Callum Comes a-Calling

Storm Callum

Named storm 'Callum' arrives heralded by the usual colourful wind maps and weather warnings from Met Éireann and (National broadcaster) RTE. He looks from the first predictions, that he will split up either side of the island's SW corner and will mainly be a coast problem. Co Roscommon is a land-locked county, so we only got a 'yellow' warning (for rain).

Upholstery "stuff" will need an official
storage place.

And so it turned out. We'd taken all the normal precautions (hives strapped down, lumps of concrete on hutch roofs etc) and we have our new chicken house roof, so we felt safe enough but no-one here was complacent and we all saw the sorry pictures of the devastation caused by Hurricane Michael which took out great tracts of Florida. I was woken by heavy rain at about 3 a.m. and then again at 6 a.m. and there were puddles but we got away with no damage.

Rooster Gandalf (right) minds a group of hens sunning them
selves and preening. 

We had even got away with a 2 day "Indian Summer" prior to Callum, with the south winds bringing unseasonably warm air up from Spain. We'd been able to sit outside, in my case with the camera, and take a few pics of the various birds relaxing in what might be their last warm days this year. For 2 days we did not light the range (I have now!). There was plenty of bee activity in both the hive and the swarm box.

Despite appearances, we think this may be a hen.

I noted in a recent post that we did not seem to be able to produce here, a white coloured hen despite having Sussex birds in the flock for all the 6 years we have done chickens here. All our white babies seemed to grow up into roosters, way outside the Law of Averages.

Rooster Gandalf has had enough of being magnificent and full
of breeding season glory. He goes for the moult.

Very recently we 'offed' the last youngster as it started to shout Cock-a-Doodle-Dooooo! and grew an impressive long tail and the big facial features (wattle, comb) of a cockerel. He also started trying to jump/rape women belonging to Gandalf and Herme and was getting a good kicking from those two boys. It was not going to end well.

Now, that lad was one of a small clutch of babies hatched in spring, a 2nd one of which was also white, and we watched anxiously as the two white "boys" both grew up, were seen play-fighting one another and seemed to be heading for similar tall stature. We were sure they were both roosters.

Pretty hen enjoying the sunshine

Then a month or 2 ago, the 2nd bird suddenly stopped growing and never developed the tall tail or big face, never crowed and did not start harassing the 'sisters'. She(?) is a bit rangey and long limbed so she will be a big bird but we think we might just have a hen, there.

Turkey hen, 'Deo' seems quite happy solo.

We have been keeping a close eye on the turkey hen, 'Deo' after we had to cull out the 'tom' ('Excelsis' - there was a bit of a Christmas theme developing there, for a while). Turkeys can form very close pair bonds and can pine away and die at the loss of their partner. Deo seems to be OK and happy enough hanging with the three Guinea Fowl cock-birds. So far so good anyway.

In line for some culling action, these two "spare" Appleyard
drakes.

Also in this inadvertent tale of culling and death we have 2 'spare' drakes quietly getting on with enjoying a bit of a stay of execution. They were due to go on their final journey back at the end of our Help-X visit by Sonja and Asbjörn but that was when the turkey-tom decided to lose the plot and attack me. He stepped into harm's way and the processing department had enough on its plate. Never mind, the Lady of the House will not be that busy for ever and their turn will come.

I can never see how this is comfortable.

Did I say 'busy'. Oh yes, I have not yet mentioned that that other big 'time-suck' that mops up our free time each year, is about to re-start..... The Village Play. The Lisacul Players wake up about now each year and start planning the next Easter's production. The 'wake up' meeting was on Wednesday and involved a big gang of them (13) reading one of the (3) plays short-listed by main man and Producer Tommy C. I went along as the reading started late enough that I had all the birds locked up safe from Mr Fox. I am sorry I did not make a note of the play or writer but it was by a well known and prolific local play-wright.

Plenty of bee activity round the swarm box in the warm days.

The Players have to try to find a play that suits their male/female cast balance and they also prefer plays where there is not just one major spoken part. We prefer well balanced 'ensemble' plays. The one we read was very good and very funny and may end up being "The Play", but the Players are going to read another one next week and another the week after, and then decide. I will keep you posted.

Finally, we came to time for the big 'Parma' ham legs of pork to come out of their dry salt/sugar cure and to move on to the next phase: 4-18 months of air drying hanging up from the ceiling in a nice airy, well ventilated space. This change involves having to scrub off all the encrusted salt using cider vinegar (or the odd splash of hot water which you must quickly pat off once the salt is gone).

Legs scrubbed clean of salt

They get wrapped in a muslin sheath or a pillow case to deter the flies but they should not really need that, being so salty and vinegar-y by now on all the cut surfaces and skin. I could not actually find the muslin when I went to do this but pending a rescue, hung them up naked anyway and I have seen no flies on or around them, so we should be OK. They hang for 4-18 months gently drying out and maturing, and losing around 30% of their weight.

That must be about it for this post so I will wish you Good Luck and hope you all survived 'Callum' as painlessly as we did.

Oh - one last thing. We have had our first goose eggs of this season

Sonja and Asbjörn

Happy Birthday Deefer, 12 years old on Monday. She's only 7
in this 'memory' picture dredged up by Facebook. Many more years
old lass.

Welcome aboard, then, our 2 latest Help-X volunteers, a German couple in their early 30s, Sonja and Asbjörn, much travelled back-packers with experience of Help-X-ing in Iceland and New Zealand as well as closer to home. He a trained chef and she a pastry chef. Very welcome, in fact, after we'd thought that Help-X was all done with the August blow-out French lad. These two are excellent, capable, workers as well as happy, friendly and relaxed - easy company and a joy to host.

Sonja clears an old spent strawberry bed.

I collected them at 7 pm from the bus stop in Castlerea. Dead easy to find, of course. Castlerea bus stop does not have that many young back packers getting off buses at 7 o'clock on Saturday and I already knew my man (Asbjörn) sported a magnificent gingery beard from their Help-X website "advert". They had been hiking and back packing around and were looking forward to some days based at a single place, where they did not have to pack everything, tent included, each morning and move on.

Asbjörn bones out a pork leg.

We fed them a soup and cold buffet supper and told them tomorrow (Sunday) was a rest day, so they were not to set any alarms or come down stairs suited and booted at silly o'clock. Monday was also going to be a bit weird but time enough to start proper routine work on the Tuesday. Elizabeth and I were off to Sligo on the Monday for me to have another chest X-ray, then dropping down to the pork butcher (Webb's) in Castlerea to collect our pig carcasses. So I showed Sonja the 'livestock rounds' on the Sunday, so that we could leave at 08:30 with the birds safe from Brer Fox, and the Help-X-ers could get up at their leisure and feed and release the birds.

A car full of pig

These guys are both trained cooks but had not, before, had to deal with a whole pig carcass. Sonja was not keen, and opted to go to work in the kitchen garden, clearing an old strawberry bed and weeding a newer one, but Asbjörn fancied a try at the butchery which is way 'upstream' from his normal experience. Brilliant for me, still on 'light duties', and good for the Lady of the House too, as this freed her up to onward process the heads, hearts, livers, tails, ears and so on into excellent brawns, patés, dog-treats and there was even talk of brains soaking in milk (I avert my eyes at that level of offal).

Splitting a pig head for the brawn.

With me 'training' him and his dexterity with knives and the bone saw, we soon had each half carcass reduced to lumps that he would be familiar with, and then there was no stopping him 'running with it' into areas we have not yet explored here. He was soon boning out the 'H' bones (pelvic bits) at the top of my 'Parma' ham legs, completely boning out other legs, rolling and tying them, extracting good looking boneless pork 'steaks' from the shoulder meat and so on. A master-class in food prep. I was just able to take it easy bagging and labelling the cuts for the freezer. I just need to salt down my 'Parma' ham legs and we are all done, all safely gathered in.

Boned, rolled and tied leg.

As I said, while we all played 'pig' indoors, Sonja was working her way down the 5 big 8 x 4 foot railway sleeper beds to brilliant effect, weeding, clearing old, spent, strawberry plants, cropping where appropriate (carrots, spuds, broad-beans-for-seed), teasing out the few volunteer spuds from among the new asparagus "spiders" - a delicate job because of the shallow, horizontal roots on those bad boys.

Cheek meat

Into work proper on the Tuesday and Sonja and Asbjörn prove to be those kind of workers who get stuck in, don't really want to stop for coffee and then carry on after lunch "just to finish off this....." We are delighted. They clean all the pig-poo out of the trailer, and clean the big 1010 litre water butt (IBC) inside and out. Asbjörn then starts chopping a big heap of fencing pales into kindling, while Sonja starts clearing the poly tunnel of volunteer spuds and an enormous fennel plant. The spuds prove to be quite a significant crop with some enormous ones - 600 grammes plus.

600+ gramme spuds. Volunteers from the tunnel.

Other than the work, the couple have settled in well and are much enjoying our food and hospitality. They are proving to be very helpful about the place. They have also introduced us to a fun, 6-dice counting game belovéd of back packers (because the whole game only weighs six dice!), called 'TenThousand'. The scoring rules are good and complicated and the skill is in 'gambling' whether to 'bank' your points or risk rolling some dice again and losing those points. Entertaining.

So, as I write this it is only 10:30 a.m. and I am hunkered down indoors waiting for the worst teeth of Storm Ali to blast their way through. Not the worst ever storm we have had here but plenty of bluster in the trees and some 'apocalyptic' rain squalls. I had delayed letting the birds all out and even held the dogs in for a while, lest they get soaked.

Brawn

Further down in the 'midlands' the biggest agricultural show in the Universe (The Ploughing Championships 2018) is due to start today but it is, like a lot of these shows, really a massive city of tents, gazebos, marquees and other guy-roped canvas. The organisers have taken advice from Met Éireann and postponed the start while the wind dies down (this morning) lest they garrote or bury anyone under airborne tent-age.

Ah well. Enough for this one. Good luck surviving Storm Ali.

A short lived Duckling

Connie brings the one surviving duckling off the nest and
quickly has it feeding like a pro.

A quick post this time, as befits the little recovery period we are having betwixt our busy, visitor bedecked Christmas and the New Year weekend. With the French off the premises, Liz headed for Silverwood land for another very quick tour of Mum-minding duty. A family meal with a 3-line whip had been planned but then cancelled without anyone telling Liz so she ended up just doing the one night. Mum is 'fixed' enough to no longer need random daughters fussing about the place. She is signed off now till 15th Jan. 

Little Paddler.

In the mean time, Friends of the Blog will recall that we have a Sussex hen who went broody in late November and then hatched, we think, 4 duck eggs just as the French visitors left. This lady only managed to bring 1 survivor off the nest. I found only one part-chewed corpse, so I guess that the nest got predated by a rat and the other babies were taken alive or dead. 

This double yolker was to be the duckling's Day 4 breakfast.

The survivor ("Little Paddler") was going great guns. His 'Mum' quickly taught him to feed and he was gobbling up the tiny portions of chick-crumb and hard boiled egg I was taking to them 4 times a day. It was alternating snow, hail and sleet outside, so I shut them in the Tígín to be 'safe', warm and dry. By day 3 (Thurs 28th) he was looking very promising and Mum was sleeping on the floor with him under her skirts.

Horrible, sleety, haily weather. Yes, I did get caught with
a line of washing out!

Sadly, this morning, (Day 4) when I went in with breakfast, Mum came down from a higher perch and there was no sign of the duckling. Mum was fussing and clucking around as if asking me where the baby was. We looked everywhere but could find no sign, no sad little corpse. If she had gone up there to perch and left him 'peeping' on the ground, then he'd have frozen to death in minutes and/or been carried off by the rat(s). Maybe he was taken by the rat and she then flew up to perch higher in her angst? We will never know. Ah well. These things happen. Mum spent part of the day all stressed out clucking about, presumably missing him but by afternoon seems to have calmed down and forgotten him. Sorry, Connie. Better luck next time. 

Just a light dusting of snow this time.

We are still determined to do more ducks, so we have decided to buy a Covatutto incubator like the one we used to borrow from Charlotte of the Mini Horses. We will set a dozen eggs in that in the spring time. We may also try Muscovies; not so good for eggs, but much better than the Khaki Campbells for meat. Also,more fun, apparently with their keenness to fly and sit on your roof tops!

Opening up the new Parma style ham.

We finally got around to 'opening' the Christmas leg of 'Parma' style ham. It had been missed off menus and side lined by the sheer amount of food we were trying to cope with, even with the French visitors. 

Roscommon style 'Parma' ham. 

This leg was from the 2016 pigs, so was 16 months at the air-drying / curing and is deliciously sweet. Liz has pronounced it my best so far. I am quite impressed too. We obviously have that job sussed and if any readers would like to come and have a sample (I know Charlotte likes a 'Parma' ham and may be around at present, down from Dublin) then do drop by.

That is about it. We are now all battening down the hatches for the next named storm, Storm Dylan who is meant to roar through on Saturday night. We are under Orange warnings here for 70-80 kph winds all across the Province of Connaught, though inevitably, coastal areas have the highest predicted wind speeds. 

Beyond that, assuming we aren't blown across to Longford, we will also be enjoying the New Year weekend which will also bring me to the end of my latest stint as curator on the @smallholderIRL Twitter account - where I am sharing a fortnight's shift with account boss @foodborn Margaret Griffin. We are nearly done - finishing, neatly, on Sunday 31st Dec. 

Multiple Pork Products

Apple shredder designed and built by woodwork
genius, K-Dub. Photo by Carolyn. 

In the last post, I described a hand-made cider apple shredding device but had no photo with which to 'paint a thousand words'. Here to put that right is the said weapon. The drum is spinning at a fair rate here so the exposed screw heads are a blur and the wooden rolling pin used to hold the more uncooperative apples down on it is also moving. I hope you can work it out.

A car load of carcasses.

We also left the 'late' pigs down at the butcher's cooling and 'setting', hanging in his cold store. This post will show that we have been very busy ever since and not stopped with the pork products thing, till now.

AB looking the part with his ADL "Cooking
up a Storm" apron and a tea-towel over his
shoulder.

AB and I collected the meat on Thursday morning while Liz stayed home to prepare the work surfaces, for which read Dining Table and chopping boards, and to get ready the pile of plastic bags and the labelling 'Sharpie'. We use an excellent You Tube self-videoing butcher from Warwickshire for our 'how to' information. Scott Rea of the @ScottReaProject is worth a look see if you are contemplating doing any butchery or making of pork products like 'brawn' (a.k.a. 'head-cheese' ).

This is very early stages, Whipping
out the "caul fat" which lines the
abdomen and is superb for suet crusts.

Amusingly at one stage Liz was in the kitchen watching the Scott Rea on brawn while I was ensconced in the Dining Room watching the 'whole pig' one. Scott would be proud of us! 

Coo. Mind your fingers there cutting out that sheet of ribs. 

So AB and I set to with the cutting with me letting him have a go on a 'monkey see, monkey do' basis. He was quickly whipping out tenderloin fillets and sheet ribs like a pro, sawing through the spine to separate out racks of chops and generally enjoying breaking those halves down into 'primal' cuts and then freeze-able portions (quarter shoulders etc). 

Slicing up some bellies.

Finished joints were landing on the table only to be rapidly bagged and labelled for the freezer. Occasionally we called Liz in to choose cuts (chops separate or in racks? shoulder in 4 quarters? ribs in sheets or separated? etc) It was a real team effort. It took around 30 to 45 minutes per half which reassured me that we were right to not spend the €50 per pig on having them cut up at the shop. We are also able to cut the chops nice and thick (basically one chop per spinal vertebra and rib), which the shop lads, with their band saws, do not do. They zip through the 'rack' every couple of cm and the saw goes diagonally through several ribs, so you get more, thinner chops but lots of sharp, diamond-shape bones in them.

First fruits. Liz sorted out some small
 cutlets of the new pork to go with our
lunch of left over pie and eggs. Delicious!

By lunchtime we were done on 'our' three halves, though Liz had another full afternoon and some of the next day onwardly processing the other bits. There was liver to make into paté. She was also doing a 'rillette' ('pulled' pork preserved in soft pig fat, lovely to spread on bread!) and, with those 2 split heads, 4 lovely big tubs of brawn. AB and I had a chance for a breather before heading down to a friend's house to deliver their half carcass and to butcher it up for them at their place.

Clockwise from top left. First of 4 tubs of brawn, rillette,
paté and more paté. The green in the brawn is fresh parsley.

The late afternoon saw me mixing up 2 strengths of flavoured brine. These recipes are from the Strawbridge books and are flavoured with a lovely 'Christmassy' mix of cloves, garlic, onion, star anise, bay, mustard seed, chilli flakes, allspice and peppercorns. The big whole ham gets 3 days in the less salty/sugary brew before being frozen till December. The belly pork rectangles for bacon rashers get the stronger brew but only for 24 hours.

The fridge in the Utility Room is rather
over-full, at least in the short term! Here
the two 'Parma' legs stand in dry salt mix
and the other buckets hold cuts in brine(s).

We are also having another go at the dry-cure and air dried "Parma" style hams. 2 whole legs again with one planning to be ready in August 2018 and the other for Christmas 2018. These are rather risky investments - each leg is about €60 gone up the Swannee River if you don't get the salt cure right and the flies and maggots get a hold, but this is our 3rd year at this and we are quietly confident that our salt, sugar and spices (not to mention 16 days in the fridge!) will win the day.

Out in the 'honesty box' we are struggling to keep up with
demand for eggs. The girls are on a 'Go Slow'.

The Utility Room fridge is feeling a bit over stuffed just now. The whole legs are long, so they go in standing on end and we have to take out the shelves.

If you are pinned down by the rain, you can
always break up some pallets for kindling.

The bucket for the bellies just about slides in beside the dry-cure bucket and the big-ham brine container perches rather precariously on top of that. It is only for the 24 hours, though, then the bellies are done and on day 3 the big ham is also cured, so then the legs get some space. They get patted down with more dry salt mix each day and the brine which is drawn out of the meat by the salt is drained off, lest the water dissolve and dilute the dry cure. It's all good fun and technical stuff and, even better, it works!

Meanwhile, Stumpy the hen reaches Day 21 of her 2nd go at doing 'broody' today and, right on time, she has a hatch. I have seen at least 1 baby chick peeping out from under her skirts. Following the new system of naming chicks after your current Help-X volunteers (as in Manu1, Manu2 etc) we guess these guys should become AB1, AB2 and so on. Wish them luck.

Going Once....Going Twice...

Crack! The (nominal) gavel comes down on our long running local drama, "The Sale of the Land". Back in early September I posted that the 28 acres of land around us had gone up for sale and that we were considering buying one of the fields. ( http://deefer-dawg.blogspot.ie/2016/09/field-of-dreams.html ). Back when we bought this place we took a small (2.5 acres) chunk out of what had been a 30 acre farm, in our case the house and buildings and the fields immediately surrounding. In the process we became good friends with one of the three sisters selling the place, 'Vendor Anna' on this blog.

No relevance to this story - just a '365'
pic I snatched of a water-well drilling rig
which parked in the village.

The three sisters held on to the remaining 28 acres for 4 years but have now put the land up for auction. They very generously created an option for us to buy the 1.5 acre field opposite in which we had registered an interest. We had to have a good old poke around in the dusty corners of the cupboard labelled "Our Financial Life" but alas, no such lump of 'wedge' presented itself and we had to pass on the option. Well, this sale has now gone through without us and we have a new neighbour. You don't win them all. Never say 'Never', though. The field is likely to remain right there and just maybe, in a couple of years when the cupboard might be a bit more yielding.......

Dry cured hams awaiting their 8 months (or so) of air drying.

Meanwhile, back in the bit we did manage to buy, plenty of stories are still chugging along happily. The big, complete pig legs we saved at butchery time for our version of Parma/Serrano ham have now completed their 21 day stay in the dry cure mix (3 parts salt, 1 part sugar, various spices, refrigerator) and come ready to be scrubbed clean of the encrusted cure (using cider vinegar properly but I used white vinegar), bagged in their muslin sleeves and hung up in a well ventilated, cool, dry place for (the recipe says) 4-18 months. Our plan is to try the first one next summer (so about 10 months) and save one for Christmas 2017 (14 months). The air drying is to get the lovely sweet Serrano flavours. The salt cure is to give us a head start in the not-very-Spanish local climate. If you hang up uncured meat in the West of Ireland in October, I think you'd just generate a maggot-sanctuary in a bit of a hurry.

The hams hang in their muslin sleeves.
We will hide them up when guests are
using the room!

The first print-run on the village calendar has sold out and we know that many have already left the country en route to their delighted recipients. We have had delighted feedback from the UK  and I have also posted them to Germany and Canada. Liz is already taking orders for a 2nd print run. The village website is widely seen as a great success and gets plenty of 'traffic' both locally and from people who have connections back to the area but now live abroad, the 'Diaspora'. It is to the website that many people are going to register their interest and place their order(s).

Liz has given up trying to knit here and is reduced to playing
a game on the laptop as long as the 'kattens' do not try to
eclipse her view. The laptop is up on the cookbook 'lectern'
to stop tiny feet walking on the keyboard. 

Our other main  'project' if you can call it that, is to try to integrate the "kattens" (they are too big to be called kittens any more but not yet big enough to be called 'cats'). They are almost 6 months old now and not too vulnerable to doggie molestation. They can jump up onto safe high places and make themselves quite big by arching their backs, bog-brushing their tails and hissing and spitting. The dogs tend to stop and think about it now.

Lovely colour from the beech trees in the
(now empty) pig-run

Most evenings and sometimes during the day when we are around to supervise, we open the door through to their Sitting Room and let them come through to explore and enjoy the family, fire-warmed company of the Dining Table. They love it and we are starting to believe that we may actually get these cats through from kittenhood without either of them suffering death (or injury) by dog. We do not yet trust them all together unsupervised, however, so they can not yet have the "access all areas" freedom enjoyed by our adult cats, the fearless 'Soldier' and the big-enough-to-damage-the-dogs, alpha-male 'Blue'.

Borrowed ram-lamb Silas has still not, to our knowledge, succeeded in mounting any of the ewes (no give-away blue painted rumps at the breakfast bar) but he has settled down with the ladies and is now very much inside the flock. I frequently see him in close company with the big ewe 'Myfanwy' and the youngster, 'Rosie'. The experts tell me that this is all OK and that ewes, even when they are in season, only come receptive to the ram on a 13-18 day cycle (average 17). We don't know where they were before Silas arrived, so we have no idea how many days we need to wait. If they weren't on at all, then the presence of a ram should bring them round. Happily, Sue says we can keep Silas for as long as we like or need, even through Christmas, so the lad has plenty of time to grow into the big boots left behind by the mighty 'Rambo', our 2015 tup.

I owe him an apology, though. In my previous post, I suggested that he was named for the biblical Silas who spent time with St Paul; Sue had said something about the diagonal white cross he had on his face as a young one. Apparently not. He is named after 'My Uncle Silas' in the HE Bates books because he is a country boy and Sue hopes he will be a disreputable, fun-loving, philandering rogue. Especially the philandering, I would think. I had not heard of these books, but Sue and Rob loved a TV series from 2001 starring Albert Finney as Silas and gave him the name in memory of it. Go Silas.