Get me to the Ship on Time

Dan and Dan last November. Happy Wedding, guys!

We trust that by now, our good friends and frequent guests, Dan and Dan(ielle) are now Mr and Mrs Dan, married late this morning on a cruise ship somewhere (I think) in the Med. We all wished them well early this morning via Facebook and text messages when they said that they were scheduled to do the job at around 11 on board. As expected and for a load of good reasons, we have not heard anything since (They were kinda busy, we guess!) so we just hope it all went off without a hitch and they are now 'done'. Happy Wedding Day, you guys. See you soon-ish I expect.

We were, of course, involved in this set up in a small way as it was on one of their visits over here that Dan proposed. They were heading from here to Galway at the end of a stay and Dan secretly asked us for a suggested route which would include suitably beautiful scenery where he might stop the car and leap out to go down on one knee. People who know Danielle, know that she is such a bubbly, talkative soul, that he might have expected trouble getting her to go quiet so he could slide the big question in edge-ways. We had suggested driving via Cong and Connemara; plenty of scenic lakes and lovely views that way.

The ducks support the cause.

Dan headed off and found a suitably beautiful lake-side spot, stopped the car and got them both out. Ring-box hidden in his hand, he lunged down on one knee but just at that split second Danielle turned away and, overcome by the gorgeous lake-scene, scampered off down the beach towards the water bubbling over with plans to come back with canoes. Dan was left there on his knees while his intended got further away, wondering whether to shuffle forward on his knees or get up and walk (Take 2?) and Danielle only stopped gabbling when she realised it had gone a bit quite behind her and where was Dan? All sorted out in the end, Dan proposed, Danielle said 'Yes' and the rest is history.

Pedro at the whittlin'. 

Other than that, not much happening. We have the Help-X lads, Manu and Pedro with us till Saturday and we are continuing to be delighted and impressed by the whole deal. This place has never looked so tidy all at once; they have worked so hard bashing the nettles, docks and rushes, mowing as well as occasionally helping us move sheep about or rounding up cattle which have escaped into the lane.

Pedro and Manu 'relaxing'. 

They have finally caught some fish - 3 roach in the River Lung by Feigh Bridge. That was a relief. They'd been trying and trying at various "never fail" , popular sites and not even seen a fish never mind hooked one or landed one. They are off down there to try again even as I type this. They expressed an interest in wood carving so I supplied them with a big old spare fence post, chisels and an orbital sander, with which they intend to create a totem pole with face(s) on. They are struggling a bit with this as the wood proved to be very hard and dried out but we live in hope.

Hand made bamboo ball-point pens. 

They made a little diversion into hand-made biros made in green-bamboo tubes. These are very clever, with their ends at the joints in the bamboo and with the lids made in tube just big enough to telescope over the smaller pen-tube. Very clever. They have cooked for us once already but, when they decided to ask to extend their stay to Saturday, they offered to cook again. We are promised some kind of Spanish beef dish tonight. We are looking forward to it.

2 Hubbards jointed for the freezer.

Meanwhile, the Hubbard birds are so big now, that even though they are only 64 days old they are looking harvest-able. We have therefore 'offed' a couple, which came in at live weights of 3.38 and 3.58 kg respectively and the 'dressed' (oven ready) as 2.66 and 2.70 kg respectively. 5 lb birds at 64 days from a genuine free-range system with no growth promoters or excessive "pushing". Amazing.

A Little Drop of Rain

Coo! When it decides to rain round here, there's no messing about. Buckets came down overnight, hammering on the roof and windows, blasted against the front of the house on a strong southerly wind. From no puddles and reasonably dry last night despite a bit of rain on Wednesday morning while we were fencing, I woke up to the biggest puddles I think we have had so far. The local lough, Lough Feigh has trebled in size overnight from a raggedy ribbon of wet between rambling beds of rush and reed, to an impressive expanse of open water. The reed/rush beds are submerged and the 'banks' are now grass fields further out. The local river, the R. Lung has risen from showing a yard of exposed bank, to brim full. A pipe-drain emptying into it under the bridge with a gurgling splashy drop of 4 feet is suddenly half submerged so that the water joins the river on the level like a tributary stream.

My part-dug pond was an almost complete sheet of (muddy) water. I will not be digging any pond today; that's for sure, but it is comforting to know that the pond is pretty level and is also in the right place in terms of catchment area. We are actually on top of a low hill here so nowhere is going to be that 'right' but we do have a small hollow centred around this part of the garden, partly because of the TK Max and TK Min apparent habit of bulldozing all the top soil off the yard and piling it up in heaps against our western boundary hedge. John Deere Bob tells us that many locals see topsoil as an expensive resource worth stock piling, so if an area was to be used for storing bales or farm machinery, then the soil (they say it "sale" here) would be scraped off. The result here is a big dam of soil along our boundary which prevents rain running off so we have a bit of a 'bowl' in which to construct the pond.

There are other dints and hollows which collect nice puddles much to the delight of the gander who splashes about dipping his head and neck under the surface, then rearing his head to shower the water backwards across his back, wings and tail. Suddenly he will honk excitedly and charge across the puddle splashing his feet down like a child playing in his wellies. We guess he wishes his womenfolk were not focused on being broody and might come out to play.

It's comforting to know that at least it drains away almost as quickly as it arrives. Almost, but not quite. Within a few days of no rain these puddles will be gone and even the pond will be dig-able. The house and yard area are the same - one of the main driving forces to our building project was to get rid of the damp and let it stay away - ivy was stripped off the walls, rainwater goods and guttering were all replaced with new, down pipes were linked to gullies (4 inch pipes) under the yard to take water quickly away to the ditches we had had cleared by mini-digger. The septic tank got a huge pebble-filled pit dug just 'downstream' of itself to ensure 'water' cleared fast and efficiently. My veg plot got its ridges and raised beds and these were aligned up/down the slopes to help clear water and our use of mini-horses and sheep on the East Field is mainly about repairing the damage done by heavy cattle squelching up the ground into a non-draining foot print divot mess ("poaching" in grass management parlance). All the overgrown areas of this hectare have been cleared and turned, for now, into short grass to help drying out and run-off when it does stop raining. Our living-hedge wind breaks are nice, thirsty, willow.

Let it rain - we can cope!

Was She Listening?

Perhaps St Brigid was listening yesterday and looked down on our rather beginner-ish making of the crosses and approved. For what ever the reason we finally got a beautiful spring-like day today, on the 2nd Feb. The sun shone and was warm, quickly burning off any frost on the grass and melting the thin ice on the water in the wheel barrows. The sky was clear blue and the birds sang. There was barely a breath of wind. All encouraged, I nipped a load of laundry into the machine and hung it on the line outside to dry. Some of it even dried! That seems like the first time we've been able to do that since early December. My younger brother has just flown off to the Algarve in search of the sun. He could have stayed here. OK, maybe we are not THAT warm, but spring is definitely round the corner.

The lack of wind and rain mean that I can move my goose-house making operation out of doors, which is handy as the finished house will be 3' by 4' by 3' and would not fit through the Tígín doors once built. Yesterday, cowering from the icy blast and lashing rain, I had started off but concentrated on completing single panels to build myself effectively a 'flat pack'. Today I would have a chance to put it all together and so finish the roof, hinged door flap and bolt.

It was so warm that I was able to work in a polo short and sweatshirt, even rolling up the sleeves at one stage. I did, though, put on my garden knee-pads; the concrete was a bit cold and damp for too much kneeling. We have now put this house in the orchard so that the geese can get to know it, get used to it and, who knows, even learn to love it and use it. They are currently over-nighting in the calf house and we have a little routine where I release them in the morning and they waddle off up the cattle race to the 'pond garden' and orchard. Then about 5 p.m. I go out and find them and they happily waddle back into the yard and into their calf house where I shut the door and give them their supper of sprouted wheat (this has proved to be very palatable and the geese love it, hoovering it up).

On the dog walk today, which took me down to Feigh Bridge, I took a camera. Today may be dry and warm, but the recent heavy rain has filled our little local lough, Lough Feigh to what seems to be an unprecedented level, at least in local memory. Lough Feigh seems to spend most of its life as little more than a water filled raggedy ditch surrounded by tall bull-rushes and other reeds, so that what open water there is can not easily be seen from our lane. Suddenly it is a decent sized, expanse of shining water with swans a-swimming and geese honking. When the nieces were up in August we went down through John Deere Bob's fields to look and had to walk miles across wet boggy grass to get to the lake's edge.

Unfortunately, it is not easy to get good photos from our lane as we run along the top of a round-backed ridge. I will have to consult my local maps and see if there is a road or path which runs closer to the edge before all this watery magnificence drains away. Lough Feigh is unusual in having no river draining into it and only a tiny, convoluted ditch draining out. It seems to get its water just from our ridge and the River Lung runs in a neighbouring valley just to its south. The twisty turny 'ditch' joins the two only when the lough is at its fullest. Perhaps this is the start of spring and the lough can return to 'raggedy ditch' once again.

No snow here but..

No snow here but plenty of rain. On this particular piece of ground at the end of this very wet year (last year, actually, I guess) any decent amount of overnight rain means we know we will wake up to some impressive puddles. My two pictures are of the pond garden; only the first is not meant to be actual pond. What we have, though, a-top our 75 m ridge between the valleys (and boggy land) of the Lough Feigh to the south and the River Lung to the north, are a good depth of lovely soil lying over clay. We are not convinced that the clay allows much downward drainage but we know that the soil layer allows good sideways drainage down the slopes either way so that when it stops raining, our puddles are generally gone by 12 hours later, certainly within 24 hours

The problem has been that in the very unusual year of 2012 (all the locals say "We've never known anything like it!") the puddles have barely drained away and the water table is still fairly high, before the next rains come and re-fill the puddles. Even in the summer, and the month of August when we had the Silverwoods up to stay for a week it did not really ever dry out to depth. They were able to camp and there was plenty of dry ground to play badminton on the front lawn etc, but nobody was kicking up any dust.

It can happen. I have seen video of the turf 'harvesting' machines down on the peat bogs in summer kicking up clouds of dust as they move about so we are hopeful that 2013 might give us some proper summer heat. In 2012 I never had to water any plants. Having taken a bit of a ribbing from some quarters for "moving to a bog" we were relieved that the wet also included the UK, where those taking the mick 'enjoyed' conditions as wet as we were. Mercifully the whole winter where we were caravan-based and building the house, was mild and dry enough that we were never prevented from working. The week we chose to do the plastering was exceptionally mild and the guys were all working in polo-shirts and short sleeves. Messing with plaster and cement is not a lot of joy when there's a frost.

As to the pond, when I get a chance to complete the digging of it, the plan is to dig down the 2 spade depths of soil to expose the clay, and then puddle and draw up a clay layer from this to form a bowl. We hope this will save us using a liner. Even if the pond does not become waterproof, if it rains in 2013 like it did this year
we should have no problem keeping it full. I will just divert the car-port run off into it via the sheep drinker. In the next few posts you will learn that we are soon getting some geese. I am hoping that these guys, puddle-ducking in the unfinished pond, might be able to help with the "puddling" of the clay.

The existing animals, of course, will always find somewhere out of the rain, even when, as sometimes happens with the cats, they are outside the house as we lock up to go shopping. The picture is of Blue on his hay bale in the chicken house, keeping an eye on any local rodent incursions.