been free to draw 'for ever' so people worry about how much the water will cost and whether they will be able to afford it. We had to pay the €1600 charge for our "new supply" as a cheque to Roscommon County Council plus a €300 in cash to the shiny-shoe'd 'Water Caretaker' who showed up on install day in his silver 4 by 4 (Make of that one what you will!). We were reasonably happy to do so because we knew there would be no rates there-after. Ah well.

There is also a certain cynicism that these charges are because the Central Government has managed to 'crash' the economy in league with the fat cat bankers and now needs this money and these 'Austerity Measures' to shore up the financial holes. Not only will the money, extracted locally not get used locally (out in the West there is a suspicion that it all goes to Dublin, never to be seen again) but probably won't get used to improve our water infrastructure.

On top of this there is disgust locally that great tracts of County Roscommon do not even have water fit to drink. All across Strokestown, Tulsk and across the NE of the county they are on 'boil water' notices as a result of Cryptosporidium infestation in the water (It is a single cell nasty which causes diarrhoea) or have such high doses of chlorine in the tap water to kill the 'crypto' that it is unpleasant to drink. I was told (by the metal detector guy) that this is largely down to ancient infrastructure and plant, some built in Victorian times, which was not upgraded when there was a housing boom to cope with the extra demand. I suspect that the locals handing over their new water rate money will believe in improvements when they see the  diggers start to roll into the water treatment plant, or the 'boil water' notices get lifted. Meanwhile local shops do a roaring trade selling bottled drinking water. A lot of people here actually have their own well and are off grid; even they suspect that the Government might start charging them to draw water from their own bit of aquifer. There is also a certain amount of grumbling about how the contract to do all this meter installation work was tendered for and won by the brand new company, GMC Sierra, set up especially for the purpose. The Irish have a certain healthy cynicism that back handers and sweeteners are almost certainly involved somewhere.

And then there is general discomfort with 'all these new taxes and charges which seem to come one after another'. In Ireland in 1977 a Fianna Fáil government (Jack Lynch's) swept to power promising to abolish (Domestic) Council Rates (and car tax, actually) and no-one has paid any since. Only in the last years have 'we' started to see 'Property Tax' again, and, so far, for our value of house, down in the hundred Euro a year area. In England we were used to £130 a month so we are still enjoying the 'holiday' but we can see their point. Rubbish collection here is via a separate contract with the wheelie bin company. There is no mains gas out here and, in the country lanes, no mains sewage.

Happy Days.

Meanwhile, a quick Many Happy Returns to the Pud Lady, 87 today and still going strong. She tells me she has set herself a target of 99. She'll be happy with that, she says. If the family's most recent newly-weds get a-cracking she may soon be able to cuddle her first Great Grandchild (No pressure, you guys!). Have a lovely day, Mum!

Happy Birthday

Sometimes the old ways....

We turn our attention to "the bit we don't talk about", the only bit of the new garden and grounds without a proper new name. Mum and Dad realised they had been making great plans for "The West Field", "The East Field", "The Pottery", "The Front Terrace", "The Woods", "The Secret Garden" and so on but there, staring them in the face was a chunk of 'neither here nor there' where long grasses, rushes, willowherb and bush-vetch grew, where tractors occasionally passed and where there were still heaps of 'spoil' left by 804-Pete's mini-digger. Something was going to have to be done or it would stay an eye sore in the middle of all the good stuff, right in the line of site between favoured evening seating area (The Pottery) and the sunsets the sitters were trying to watch.

Dad had had a bit of a poke about with the 'Old Father Time' scythe but the thatch was too tough and the mower struggled with the amount of cut material it had to spew out before it could bite off any new. Even a strimmer would struggle here trying to battle the cut stuff which would fall down where it was cut. There was only one answer, the old fashioned Sussex "Grass-hook" hand-scythe accompanied by lifting out the cut swathes and stooking them up to clear the ground, allowing you a clear swing on the next pass.

It was a scorcher of a day and working in shirtsleeves Dad quickly had a good old sweat going. He was thankful every now and then that the 'annoying puppies' would stray too near and give him a break from swinging the hook from a kneeling position, making him stand up and fork some 'hay' away with the hay fork.  In the end he was standing in the 'aftermath' dripping with sweat and feeling like it was the 70's again and he was back in the student-jobs pitching straw bales. The grass had been so long that the bases, down in the dark, were straw coloured anyway, so it looked like a field of stubble, and the piled up grass, all be it wet with dew and rain from previous days, looked like a miniature version of an old fashioned hay-stack. The old style pitch-fork and hand scythe added to the impression. Pure pleasure, confessed Dad. Funny what makes the old bugger happy!

The hot still day finished with a chance to drop another tree and create some more logs, in this case a dead spruce which proved, on counting the tree rings, to be about 49 years old. These are nice and easy to fell and to log up and , being dead standing and nearly bereft of side branches, easy to clean too. The log store is filling nicely.

New Yard

Mmmm, looking down the post as I type this the 3rd and 4th picture are on their sides. Maybe it'll sort itself out but this is the new version of blogger and we have not fully sussed out its idiosyncrasies. You may have to 'steer' your laptop into portrait mode or just make do with them. Ah well.

We have had our yard "done". One bloke (Dushty-Sean the Mini Digger driver), 20 tonne of this mixed-sized aggregate 804 gravel with bits from small to 'dusht' in it and about half a day.

Good Man Sean! First he had to level the ground where Dad and Sparks had demolished the inner wall of what is not the Utility Room, and left some BIG bits of rubble all over the place. Mainly this involved thumping the digger bucket down on top of the concrete lumps till they collapsed in an explosion of dust. Then he moved obvious lumps to fill obvious dips and finally swept the 20 tonne (2 decent sized tractor/trailer loads) of 804 across the lot to "blind" it smooth.

He deliberately kept back a bit of the 'dusht' to recover the front drive. Normal 804 is usually used where it will be buried under concrete or a smoother finishing 'stuff' but our front drive, just outside the front door had a covering of the stuff we'd used on the floors inside, just left where the piles were tipped. The nieces and nephews on a visit up in hot weather were running around barefoot in cozzies, having a water-fight and found they couldn't walk on this bit because of the sharp stones underfoot. Not any more - the 804 "dusht" is as soft as beach sand under foot.

 With the yard now finished and looking like some kind of grey lunar surface, Mum and Dad could think about "gardening" it and some kind of planting, mainly into pots, but also, they decided, with a few more hardy things planted straight into the old cattle-yard clay (obviously with a hole scraped into the 804 so the roots might actually see the soil!)
In addition, some of the stones we have saved, and some of the big bits originally 'chucked' over the wall by 804-Pete when he first cleared away the boggy turf, we decided might be quite attractive used back in the garden. We were thinking just of groups or small rings around plants almost as 'mulch' but one of these was so huge Dad couldn't lift it. Mum and Dad dragged it into the yard on a 1-tonne builder bag and Mum decided it needed to be stood on end like a mini henge. We all think it looks rather good there!

 Coco has pee'd up it many times. Incidentally, "Coco" is changing his name by Deedpoll. Mum and Dad never really loved the name Coco for a dog, and generally it got shortened to Cokes or Cokey-Doke, both of which have rather too many druggy overtones. Hence our little Yorkie friend will from now on be known as Trigger or Trig, short for 'Trigonometry'. I offer no more explanation than that. Ask Mum.

Deefs

Don't call ush....

Like the worst tales you'd find in the "Year in Provence" tales by Peter Mayle, we are getting increasingly frustrated by the number of local tradesmen who talk a good game and promise that the job you're asking them to do is no problem, and they'll get back to you, but then vanish into silence. We are starting to form a club of the various workers and tradesmen who we are waiting to get back to us. These are currently as follows.

1) 804 Pete - Yes! Former total hero of the building project who we put firmly up there on his pedestal. He delivered the 804 sub-base gravel, he lent us a whacker plate, he offered no-bolt scaffolding, he did a good honest day's work with the mini-digger, clearing the yard, scraping the rubbish from around buildings, taking away the railway line sections and he put us in touch with the Midnight Joker (Maurice) who laid our concrete floors downstairs. However, now he has descended from the exalted ranks of "Project Hero" to the lower echelons of "the elusive Scarlet Pimpernel". His phone gives only voice mail and he never returns your call. We know not why. Last heard of driving off down the drive having looked at the mini-digger job in our yard, saying "Yeah... I'll give you a call back".
2) FBD insurance, who insure our house and now Mum's Fiat. They are meant to be calling Dad back after he clicked on "call about this quote" on their website, but we think that because Mum and Dad ended up with both cars on one quotation reference, the lady who phoned Mum has now set the reference to "sorted". Dad will have to phone back and wake them up.
3) Local jeweler who is meant to be re-sizing a wedding ring and re-stringing some pearls. I'll call you in a couple of days. Tumble weed blows by. Trees come into leaf. Birds sing.....
4) Gutter man. Flies out here like a scalded cat to measure up. I'll give you a call "one of the days". This local expression we have not yet been able to fathom. Does it mean 'One of the days this week'?
5) Local carpenter and door wrangler. We need a split "stable-door" for the Utility room. Called by his workshop 3 weeks ago and he wrote my number down. Called by again last week and he apologized that he'd written it on a random page of his diary and lost it. Wrote it down again and was going to call us Thursday (last night) evening. More tumble weed.
6) Local VW Golf afficionado who may have finally taken the old Sligo reg car from our brambles but turned out to be a carpenter willing to come and have a look at doing the doors on all our out buildings. Yes, I'm a bit busy at the moment but I'll call you one of the days (!) this week. Did he call? That'll be a 'no' then.
7) Car registration office who whizzed Mum's Fiat through in no time at all but stalled the 2CV because "it's a classic". We will phone you in a couple of days. We have to do a couple more checks.............

That's all I can think of for the moment but there are probably more. We pay these guys on time, in cash and we are always nice and appreciative of their work. We don't upset them in any way. Dad is paranoid that it's because he's British, but Sparks defends them all saying it's because they are busy.

Thank God then for Dushty-Sean who we called in to do the yard job in the absence of 804 Pete. He came at lunchtime when he said he would and sized up the job. He told us we didn't want the big coarse '804' we have been using on the drive because we'd not be able to walk comfortably on it in bare feet, and the pea-gravel we'd suggested would move around too much under foot. It'd be like trying to walk on a beach. No no, says he. You want the fine 804 - it's like fine "dusht". We need 10 tonnes of "dusht". He put us in touch with a guy we'll call Dave-the-Dusht. He can't deliver till Monday and will be up with his tractor and trailer during the morning while Sean prepares the ground. We'll wait and see.

Dushty Deefs

804 Pete, One in a Million

We Love 804 Pete! A brilliant bloke, a good worker and a genius with a mini digger, who also comes in very useful as he knows everybody round the new house who will be of interest, including Maurice the Midnight Joker, of whom more later. Pete arrived on the scene first as just the delivery driver for our first load of the '804' crushed stone sub-base. We'd ordered it through Sparks's supplier in Dublin but he'd got hold of a local firm to actually find and deliver it. We got talking and showed Pete round the house just out of curiosity, but it turned out he had a whacker plate we might want to borrow, and a mini digger he could see some jobs for around the place. a 'no-bolt' scaffold we might need when doing joists, a cheaper source of 804 if we needed any more (cut out the middle man) and that he knew a bloke who'd be very good at setting the new concrete floors and was also a good plasterer.

We have taken him up now on a good few of these offers and he is as good as his word and very favourably priced on all of them. He is an unstoppable hard worker and very skilled with the mini digger. Mum is actually calling him an 'angel' at this stage and suggesting him for beatification. He has delivered us more 804 as well as concrete and plastering sand. He has used his mini digger to spread more 804 into holes in the drive and to scrape the 15 years accumulation of pine needles and cow poo from drive, cattle yard and 'the bit round the side'. He had cleared bramble patches and opened up the drainage ditch from the yard. He has loaded our 20-odd tonne rocks and clay pile onto his lorry and taken it away and come back for the plaster-board mountain. The digger becomes like a living thing in his hands, smacking stuff hard where it needs it and gently brushing and kissing bits out of the way or smoothing them flat if that's the requirement. It's an impressive display of digger dexterity. He works really hard too - there's no stopping him. What can I do next?

Deefs