Practise Makes Perfect?

Pigs loaded during one of the practise runs.

This may be one of those posts that you don't read if you do not want to know how those charming piggies you love to see running around, wind up on your plate as pork chops or sausages. Yes, I am afraid Mapp and Lucia came to the end of their particular road over this weekend and are now handed over to the slaughter-man and butcher, Webb's in Castlerea. You'll know from previous posts that as they came up to 6 months old and had achieved live weights of over 90 kg, we started to prepare for the end game. We had built the pig-race to run them up from the pig-paddock to the trailer, and now needed to get them used to trotting up and down the trailer ramp.

Breakfast in the trailer.

I was looking to do this at their breakfast times on the Saturday and Sunday, so that they might be ready to go for real on Monday (this morning). In the event, we hit a problem on Saturday morning, with Mapp taking to the new feeding location like a duck to water, but Lucia stubbornly refusing to go up the ramp despite a good half hour of cajoling and coaxing. Liz had suggested doing all meals that way, and that, in fact, is what we had to do, and it worked well. You would have laughed, though, at our amateurish fumblings on the Saturday.

Mapp was done and dusted in no time, but Luc' was still not playing, so I ended up hooshing Mapp out so that she'd not distract her sister, then climbing into the trailer myself where I sat rattling the feed bowl under Luc's nose, tempting her to put one, then two, three and finally, finally all four feet onto the ramp and then into the trailer. All the time I was cooing to her softly and tickling her ears and neck and flanks so she'd relax and know it was safe. We got there in the end. For supper that day I adjusted the height of the dolly-wheel so that the floor of the trailer would be slightly sloped, but the ramp at a more gentle angle, and then there was no stopping them. Supper and all three meals on Sunday went like a dream and the pigs were as good as gold, so it was looking bright and optimistic for this (Monday) morning. I even shut the ramp on them each time so that they were briefly caught in the trailer, so they'd not spook on the big day.

It had been a tense couple of weeks coming up to 'the day' and I'd invented in my head all manner of imagined problems which might go wrong - would the trailer break? Might the pigs not load? Would I suddenly lose my ability to reverse when I got there? Now I'm not a religious bloke though I suspect that, in common with many, I keep what faith I have in the back pocket like an insurance policy, pray occasionally under duress (There are no atheists in the trenches?) and avoid 'dissing' any deities just in case. If I am anything, I am (low) Anglican so when I get involved at all with any of the local Catholic activities I always feel a little fraudulent and awkward. None the less, Liz and I happily headed off to local RC Holy Centre and icon-gathering, Knock Shrine, which is only about 45 minutes drive from here. Liz needed to look in the book shop for a specific gift item for a friend, but wanted to light a candle too, in the special roofed area for another reason. I decided that I would too, for a similar reason but also to pray for a calm, respectful, painless, stress free end for the pigs and a problem free run for us on the Monday.

Feel free to mock if that is how it takes you. We will never know whether the car dying through a flat battery on the Thursday morning after our Knock prayers and needing the local garage called out and a new battery was "the guy upstairs" answering to help us from having no car issues on our Monday! When my two brothers and I were teenagers, we used to love the Welsh rugby-based comedian Max Boyce and had a recording of his song "The Lord, he said, doth often move in Strange and Wondrous Ways!"

Anyway, enough of this waffle - this morning went sweet and smooth and the pigs were as good as gold, loading in minutes so that I could shut the ramp on them and Liz and I could push the trailer across the damp grass to the hard standing and the car. We hitched on by 08:00, grabbed our (Pig Movements) paperwork and the money, checked the trailer, the hitch, lights etc and headed gently for Castlerea, about 20 minutes away at that nice gentle pace. I easily reversed onto the butcher's 'driveway'. the pigs trotted happily down the ramp and slowly into the lairage pens. We did all the paperwork and Liz talked butchery, mincing, sausages, roasting joint sizes and so on with the man. The ladies will apparently be killed today but samples have to be sent to a vet in Kildare to rule out the infectious pig disease Trichinosis before the butcher can cut up the carcasses and give them to us. He has never yet had an infected pig, but if they are, the whole animal must be dumped as Trichinosis can cause blindness in humans. That would not be good!

We did not, in the end, need to avail ourselves of the help offered by Simon. We had him on standby waiting for our panic stricken phone call, but as it all went without hitch, we were able to text him at 08:30 to stand him down, but thank you very very much, Simon for being there for us. As I said, these were nervous days and it was very reassuring to know that another pair of hands could be brought to bear.

A  very welcome gift. 

There's a focused post for you, now! 7 paragraphs all on the same subject. Pigs seem to have taken all our attention lately, but there have been some nice distractions. With the car dead on Thursday and no shopping possible, we were, as Liz wrote in one of her posts "just resigning ourselves to NO WINE when a white van turned up bearing superb gift from a heavenly creature". Thank you, that very generous and timely donor, you know who you are.

Tall 'new' fridge/freezer, short-leggedy
cleaner!

And finally, with the huge 'crop' of pork meat imminent, we needed to start up our fourth freezer, this one a fridge-freezer hand-me-down gift from Steak Lady (Thank you SL!) who had renovated her old kitchen in Portmarnock just before deciding to move house completely. Thanks to Mr Silverwood also, who hauled it all the way down here in his big people-carrier; there was no way it'd fit in our little Fiat Panda. We did that job on Saturday, swapping it for the shelving (which is now in the Tígín) and giving it a thorough nut and bolt clean before setting it running. We are now ready for our Pork.

I Named that Statue. Minute that!

One of the things I have always loved about the Irish is the way that they adopt amusing, irreverent nicknames for their statues, street art and landmarks, notably in the capital, Dublin. A rather boobalicious representation of Molly Malone with a barrow full of fish, cockles and mussels (naturally) is widely known as "The Tart with the Cart". A statue of James Joyce complete with walking cane and iconic specs is "The Dick with the Stick".

A fountain in O'Connell Street which depicted Goddess of the River Liffey, Anna Livia reclining in the water with fountains bubbling down her from shoulders to feet was nicknamed 'The Floozie in the Jacuzzi'. She has now been moved to Croppy Acre Memorial Park in Dublin, replaced with a Millennium Spire, after having been filled with washing up liquid for the umpteenth time. The spire, as far as I am aware does not have a funny name, but I expect it does. A nice statue of two ladies paused in their shopping, sitting on a bench to chat with their Arnott's bags beside them quickly became the 'Hags with the Bags' and so it goes on.

Our nearby Airport, Knock, now has its own statue. We saw the strange twisted pair of upward pointing spikes, shaped like one of the more delicate pincers or tweezers I had in my precious Dissection Kit as a biology student, when these prongs were still being smeared with cement as I collected Liz from the airport on April 29th. We had no idea what they were apart from fairly obviously being a bit of roadside art. Eye catching enough and with that lovely view across Mayo behind them. It was only a few days later that we saw in Facebook, that they were in fact the backdrop to a statue of the visionary 'man of the cloth' Monsignor Horan who first conceived of the idea of an airport for these parts and politicked it into being.

As the news release says "A new statue of our founder, the visionary Monsignor James Horan was unveiled today at Ireland West Airport Knock. The new statue is situated on the approach road into the airport and is a fitting tribute to the great man. A display of Monsignor Horan's memorabilia and artefacts will also be on display in the airport terminal over the summer months".

Of course, I was straight into Facebook and thinking that this statue now needs a witty name, so I challenged 'my lot' and, aside from a rather rude one from Mr Silverwood no-one took up the baton. I went with "The Geezer by the Tweezer" which got a few 'likes' (approving ticks by Facebook people) and was then passed on to a vox-pop 'Twitter' Feed called @Ireland where the current 'chair' liked it too.

This summer, when the crowds of returning Irish wing in on Aer Lingus flights to Knock Airport for "The Gathering, Ireland 2013" and you hear them being driven past Monsignor Horan by their pick-up drivers who say "Ah yeah! They're calling it the 'Geezer by the Tweezer'! Isn't that great?" you'll know that it all started HERE.

Meanwhile in Rabbit news, Goldie is settling in well and was out there in the sun (when it managed to shine) wolfing down good Roscommon grass like it was going out of fashion. She'll be fat as a fool, as well as pregnant!

Lazy Beds

With the guests gone and the evidence of their visit squared away, Dad can get back into the garden and check out progress on the vegetables after the week of beautiful sunshine. The warmth has brought on the peas and broad beans beautifully, so we can have a first portion  of peas with supper on Monday night. The broads will be a few more days yet but the runners and French beans are starting to flower profusely. We are also looking at some courgettes soon in the kitchen garden from which we have already been enjoying various cut and come again salad stuff.

The broader picture, though, has Dad needing to finally give in to the local method for raised beds or lazy beds and trenches. It's just been too wet this year gardening on the flat, to hoe or control weeds, so that we have a depressing embarrassing lawn of weeds between the rows of crop so that a mower is sometimes more appropriate than a hoe. The crops sulk in damp, cold misery, succumb to slugs or general malaise so that often 'we' have just given up on them and ploughed them back in.

Way back, when Mike the Cows was tractor-ploughing and tractor-rotovating he did suggest ridging it up (which is quite easy, I now know, with a couple of changes to settings on the rotovator) but we didn't really know what we were about back then and Dad thought he meant into potato-style ridges. We declined the offer, thinking we'd be able to plant rows 2 feet apart and simply walk-behind-rotovate up the rows like you would in Kent to keep the weeds down. Then came the rain for most of May, June and July and the flat rotovated land saturated and could not drain.

It was John Deere Bob who explained what was meant by ridges - three or four foot wide broad ridges (what they'd call 'breeds' in the Fens) with deepish trenches between but with the ridges/trenches aligned down the slope (we'd done our initial rows across the allotment, effectively parallel to the contours). You can either dig the whole site over and then make trenches or use a traditional Irish method which saves quite a few square yards of digging and that's called 'Lazy Beds'. You skim the turf (or 'lawn of weeds in Dad's case) off where the trench will be, folding it over to lie upside down on the edge of the ridge, grass to grass. You then shovel out the trench and use the soil to bury the rest of the ridge and the flipped over turfs. You can also then cover the whole with plastic to further supress weeds. We used plastic sheeting left over from the building project, plus we recycled the ground sheets from Mr Silverwood's thrown-away tent. We have since seen pics of raised beds and Lazy Beds in the Museum of Country Life in Turlough, Co. Mayo, so we now feel very authentic!

Now we're talking. Now the soil in the ridge tops is drying out and does not water-log and Dad can stroll up and down in the trenches easily getting at the weeds even on the wettest day. The rest of the allotment will be converted to raised beds as it comes free after we have harvested the current crops of beans, cabbages etc.

My final pictures on this catch up are just a nice shot of the High Hopes pink rose climbing up the Tígín wall and a nice box of 9 eggs showing 4 dated today (15th Aug) just because all the gals are now in production.

No longer homeless

We head for the small town of Mountrath to collect the caravan which will be our temporary accommodation 'on site' for the hopefully short period that the 'new' house is uninhabitable. For example when we have filled the internal space with the fumes of woodworm treatment and do not wish to suffer the same fate as the woodworm dudes. Dad has no tow-hitch on his car, but Mr Silverwood has a big people carrier suitably equipped, so he has offered to do the collection run. It's a horrible wet rainy windy day and Mr S has never towed a caravan before, but he's brave and up for it.

Dad, being an ill-informed (OK let's just admit to a bit prejudiced) was a bit wary of doing business with our traveller chums, especially cash-in-hand ones, and some of them have accents with very flat vowels and indistinct consonants making them difficult to understand but Mrs S held his hand and all was well. We handed over the cash and the guy (John) didn't even check it (while we were there). Mrs S says they consider it very rude to do so. He also handed Dad a tightly folded €5 note at the end saying "a bit of luck for you". We hitched up the caravan, tested the lights and we were away, Dad following the people carrier and caravan. Mr S did very well for a new boy, keeping well clear of either side and bringing home the caravan through the rain round the twisty lanes with no problem.

Back at the house the caravan was unhitched and pushed (it's very light) up the drop-kerb and into the drive where Mrs S is gleefully anticipating the neighbours horror and curtain twitching as they expect a skew-bald pony to show up next, tethered to the gate post. With the beast home we could all have a look, and all 4 children have had a good old explore. It is nice and clean inside (normal for traveller vans, apparently) all be it with a slight smell of not-used-recently damp and mustiness. We have brought all the cushions and curtains indoors for cleaning and drying out. Dad has been exploring the electrics, gas and all that jazz.

The caravan can be hooked up to mains but Dad can not, for now, work out how you'd do the equivalent to 2CV Llew's system with an old car battery in the gas-locker. No matter. You can buy little battery powered LED 'tube' lights for camping, so if we have to, we'll use those. There is also no loo for the humans to use but there's a biggish shower-room, so we will buy a camping stylee chemical loo 'potty' and that can go in there. Now all we need is for the whole thing to be towed to the new house at some stage and we're 'game on'.

As Mrs S pointed out to Dad, we are no longer officially homeless. We own a home, all be it a van parked on someone else's property.

Deefs

Sofa Back

Here is a girl who knows how to relaaaxxxxx, in this case in my favourite place, the back of the sofa while Mum and Dad are both in the room preferably watching a nice long TV programme or film. Only then do we (Haggis and I) seem to truly relax. Any other activities or positions, or having Mum and Dad not in the same room render us a bit fraught in case we miss something or one of them sneaks out without telling us.

I have to admit, I look a bit disreputable here but that was yesterday. She whos word is Law round here didst sniff of Haggis's ears and did declare unto Dad "These dogs ming and need a shampoo". That was it. No arguments are brooked. As soon as we got back from a run down to visit Pud Lady in Hastings, Dad laid the fire (so that we will be warm and dry out quickly after our bath) and then nabbed us one after the other for a trim of the aforementioned manky hair in our ears and then a shampoo to within an inch of our lives. Now we are white, fluffy and fragrant. It'll never catch on.

We hear that following the daring commando raid by Mr Silverwood and the abduction of Maxwell in the dead of Dublin night, Max's former owner may have been having a re-think and is possibly going to ask for the puppy back. Given that the pup is still only 10 weeks old and therefore as capable of pooing and peeing everywhere and eating the house, it will be interesting to see how this one plays out.

Hope you had a good weekend.

Yours, Fragrantly and Lovelililily

Deefs