An Alternative Blog

We are all enjoying the blog we have recently 'discovered' written by friend and mentor Anne, of Anne and Simon. It's on http://anirishalternative.blogspot.ie/2012/11/samhain.html and describes their own small-holdering efforts and other adventures. The latest episode is entitled "Samhain" (it's pronounced Sow-uhn with the sow being the female pig variety, not the distribution of seeds) which is the pagan pre-Christian feast of November, safely gathered in and all that. That's how we are all feeling at present as the weather turns a bit wetter and occasionally frosty. We are glad we have our log store full. We are also enjoying the fact that despite the awful wet, cool summer and our late start to the season, the allotment and Kitchen Garden are pumping out some decent crops at present.

 We are especially amazed by the parsnips coming out of the raised beds in the kitchen garden. These have turned out to have quite sandy soil in, probably because the 'fruit cake' loam we barrowed in has now had most of the smaller fraction and humus washed out of it by all the rain. Anyway it suits the parsnips which are coming out a foot long and 2 inches across, with 2 feet of greenery on top and completely free from canker and any slug damage. They are the best parsnips I have grown including all the Kent allotment years. The carrots are clean and healthy too, all be it shorter and we are eating regular cuttings of curly kale, chard and 3 kinds of cabbage. The broad beans and peas are finally finished, knocked back by the frost, so have been cut down and the roots left in the soil to rot down and release their nitrogen nodules.

As well as the fresh produce, Liz has lately got into baking, so the 'safely gathered in' feeling is also happening in the fridge, which is quite often stuffed with left over portions of meat pies, Danish Apple cake and, more recently, lemon biscuits and bacon biscuits, Nigel Slater cakes and mince pies. We approve!

Although we are well off for logs, John Deere Bob has suggested we go logging with his tractor around the bits of the (12 acre) farm we didn't buy, in search of ash trees (of which there are many in the hedgerows round these parts). Obviously this land still belongs to the Three Sisters so we have contacted Vendor Anna L who is happy enough as long as we only take the free standing ash, nothing from actual hedges. That suits us, as there is a short stand-alone row of half a dozen coppiced trees near to the NW corner of the farm which may once have been a hedge but is now not connected to anything at either end. With that in mind I got the chainsaw out today and sharpened up the teeth, then used it to clear up a few stumps and left-over bits, mainly to top up the log store.

In the animals department, the sheep look heftier by the day and will soon be coming to the day for their little trip to Cunniffe's of Ballaghaderreen or possibly another slaughterman-butcher in Castlerea pointed out to us by Mentor Anne. We have therefore been in touch with plasterer and our original supplier of sheep, Kenny O'C who is going to come and inspect the sheep, make the decision and then haul the ladies to meet their fate; he has a sheep trailer. We do not yet. We are not sure if he was joking but he suggested that the best way to weight them would be to climb on the bathroom scales, then grab a sheep and climb on with that. I joked with him that I didn't think I'd be able to lift one and even if I could and it would stop wriggling, the combined weight of me and a 50 kg (we hope) lamb might be too much for the scales. He insists that he's not joking and says they used to do it regularly back home, grabbing the animals they thought were the heaviest and lightest. He's round this week. I will enjoy watching him try! We have also driven round to the Cunniffe's slaughter-house to see how the land lies and find out the procedure. We then went to Cunniffe's actual shop to order Christmas turkeys etc and came away with some good bones for the dogs to teeth on.

The rabbits are coming up to weaning (if they are not weaned already) so Mum (Padfoot) will soon be returned to her sister and 'boyfriend', Ginny and Rogers. The babies are putting on weight fast and look, to our eyes, bigger at 4 and a half weeks, than Rogers did at 10 weeks. Despite the colouring of the brown bunny, which looks a lot like Rogers, we therefore now think that these may indeed be children of Anne's meat-breed buck, Peter, the New Zealand White. He has 'thrown' children in all colours from wild-rabbit through all the whites, browns and blacks despite his whiteness. If that's the case and the three buns are going to become nice, heavy, meaty animals then we are not too upset that our effort to sell them as pets through the on-line classified ads website DoneDeal.ie have so far yielded no fruit.

The chickens are growing too, sprouting tails and wings with real feathers. They are only 3 weeks old at this stage and it will be another 3 weeks before they are fully feathered. They are therefore kept indoors in their hutch which unfortunately means Mum must stay in there with them but we are getting hold of a cat and rat proof 6 foot by 4 run to give them all a chance to stretch their legs in the calf house without getting rained on.

Once they are fully feathered we may be able to let them all out on nice days to run with the main flock and William but we are concerned that once released we may not be able to round them up again so it's going to be a bit hairy.

That's it really at the moment. The 2CV still sits in the garage getting its kingpins (front steering/suspension parts) changed prior to its NCT re-test, now booked for the 20th, the sheep continue to expand their horizons into the east field, Liz stayed up all night for the USA Elections and we are hardly daring to whisper that we have not had any puppy poo or pee to clear up indoors for a couple of days now..... shhhhh!

Matt

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.