Six Chix

4 more chicks hatch among the duck eggs.

I left you with a bit of a spoiler in the last post. We had just saved the life of the first chick from the broody hen whom we had named "Cat Basket Lady" having found the little mite hypothermic and revived her with the warmth cradled in my hands. She had been returned to Mum and went on to survive the night. We had sat back happy with our one chick. Elizabeth even made the conciliatory comment that she had "always wanted to find out whether that cliché about being 'as fussy as a hen with one chick' really worked". However, the story did not end there - there was plenty more drama to come and a plot twist or two.

Feeding the new babies indoors before reintroducing them to
Mum

On that first day, Mum decided to come off the nest, which is usually a sign that she is done, has hatched all the good eggs and now has to rear those babies and leave the duff eggs behind. Ready or not, those eggs get chilled and die. When you clear the nest they usually prove to be infertile, or part-developed and dead-in-shell, so you find out that she is a good Mum and knows what she is about. This lass, though, is a first time broody, so she came off the nest with her one (we thought) then went back on, and off and on and so on. We just had to wait and watch.

Mid morning, the hen came off properly, fed the one, and went for a sit down elsewhere, so I knew I could clear the nest but wait, another hen had nipped in to lay today's egg, so at least the abandoned eggs would be kept warm. Meanwhile a fully dry, mobile black chick appeared with Mum. It must have been with her all along, but staying hidden under her skirts, perhaps carried between Mum's wing and body. Then there were 2. Eventually, the laying hen finished her task and hopped off the nest, so I was able to clear the old nest. Another surprise was in store.

Mum with 4 of the babies.

When I looked into the nest I could see a fully hatched but still wet baby chick in there and at least 2 more eggs 'pipping' (starting to break open with the baby pecking inside). I decided to gather up all 8 eggs and bring them into the incubator where there was just enough space between the nearly 'cooked' duck eggs. By evening, 2 more had hatched and overnight another bird emerged.

Mum with all 6

We were fairly confident we could introduce these to Mum, giving her a total of 6. Hens do not, in our experience, reject 'foreign' babies in these early days. You would normally sneak them in when it gets dark at roosting time so that Mum would wake up and just take on board that there were a few more mouths at breakfast.

Upside of being woken early by the dogs. This lovely 05:30
sunrise over the East Field.

We went with a slightly earlier (braver?) method. We fed them all indoors that afternoon and found them all to be very quick learners, all happily copying our chop-stick 'pecking' mime at the food. So we went out to the Mum+2, put a plate of food in front of her and our 4 'foreigners' beside her. Like magic, the 4 merged with the 2 and Mum accepted them all seamlessly. We now have a hen-and-six wandering round the yard in the sunshine, and she is mothering them like a pro. Happy days.

Short back and sides? Anything for the weekend, Madam?

On Wednesday, we were back at the sheep shearing, this time, over at Sue and Rob's where Rob was actually in the UK (Mum's 90th!). I knew that if I took my Help-X volunteer, Laura, along we'd be able to give her some real work, not just standing watching the "experts" (ha!) at play. That was exactly what she got - she was as exhausted as the rest of us. There were 4 ewes to shear, those same 4 to be given liver-fluke meds and 6 lambs to ear-tag.

First up was the tagging. I showed Laura how to do the first one but after that I was the only one nimble enough to catch them. I was grabbing them, holding them up for Laura, and she was banging in the ear tags. One for the CV - "I have ear tagged 5 lambs". The shearing went well, too. Laura wound up as chief 'holder', hanging onto the collar and lead that kept each sheep fairly still, whispering 'sweet nothings' into their ears to keep them calm, while I sheared.

I am delighted with this ewe - my 'personal best' ever shearing
job.

I was delighted with one ewe in particular, a 2nd-time sheared Suffolk cross Galway. For some reason her fleece was beautifully clean right down through and she was a big calm lady who stood for the cut as good as gold. The sides came off almost in one piece each and I never needed the trimming 'scissors' (Jakoti hand shears) or nicked her by mistake, even once. I'm calling it a 'personal best'. By comparison the other ewes just got 'normal' treatment and I should confess I made one bleed a little (oops).

Next.....

Sue introduced a bit of mischief into the job by spotting one of the girls with so many squirts of the blue anti-septic spray, she looked like a Dalmatian. Anyone passing their place is going to think I have cut the ewe to ribbons. Sue has told me since, that it was foot-rot spray she was using, so it all washed off or faded in the night, to save my blushes.

Can we go back out now?

What else have we been at? Actually some good honest, Help-X partnered 'garden' tidying. We have cleared through some big nettle patches up what we call the 'Primrose Path', the 'Keet Run' and into the East Field. Sitting here by the Dining Room window I can actually see through into the sheep. Before we did the job, the new nettles almost reached up to the lowest branches of the hawthorn bushes.

Dressed to kill. Laura and the brush cutter

Today we broke out the brush-cutter and did battle with the tall weeds (docks, goat-willow(!), rushes and creeping buttercup) in the area briefly known as my veg' patch. Friends of the Blog will know that I literally "lost the plot" 2 years ago, and then brush cut part of the wilderness and covered it with black plastic last year. This year I am re-attacking the paths and the beds that did not get sheeted over. One of these days I may even plant something in there.

Somewhere out in that wilderness....

The only other 'landmark' worthy of note is that today was the day for the vote on the all-important Constitutional Referendum on the '8th Amendment'; that thorny abortion issue. These referendum votes are only allowed for Irish citizens, so I had to sit this one out, but Elizabeth, of course, went down to tick the box.

Laura joins the ranks of #PigWimmin 

We now have to try to get a night's sleep with only the data from an exit poll at 11:30 pm, as the real count does not start till 09:00 tomorrow morning. The Woman of the House will be glued to that news feed; of that you can be sure. By the time I next write we will all know the result.

Starsky and Hutch

Jars from the rebuild house 'treasure' haul.

If I may, I will briefly catch up on a couple of stories from previous posts. The 'rebuild' house yielded up a couple more bits of treasure before moving to "completely cleared out" status, with Liz briefly sweeping the floors clear just in time to see her efforts come to naught in a shower of jackdaw nests, rubble, clinker and soot as the middle chimney got cleared out downwards. These treasures were a couple of nice little glass vases which can be used for table decoration or some such, and a government pamphlet from year 2001 concerning voting in the referendum on (among other things) stopping Capital Punishment.

Lasagne style composting - this calf muck gets alternated with
weeds and grass cuttings

I had not realised that Ireland still legally had the Death Penalty until the 90s, although it had last been used in 1954 when the State asked our own UK hangman (Albert Pierrepoint) to come over and do the job on a rapist/murderer. After that the Death Penalty could still be handed down for crimes such as killing a Guard (policeman) but it was always commuted to 'Life'. In the 90s it was removed from statute and in this 2001 Referendum the Constitution was changed to outlaw it as well as to ratify two Euro-treaties (Nice and Rome). There. Every day is a school day.

Em-J's book.

My other catch-up concerns our Irish nieces, the older of whom, Em-J, we noted in a recent post getting good results in her Leaving Cert. She is also starring in another way. I will quickly say that I know very little of this subject and would fail badly in any test of knowledge of the current sub-culture of Japanese style 'graphic novels' (comics to we older ones) in the "Animé" genre. Em-J loves them and reads them avidly as well as using her considerable skill and talent as a cartoonist to produce her own pictures in the style. This drive led her to get accepted onto a course up in Dublin where all the budding writers and would-be illustrators got to help in the making of a proper, published book, "Demons in Disguise".

Our first outdoor spuds in this slow, chilly season. These are
variety Orla

This being a proper book is now published and is subject to a proper launch up in Dublin, to which, naturally, all the contributors have been invited. Em-J is going up there tonight 'en famille' with proud Auntie Liz in support as one of the drivers. She will be bringing the little ones home to Silverwood at a sensible 'school night' hour and then stay overnight a couple of nights to catch up on the family gossip. Also to congratulate the other niece, J-M who is following hot on the heels of big sister, with some good results in her Junior Cert (equivalent to 'O' levels, roughly) published yesterday and getting herself onto national television (RTE) news, no less. It's all happening for those girls. Their Dad is sure they must get their brains from their Mum!

Starsky style knitted jacket. 

As she was Silverwood-bound, Liz decided she also had a chance to see Mrs S and to produce a nice, though 40 year late, surprise. Readers who are as old as us may recall American cop thriller series, Starsky and Hutch, from the 70s and may remember that Starsky was often seen wearing chunky knitted patterned jackets with big roll collars. Back then they became a fashion item you could often see in shops and Liz tells me that Mrs S has always regreted that she "never got her Starsky jacket". So when Liz saw a pattern for one on line and had a supply of the necessary chunky-knit wool, she realised she could rattle one up fairly quickly.

Gladioli doing well.

This turned out to be true up to a point. Knitting up chunky knit is quite fast because of the size of the wool, so Liz zoomed up the back panel, cracked off the sleeves, pockets and front panels. There was a little hiatus as she picked up all the hundreds of stitches up one front edge, round the collar and back down, so that she could knit the "button band" (no buttons) outwards at 90º to the front panels. Then came sewing all the bits together which is Liz's least favourite bit but with Em-J's book launch now looming, time was running out and things were getting a bit pressured, that is to say heated. We are thinking of getting some of those labels for these garments which say things like "Hand knitted with pride by ...etc" but ours are going to read "Hand knitted without too much swearing by....". Anyway, as I type this at half eight on Thursday evening the garment is complete and has been delivered. Mrs S is delighted to have finally "got her Starsky jacket", a bit of an early Christmas present. They are all at the book launch, so maybe she is even wearing it.

Apple variety "Irish Peach"

Meanwhile, back at the 'ranch' we have been enjoying a bit of an Indian Summer. The weather came good on the 4th of September and is due to fall off a cliff tomorrow (11th) so maybe at 7 days long it is more of a Summer-een but it has been lovely to get out into the garden properly. I have done a mountain of weeding and harvested some first outdoor spuds. These were variety 'Orla' which struggled so through the chill wet July and August that they never really put on any tops. They never reached a foot high and didn't flower, so when they started to do autumn fade I first feared blight and then just worried that there would be nothing underground. There was, in fact, no blight and they have done an amazing weight of good sized spuds which cook beautifully in the skin-bursting 'floury' Irish style that just asks for a lash of butter to be melted into them as they are served.

Czar plums pecked to destruction by crows or magpies.

Less succesful have been my plums - a tree loaded with lovely Czar. This was my most successful tree and I had watched with mounting excitement as the fruit enlarged and started to ripen but today, while the fruit was still way too sour and hard for us to enjoy, the bountiful crop (20-30 fruits) is pecked about and stolen by the crows or magpies. I even found one carried to a handy fence post to be pecked to pieces. Some fruits were on the ground where the slugs were now finishing off the robbery. I have around 6 fruits left on the tree and I can't see the maggies suddenly going off plums and letting me keep those, can you? Annoyingly this same tree did a lovely crop 2 years ago and not a one magpie stole any. Perhaps they have learned this like the old bluetits used to do with tin-foil bottle tops on the doorstep.

Twins Thelma and Louise grazing with youngster Dylan
looking hopefully at the cameraman. 

Finally, our little March-born lamb twins, Thelma and Louise have now reached an age and size where they must go on their final journey, so they are booked in to our friend and butcher-man, Ignatius G Victualler for next week. With them out of the way I am a bit happier about getting our tup round to service the grown up ladies. I did not want anybody too young to get hurt or to get involved in that, though Ignatius tells me that they get a surprising number of ewe lambs coming through their place themselves in-lamb where they have been got at by a brother or 'cousin'. We are hoping that our boy 'Rambo' will complete his mission around the end of this month, which we hope will give us all three ewes (Polly. Lily and Myfanwy) in lamb through the winter and due end of February or into March. Fervent prayers are being offered up.

Goats and Votes

The white goat loaded.

Let me just set your mind at rest - we have not finished today owning any new species. We remain firmly in the 'No' camp regarding the goat species as a good plan. The billy-goats in these pics we were just moving for friends as we have a trailer. Phew. That was close.

Well, THAT was a big busy day for the trailer and even busier in other ways, too. We had three jobs for the beast today - collect pallets from JD Bob, move goats and then go shopping for hay and straw for our horse-rescuing chum, who we will call, for the purposes of this blog, for now, "Murphy's Mum". You may also know that it is voting day for the Referendum and, just to put some icing on an already rich cake, T McC's main hive decided to swarm so we got involved in that retrieval. It's all go.

Out frightening voters in Ballaghaderreen with
our new chum Tommy R. Canvassing.

For Lizzie, certainly, the vote was the main event and we were down at the Polling Station nice and early. The turn-out is reported to be very high but even then our tiny local Polling Station had been amazed to have had 48 people through by the time we got there. Liz had been out on the mean streets of Ballaghaderreen, canvassing with our new friends Steve F and Tommy R and I'd even joined them on the Tuesday after livestock lock-up. The feeling was that it was all a bit 50/50 on the doorsteps and we had a superb time at one where the household were even 'arguing' at the front door and using Liz as a referee. We don't know if a high turnout is a good thing for 'yes' or 'no' but it is surely a good thing from the point of view of democracy - the answer they come up with will be more representative of the national state of mind.

The geese may also be voting 'yes'.

The pallets were an easy one. These were some boards on which JD Bob's "bag manure" (as they call it here; it's basically pelletized NPK fertilizer) was delivered to his fields and he knows that we can always use an empty pallet. He can too, but he has an outbuilding full of them. We use them intact for fencing/hurdles, or we use the wood for scrap wood for making things, or in the end for kindling. I just needed to nip out to his field to collect them in the trailer.

Next up were the goats. Another family we are friendly with are selling up and moving back to the UK, so they are off loading as much 'livestock' as they can to make the journey home easier, plus the likely move they will have to make, short-term, into rented accommodation, where pets may not be allowed. We have inherited a new cat, Soldier, of whom more later, but today was all about collecting their two billy-goats, Jean-Paul 'Goat'ier and Sebastian Farquahar. These guys were a pair of boys originally rescued by our chums from the local forestry where they'd been abandoned and gone half-feral but then more recently kept tethered on their grazing to keep the rushes down. Being 2 boys they were kept a bit apart, so they'd not fight and each a bit spoiled with a make-shift weather proof shelter.

Safe at Carolyn's the boys catch up on some horn-clashing
head-banging, grudge-match pecking order stuff. 

Charlotte and Carolyn of the mini-horses are taking these guys. They are well equipped in the horn department and allegedly can be a bit spiteful but Charlotte, not willing to put up with any such nonsense, gave us a master-class in goat-wrangling. You don't need any of this tempting them with feed bowls and leading them - they have blooming great "handles" on their heads by which to grab them and yank them in the direction you want them to go. Something about being used to getting a 600 kg horse to do what it's told and not putting up with any argy from a 60 lb goat.

We inherited this very smart, young cat, 'Soldier' and now
need to settle him in to cope with the dogs. 

We quickly and efficiently got them loaded and home where we steered them by the 'handles' into a bit of Charlotte's yard. No sooner were they in there than they decided they needed to settle all those grudges they had built up by being tethered 30 yards apart in their field, so we all watched an impressive head-butt fight which Charlotte assured us would not last long; they would quickly establish who was boss. I'll take her word for it - they seemed fairly evenly matched to me but it was an impressive battle. The boys would rear up on their hind legs then smash together, often bouncing their back legs off the ground at impact. An impressive noise. They must have very hard skulls!

Soldier

From there, the car and trailer came home briefly but then had to head for our horse-rescue lady friend's place to go buying hay and straw for the big, impressive Irish Cob gelding (Murphy) she rescued, who is now in a nearby livery/racing stable. At this point there was a brief hiatus when a phone call from T McC told us that he "thought he had a swarm". This from his biggest hive, which we'd actually cracked open yesterday. We'd found queen-cells but had been unable to locate the queen. At the time of his call he'd been imspecting a different hive and had suddenly noticed that the air was full of flying bees - the swarm was on! Now, 'Murphy's Mum' is quite keen to get into bees, so I wondered would she like to come along, out of curiosity, to watch the action, en route to the hay-shop. We ended up being given bee-veils by T McC (and, in my case the video camera) so we rather nervously (aware of our bare arms etc) watched and video'd as he got to work. By now the swarm had coalesced around the queen in a nearby hawthorn tree so we watched (and filmed) a pretty impressive loppering of bush and gathering up of the swarm in a basket, then T walked across to a hive he had ready and tipped the basket full of bees into the hive. We both may be inept beginners who happily laugh at our clumsy blundering efforts but this time it seems he got the queen and the bees in the basket/hive were straight way "fanning". When the workers have landed and are happy with their location they fan off volatile 'pheromones' (scents and chemical hormones) to call all the other bees 'home'. In this case they fanned both their own smell and some queen pheromone (9-ODA) out into the air and quickly gathered all the flying bees and the ones still left milling in the hawthorn bush to them and in an hour or so, seemed to be settled in the new hive, so that T could make his way happily to Dublin to do his own voting. I am going round tomorrow just to check on the new hive and make sure there are bees coming and going. Job Done.

Hay for Horses? Murphy's Mum is just finished working.
The posh tweed coat and strappy pink sandals may not be
the most sensible attire - open toes that close to Murphy's
great big hooves!

From there, off to the hay-shop with Murphy's Mum and then round to the local livery stables to meet the famous 'Murphy', a huge Irish Cob she rescued. Poor MM was just out of work and still in her posh dress, coat and strappy sandals, so it might have been a bit unfair to take her off swarm-wrangling and then horse attending but Murphy is a calm lad with a quiet power and does not skitter about stomping on people's feet uninvited. We got him out to the sand-school, delivered the hay, changed his bedding and stabled him up again without drama.

Meanwhile we are having some fun bedding in the new cat. The three terriers are still in 'mink' mode and think that any slinky black furry creature is game for a three-dog assault, so we are keeping 'Soldier' in a separate (locked) room for now and doing the rehabilition in a series of controlled sessions with dogs on leads or (singly) with grab-able collars. The cat has been no problem - Blue and he are now the best of friends and play like Blue used to with the late Rolo, but Soldier has not yet learned of the need to get up somewhere high when the dogs get a bit feisty. It will work, but it's not going to be a quick fix.

Getting into some Greek food care of a Lidl promo.
Clockwise from top, Squid, green beans in tomato sauce,
 filo parcels with feta and spinach, 'dolmades' (rice wrapped
in vine leaves) and garlic mushrooms.

The broody Buff Orpington in the Tígín has had her hatch(es). We have seen her off the nest with one chick and suspect that she may have another under her skirts. Unfortunately she hopped off with these (?) two during the night and the remaining eggs were well chilled by the morning, so that might be it. Still, the one we have definitely seen looks like a pure-bred Buff, so it will be quite charming to watch mother and daughter(s).

The count on the Referendum does not start till 10:00 tomorrow and the results are expected by about midday, so at least we can get a good night's sleep after all this drama and Liz only needs to be glued to the internet and TV for the morning.

Yes Equality

"Yes Equality" badge (in Irish)

Be my guest. You may read this blog from 'cover to cover', from November 2006 to now if you insist, but you will find very little politics in it. I have posted recently that political issues do not get any space here although, behind the scenes, Liz particularly can sometimes get quite engaged and does the all-nighters on election nights. Full engagement does happen occasionally - we are not hermits and we feel acutely our democratic responsibilities. Liz went marching round London for the Not-In-My-Name anti-war demos, for example but these are the exception rather than a full time 'hobby'.

At the 'Yes Equality' open public meeting.

I make an exception this time for an issue which has us both engaged, that of the imminent Constitutional Referendum on Equal Marriage rights. I should quickly add that I am no expert and am only recently 'over here'  and, further, I am here giving you my own personal opinions which may not match even Liz's, let alone our wider circle. Feel free to comment on this blog if you like. UK readers may also be unaware that this republic, unlike the UK, has a written constitution agreed and installed in 1937 which can only be changed by a Public Referendum in which the government itself cannot even take sides.

Ireland has been chugging along following the rest of Europe through the stages towards Gay Rights and modern marriage law (legalizing divorce, allowing Civil Partnerships and so on) but is always held back by a strong Catholic Church influence, with congregations of Mass-goers often being preached at from the pulpit about which way to vote. Homosexuality was only de-criminalised as recently as 1993 and the Divorce Referendum finally squeaked through positive by a margin of 50.3% to 49.7%. Currently if you are gay, you are allowed to have a Civil Partnership but not the full monty, actual 'Marriage' as defined in the Constitution. These referenda have lately gone with the youth-filled cities voting one way, while the rural areas have often resisted the changes and our local bar-man was chatting to us last night about how all the young ones had left the village for Canada and Australia so that it'd would have to be a "city vote" again to count.

The Church is hanging onto its waning influence as hard as it can but the country is slowly leaving it behind and it has done itself no favours in terms of clinging to the moral high ground with the recent revelations about the appalling treatment of single mothers by the "Magdalene Laundries" and the official cover-ups of child abuse by priests. The Catholic church was never an official 'Established' church but it has been to all intents, so that Government leaders have become anxious to distance themselves - The Taoiseach (Prime Minister) says he is a Leader who happens to be a Catholic, rather than a Catholic Leader.

As with all these issues, one big problem will be voter apathy. Liz was showing me that even in the UK General Election just passed, the result went the way it went largely because the Labour voters did not bother to head for the polling stations; the maps of who DIDN'T vote constituency by constituency were as revealing as the maps of who did! That is where we might come in. I am a Brit. so I am not allowed to vote in this one but we are allowed to fight for 'our side' by supporting their efforts and canvassing to try to get the people out who are wavering on whether it is worth voting.

The beech trees in the pig area come
into full leaf.

We have gay friends and gay relatives as well as knowing plenty of young ones who might turn out to be gay and/or who will have children who will inherit the results of these votes. We can not bear that anyone is treated as a second class citizen; lesser people if you like. "We are straight and have designed this Marriage thing but it is too good for the likes of you, so you can have this nearly-as-good Civil Partnership?" In the Constitution, Marriage gives many rights, especially around those of bereaved or separated partners, which are denied to Civil Partners. Civil Partnership is a construct in Law outside the Constitution. As Kevin Cross, the Chair of the Independent Referendum Commission says, "Civil Partners only have legal protection. Legal protection is something that can be changed, amended, whittled down by act of the (Government)". Many people would be thinking that you would only need a Catholic 'fundamentalist' to get into a government position and suddenly their 'piece of paper' is in shreds. So the Referendum is down to one simple change, that the Constitution be changed by the addition of the sentence, "Marriage may be contracted in accordance with law by two persons without distinction as to their sex". Polling is next Friday, 22nd May. We will be watching the count (on 23rd) with interest. What ever next - voting rights in Referenda for we 2nd-class non-nationals?

One Swallow.....

One swallow, they tell us, does not make a Summer. We hear of one seen in County Clare today and he seems to be doing a blooming good job at the Summer thing. We have had a few days now of blue skies, no wind, warm sunshine and temperatures soaring up towards 18ºC which may not be that hot by global standards but it is pretty good for Co Roscommon in April. We have scanned the blue for our own swallows but none seen so far and unfortunately, when they do, thay may be disappointed again in the nest site searches.

They coped when our cats were tiny kittens but now Blue is a full grown and very athletic hunter who can defend our barn doors like a Premiership goalie defending an open goal. He can leap from a standing start to get an out-stretched paw to any part of the doorway. The swallows, diving from bright sunshine to the deep shade of the Tígín don't stand a chance and last year he caught one of the breeding pair and bit chunks out of it before we could do anything. We love this skill in Blue when he aims it at rats so we have to put up with it if he takes a few birds. The only mercy is that there are plenty more barns round here not 'defended' by Blue.

Purple sprouting broccoli - a bit late on parade but now
yeilding mightily.

By coincidence, the Irish Biodiversity Data Centre outfit sent us one of their periodic 'pep talk' reminders encouraging us to record even the most common-place mammals. "The Brown Rat", they said, "Are you guys not seeing them any more?" Apparently 'we' have only recorded 70 odd for the whole of Ireland in the last 12 months and the IBDC guessed that this was likely a lack of recording rather than the rats magically going extinct. I must admit I'd not been scoring the ones killed by Blue, who probably does for 20 or so per year. Blue promptly obliged me with a carcass left in the yard the next morning, so that one has been noted.

Much to the amusement of several friends I had been using the gloomy, windy, rainy days to carry on with that bit of knitting. Having done a pretty good job on the test-square I thought I had better make someting useful, so Liz found me a pattern for a 'beanie hat', just 24 cm of 109 stitch wide 'stocking stitch' (if that means anything to you) then some fancy reducing and a sew up of a seam. I'm not very fast, so it has taken a while and there were plenty of anguished calls for help to Liz where I had dropped a stitch or, on one occasion gone to grab a dog and slid a dozen off the end of a needle. I finished it yesterday and Liz has actually taken it off to Knitting Club tonight to show it off.

Fancy 'reducing' to get from 109 stitches to about 12.

She has been joking around that it is in rainbow colours because I will wear it to the Referendum on 22 May on Marriage Equality. Well, I'm a Brit so I can't vote in that one  (it's a Constitutional change) and anyway, we don't 'do' politics on this blog so I am not about to comment. The politics here baffles me after the more class-orientated UK format and, for any given policy (The new water charges are good/bad, for example) I am no more sure whether to vote Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil than I was when we arrived. Ah well. I think this was just a ball of wool which Liz had spare and disappointingly does not have any green for the true rainbow. I'll just wear it when it's cold again, shall I?

Those 'barge ends'; the diagonal "planks" of concrete capping
the gable walls.

Meanwhile, our white-washing of the barns ended up very well, with even the apparently thinner areas turning a good white as they dried. It all looks very smart and especially so from a distance. I have been doing a bit of research around lime plaster and it is, apparently, quite a skill which many tradesmen would have worked hard to learn before the days of modern concrete and mortars ( pre 1910-ish). Not only was there all the chemistry around quick-lime, slaked lime and the percentage of the hydroxide powder which was actually Calcium (you'd get 'CL90' grade delivered if you wanted 90% Calcium for fancy masonry for example.

A candidate for lime mortar? The north
end of the Tígín.

Then there was the ratio of sand to lime (taking into account that the lime swells as it wets) which they would estimate by decanting water into the sand to see how much water was needed to fill the gaps between the sand grains. All clever stuff; and old traditional skills forgotten when everyone started using modern cement, so now having to be re-learned by anyone wanting to restore old and listed buildings. I have seen on the internet, some people buying the 'lime mortar putty' by the lidded bucket load and using a 'gun' like the big brother of a bathroom mastic sealant gun to inject it into the gaps. It might be expensive, but I reckon I could cope with that without doing the 7 year Trades apprenticeship.

Off to enjoy some more sunshine now, then. Experience tells us it won't last.

As sure as eggs is eggs.

Having posted on Friday that Ireland had gone to the Referendum Polls on the 2 subjects of whether to abolish the Seanad (Senate) and whether to establish a Court of Appeal, it seems only fair that I now tell you the results. The Court of Appeal vote went through seamlessly so I presume that 'we' will now get that. The vote to abolish the Seanad had a more troubled passage and got a bit tangled up in arguments about how much money might actually be saved by getting rid of it. There were also some concerns about the double-negative wording on the voting paper which asked, more or less, 'are you in favour of the constitutional amendment' with in smaller writing in brackets added (which abolishes the Seanad) so you had to vote 'No' if you wanted to keep it. The amendment was narrowly defeated (51% plays 48%) so the Seanad stays and the Government gets a bloody nose plus, apparently a bill for €20 m which is how much it cost to stage the Referendum.

I should add, for my Irish readers, that I am not meaning to be at all superior about this, or belittling it in any way; I am fully aware that our own (UK) House of Lords is possibly even worse being made up of large proportions of people who are there by accident of birth (Hereditary Peers)  or by pure patronage (the 'Tony's Cronies', (Maggie's Mates and Dave's Faves?) thing and that there is no provision in our "constitution" (or precedent in law) for putting a possible abolition to the people in a Referendum. Nor can we vote our monarch in and out, of course, even if we wanted to. This statement probably just goes to show that I am no political scholar and should probably stay out of all this anyway!

I'll stick to the subject of eggs. There are all these eggs now starting to come our way. The geese are now laying one a day, the Sussex Pontes are still at it sporadically and the 8-Ball girls are starting to pump out eggs a bit too small for the Steak Lady's fancy box, so they live in a bowl on top of the box. So, it had to be done. Sooner or later we had to try doing the toast soldiers thing with a goose egg. Liz had been experimenting and reckoned that 6 minutes was the best timing bet. As to egg cups we put into action some small Greek coffee mugs which were a gift from Liz's (and Diamond's) friends on the Island of Poros, Vesalina and Maya. These are the perfect size for these big eggs. The results of this vote were wholly positive - the eggs were lovely! Possibly they might have done better on 7 minutes as the whites were not quite set but there were oceans of lovely soft yolk and we ended up feeling like we'd both had a 3-course meal and were completely put off any need for lunch!

We have had a further surprise from our allotment. I've been  nicking the odd leaf now and then from some big, vigorous plants I had assumed were some kind of flat leaved kale (very nice too). I went out a couple of days back to gather more leaves for supper and was surprised to find the spiky spiral shaped curds of Romanesco Cauliflower looking at me from the top of the plants! I knew I had sowed some Romanesco seed way back but had lost track of the plants or labels and assumed that they had been slugged , chicken-scratched or droughted out of existence. Liz was on-line like a shot looking for likely recipes (we didn't want to just go down the cauliflower cheese route) and found a surprising new way in the New York Times cookery pages, would you believe? The cauli got broken up into its florets, tossed in a little salt and hot oil, then baked in the oven (hot) for 20 minutes. They were beautifully savoury and different. Liz has also been getting into fruit-cake style tray bakes and sticky toffee puddings too, but that's another story. We are not starving here.

With the two existing freezers now nearly full of fruit and veg after a very good summer on the allotment and in the hedgerows it became obvious that we would need a third, 6 foot, stand-up freezer to cope with the lamb meat when that is ready. We nipped into town to our local 'white goods' outlet and ordered on (it was around €450) and met a whole new problem of which we had been blissfully unaware.

We had intended to stand this in the unheated concrete out-building we call the Tígín but the shop lady told us that you can no longer do that with domestic appliances. They now have fancy electronics in them which do not take kindly to the freeze/thaw/condensation of unheated rooms, so they quote a minimum working (ambient) temperature of between 10 and 16 degrees. Dryers are particularly a problem apparently, where the wash/dry cycle used to be controlled by a click-round, clockwork-style mechanism but are now electronic. Freezers for use outdoors are a whole different (and pricier) animal now. Ah well, back we came to shorten my bespoke shelving in the (nice warm) Utility Room to take the 60 cm freezer and its 10 cm breathing space.

In the garden we have now received our first batch of ordered Spring Bulbs via our joint-ordering system with Mentor Anne (saves postage). We are going this winter with some first crocuses  and fritillaries in the lawn, some more fancy tulips and a clump of our old Faversham gravel-garden chum, Nectaroscordum. We had already received a generous donation of daff and iris bulbs from Pud Lady. I also ordered some 'Electric' red onion sets for autumn planting so these too have gone in to the lovely warm soil of the allotment. It feels like my 2013/14 Season is well and truly started. We have also ordered 4 more trees for the orchard (we have space for 6, so I can cope with 2 more!) another Braeburn, a black sweet cherry, a crab apple and a mulberry.