Ross's Turn

Down in the rain ditch, one of the pigs
manages to nudge the barbed wire aside
from the hawthorn roots. In this pic I
have wedged a spare sheep hurdle into the
gap and wired it down solid. 

After the dramas of the previous post about kitten suicide missions, the next day one of the pigs (Ross) decided that she, too, needed a bit of a break out. I am a creature of habit and routine and I always do the early morning livestock rounds in the same order; that way I don't miss anybody. I had fed, watered and released the baby chicks and Mums, the young Marans, fed the sheep, then the young Hubbards. All this time I can hear that the pigs are awake and getting all excited about their breakfast - low bassy grunts and some squeals come at me round and over the main chicken house.

Somerville fancies a taste of camera,

I gathered up the pig food and fruit, then walked down through the side-gate of the cattle race, expecting to go across the 5 yards of space to the pig-gate and be met by the pigs. I was a bit surprised then to find Ross wandering about in this gap but my worries about how I would recapture her evapourated when she looked up at me as if to say "Ahhhh, now THERE's a breakfast!" and she happily trotted after me down the 'race' to the gate and in through it to join her sister at the breakfast banquet. This was our first ever pig escape in 3 years and felt a bit like an initiation. I hunted down the escape hole which proved to be at the top of the rain ditch among the hawthorn roots and grabbed a spare sheep hurdle to wedge into it, wiring it firmly in place. When the pigs are gone I will fix this properly (I can't afford to just 'lose' a sheep hurdle into a hole in a fence!).

A 365 pic of a sunlit lane just after a shower

While I am on pigs, a fascinating fact I read in a book today ("Spotted Pigs and Green Tomatoes", Rosie Boycott, Pub Bloomsbury 2007). I knew, of course, that Truffle Pigs exist and get used down in Perigord (France) for hunting out these 'foodie' treats but I had no idea of the mechanism. It turns out that the truffles grow in symbiosis with the local oak trees where ever there is a shortage of phosphorus. The fungal mycorrhiza (filamentous roots) grow into the oak roots and act as an extra root system to extract the phosphorus from the soil and in return the oak supplies the fungus with carbohydrates. The oak can breed and spread via acorns but the fungus, being wholly underground has no easy way to spread its spores about.

Nicely back-lit teasel head.

Step forward the wild boars of that area which could find these truffles and then spread the spores on their snouts as they went rootling onward. In a rather clever example of co-evolution, the fungus adapted by producing and releasing a synthesised copy of a testosterone chemical called 5-alpha-antrostol which smells, to the female pigs, exactly like a randy boar. They go rooting around convinced that somewhere under those trees is a buried boyfriend. Everyone is a winner, I guess, except for the frustrated sow who never finds the boar. It is to be hoped that a supper of truffle fungus is compensation. Thank you for that gem, Rosie Boycott.

A nice afternoon snack - Autumn-fruiting raspberries and
a slab of ice cream. 

In Yoga, I am now 4 sessions to the good and I am definitely improving and still enjoying it. My Wednesday evenings are enlivened by a series of animals (OK Yoga positions); cobra, eagle, downward-facing dog and other weirdness (Warrior 2, Plank, 'Child' position etc). We blokes get well stretched about and warmed up trying to follow the very bendy instructor at the front but it now feels like good 'pain' and work to me. It's like freeing up a rusty hinge with a drop of 3-in-1 and then pushing/pulling the flaps ever further till you can move the hinge to its fully open/closed positions.

The muscles particularly feel as if they can now extend further when relaxed and tighten up further when retracted than they have had to do for decades. In one move I was whisked right back to childhood; lie on your front, flex a knee and grab your foot, then pull the foot all the way down till your heel is touching your thigh and your knee is bent to 180º. Now, I should rapidly add, I can NOT do that one all the way like I remember we used to do as boys (we could all do it standing up on the other foot and hopping around pretending to be pirates), but 'teach' was quite impressed by how flexible I was after only these 4 sessions. And relax.

Rudbeckia 'Goldsturm'

No progress on the Kitchen since the last post except that we have had our delivery of the timber and building materials and we have secured the fibre glass at a very reasonable price. We love that K-Dub who is used to his friendly Dublin prices where the quantity of stuff he buys from his tame builders' merchants gain him good trade-discounts, hates to re 'ripped' off by the smaller local shops out here in the sticks. He hunts around locally and finds the best price he can but still brands it daylight robbery and gets on the phone to his Dublin colleagues. He doesn't HAVE to do that. We love him for it.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back?

Yoiks! Not a howling success then, that 'hard' cheese. 

I have always tried 'on here' to report our story. like Cromwell's portrait, warts and all. Thankfully embarrassing howlers are infrequent and most readers' comments focus on the good stories with happy outcomes - "living the dream" and all that jazz. I think you can probably place my latest cheese making attempt and my first try at hard-ish cheese, firmly in the 'warts' camp. I have definitely missed a stage in the process and the lovely white, semi-hard cheese I hung up in a muslin bag to ripen started showing very dark through the cloth within a couple of weeks. I have, it seems, hung a lovely moist, nutritious chunk of fungus-food up at air temperature in a non-sterile bag in a non-sterile air flow. Spores must have been queueing up to come to this party. It seemed like a good idea at the time and I can't quite believe how stupid that sounds now. Back to square one - I will go read some more book and talk to our goat-milk supplier and (now) successful cheese-making mentor (Hi Sue! Congrats on your "promotion"!).

Ouch. Yellow arrow shows where the girl's sting went in. The
big red patch was the itchy, alarming result but I am still here
to tell the tale.

Then I was just off to enjoy a bit of archery on Sunday and took the opportunity to water the courgettes growing in the polytunnel. I leaned over my water tank wielding my watering can, then stood up and flexed my arm to lift the can just as a wasp zoomed up from the tank and through the crook of my elbow. Bang. I half-crushed Miss Wasp and she reacted as wasps do, zapping me before I could flick her off. She fell into the water and a less merciful soul would have wished her good luck.

I am currently feeding these lads for a neighbour. Grub's up.

I am silly enough that I rescued her with the spout of my watering can and, as far as I know, she lives to sting again. I was alone in the house at that stage and could only wait the few minutes to see if, like my Mother, I am allergic to wasp venom and there would be anaphyllactic shock dramatics, ambulances and paramedics. Fortunately, no. A tiny white pimple with a fan-shaped red patch below it was my only injury. It itched like fury and 'Nurse Lizzie' administered Piriton and a chilling 'Wasp-Eze' spray but I was able to go to archery and lash the required number of arrows down the hall as if nothing had happened.

Yes, I know we have a bowl each. but....

With Thursday came the piggies' 6-Month Birthday. Local tradition (all be it only 3 years old as an event) has it that the pigs get an extra meal that day at lunchtime which includes Guinness poured into their barley. It is very simple as kiddies' parties go; there's no jelly or crisps trodden into the carpet, no disappointing magician or balloon-animal guy, no party bags and no tears before bedtime, but we like it and so do the pigs. They can't believe their luck - an extra meal! And beer in it - which they have never tasted before (and won't again). I also got them some banana and cherry tomatoes (both on special offer from Lidl; I wonder if their marketing bods know that their special offers are the must-have fruit choices for 6 month old gilts party fodder?)

A Birthday back-scratch. All pigs love a good, hard,
dig-your-finger-nails-in, rake-over. Get that dandruff flying!

The Guinness was almost a story in itself. I'd bought 2 cans and was only going to give the 'babies' one between them, but I took the other can (the pigman's share?) in with me to make a better photo. I put it down while I messed with bowls and barley but Ross took a shine to this new object and promptly gave it a good chomp. She pierced the thin can with her teeth and set the whole thing off with a spray of beer like a fire extinguisher. Rather than waste it I glugged the rest into the bowls and the pigs got a can each.

Two very happy little piggies schlurrrrped up the beer-soaked mixture and the fruit with more gusto (and saliva) than normal and then did a good job of cleaning the ground around the bowls. No waste there, then. At that point they pretty much headed for the ark and a mission to sleep off the full bellies on the straw. Later I was barrowing in some shredded wood to 'repair' the poached up muddy bits and it was only at the 2nd barrow that two bleary eyed pigs woke up to investigate, shaking strands of straw from their noses as they wandered over.

Of course, we have now probably spoiled them rotten and they were 'asking' for more barley and beer at lunchtime today but I only gave them a couple of chopped up apples to shut them up. Over feeding was the mistake I made on the Tamworths in 2014, handing them food every time they squealed. That way madness lies (and pork chops where 30% of the weight is the skin and subcutaneous fat!). I am pleased to say that my pics of these ladies at 6 months, posted to Facebook yesterday, have been complimented by our breeder/supplier who says they look "perfect".

On that subject, too, on the day we went to collect these pigs, the breeder passed me the phone number of another customer of his, who is now a breeder of 'Oxford Sandy and Black' pigs only half an hour's drive away. I contacted that guy yesterday to see how that project was going and the man was delighted to talk to me and have me as a likely future buyer of his piglets along with our friends Sue and Rob, who are also looking to get back into the pig game with a couple of these. More on that next year, probably.

Happy Birthday, Somerville and Ross.

Eat Your Vegetables!

Ross (l) and Somerville (r)

Our tiny pigs, Somerville and Ross are both nicely settled in now to our place and our ways. This may be the case every year (you forget) but they seem so tiny to me, probably because the last pigs we had were our departing Berkshires; long since gone through 'tiny' to become hulking 70-80 kg beasts. When the new ones turn up I worry that they are so small they will get through the gaps in the sheep-wire and it takes me a few weeks to relax into the idea that they might like it here and stay voluntarily, even if they could escape.

Ross is a galia melon kind of girl.

These two were immediately the most friendly and tame newcomers we have ever met. Real charmers. Within 24 hours I could feed them from a bowl which I still held, and now, a week later they are both sprinting up to me on my arrival and 'asking' for food. Somerville (the 'spotless', sandy one) is perhaps a lot more chummy that Ross (she of the many black spots and blotches). The former will allow me to scratch her head, shoulders and flanks and is all over me nuzzling into pockets and wellies. The latter, Ross, is a bit more shy, only allowing a little touching of her forehead.

Somerville prefers a tomato.

In a previous post I said that I was a bit worried about their lack of appetite. They seemed fixed on the wetted grain-mix that I got from the breeder and turned their noses up at my 'proper' commercial pig-ration. They also ignored my offerings of apple and carrot. 'What manner of pigs are these?', I worried, 'that they won't eat anything? Were we going to have to teach them to eat their vegetables like naughty children? We are through all that now as I ran out of good breeder-mix. They are now piling into my 1/3 : 2/3 mix of barley and pig-nuts and happily accepting apple, tomato, carrot and galia melon. That is a relief.

They are also lovely looking, attractive animals and I have been able to get some lovely pictures of them glowing in the afternoon sun as they wander about in the grass patch up the side of their 'woods' next to the goose orchard. They are completely unfazed by the arrival of a camera lens close to their pile of fruit. We have great hopes for them and they might just have knocked our belovéd Tamworths off the top of the "most favoured breeds" list.

Happy pig-butts

Meanwhile on 'veg' Liz continues to do the swimming lessons thing with the ducklings and both of us are finding, as usual, that the official diet of pure chick-crumb is just plain boring. The ducks enjoy dibbling the crumbs up from the surface of their bath but they just look like they should be grazing up greenery and vitamins. We had some curly kale in the fridge (for us, of course) and Liz wondered whether if she finely chopped this and set it afloat on the 'bath' water, the ducklings might enjoy that. Well, talk about feeding frenzy! 6 ducklings were immediately in the water splashing it every where as they scrabbled up the bits of kale. No problem with them eating their veg.

We are fast approaching the time when we can let them out into the rabbit runs on sunny afternoons for an hour or so, and, as they become more waterproof, we will also give them a try out on the big pond. We KNOW that ducks can wreck a pond but this is a BIG pond (6m by 10 m) and there are only 6 ducklings, so we are willing to risk it. If the pond starts to suffer we may re-think this plan and confine them to a smaller run with some kind of kiddies' paddling pool, but the photo's wont be anything like as good.

Somerville and Ross

One of my annual name plaques for the pig ark.

Welcome aboard, Somerville and Ross. No, not the 'Irish RM' ladies, but this year's brace of gilts (female pigs) who came to us at 9 weeks of age, just yesterday. Regular readers will know that our pig-gathering missions are usually a bit epic - 2 hours+ drives down to Kildare where we take Charlotte and a substantial picnic. This year could have been slightly further as we had locked onto a breeder in Wicklow but by happy chance the guy was heading up this way this week and suggested we rendezvous with him and pigs in Boyle market square, just half an hour's drive away.

The new pigs - Ross on the left, Somerville right.

We had not decided for 2016 which variety we would try this year after going with Tamworths in 2014 and Berkshires in 2015, having worked our way thus through the likely varieties coming from the Kildare breeder (FreeRangePigsIreland.IE). We had briefly toyed with the idea of his "Iron-Age" pigs (a Tamworth x WildBoar) but worried that they might be a bit tusky, mean and dangerous. Then our good friend Rob found in Facebook a group associated with and promoting the variety "Oxford Sandy and Black" (OSBs) including in Ireland. I joined the group and put out a shout asking if there were any OSB breeders at all near us.

The piglets in the dog-crate in the back
of our car.

Step forward, Dermot A of Winetavern Farm in Stratford, Co Wicklow who is a little further away from us that even the Kildare guy but hey, we thought, shove a stop at Silverwood's for refreshments into the mixture and you still have a workable mission. We placed our order last 'back end' and then kept in touch with Dermot through the winter while the piglets cooked, then farrowed, then weaned. When I phoned last week to confirm that we were still on, he told me of the plan to come up to Boyle, where a friend and earlier customer needed some boar-piglets castrating and also his breeding sow collecting for bringing back to Dermot's boar in Wicklow. You may have spotted that this could well lead to OSBs from Dermot's bloodlines being available soon as close to us as Boyle. This puts a whole new slant on the 2017 choices!

Dermot's truck signage

Dermot turned out to be a superb bloke, keeper of 100 pigs on 3 acres, well experienced in pedigree breeding and showing, full of helpful advice but also very very practical, relaxed and easy going. He knew that we did not want these gilts for showing or breeding from so he had selected for us a couple of girls with slightly 'wrong' colouring - they are meant to be 'sandy' coloured (from blond through to very ginger) but well spotted with black splotches. One of ours has too many black spots and these joining up into 'patches' which would be a breed-fault at a show, the other not enough spots. If you know us at all you'll know we don't give a fig for 'show standard' (hence our three "nearly-westies"). We are more about healthy animals, meat quality and flavour. I only mention the spotting in case someone reads this who knows OSBs, sees the pictures and judges Dermot, us or Somerville and Ross negatively.

Home now and briefly rested in the sun.

The piglets are utter charmers and already more friendly than either of our previous 'batches'. Previously I have unloaded the pigs and they have vanished into the straw bed from whence you take a good month persuading them (with food and general schmoozing) to come anywhere near you.You eventually manage to get them to accept a tickle of the ear or a scratch of the back and then a tape measure round their 'bust' when trying to estimate weight. No such reticence with these ladies. We dropped them in home at about 3pm yesterday and left them to sleep off the trials of the long journey (3.5 hours all up). I took food into them this morning and never saw them - just rustling straw. Lunchtime I saw them but they stayed (not very well) hidden. But this evening I took them more food and 2 heads popped up out of the straw bed, and they came trotting over to get their noses into the food bowl while I was still holding it. I was able to stroke a back with no resulting protest or scarpering.

Clean straw. new home in our pig ark.

Thanks to Dermot and to all involved in this pig story. Charlotte agreed to come with me despite the lack of long car-ride and one of Liz's picnics and was as superbly practical and helpful as ever, especially at the stage where, in the open of Boyle car park, we had to transfer 2 wriggling piggies from Dermot's 4 x 4 to the crate in our car. C just grabs them by the back legs the way you are supposed to do, and walks over with piggy dangling from her hand head-down, completely subdued, quiet and relaxed. No harm done and no pigs vanishing between the parked cars into the traffic or local shops.

A full house for the village play on Thursday night

While I had C's undivided attention, when we were back here we had a good long chat about pasture improvement (re sheep), I captured Nanny Óg so that she could do a hands-on examination of kid-filled abdomen (they were kicking!), ever bigger udder and tight vulva (not ready yet), and she also demonstrated how to start halter-training our new ewe-lamb Rosie. My plan is to start Rosie this young so that by the time it comes to her first shearing (Spring 2017) she will accept being sheared while standing up the right way as we did last year for Sue's ewe 'Pink'. This is so much easier (on me and the sheep) than the upside down wrestling commercial method we have to use on Lily and Polly and (possibly) Myfanwy. M is quite tame so she may take halter restraint OK.

This is all you can see of Liz in her prompters
'cubby hole' off stage-right if you are on stage.
She is well hidden from the audience, obviously.

In a busy week, the only other thing we have had time for has been the village play, where Liz has been co-opted as 'prompt' as well as costume-seamstress and a variety of admin functions (tickets, booking, obtaining props and raffle tickets etc). I have become the official photographer. Final night is tonight even as I type this but if this showing is anything like the Opening Night and Thursday, then the whole will have been a huge and delightful success. They played to 3 full houses (It seats about 110). It has gone down enormously well and is much talked about as being a very enjoyable night well threaded through with loud laughter and audience members snorting into tissues or cheering with joy as a popular character from an earlier act comes on stage again. The actors (3 are complete novices) have had to learn fast how to pause while laughter dies down before continuing with their lines and Liz has had to learn that they have stopped for a good reason, and do not need prompting, not because they are frozen in fear! It has been a good thing and everyone is quite tired and looking forward to tonight's final performance - there are solid plans for the entire cast and crew to adjourn to the pub for a wind-down drink. More on the play and stuff on the Lisacul website, as ever. I am off down there soon to watch the end of it and join in the celebrations.

The Run Around

John Deere 5310 Tractor clutch

With John Deere Bob still tractor-less due to the clutch problem, I am by now, pretty much his own private driver. He needs to get down to check on his cattle each day and get to the shops and Post Office, the old boy, and he is also a fiercely independent type of bloke and must be going stir-crazy without his usual transport, so I am happy to help.  When Bob phones for a 'taxi' these runs normally go as advertised - "Could you take me to Lisacul?" and off we go to Lisacul. It's quick and of minimal inconvenience. But not yesterday. Yesterday a simple run turned into a Somerville and Ross style, farcical adventure worthy of a blog post, so I thought I would share it with you.

2 day old Hubbard Chick

Bob had taken a call from his repair man, Jim B which he understood to say that his tractor was fixed and he could come and collect it. I was half way through assembling my lunchtime sandwich but thought it would be so quick I'd take Bob to Jim's and leave the sandwich to complete on my return. Off we went, with Bob even saying that we needn't go 'lookering' first because he'd be able to do that in the repaired tractor. Something made me decide to stay with Bob till he had the keys in his hands and the tractor running, rather than just drop him and flee - he has no mobile, so would have been left stuck at Jim's if the tractor proved not to be ready.

The "Dirty Dozen" our new Hubbard chicks.

We could both see, as we walked in, that the tractor was still in bits, the front and rear halves separated and the 'guts' hanging out. No, said Jim, I didn't say the tractor was ready, only the clutch is ready and you can collect it from Brogan's in Ballintober, about 10 km beyond our nearby town of Castlerea. Now, a tractor clutch is not your simple disk and springs like you'd have in a car. It is a massive heavy assembly of casings, discs and sprung levers about 15 inches across, 6 inches 'deep' and weighing 30 kg or so. I could barely lift it. I am not sure how Jim thought Bob (70) was going to manage it, but that was now our mission. Oh, and it was going to cost €700 just for the part. Brogan's and Jim's labour would be on top of that, so we were going to need to find a bank.

As we approached Brogan's, Bob started looking nervously at his watch. Most garages, trades shops and the like have a genuine lunch hour in these places, shutting up shop from 1 pm to 2 pm. It was 13:03 as we pulled in to Brogan's yard and overalled mechanics were leaving in droves. We were looking at having to wait an hour in the road outside. BUT as we only needed to collect our bit and hand over €700, Mr Brogan was more than happy to do that before he closed. That was one plus-point in this tale. I lugged the cardboard box containing this mighty part to the car.

Heading back to Castlerea Bob voiced the need to find a bank and also said that the bank's lunch hour was 12:30 to 13:30, so we'd need to kill 20 minutes or so. He offered to treat me to lunch. Hester's, he suggested. This happens to be my favourite restaurant locally for my ideal Irish meal, 'bacon and cabbage'. 2nd plus point. We sprinted through a downpour from car to the Hotel and ate gratefully and hungrily - Bob has a hearty appetite too, and piled into his turkey and ham. Next to the bank where Bob drew out the extra money needed.

A first glimpse of Goldie's (rabbit) kittens at 3 days old.

From there 'home' to Jim's where we handed over the clutch only for Jim to heft it out of its box and declare, "You need to go back above, the PTO disc is not here!" (The local idiom is a bewildering mixture of 'over yonder', 'away above', 'beyond below' and other direction and elevation phrases which bear no relation to the longitude or altitude of destinations). Bob was a bit irritated by this and made the mistake, in his own calm, patient, quiet spoken way of suggesting that if he'd known he was going to get this much hassle he'd have had the job done in Brogan's. Unbeknownst to me he had already told Jim that our mutual friend 'Mike the Cows' had helpfully told Bob he could have done the job for €500. Jim had a melt down shouting and swearing, kicking cardboard boxes across the floor and letting fly a stream of invective which was mostly too fast and in such a powerful accent that I missed all bar the last three words which were "....so Fuck yeh!" as he stomped off from the garage and went round to his house. He was not happy. Bob tells me he is not generally like this and was "cross" because he must be having a bad day.

New 2 m 'tan' birch trees.

There was nothing for it but to head back to Ballintober and try to collect the part, both of us having fits of laughter at the theatrical anger of Jim. Bob kept referring to it in the car, rubbing his hands together and chuckling in his wheezy hissed laugh. We also had to go via Bob's so that he could change out of his wellies and into normal shoes. Oh, and could we also go check on the cows as he'd now need to do that from the car. From the cows then, to Bob's and back to Ballintober where Mr Brogan quickly found the missing part, the PTO disc (this one thankfully light and much smaller than the clutch itself). Mr B also had a laugh about Jim's meltdown, saying "He's a mean man today... It's thankful that he never grew up to be a big fella!" Back next towards Jim's but now Bob got cold feet about facing Jim's wrath and suggested that I drop him off at home and then drop the PTO disc to Jim's on my own. He even mischievously suggested that I stir Jim up by passing on Mr Brogan's message. No thank you, Bob. Well, Jim's beef had not been with me, so I guessed he'd be calmed down and, anyway, OK with me. So it proved. Jim tried a theatrical scowl as our Fiat pulled in to the yard again but his face split into a grin when he saw it was only me in the car. "Bob too scared to come back then?" he guessed.

So that was that. Jim had his part and had calmed down enough to laugh heartily at the fit he'd thrown. "He vexes me so!" said Jim, "He's on the phone every half an hour!" Ah well. No harm done. I had a nice chat with Jim telling him all about our rebuild of TK-Min's place and asking him about his garage and his work. He mainly does 4 wheel drive transmissions and big stuff like engine changes. We parted on the best of terms and it only remained for me to report back to Bob to let him know everybody was best friends again. Bob was still chuckling about the adventure today when we went out on today's mercifully short 'lookering' run.

Other than the clutch pic at the top of this post, the pictures today have nothing to do with Bob or his tractor parts. They are a quick way of saying that we have started another batch of Hubbard chicks, with big thanks to Anne and Simon for their pilgrimage up to the Border to collect ours as well as batches for other 'customers'. Secondly we have now seen a first glimpse of Goldie the rabbit's 'kittens' and thirdly we have now received from Carolyn and K-Dub a delivery of 'tan' birch trees which we have planted in the small copses we are starting around the pond garden.