Her Royal Honkiness

Our amazing dry spell continues all be it recently with a chill East wind taking the heat off unless you can find shelter. We are mud-less and puddle free and we are loving it but it is certainly too dry for some. The local forestry, bog-land and tracts of scrubby gorse are tinder-dry and wild fires burn across the hillsides for days, keeping the local fire crews busy. Here we are safe enough, being in the middle of a beef-grazing area (though we do have stands of trees and this house is pretty much surrounded by tall black spruce) but we see the big, wide-base plumes of dark smoke on the horizon. One fire was within 15 minutes drive, near Frenchpark. The wind will also be giving those guys problems.

Meanwhile, back here, a post full of miscellaneous jottings across a variety of subjects. First up, with the pigs arriving on Tuesday, I finally got round to creating the little nameplate I do every year so that their ark begins to resemble a much-won trophy with each year's plate attached. This year we have gone with names from literature, being the Empress of Blandings and the Pride of Matchingham.

Literary-minded readers will know that these were two Berkshire pigs competing for the local livestock show "Fattest Pig" prize in the PG Wodehouse books. PGW being, of course, he who wrote about Bertie Wooster and his manservant, Jeeves. Well, these pigs are not Berkshires (They are OSBs again) and neither are they both sows. Nor will they be overly fat but I like the names, so Empress and Pride they will be.

Plenty of blossom on our James Grieves, mainly a pollinator tree

The other sign in my pic is one I was asked to do by a good friend (Hi, Margaret G) when she saw a pic of my last year's ones. Her pigs are long-standing, breeding age beasts. "Honky" from "Her Royal Honkiness" is self explanatory but I always smile at 'Parker'. Parker was the long suffering, nasal-speaking manservant/chauffeur to Lady Penelope in the Thunderbirds series when I was little. "Yes..... Be-Lady" and from Margaret's feed on Twitter, it sounds like Parker is always having to give way to Honks as she claims the lion's share of new warm bedding, any new ark, food or pretty much ANY resource that a lady-pig could monopolise!

This week saw us at the end of this goose-egg season. The ladies in that frame have now gone broody, so they are keeping any more eggs well hidden under their skirts and we are happy to let them. They started laying on 14th November and we have had goose eggs continuously since then. I haven't counted them up yet but if we can't spare them a few to go 'Mumsy' on then we are not doing the welfare "Freedom to express natural behaviours" thing properly in my view.

Give me your tired, your poor, your
huddled (swarming) masses yearning to
(come and live in a nice hive).

I have also deployed our honey bee swarm lure/box in the big ash tree just coinciding with the very warm (swarms a possibility) weather turning to our present bitingly cold Easterly breeze (swarming unlikely). We caught no swarm last year and I don't really expect to this year as at least 2 local bee keepers have come out of bees and there are very few apiaries where our box would be within scout-bee range.

Our first 2017 asparagus puts in an appearance.

Even so, I have baited the box as advised with old frames, a bit of honey and some sprigs of lemon balm. It is possible that if our own hive swarms and I can't get at the swarm (too high up, vanishes over a hedge while I'm not paying attention etc), the scout bees from that might find my box during their "house-hunt" phase and helpfully come nearly home again. Possible, but not very likely. 'First Prize' would be if I am there on the day they swarm, and they adjourn to a nice, low-hanging bit of hedge nearby where I can scoop them up.

Some gardening course output

Other than that, our main 'excitement' has been a gardening course offered to the Village for free, funded by local Training body "GRETB" (Galway and Roscommon Education and Training Board) so accepted by Liz in her role at the Centre, publicised and marketed widely. Liz and I would know quite a lot about gardening, of course, but there is always more to learn and we also wanted to support the endeavour.

A very old, tumble-down apple tree at the bottom of our land
manages to show lots of blossom despite always looking as
if it is on its last legs.

Even while the play was on we made sure there was at least one of us present. It has been (it's still running) a very enjoyable course. The guy, Richard, is a lovely bloke full of neat tricks-of-the-trade and also very generous with his training materials - plants grown in his nursery, peat bought in bulk, even tubs and pots. We have had a great time and learned lots. We have been able to bring home no end of seeds sown, trays and tubs planted up. Liz has also had a wealth of 'stories' to keep the website fresh.

An old pile of brushwood with nettles growing through it?
Yes but dead centre, the dark hole is a sneaky chicken nest
hole - another secret outdoor stash discovered.

So where does that leave us? Pigs are just around the corner. The orchard is pretty with blossom and I spotted some first asparagus breaking surface today. I have been walking the dogs away from here in my car-ride sites, Kilrooan and Kiltybranks. At Kiltybranks this morning I not only saw a hare, but also 'found' a colony of sand martins digging nest-burrows into the vertical face of some newly dug peat.

Sweet chestnut.

The big diggers cut the blocks of turf out from a 3m "cliff" moving across the ground dropping the ground-level as they horizontally go. In this case the 'cliff' backs a dug out 'sump' full of water so the martins presumably think they are on a river bank. The peat is lovely and dry after our weeks of no rain and now drying East wind so must be easy digging. I do worry that Digger-man might come back and take another bite out of the cliff nests and all, sending the birds down through the hopper, extruded like toothpaste and laid out to dry for burning this coming winter. Stay safe you sand martins.

100,000 Page Views

We made it! Thanks to all my readers, this blog passed the 100,000 page views milestone today. Better keep going then; cracking on.

On these long dark evenings, I find myself reading books as a way to pass the time, and enjoying it more than I thought I would - up to now I have generally read a book once and never touched it since. Compare that to Liz, the real reader in this family, who has hundreds of books filling half a dozen bookcases, many of which she has read dozens of times. This is particularly true of her favourite authors and series - the Lord Peter Wimsey series (Dorothy Sayers), murder mysteries, especially Margery Allingham's 'Campion' stories, PG Wodehouse, Georgette Heyer's stuff and currently various Nora Roberts and a batch of 50 books she inherited to her Kindle which make up the New York Times best seller top 50 (some good, some appallingly bad, apparently). My part in this, historically has been a small section of shelf by Maeve Binchy, a shelf full of books about Thames Barges, some natural history books, a lot on Westies, pigs, bees and small-holdering and the Terry Pratchett (Discworld) collection which we share.

Pirate Cat certainly likes his fish. This is all you get left if you
throw him a big salmon head, boiled up. Just keep your fingers
out of the way, is all!

Having got back into reading, I worked my way back through the Pratchetts but then decided I should spread my net wider and started plaguing Liz for books which "I might like"; I read a wad of  PGW (naturally including the 'Empress of Blandings' pig stories!) but then ran out of reading while Liz was studying a book by Diane Purkiss on the English Civil War. Now my family will know that I am not one for the History. I could not string 2 English kings together in the right order or give you dates to save my life. I hated the subject at school with a passion. It was taught in a dry and dusty way by a bloke who couldn't engage with kids for love nor money, just a series of dates, monarchs and battles which we were asked to learn by rote. One of the things that amazed me about Liz, when I met her, was that someone could actually love history, bubble over with a passion for its detail and could pretty much put every monarch onto a mental timeline, along with all the major events. She is currently coaching 2 young ladies, one on English Literature, one on History, so the books are out while she 'bones up' to get her facts straight before a coaching session.

Marzipan-ing the cake.

There I was, then, with an actual history book in my hand and found I was enjoying it as well as learning a lot. Purkiss's book approaches the Civil War from the angle of ordinary people struggling through it, their lives disrupted, their children off fighting or they off being soldiers and seeing their tiny perspective on things. You got a good idea of the mess and confusion of a war fought in the 1600s The 'big boys' don't get a look in unless written about by these 'lowly' letter writers or diary-keepers, unless Purkiss needs to slot in some detail by way of explanation or context. By the end of the book I felt quite happy that I knew a bit about history, all be it only the score or so years in the 1600s in which the war took place. Since then I have been handed a couple of novels which are from soon after, being Daniel Defoe's "Moll Flanders" and Henry Fielding's "Tom Jones". I have to admit that the 'Moll' was familiar territory-ish after the TV series with Alex Kingston, at least as to plot, but I was delighted to find that the real book was full of detail and context which I 'knew' from the Civil War book, especially around the way real life was organised, how people lived and ran the communities, law enforcement and so on. I have similarly loved Tom Jones, all 870 close-printed, garrulous pages of it. I am worried that I am becoming interested in history as well as a tiny bit 'well read' (!) I will be annoying Liz with my silly, simplistic questions. Perhaps I need some of this 'coaching'.

Strike is over. We are back in the egg game.

We run gently in towards Christmas. We have negotiated a settlement with the hens and they have started to go back to work on the egg laying. Thanks are due to Mentor Anne for an interim rescue - a quick dozen of her 'proper' organic eggs including one of her lovely dark-brown shelled ones now coming from her new Copper Marans hens. That let Liz go back into Christmas baking without us having to buy any more supermarket eggs. I now have 3 chooks in lay and more soon, I am sure. The 'negotiation' was possibly Liz walking round threatening them with the stock pot. It worked anyway, what ever she said to them.

Home made marzipan.

I have been marzipan-ing the cake. We have done this for this year with home made marzipan. The chef hates the taste of almond essence but has no problem with actual almonds themselves. We end up trying to peel the marzipan off the cake and then the icing off the marzipan. Not this year, we hope. The cake now gets a few days drying before we throw some icing at it. I have a design in my head based around the sheep 'logo' I used on the dustbin, but readers will have to wait and see.

Possibly a bit bigger than we intended.
They always look smaller in the 'shop'.

We have also finally brought the tree indoors. It had been outside, wrapped and sitting in a bucket of water, we believe that this helps with the loss of needles at the '12th night' end of things. We bought the tree on Friday morning but Liz then shot off back to Silverwoods for another quick burst of 'sitting' ('babies', school runs, houses, poorly parent in hospital, that kind of thing). She came back on the Monday and we like to 'do the tree' together, so I got as far as bringing it indoors to 'relax' from being wrapped up with its branches squashed upwards against the trunk.

We decorated it today. It may be a little bigger than we intended (especially width-wise); they always look smaller in the big perspective of acres of tarmac and big supermarket architecture, but it is OK. We don't really do 'tasteful'; the only house rule is that only white fairy lights and silver tinsel can go on the tree, no other colours and that the plain glass baubles are only silver or red. After that it all goes a bit wild with toys, bows, owls and stuff which we have accumulated down the years; we make a point of each buying one new one each year from craft fairs or what ever so our decorating is slowed down by exclamations along the lines "Ahhh look! Here's the crawfish one from New Orleans" and appropriate reminiscences.

I was off to 'bee school' for the last session before Christmas yesterday. This was going to be a very promising lecture by one of the National Committee boys on 'The Honey Harvest'. I was looking forward to it. I had the usual hour's drive out to Longford in the rain. Frustratingly, it all went a bit pear shaped, as the guy did not show and we all sat around wondering what to do. It turned out that the man got his dates wrong and came down on Thursday 11th but then, finding nobody about, went home again without contacting any of our people, which struck me as particularly dim. Our man had e-mailed him to confirm dates but he happily brushed that off with a "Oh, I never read my emails". Thanks, mate. We were left having a general discussion for a half hour or so before we all split up and the speaker has promised to try again in the New Year.

Connie, Dora and Flo'

In 'Small Holder' terms and exciting and momentous day when, without a lot of warning, we end up owning 3 sheep. Yesterday saw us finally get a visit from the fencing contractor, Paul M (Paul the Fence) who had been 'going to do' our sheep paddock for what seemed like weeks without ever showing up or phoning and Dad was just getting to the stage where he would do it himself or find another contractor, when Paul phoned to tell us the price and ask could he start "tomorrow". It was all agreed and Paul duly showed up Tuesday evening to drop off the wire and posts. He'd be back 'first thing' he said.

On the cattle-fencing job a few weeks back this had taken us all by surprise by meaning 0800 so this time Dad was ready after an 0700 alarm call. Foolish Boy! Of course, Paul rolled in at 11:30 with his tractor mounted post-whacker. Dad and he got stuck in and worked all day round to 6:30 pm creating the paddock, hanging the gate and so on. Very nice it looks too and the puppies and I are interested to note that the sheep wire has smaller holes at ground level and is puppy proof (and grown-up dog proof also). Mum did sterling service catering, supplying bacon sarnies at lunchtime and scones and jam / Greek Stafilia at 4pm. Paul seemed to very much appreciate this and happily piled into the home made bread, homemade jam and lemon curd, and the Greek 'Stafilia' which is a syrupy sweet grape confection.

 With the paddock built, Dad this morning contacted our friend, stilt-walking plasterer and sheep farmer, Kenny O'C (Kenny the Sheep) to let him know to start looking for 'our' sheep, but warned him that with Dad in the UK soon on a  Mon-Fri, to avoid those dates, thinking we'd get our sheep after that. Not a bit of it. Kenny was delivering some of his own sheep to the abattoir today and would happily let us have some of the 'remainder' sheep which had not yet made the required weight. Mum and Dad had decided to go with three ewe lambs this time while we find our feet and Kenny has some Texel x Jacob ewes at around 32 kg which will do nicely.

He was able to deliver them tonight so, a bit sooner than we had all expected, we find ourselves sheep owners. Kenny arrived at about 6pm in his huge shiny 4 x 4 with sheep trailer attached with our three sheep in the trailer and his young son Oisín in the cab  (it's pronounced "Urshin"). This was backed up to the gate in the pouring rain and with all dogs confined to in the house, humans blocked exits and guided the three into the new paddock. They stood around admiring the animals and talking sheep for a while and then retreated to the warm dry indoors to do all the necessary paperwork.

 Since foot and mouth there are now plenty of forms to fill in with every movement of every sheep around the country and each one is uniquely tag-numbered
These ladies are 4 months old and were born in Irishtown, County Mayo. This is only their 2nd address. To the government they are called IE045492600051B, 61C and 62E respectively but Mum has decided to name them after three sisters of the PG Wodehouse character Lord Emsworth, so to us they are Constance (Connie), Dora and Florence (Flo). Good luck girls. You mission is to achieve weights of about 50-60 kg by about Christmas and for Mum and Dad to not fall in love with you (too much)

Deefs