The North Wind shall Blow

Cody finds the grass a bit white and crisp

I wake up this morning to our first frost, the grass white and crunchy as I'm going about my release and feed rounds. At this time of year that comes, of course, with clear skies, bright sunshine and, often that NE wind coming down from Donegal at us. The clear skies give us, in this land of little light-pollution, nights of a million stars. You can clearly see the Milky Way, which I never managed while living in Kent and it is actually hard to pick out the constellations you think you know, because they are surrounded and 'enhanced' by thousands of other stars. What I have not yet managed to get is any kind of a photograph of this magnificent star field but one day I am determined to get out there with my camera and tripod and see what I can manage.

This blog quietly slips through the 60,000 page view mark so there are still plenty of readers out there, for which I thank you. It is good to know that I am not just firing these posts off into the ether. I am not writing a best seller here, I realise and most of my readers are friends and family but I know from the 'SiteMeter' reports that there are a few other regulars who presumably just like reading these posts - it is fun to imagine them on the other side of the globe, looking in to this small part of Ireland through the window of Blogspot.

The chilly weather and, of course, the emptiness of the wood-store, have us back on the logging task. This has made me break out the 'new' chainsaw. It's new to me, though in fact is an almost mint condition saw from the 1990's once belonging to TK Min (former resident of this house) and then also Vendor Anne but neither of these owners have ever fired it up or run it for more than a few minutes. That at least, is the opinion of our tame Chainsaw expert, Felix-the-Fix who checked it over for me and declared it to have no wear and tear at all where a used saw would show wear.

Goldie dozes in the early morning sun

I had been a bit wary of this saw for various silly reasons. I had killed my previous one as you may have read, part-seizing the engine and damaging the piston through over-work and possibly incorrect fuel/oil mixture. The problem is, I don't know what killed it and I was nervous of doing the same to this one. Being an older type of saw it also has no rubber 'blister' easy-start primer, so you have to pull the cord 4 times on full choke, then drop down to a #2 position to start it, then quickly blip the throttle to remove the choke and put the lever down to #3 (warm running) position. All a bit fraught. Add to that the Main Dealer had told us scary stories of 'modern fuels' having all manner of highly volatile ingredients so you should drain the tank and run the carburettor dry before storing the saw for more than 3 months.

However, I had been out and treated myself to some Kevlar chainsaw trousers, so I could not just give up and buy wood, I had to steel myself and get stuck in. In the event I needn't have worried, the saw started perfectly and ran well, cut beautifully with its new, unworn chain and only needed that little tighten up which all new chains need after a few minutes of running-in. Liz came out and helped with clearing up the logs I was producing as I dropped three smallish (black spruce) trees in the 'Secret Garden', one of which was leaning at a jaunty 45 degree angle anyway. I also took the opportunity to cut up the pile of old door frames ripped from our outbuildings by K-Dub when he replaced the doors. That was a good bit of tidying.

Goose and Rooster stock

Autumn too, in the livestock dept, so some of the poultry are coming to the ends of their planned careers. Most recently this has included our Jersey Giant rooster who was starting to be a problem both for William the Conqueror (who he was challenging and getting the odd wallop from, so there was a risk of him getting injured) as well as for some of the girls. The JG is a very long bodied bird and was trying to 'tread' some of the hens, especially the mini-Buffs but when he was on board, his bits were a mile away from the hen's and he could not mate successfully. He just held on tight, crushing all the wind out of the hen, straining to arch his back end round. We could not allow this to go on and he was, to us, looking an attractive big bird for the freezer.

He was culled out on Wednesday and had a live weight of (what we thought was..) a huge 4.24 kg (9 lb 5 oz). Liz, who already does all the plucking, decided that he was going to be her first go at gutting out and cleaning, so in she went and created an oven ready carcase weighing exactly 3.000 kg (6 lb 9.75 oz) again, we thought impressive and certainly the biggest chicken so far. It's only talking to Mentor Anne since that we learned that these Jersey Giant variety birds are well named - they continue to grow till they are around a year old or more and can reach live weights of up to 15 lbs which must be some impressive bird! We would have had lots of squashed hens around the place looking like they had been steam-rollered! We are now watching his sister who, at 23 weeks is not quite the size of the rooster, but will presumably grow on too. William is going to be asking for a box to stand on so that he can cope. You live and learn.

As it was, the 'roo' was jointed up by Liz and for our first meal, just the legs roasted, separated into thighs and drumsticks. These were served with chunked Thai-seasoned spuds, artichokes and Romanesco cauliflower and, guess what, we could only manage a thigh each, so the drumsticks are back in the fridge as cold roast chicken. The remainder of the carcase is already portioned up into wings and 'oyster' bits, and breast meat, so we should get 4 meals for two off this one even though he was only half grown.

The bones, combined with those of the La Bresse 'roo' and the recent goose are now bubbling away in our huge stock pot creating what looks like a magnificent stock. The hearts, livers and gizzards are saved in the freezer for later. We don't quite use "every part except the squeal" but we come close.

As Clear as Gin, Reverend?

I run an embedded software application in this blog called 'SiteMeter' which lets me know how many followers I have, how many people have visited and from what part of the world they are from. By no means a 'Best Seller', this blog is read by about 20-30 people, mainly friends and relatives, so it chugs away gently racking up the 'hits' in its 6th year, creeping slowly up past 40,000 visits. I was amused though, that all normal posts with normal headings get that 20-30 hits but my recent post entitled "Attacking the Bank with a Pick-Axe" got, all of a sudden, 66 hits! Were I of paranoid persuasion or given to believing conspiracy theories I might start worrying about all this GCHQ and the National Security Agency stuff about Big Brother watching me, but I expect it's just that more people google expressions like 'attacking the bank' than would google baby bunnies and red algal blooms!

Which leads me neatly on to an update about said bloom which, I am happy to report at last, seems to be fading fast. We can now see almost clear to the bottom and to the planters in which the new aquatics have been set, as this black pot shows here. The water is still just a little bit cloudy and has a bit of red colour from the sediment but nothing like as bad as it was when we were in the tomato soup phase (or as someone more dramatically noted, it 'looks like you have bled an ox into it'). Not quite as clear as gin, but getting there.

We can see every stone of the beach now rather than just the shallower ones and we are delighted to note that we have a massive population of tiny, presumably newly hatched, water boatmen. If baby water boatmen eat red algae then we should be in business! What I suspect will happen is that the algae will simply die, settle to the bottom and then become part of the sediment, soon buried under blown in dust, spruce needles and any other debris which falls in.

In a lovely whiff of glories to come, our Rambling Rector rose is covered in flower buds and has opened three of these. This rose and three of increasingly dark pink in sequence are going to turn the side of our hay barn into a sheet of glorious colour at some point in the future, but that's a work in progress.

We had thought that our cat Blue, hooking that swallow out of the air a couple of months back, might put the pair off nesting in our Tígín even though we rescued the bird and think we restored him to happy full health. For a month or so we saw swallows nipping about but nobody seemed to be going into the building. Well, they are back and showing every sign of nest building again, just a bit more wary of where Blue is snoozing. This gave us a new problem as we have now had the window frame repaired by K-Dub, and glazed by me, so that the swallows had started flying in through the doorway but were trying to escape through the window. They were going to get a head ache or worse, Blue might be waiting on the inside window sill. I have therefore blocked the daylight temporarily with a couple of old coal sacks. Not beautiful, but effective.

At 2 weeks and 6 days, Goldie's babies have got active enough to start climbing over the nest box retaining-wall and exploring the grass outside. We are amused by how tiny they look against the huge bulk of meat-breed doe, Goldie. We have 5 whites, one the colour of Goldie and a darker 'rabbit-brown' one. They grow very fast and will soon start to look a bit 'cosy' in that run even though the grass area is 90 cm by 250 cm, so we are mentally designing extension runs.

International Dog of Mystery

Hey! Look at me with my world wide fan base - Mexico, Bahrain, Germany, Ireland, Oz, The US of A and Canada! And that's just on tonight's "last 20"


Mind you, I am convinced that 99% of these bimble in here on some link because of my by-now-very-wide ranging selection of key words / labels, and end up going "what's this old tosh I've stumbled upon?" and go away again, never to return unless by accident.

We've been at this now over 3 years and have covered a huge range of topics, so there are mountains of words and combinations of words, that will bring up little ol' me. I may also be one of the top listed sites for things I talk about a lot which are not covered by other bloggers - the Cambria Sailing Barge for example.

There are, then, a few of you I know who do deliberately pass this way and return, and thank you very much for that, but generally I chug along with about 60 hits a week, slowly slowly racking up my 8500 surfers ghosting through and and 5500 proper click in/out visits.

"Search Engine Optimisation" is a very clever science all of it's own, and when we were learning how to build websites (my Dad and me) one thing they told us that search engines "like" is if your subject matter commonly refers back to the subject / title ( which you obviously don't do if you are a spammer who chooses a respectable site name as cover, but is then trying to indulge in activities which are nothing to do with that subject!). They (search engines) also love regularly refreshed websites which this one, (barring a few gaps), most certainly is.

Nearly the weekend
Deefski

5000 visits

Hey! We made it. Site meter is recording the fact that this blog scored 5000 visits by Friday 25th which is quite neat timing.

We were off down to visit Pud-Lady and Stamp-Man, where Mum and Dad were due to cook the turkey dinner. In the event, Mum got so focussed in the small kitchen and was enjoying herself so much that, except for lifting heavy turkeys out of the oven and the carving itself, she rebuffed all offers of assistance. Dad was left to chat with the other guests, T-Fer and friend-of-the-family, Jane.

I caused a quick flurry of excitement myself, of course, when I found that a badger dig under the fence meant I could get out of the Steak Lady's garden, and then off across 3 or 4 more gardens. This was much too exciting for me to worry about Dad whistling and calling (won't be a minute Dad; I just have to check out these hutched rabbits and these Dogs going mad barking at me strolling around because they are inside a fenced cage).

I was very good - I always knew where Dad was, and I made sure to keep giving him glimpses of me in various gardens, but eventually he clambered over a few fences and cornered me. There after I was only allowed out in the garden on a lead, which seems a bit mean.

Meal eaten, prezzies exchanged and opened, we headed back to home with a pleasing amount of cold turkey left overs, via a nice sighting in the headlights, of Fallow Deer in Challock Forest, to chill out with our bloated stomachs, to watch Doctor Who. It's been a very good Christmas all round. I hope yours was as nice.

My pic shows a recent Cambria shot, just for an update, deck-beams almost complete and the start of deck planking going on, as we headed in to Christmas.

Enjoy the weekend

Deefer

One Hundred and Two

Today we celebrate passing a new milestone in bloggishness. Just every now and then we nip into the Site Meter stats you can link to from this page (top right), just to see how often it's read and where the readers are from. We have several regulars, we know, (recently Mrs S's Ozzie rels have joined us - Hellow you guys!), and then you get one offs from (we notice recently) Germany, Romania, Singapore, all over.

We generally chug along at about 40 visits a week and 50-60 page views. Lately though, with the Sussex saga this has swelled to an all time record of 102 views as of today, in the last week. We are delighted - sometimes it feels as if we are writing into the big black void - it's good to know 102 people have spotted us this week.

Perhaps not a best-seller yet.....

Deefer

4000 views!

Can I just say here that we've now passed 4000 views - famous or what? Thank you all for your interest. We are, though, beginning to think that maybe as my 2nd birthday approaches, enough is enough. Been here before, I know (about a year ago in fact!), but watch this space. My birthday is 17th Sept.

Meanwhile in "new-kids-on-the-block" dept, we have regularly now seen Gigot's family out with a black and white Great Dane. We have yet to cross paths and ask whether this is a new recruit, or a borrow. Also, Dad's friend Shirley has now taken delivery of the sheltie x westie "Poppy" (also known as "chav-dog"). We've seen mobile-phone pics but not in any format I can pass on yet, but as soon as I do, I will.

She looks a darling little thing with a westie-pup shaped head, but only her feet are white. Her body is like a brindled or tortoise-shell cat. Apparently she's really good, already "asking" (little cries) to be let out of the house to poo, on account of being allowed in and out all the time with her Mum. A feisty little thing too by all accounts, so proud of having wee'd on the special sanitary mat, that she then showed off by savaging (and ripping up) the said mat!

The humans are currently weaning her onto the idea that some of her time she will be left in the house alone, starting off with half hours and building up, and she seems quite cool with that. Good at night too, apparently - nice and quiet.

Good luck Poppy - you've landed on your feet this time!

Deefski

3000 Views

My sitemeter tells me that we are only 7 page views off the 3000, and we have 1700+ visits. We have had a larger than normal number of visits this week. Just an observation. No idea why.

Today we are all off to visit the Pud Lady in Hastings. This is a good plan, because we get walked at the Firehills, in Fairlight, just outside of hastings - multiple bunny-grazed swards and gorse thickets. Terrier Heaven.

Catch up with you later - gotta go

Deefer