Chicken Commotion

Tuesday 26^th June is an easier day for us with none of the dramas of the weekend. It's a "soft" morning (i.e. drizzling) so much of it is indoors. The half doors for the utility room get more coats of paint, with Mum applying bright post office red. Dad makes some wholemeal bread using recipe from some friends on the internet (50/50 wholemeal and strong white flour, shorter first rise time, longer proving time and he is delighted when it turns out to be light, elastic and softer than the dense brick he has been creating up to now. Dad digs some more soil out of the piles surrounding the hay-rake-in-a-hedge and discovers (inevitably) more buried plastic bale-wrap sheeting but also (pleasingly) another stash of "sausage" turf. These are olde style, hand-dug peat 'sods' but cut (or reconstituted/extruded?) like thick sausages, 3-4 inches in diameter. These have probably been buried in this shallow grave for 30+ years but hey, peat is peat; it's not going to spoil for a few more years underground, so we bring some in tonight and chuck it on the fire and of course, it dries out and burns. Proper peat-smoke! Very Irish!

An early bit of drama is provided by Ginny the rabbit on Weds 27^th. Dad and I have come downstairs at the usual 06:30 and done the rounds of the livestock, releasing chooks from their shed and rabbits from their hutch. We are back indoors sitting down when we hear a commotion from the chooks. Dad nips round to check and finds Ginny up on her hind legs just outside the chicken run introducing herself to the Lovely Girls and they, having never seen a rabbit before are quite alarmed! Dad is in dressing gown and slippers. There is no way he’s going to catch Ginny (even if he was in running spikes) but Ginny is reasonably steerable by gentle persuasion. If you get behind her you can mush her in the rough direction you need but she’s picked up her skirts and is loving the freedom to run around the acre-age! At one stage she’s up through the allotment pausing to sample cabbage and sprout leaves. She is eventually rounded up. Dad discovers that where I’ve been pulling and and biting on the 2 inch mesh chicken wire, I have made bunny sized holes. He resolves to add a 2^nd layer of one inch mesh as belt and braces. He is kind of glad we do live in a quiet area, not overlooked.

 

We have no TV but Mum and Dad are enjoying evening's entertainments through t'internet with combinations of silly R4 stuff like "The Now Show" and "Sorry I Haven't a Clue", stories like the currently running "Chamomile Lawn" and recently finished "Night Watch" (Terry Pratchett), plus a BBC-shop DVD of the Griff Rhys-Jones series "Britain's Lost Routes". The latter was bought mainly for the Thames Barge episode, but proves to be good throughout. Also a Birthday Present boxed set "Frozen Planet" (Dad can't get enough Attenborough.) When those run out I guess it'll be back to Dad’s current gently slog through ‘improving History book "Ireland Since the Famine" (FSL Lyons).

Every Day Country Folk

 Today my post will sing of stable doors and animals bolted, of riverside towns and expansionist chickens, of bunnies and beef. Grab a cup of coffee and a comfy chair. Sit back and enjoy and/or click past muttering "Bl***y Deefer's off on one again...."

 We had decided that what the still door-less Utility Room needed was a stable-style door in two halves, painted red to match the house front door. You can't seem to buy them anywhere except for mad money, a guy we asked to quote a price for us has joined our "choir invisible" of vanishing Irish tradesmen (I'll call you in a couple of days....), and making one from scratch is way beyond Dad’s carpentry skills and tools, with all those mortice and tenon joints etc. But then ace interweb ferretter, Mum came upon a website which advocating buying a suitable one-piece door and cutting it in half. You have to strengthen the door so that the half you cut off doesn't fall apart, of course, and you hang it first on 4 hinges to make sure it does what it's meant to, then you split it, re-hang the halves and finish with weather strips (2) and all the door furniture (bolts, handles etc). More complex than anything Dad had tried before; He’s a rustic arches and dodgy nest-boxes kinda bloke!) but hey... nothing ventured.

 So, orf to Carrick on Shannon went Dad, down the minor roads, dry stone walls, green green fields, leaving Mum with us behind as he had to bring a full sized door back in a Fiat Panda. Nice town, Carrick, all boaty, marinas and riverside pubs etc. Mum got down to some weeding in the gravel of the front terrace.

Before Dad started the carpentry Mum and Dad decided to move rabbit run en bloc down the western field to give bunnies a new bite of longer grass. Not a bother except this seems to unleash in the me, a new enthusiasm for biting through the chicken wire. On this occasion, unknown to Mum and Dad, I must have made a hole too small for a Westie but big enough for an escapist rabbit, but more of that later. They next closed off the gates at either end of the cattle race and open "Chicken-Gate" (which sounds like some dodgy American scandal inquiry) to give the chooks extra territory and a million worms and grubs unwise enough to live in the thin carpet of earth and grass over the concrete of the race. No escape downwards, guys! We expect very proteiny eggs tomorrow, Ladies.

And so to door wrangling, which goes OK and Dad is quite proud of the results. He finishes carpentering and sands off the door halves, passing them to Mum who is our proud, no-runs, gloss painter. She sits out in the yard on a stool in the sunshine with the door halves propped in front of herself on the big terracotta tubs, looking for all the world like a Parisian painter at her easel. Dad thinks “Ahhhhh sigh...Why do I love her at these moments?” Soppy git!

While she's a-painting, Dad grabs the shovel and barrow and moves a bit more soil from round the horse-drawn-hay-rake-in-a-hedge (hdhriah) to fill the two newest raised beds. It's hot. he finishes and grabs a cool Guinness on the front terrace. Coco, joins him. I am pre-occupied elsewhere so I don’t know this is happening. They sit and watch Ginny, the grey and white rabbit lollop past them down the drive towards the road. ARGHHHH! Dad jumps up, shouting to Mum to help and sprints across lawn to road in time to see Ginny crouch and freeze on the grass verge as a tractor/trailer thunders by inches away. She's untouched (thank God she froze) but a bit shocked. Dad manages to grab her but she comes to, screams and kicks out. (Ouch! cheers Ginny). Dad returns her to the run and they've found the hole, fixed it, settled her and returned to the front terrace, when we all hear noises of cattle being moved down the lane towards us. Mum jumps up and races to stand at (lack of) front gate to stop ingress of beef animals and to stop us shouty dogs from scattering the cows. Spoilsport!

The relaxing life of everyday country folk....

Deefs