A Kind of Inheritance

My previous post describes the unearthing of a tractor-mounted fertilizer spinner / spreader from the bank at the west end of the (now) Pond Garden and way back I have spoken of a horse drawn hay rake found in the same bank and hedge. These are all part of the charm and interest we have obtained by buying this place, an abandoned farmhouse and surrounding fields. It is our inheritance, if you like, and we have both been very struck by the fact that we have taken custody of a piece of history. We both feel very strongly that we must treat the house and land with respect, keeping it and improving it till we eventually hand it on ourselves to the next custodian(s).

The house, particularly, feels in a way which is hard to define, as if it has a soul or a spirit which we must try to make feel secure and to please. We hope that we have completely gutted the place and renovated in a sensitive way, somehow bringing it new life and warmth. This might all sound a bit weird and spiritual compared to my normal shallow, superficial warblings and I may not be describing it very well, but as we lit the first fires and sent our first warmth and smoke up the chimneys and started to see the rooms and walls dry out, we were both saying things like 'There! That's better, isn't it, house?' and we always wished it well as we went off for the weekends during the build and tried to re-assure it that we were not abandoning it again.

Too weird? Ah well. The previous owner and dweller we have called TK Min in this blog, TK being his initials; 'Min' for him being the son. This farm has been owned and run by the K family going back generations; they were definitely here in the 1901 census, and Dad (TK Max) and Grand-dad, along with Mum and Grandma are all buried in the fine family grave along in the local village cemetery. Grand-dad and Grandma died 1955 and 1963 respectively, TK Max in 1987 and his wife in 1962. 'Our man', TK min died just over 3 years ago on the 18th Feb 2010 although he had moved out of the farm around 10 years ago and the farm has been out of use and not lived in since then.

We never met any of these people. We know a bit about them from talking to local folk and have read the exciting newspaper stories of their instant fame when having their car hi-jacked by the robbers in a local bank raid in which 2 policemen were shot and killed. Our dealings have been with TK Min's sister, our 'Vendor Anna' who was involved with selling us the place on behalf of the estate following TK's passing. We have since become firm friends. There are two other sisters, hence the 'Three Sisters' described in this blog during the conveyancing, but we have yet to meet them also.

So, it was in this way that we came to 'inherit' our beautiful house and the wonderful grounds - the fields, walls, trees, the yard, the 'Secret Garden', the cattle race, the Tígín and milking/calf sheds that we love so much. In terms of physical contents, naturally most of it had been cleared away for the sale, but we also inherited a few bits and pieces and tools - a kitchen knife and an enamel, cream-coloured roasting dish, a couple of pitch forks and the hay rake. A rather nice plate and some personal papers including TK Max's "An Garda Síochána" (The Irish Police Force) membership card and newspaper cuttings, we have passed to Vendor Anna.

Until last week, that was about it. Then we were talking to Anna's Paul about the fact that I had fried my chain saw engine and needed a new one. Paul very generously volunteered the machine in his shed, a nearly new Stihl which originally belonged to none other than our own TK Min! The little we know of TK Min does have him as rather a nervous guy and no-one can actually imagine him using a chain saw. Paul is also not a great fan of these tools, so he has not used it either; nor did he intend to start, so this one is probably about 6 years old (says our man at Stihl Main Dealer, East Brothers of Boyle) and will not have turned a crank for most of those 6 years.

We are delighted of course and very grateful to Anna and Paul as it saves me buying a new one for €370+. I have whizzed it straight round to our chainsaw genius, Felix-the-Fix to check it over, service it and (mainly) re-assure me that it is safe to use. It even came with the instruction book. I have used some of the saved money to treat myself to a pair of those kevlar, chain-saw safety trousers as, in general, I prefer life with both legs.

There you have it then; our inheritance and our plans for its custody and enjoyment.

Runs, Rotovators and Raised Beds.

I have no one big story for this post, so I will treat you to a random scatter-gun load of waffle on a variety of subjects, roughly in time order. I have now finished the third and final (for now!) rabbit run all to the same design as the one photographed in an earlier post. These are for, in order, Rogers (who is already installed in his), Ginny and Padfoot and for the third, our soon-to-be-delivered, pregnant Californian doe, Goldie. In her case, there has been a slight delay as our Mentor Anne suffered a couple of unfortunate fox attacks losing a duck and also their much loved and nicely fertile buck NZ White, Peter. Peter had been intended as the father to our little project. Anne and Simon have been able to obtain a replacement buck, known as Bobby but he is quite young yet and we might be a few weeks waiting for him to be able to do the necessary. Hang in there, Goldie. Good things come to those who wait. Meanwhile some nice drying days gave me a chance to varnish the vulnerable parts of the runs with 'Sadolin', the same varnish / wood preservative I was advised to use on the 2CV trailer - good stuff but pricey at €17 for a fairly small tin.

I finally hear from the plant hire firm who have had my rotovator since last summer, allegedly trying to repair it. They (Domac's) have now, at my chasing, retrieved it from their Ballinasloe branch, an hour's drive away, back to their Roscommon depot half an hour's drive away. I am welcome to collect it, they tell me but, if I like they will try to get hold of a coil and have another go at fixing it if I'm willing to wait a week...... NO! You've had it since July. Now it's MY TURN!

Fair play to the guys at Domac's, though, they were happy and relaxed and not at all offended that I wanted it back now. Even better, they did not charge me anything because they had not fixed it. Gerry, their guy, helped me into the Fiat's boot with it. It just fits with the handles down. I ran it round to Felix-the-Fix, our new found chain-saw genius (of whom more later) who gave it a bit of a wry look and pronounced "Well, it's an OLD rotovator" but took it into his Aladdin's Cave of a workshop. I swear he had the look of love and a "Come to Daddy" air about him as he took it under his wing. He did not believe Domac's story that it just needed a coil but said that he had a number of suitable coils in his shed if that proved to be the bit required.

Meanwhile I am getting on well with the raised 'lazy bed' in my allotment. The whole allotment is 30 m long and about 8 m wide. I have done it in 5 beds up and down the slope, with a couple of cross trenches to use as paths. This will give me 15 beds of different lengths, 5 at 5 m, 5 at 17 m and 5 at 7 m. I have dug the 7's and the 17's and I only have the 5's to finish. Where plastic sheet allows, these get covered up as soon as they are dug to help finish off the weeds. That seems to work better in warm weather, not so well in the cold of winter, but really as soon as you dig these beds you can see the poor old soil start to dry out by natural drainage in a way that it just has NOT been able to do while sitting flat. It seems to me to be breathing a sigh of relief.  The hens like to help with this digging and I am constantly having to watch that I do not wound a hen as I sink the shovel in; they are right in there with me picking up the worms. The geese come round after I have gone, checking for cut ends of left over carrots and other rooty bits.

The wind over recent weeks has caused a decent sized branch of one of the spruces to sag down onto our phone cable. Our old chum from 3rd January 2012, Aerial Keith is called and turns up with his ropes, mountaineering carabiners and harness, impressive tool belt and kevlar (carbon fibre) chain-saw-proof trousers and boots and plays monkey for an hour, swinging about in the branches, quite often upside down with his legs hooked over the branch. He mainly uses a beefy pruning saw but finishes off by chainsaw which he has in reserve dangling on the end of a rope 20 feet up, sometimes sputtering away with its 2-stroke engine idling as it swings like a pendulum. When he needs it he hauls it up  till he can grab it, use it and then let it back down. He clears up our twanging cable and tidies up the tree, does a very professional job and charges us only a modest fee. He declines tea saying he is off to Tubbercurry (town) for a Curry. It had to have a curry house, really, didn't it, with a name like that?

On Saturday 9th we are due delivery of a short under-the-worktop fridge. We have decided to move the 6 foot tall existing one into the Utility room as it restricts food preparation space in what is quite a small kitchen. The new one arrives at lunchtime just when I have given up waiting and gone for a dog walk but the delivery man was happy to fight his way in through the gate, come up the drive to unload it into the dining room. Liz has all the fun then of clearing space for the tall one in the Utility, emptying it so it can be moved, preparing the space for the new one, moving them (I help with that bit!) and reloading both. It's not a 5-minute job.

That afternoon sees me back helping John Deere Bob with the logging up of the big ash tree we felled. This job was interrupted by my saw going on the blink, refusing to idle. I'd had to take it in to Felix-the-Fix, our bearded, German-speaking Swiss backwoodsman. He'd fixed it but I had not actually tried it out till now. Well, the saw sang its song beautifully as I logged up the smaller branches but then, after a half hour, when I started to tackle the big stuff, more than the 14 inches thick that my saw will cut, it all got a bit slow, smokey and sad-sounding. Eventually it stopped and I could not re-start it no matter what. We thought it might just have got a bit over-heated, so we stopped and I was disappointed to admit that Bob might be better off getting Mr McG, with his bigger saw, to finish cutting the big trunk up. It felt like I'd let the side down.

It was, in fact, worse than that. On Monday 11th I took the saw back to Felix and he pulled the start cord, felt a lack of compression and thought I might have fried the piston. In two minutes he had the exhaust and manifold off and could peer down the exhaust port and see the badly scored and crazed side of the piston. "That should be shiny like a mirror" he opined, sadly. So, I have an option to seek piston and barrel on the internet but Felix's opinion is that I have probably had my €110's worth out of it and it owes me nothing, so I'd be better getting a less cheap saw and moving on. The makes they recommend round here are Husqvarna for ground-level work and Stihl for the 'arboreal' (monkeys and ropes) stuff, but realistically you need to spend €350-€450 for a 'decent saw'. The cheap ones are (says Felix) "made to a price" with consequences I have now experienced. Ah well, old chum, Flora-best Saw from Lidl. We did OK together and you definitely earned your corn, as well as being a good 'entry level' saw for a complete beginner. RIP.

And so we moved on to things caravan. Our trusty old caravan in which we lived for the 5 months of the build and which has since served well as 'den' for the nieces in August and kennel for guest-dogs at Christmas, was starting to look a bit shabby in the winter damp, with algae growing outside and damp and mould inside. Liz has blitzed the inside but got to thinking that, should the Silverwoods NOT want to exercise their option to use it for towing / touring (and we have yet to talk to them about this) we might gut out the 'shower' bit (we never used it) and the galley and increase the bed-space to 4 berths, replacing all the soft furnishings. With both our brains in planning mode we actually went on a bit further and started to see the former hay-barn with three bays. The first, our car-port already exists. The second could be a roof over the caravan to stop all the rain, algae and damp and the third, western-most, bay could be a 'greenhouse' of corrugated transparent plastic which would serve instead of a poly-tunnel. Our note-book is suddenly full of 3-D scratched drawings of uprights, horizontal beams, parked cars and caravans, corrugated sheets, doors and verdant greenery.

It's never boring!