Carsten

Carsten is quickly adopted by Towser indoors
and our turkey 'tom' Excelsis out of doors.

Welcome aboard, then, latest Help-X student, Carsten. Carsten hails from SW Germany and the town of Dudenhofen which is, by all accounts, quite similar to our local market towns of Castlerea and Ballaghaderreen. It is in the Rhineland "Palatinate"; Mrs C loves that this expression is still in use. Plenty of her most recent history 'pods' have involved the Palatinate but she had thought that this was an old name, no longer in use. She is delighted that "they still have the Palatinate". Dudenhofen is also in the main asparagus growing area of Germany.

Adopted by the male turkey out of doors

Carsten, in his early 20s, is studying teaching of English and Sport and as part of the language chunk of this, he has to go and live in an English speaking area for 3 continuous months. He has chosen Help-X as his method of getting accommodation and Ireland as his destination. We have him for the first week of this 'tour', round till the middle of next week.

He is an excellent guest - all the good things you can say about Help-X volunteers - fit and strong, willing to work hard and try his hand at all manner of jobs, happy, friendly, relaxed, easy to talk to and thoroughly enjoys any food The Woman of the House puts in front of him.

By his own admission he is very new to this travelling thing and this is his first adventure alone, so he gets a bit wary around trying to connect up legs of the journey, changes of train and so on. He managed to mess up the journey here from Frankfurt airport (Ryan Air) and, in Dublin, managed to get on a bus which missed its train connection at Athlone.

Instead of him pitching up at Castlerea at 8pm for me to do a 15 minute taxi run to collect him, we got a series of phone messages ending up with him stranded in Athlone and needing us to drive the 2 hour round trip to rescue him. Never mind. No harm done and Carsten was safely under the roof by 10 pm where Elizabeth could feed him soup and pizza. Poor lad had not eaten since breakfast at the parents' house that morning.

All looking a bit Spring-like. Love those hot orange tulips.

After that late night, we took pity on him and decided we'd not start any work that next morning, taking the day, instead for us to get to know each other, for him to get a look round here and meet the livestock, plus we could go for a little drive around in the car shopping etc if he needed wellies or gloves.

Now, four days later, we are properly in the groove and have done some good, productive work. The weather has been dry and warm, so we have been able to get 'out there' and get long overdue garden tasks done. We have emptied two big compost bins and top-dressed three railway sleeper beds and one of the long beds in the polytunnel with a good 6-8" thick layer of the lovely rich stuff. We have cleared up all the wind-blown branches in the East Field onto a fire-pile for burning.

Food for baby ducklings. Chick-crumb (slightly wetted), finely
mashed hard-boiled egg (incl shell) and finely chopped lettuce
(which they will completely ignore, of course!)

We have chopped up quite a bit of the Storm Eleanor larch and spruce which had been seasoning in its round 'cakes' sliced out of the trunks. Then we crowned all that yesterday by mucking out a bullock barn for a friend. This latter involved me getting a 'fix' of tractor driving - I was hauling the mucked loads down to the dumping pile. Nearly an 'oops' for me there to match Carsten's Athlone mess-up.

It survived the winter!

That's only a 2 wheel drive tractor and with the link box full of muck it's so back heavy that the front is almost rearing up off the ground. In the destination field there was (unbeknownst to me) a very soft patch and I started to sink my left rear tyre in. I was sweating a bit, wallowing around there praying that I didn't need to make the embarrassing rescue phone call to get myself extracted. That would have taken some living down!

Plenty of bee activity in this warm weather.

That was a full day. We were already tired from the compost barrowing and the log splitting, so when we went down to clear "just a couple of boxes" and then fell in with the mission-creep to "the whole barn" (5 boxes), my aul' bones were definitely starting to creak.

A beautifully hearty neck-of-lamb stew. Our own lamb of course.

This morning, I am as stiff as a board and very glad it's the weekend. I was joking with Carsten that I love working with the Help-X lads and I get much more than twice as much done as I would on my own, 2-handed. This mainly because I get lazy and I don't actually do anything in between the Help-X-ers. I need them to motivate me of a morning. May not be 100% true but certainly seems that way sometimes. I find myself 'saving jobs up' for the next Help-X-er, which translates as "avoiding those jobs till I get help" :-) (smiley face)

I started doing these ten-packs with "all the colours" through
the honesty box. They sell very well.

All we have planned for today is a nice breakfast and bit of driving around. I am taking Carsten over to friends Sue and Rob for him to meet them and see their place. Also to look at some new baby kittens from which two may be of interest to 'Sparks' and his lady. We were going to select the two as Sparks was thinking that the lady would find them all equally cute and it did not matter much which they were given. However, I understand that she has now seen the pictures and chosen her kittens, so we are just going to say 'Hello' and admire them, presumably.

Pears coming into blossom.

I am on strict instructions not to slip up and fall in love with the other two. WE HAVE ENOUGH ANIMALS was how it was phrased. No arguing with that.

There's snout to see here. Move along.

I think that is probably enough for this one. More on Carsten and our adventures in Help-X-ing in the next post. Good luck now. Get out and enjoy that sunshine.

A Drought in February?

According to textbook Meteorology a 'drought' in the British Isles is any period of 15 days without rain. My paper-diary had it's first mention of "warm sunny spring-like days" on Feb 14th so if we manage tomorrow without rain (and it looks as if we might) we are officially in a drought situation in County Roscommon in February. This is unheard of! Given that if felt like we had rain every day through November, December and January it is a very pleasant change and we hope that it is a portent of a decent spring. We are starting to enjoy plenty of 'signs' by now. We have primroses open in the 'Primrose Path' and our daffs are starting to turn down prior to showing the first colour. The buds on the cutting dogwood from Vendor Anna are opening and plenty of other plants have signs of expanding buds.

Our rabbits in the big run had grazed their grass down to the clay and were running to the fence to 'ask' me for food as soon as I appeared in the garden. They were gobbling up cabbage leaves and broccoli stalks, carrots, feed wheat and the last remaining 'Fast Lamb Crunch' mixture like it was going out of fashion. They have now been moved to their new runs and the front lawn, where they will graze the whole of their 1 m by 2.5 m area in one day and we are moving them on to new grass each morning. They are leaving a snooker-table-like baize with a few pellets of poo in their wake as they proceed across the lawn.

We nipped out to beyond Carrick to a place we had heard sold poly-tunnel plastic sheet by the yard and bought enough to produce the Mark 2 version of my raised-bed cloche. The Mk 1 was only made out of an old bit of plastic wrapping and had been shredded by the first decent gale. You will know from reading the job list a few posts back that I had in mind to create a 'greenhouse' using a wooden frame and corrugated transparent plastic, maybe fibre-glass. Mentor Anne (who had played this game before!) suggested  that while we were out at the poly tunnel place (North West Tool Hire, Kilclare, Co. Lietrim) we ask the guy for a price on the corrugated. She was suggesting that it might be very expensive and was steering us in the direction of poly-tunnel plastic, at least for sections, if not a poly-tunnel itself.

 Well, Anne, you will not be surprised to know that the corrugated sheet plan is now withdrawn. The plastic alone was going to come to €1400+ and that was without wood, screws and so on. Instead we have been persuaded that the way to go is actually a poly-tunnel, so we have ordered one measuring 20 feet long by 14 feet wide (and 7'6" tall) which will fit in the same space. It was only €700 all in and is being delivered, we hope, this weekend. We have spent part of today clearing the site which is, you will recall, the western bay of the former hay barn. Liz is now planning all manner of tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and basil to cram it with.

With the soil nicely drying out in the DROUGHT (did I tell you we were nearly in a drought?) I have got back into pond digging. It is pure pleasure. The shovel-fulls are so much lighter when not weighed down like a sodden sponge and the barrow loads bounce across the firm ground. The plan for this is to not need an expensive rubber liner (estimate €860) as two 'spits' down, we hit yellow Roscommon clay. I have nearly taken the first 'spit' off so you can clearly see the shape of the pond now. I will then come in a bit all round and start on the next level. When we get down to clay I am hoping that we will be able to 'puddle' the clay into a waterproof layer or at least. waterproof enough that the replenishment from the rain (when we are not in DROUGHT) would keep up with any seepage.

I have just noticed that the picture above appears to show a headless chicken. This is just William preening his right side out of sight. The strange grey cloud which you can just see rising to the left of me (as you look) turns out to be because one of his daft hens decided that the old bonfire ash would be a good place for a dust bathe. She got well involved in this and was there for half an hour at least rolling and writhing about getting completely covered in the grey ash and sending up plumes of dust into the windless air. She got up, shook herself and was obviously well satisfied with the result but spent the rest of today looking decidedly grubby compared to her sisters and with very grey wattles and comb. If we'd not seen her bathing we would have been very concerned for her health. Oooh. She does look poorly!

Meanwhile we have started planting some of the Wispy's and Ardcarne plant purchases. We are trying out a new sort of raised bed as an experiment.  This is Liz's cunning method. We make a circle of stones to mark the patch out from the grass, drop a layer of well rotted straw-bale onto the grass and then shovel on a mound of spare soil from the pond. The chickens and rooster inspect this for worms and grubs and then sign it over to Liz for planting, in this case with foxgloves, Ismene (Hymenocallis = "Peruvian Daffodil") and geraniums. It then gets a chicken-wire cover to deter the geese for the first few days while the plants get established. The picture is the first ever one, a Pilot Project. There!

Did I tell you we might have a drought? Oh yes, so I did.

Poly-Tunnel

Bit of a thaw. After a succession of mornings at minus 5 degrees C, this morning was either warmer, or us getting up at a lazy 9am instead of the workday 04:15 meant that all the white frost had had a chance to melt.

Still steering clear of the Rec, our walk this morning took us down to the creek abnd back through the Iron Wharf and the boatyard. We were able to check on sailing barge "Cambria" now cocooned inside her poly tunnel of white tarpaulins. She also now has her smart new gang-plank and here, in the pic, you can see the railway sleepers the men have laid down to stop the cranes, when they use them, from collapsing the creek bank.

At home today, all is mad preparation for Mum's "posh frocks" do tonight, where Dad will be descended upon by 6 more glamorous ladeeeez in their finest (it's a hard life, Dad, but some-one's got to do it!). We have been despatched to the allotment to harvest leeks, kale and savoy cabbage, we have laid the fire, we have been shopping (nearest Sainsburys surprisingly not too manic!), we have been tidying and readying the house, polishing champagne glasses and getting out the finest china. Coo... aren't we the elegant ones!

Deefer

Oh Ellie!

The grapevine has it that my Sis, Ellie is in "twouble" again. Her Mum has grassed her up to Uncle Jim, found guilty of chewing up her glasses. Ellie's Mum says she has 2 pairs - her "spare" pair and her "best" pair. We'll leave you all to guess which pair Ellie has written off......

Dad has a Team Lunch today and skanks off work a bit early, so is home to walk us round the boat yards loop in daylight. We pass the project Sailing Barge "Cambria" in her dry-dock "lighter" and see the guys just finishing off assembling her "polytunnel" of bright white lorry tarpaulins. Dad hails one of the shipwright guys. "She'll start to dry out now", he says, "So we can start doing some proper work on her.

We also pass the barge Greta, as sailed on by Mum and Dad (twice now) under her own transparent plastic polytunnel. We say Hello to skipper Steve and barge-dog Alfie

Meanwhile at home, all is oprepping up for Christmas. Ever more cards are amassing on mantle shelf and window sills, and present wrapping has commenced. There is some stuff being kept out of sight of dogs, which is promising.

Deefs