Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord...

Stir up Sunday

A blog post with at least some of those words in it is by now almost an annual tradition. A blog of mystery and unpredictability, this is obviously not. We do love this process, though and can think of no finer way of creating the 'pud' and the Christmas cake. Off then on a special shopping mission on the Saturday (25th) and some of the dried fruit doused in Jameson overnight.

Hours of fun, too, on the Sunday adding final ingredients, mixing and doing the obligatory stirs before tipping the mixes into their respective cookware, lined with grease-proof or covered in same and foil, tied down with string like Mamma used to make. Now cooked too - 8 hours gentle blupping for the pud - and left to rest for the required amount of weeks. The icing of the cake is my department - I have a cunning plan but need to source some coloured icing, which could be tricky.

Temporary fences allow the sheep to access all areas. 

Friends of the Blog following our hosting of local gardening journalist, Paul Kirwan may have been expecting our story to appear in the Roscommon Herald today but unfortunately we got 'bumped'. Paul had had a story about his involvement in Golf Course "gardening" sitting on the back burner for weeks and the paper decided to go with that one this week. 'We' are therefore postponed to next week. More on that next week, maybe.

As bad as it got slush-wise.

We had a short burst of winter over the weekend. Nothing impressive or photogenic, just lots of raw, biting wind and wet wintry showers. No real frost either, so we are very sloppy under foot and pinned down to indoor jobs.

The ever reliable duck eggs. 

Rather bizarrely, our white Sussex hen, 'Connie', has decided to go broody. We have no idea why she thinks it is Spring but just maybe she has worked out that by doing the broody thing she can sit in a lovely warm nest in a shed and be given waiter-service on the food and water, protected from piratical 'sisters' trying to drop more eggs in on her by the cage I have built around her little hidey hole.

Not so much 'frozen' as covered in a
layer of part-melted slush. The pond
goes gun-metal grey.

I have, though, stitched her up. Not wanting any more chickens just for the moment, I have slipped 5 duck eggs under her. She will not be able to check on her diary but her instinctive Day-21 will come and go. Duck eggs take 24-28 days at least to incubate. Day 28 will put her right on Christmas Day so, with luck, our guests will get to see cute, new-hatched ducklings. Chickens will generally just sit tight, unaware of any problem and not visibly concerned that the chickens look a bit 'funny'. You do then need to take the babies off the Mum by about Day 10 because the Mums get quite upset that their babies will not learn to scratch and peck and do not try to stay dry. We'll have to see how that goes.

The turkeys are still thriving and impressing us with their size. We reared three because in previous years we have given them to family, one going to Sparks for a special dinner he used to do for a gang of his Dublin builder mates. Sparks is no longer in that world and now lives outside the capital, so tells us he doesn't need one, and neither, apparently, do any of the Silverwood gang so we have three turkeys and only ourselves and our guests to satisfy. Turkey for Easter anyone? St Patrick's Day?

Finally just a couple of pics for the usual reason, that I have them. First up, Lizzie. When you are wiped out by a cold and chilled to the bone, wrap up well in the 'onesie' and under a blanket. If that's not warm enough chuck a couple of cats and a dog on the bed too. Toasty.

Next up the two grown-up boy-cats, Blue and Soldier who have lately been fighting a bit over the best roosts and nests. Here they both grabbed the top of the book-case under the stairs, with their heads against the woodwork in a quiet stand off. Anywhere you can climb, I can climb higher? In the end Soldier blinked first and jumped down, leaving Blue to stretch out luxuriously across the case-top with a rather smug look on his face. The status quo is restored. For now.

Stirring it Up.... Early

Stir It Up..... Christmas Pudding Mix

Normally we would be looking to make up our Christmas Pudding mixes on the 'proper' day, "Stir Up Sunday" which, as you will probably know falls on the last Sunday before Advent. This year that is the 20th November. However, this year Liz wanted to make extra puds to give away as Christmas presents, one of which will be going to some UK visitors who are here soon; way too soon to have a pud mixed on 20th November.

...because sometimes you need to leave yourself a reminder
for the next morning.

So as I sit here writing this on a Tuesday evening with Liz off at knitting club and then drama group, I am actually supervising three puds 'blupping' away gently in three different places. this just to make sure nobody boils dry. I have to turn off the hob pair at 10 p.m. but the slow-cooker one can keep on a-going till Liz gets home. The house seems to be acknowledging that Christmas is just around the corner (though we are not ones for early decorating or playing any Christmas songs till much nearer the day).

One of the puds simmering gently (lid removed for photo)

This very mild, food-based, Christmas feeling is also spreading to our sense of 'harvest time'. I like to get all the killing done by the Solstice (21st Dec) because then I can go into Christmas in a constructive frame of mind, not a destructive one. I mentally turn a corner on that date and start my getting ready for Spring. We have started to "finish" (that aul' euphemism!) the Hubbard meat-birds who are currently on day 93; you may recall that we try to finish them all between days 80 and 100 so that they a big and meaty but still very young and tender. Superb meat. So tasty and succulent.

Hubbard carcasses. These two were 2.4 and 2.7 kg oven-ready

This year I am mildly concerned that following a good 'harvest' of our pork and our lambs, the freezers are a bit full to be accepting a dozen biggish chickens but Liz is calm and tells me not to fret. "Keep on killing them", she says, "and I will keep on plucking them, dressing them, jointing, packing and freezing them". She shuffles up the smaller items already frozen to make more space and immediately capitalizes on any vacant places gained by us whipping out a joint, a frozen left-overs tub or a bottle of stock.

Rolled Rib Roast of pork

Reading Anne's blog, she found that this batch were unusual in their inconsistent oven-ready weights. "There is a wide range of weights", she writes, "with these latest birds which are supposed to be Hubbards, a slow growing strain. They have ranged in weight from six and a half pounds (2.94 kg) to nine pounds three ounces (4.17 kg). We really  do have our doubts as to whether they were in fact Hubbards. None of our previous batches have weighed so much yet they were reared and fed exactly the same as previous batches". We have killed our biggest 4 roosters here so far, with weights ranging from 2.4 to 2.7 kg - the hen birds all look quite a bit smaller.

With Charlotte now off in Dublin working for a living (good
luck Charlotte!) I had to clip my own dogs. I know! Outrageous!

My other comment on them would be about the dirtiness of them. Regular readers will know that this year, to avoid wading through lazy, over-fed Hubbard poults (and their poo!) as soon as we stepped out of the kitchen into the yard, I confined them to a pen out by the 5-Acre field-gate. They quickly mashed this ground to a muddy desert and, not being ones for perching or roosting up out of the wet, they ended up more brown than white and looking very bedraggled.

Liz enjoying Mum's car. 

I shovelled in no end of shredded wood to try to dry them out and eventually let them out fully free range so they could walk the clean, green grass. Their upper sides and backs were quickly cleaner but the damage was done on their bellies and breasts, their feathers worn and mudded to discoloured "stubble" which was not a lot of fun for Liz to pluck out. I don't know what the answer is to this - it rained so much through August and September. Ah well, they look OK as carcasses with all those soiled feathers gone and in the bin, and they were happy and healthy enough despite the muddy pen.

These 6 youngsters escaped into the lane once too often and
the owner decided to take them 'home'

The local cattle have all been taken 'home', the ones who rent the land surrounding ours. As they ran out of grass in the field, they started trying to push through the fences and hedges to get at the greener grass beyond. This happens and is normal (I am told) and it is usually the youngsters who get out first because they are smaller.

Walking our summer guests home.

Several times last week I'd return from a dog walk or drive and find the lane "filled" with calves all happily grazing the verges (the "Long Acre") and helped by either random passers by or Liz, we'd be rounding them up and shepherding them back into their field. Each time I'd text the owner but then send him another text to say "sorted". The owner had been hanging on as long as possible because these Mums and children run with the bull (young cousin of the original 'Felix') and he did not want the bull mixing it with the ladies he already had nearer home.

Those 'kattens' are due their operations this week. We don't
want any dodgy brother-sister incest. 

Eventually even he got fed up with all the escapes and came down with a small crew of walkers and followers (plus vehicles) to take everybody home. We'll miss them and, with the land now having changed hands, that will be the last time we see them. We got quite good at shepherding the calves about.

That is pretty much it for this one. I was hoping to get some pics of the 'super-moon' - last night's full moon which was meant to be the closest to earth (and therefore biggest and brightest) for 70 odd years. Well, Roscommon did it's usual 10/10 cloud and misty morning so there was no moon to see that night. I did get a glimpse of it on my morning rounds as the sun burned off the mist on the 5-Acre field to our west. That would have been about 07:45 and almost full daylight. I could have probably got a pale photo but, hey, had my hands full of bird food and sheep crunch. Such is life.

European Lime and Cider Apples

3.93 kg of red cabbage.

With Liz back from her latest 'errand of mercy' down to the Silverwoods, the kitchen is once more its periodic whirlwind of activity. The Christmas Pud stir-up, postponed from the proper day (Sunday 23rd) went ahead with the usual lavish spread of ingredients packets all over the dining table and of course we both got to do a stir and make our wishes. I was instructed to bring in from the garden my finest red cabbage which we had been saving for the making of the Christmas 'spicy red cabbage' recipe. This had grown and grown and even took me by surprise by being 3.93 kg and as big as my head! Liz was suddenly scrabbling around all the fruit bowls and fridges for enough apple to go with it and raiding the onion 'ropes' in the car port for enough onions.

I love the sight of red cabbage shredded up.

The mix is now gently brewing in the huge slow cooker and in our big gumbo pot and will give us frozen portions nearly through to next Christmas. That is just from the one cabbage. While I was out there, I also lifted some more spuds (Sarpo Mira) and a few carrots. These crops seem to store best left in the ground, as long as you do not have too much of a slug problem. I found a few small clutches of slug eggs but nothing to worry about and the spuds are coming up nice and clean; it is just a cold wet job in the drizzle and I am happy that I can walk on the paths between the ridges to dig and also that we have a nice warm house to retreat to for a coffee.

The 2015 pigs are not even born yet, but a little old lady
we know of in Leeds jumped at the chance to name them!
Our pleasure, Olive!

The 'errand of mercy' was Liz staying at the parents' new place over the weekend keeping an eye on Steak Lady and Mr SL (the latter not long back out of hospital) but also able to nip round to the Silverwoods' and dog-sit their three Westies while the family de-camped to a hotel in Bray for a baton twirling competition (mentioned in an earlier post). This also gave Steak Lady a chance to abandon Mr SL for tasks like a 2 hour shed-clear-out, or any shopping, knowing he was well looked after, and chatted to by, Liz. Mr SL is thriving by all accounts and is up and about, shaved and out of his PJs looking much more like his old self than a patient. He has always been a very dapper chap and happiest in his suit. He was hating the unshaven, just got out of bed look.

A first rack of lamb and a good dollop of
home made crap apple and rosemary jelly

Exciting news this week when I got a text from our main tree supplier, FutureForests.net to say that 'our' trees were now out of the ground and ready for 'shipping'. I had seen on Facebook that they had had a fire at their premises but were hoping to get back to business as usual and they obviously have. These trees will be some European Limes (Tilia cordata x) which we are mainly buying for the bees. These limes flower in June which is a bit of a hungry-gap between the main flush of spring flowers (dandelions, horse chestnut, fruit blossom, blackthorn, hawthorn and the like) and the full flourish of proper summer flowers, the bramble and so on. A friend in the Cotswolds tells us that they are much loved by the bees and that a tree in summer can 'hum like a hive'. The writers in our bee keeper Federation mag (An Beachaire) also recommend them, so we are giving them a try. The rest of the trees are our first dip into cider apple growing and possibly cider making. We have bought traditional old Irish varieties (we love the names - Dabinette, Camelot and Dunkerton Late Sweet). We read that Irish cider is normally made with a 50/50 mix of the actual cider apples and what ever dessert apples were to hand. . These should arrive here either tomorrow or Thursday, so watch this space on that one.

Mk 3 sheep shelter (now with sides!)

Our old sheep man, Kenny, laughed when I first erected a shelter for the sheep back in 2012 when we had them in the orchard. These were tough Mayo sheep, he insisted, used to being out in all weathers on scruffy mountainsides. But they seemed to like it and use it, hiding in there when the nights were frosty or one of our mighty Atlantic squalls came driving through; this even though the shelter was a rudimentary affair with just four posts and a roof, with a 'back' made by tying an opened out builder's bulk-bag to the sheep-fence. I have done a shelter ever since, moving the old corrugated sheeting, the builder's bag and door-frame timbers around to which ever field the sheep were in. This week I got hold of Sparks's brutal diamond-cut angle grinder and cut out some bits for the sides. We are positively palatial and the sheep which should also be coming soon will be well protected. Mayo sheep they might be but 2 of them at least will be in the family way and will get, even if they don't need, a higher standard of pampering. The third sheep is too young to be got in lamb yet, but she can also enjoy the shelter while she watches and learns from her 'aunts'.

Stirring It Up

Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people etc etc. Yes, a whole year has rolled around since I posted the post at

http://deefer-dawg.blogspot.ie/2012/11/stir-up-sunday.html

and we are back to "Stir Up Sunday" again. For my Irish readers this is a rather nice little British (and probably Protestant) Calendar Custom when it came time for the cooks of the parish to mix up their ingredients for Christmas Pud and Christmas Cake to give them time to 'meld' (for flavours to merge) and the Vicar would select the above 'collect' from the Book of Common Prayer which would remind the cooks. I have no idea how traditional this really is but it's a nice story and it happens in The Archers, so it MUST be true.

We do it in this house, anyway, and Liz was there today with a table covered in the different packets and tubs of suet, dried fruit, glace cherries, bowls of eggs, the bottle of brandy and the rest. We use an old family recipe which comes to us from Pud Lady and which I believe comes from our family's ancient and venerable, much thumbed and well used recipe book which we know as 'Flo' (It's Florence somebody or other). Pud Lady may correct me if I am wrong. Last year we almost had a two-fold disaster when firstly Pud Lady, relating the recipe over the phone, omitted bread crumbs and also, we were so short of eggs that we were anxiously waiting on one of the hens to lay that day's egg before we could proceed. Luckily the bread crumbs did not seem to matter and the hen laid her egg - the result was a delicious success after all. This year we have a glut of eggs and we have added the bread crumbs to our saved version of the recipe.

Goldie Rabbit gets two visitors.

In their own attempt to stir things up, the Irish Rugby team almost beat the All Blacks, being beaten by only 2 points just 4 minutes from the final whistle. It would have been the first win over the New Zealanders for a hundred years or so. We deny ourselves the permission to follow these matches lest we jinx the team as I used to do to England when ever I watched them but my absence today was not enough. I understand it was a gripping match.

4 trees as delivered.

For me, a very enjoyable job today and another milestone in the November sunshine, once the mist had been burned off. I receive through the mail via Anne and Simon, my fruit trees ordered from "Future Forests". These are my last four for the orchard, filling the final four slots in my 6 by 4 array, a 2nd "Braeburn" apple, a "Sunburst" dark dessert cherry, a crab apple named "Golden Hornet" and a black mulberry.

Each has a small story and a reason to be included. The Braeburn is a potential substitute for my existing tree which is suffering a bit from a canker like lesion which has nearly gone right round the main trunk from a side bud. The cherry is the closest we could get to the Black Wonder we grew in Kent. We'd heard about it from a Bob Flowerdew answer on Gardeners' Question Time and had to have it specially grafted by Brogdale, the famous Fruit Research Station (which was in our town) as a one-off order. The Sunburst looks quite dark in the catalogue picture (though not on the pictorial label) so we will have to wait and see whether we have a "dark dessert cherry" at all.

The Black Mulberry harks back to my University days when the college with which I was associated while doing my research, Wolfson College, Cambridge, had a huge black mulberry tree growing in front of the main doors which used to literally drip the black sweet juicy fruit all over the flagstones but which we students used to happily 'scrump' every time we walked past. The crab apple harks back to our family home in Hastings, where Pud Lady and my Brother, Tom, still live. There is a magnificent crab apple in the front garden which gave us boys no end of pleasure in the climbing and in the harvesting of the crabs for making crab apple jelly and wine.

Well, those four trees are now in place and the orchard, nicely grazed short by the geese, is complete. We hope for great things over the coming years as the trees establish and grow. We have a vision of looking down the rows between the blossom and of picking plenty of fruit as it comes ripe. This year the trees were all very young (the first trees were planted in August 2012) so we got some blossom this year but the only fruit which set was on a plum, which gave us 2 dozen lovely fruit. Next year, who knows? Apples, pears? Quince and greengage?  Plums and dessert or sour cherries? Damsons and Mulberries? Hazelnuts and crab apples? We'll have to wait and see.

Stir Up Sunday

"Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen"

Church going types may recognise this as being a 'collect' from the Book of Common Prayer but more recently it features in programmes like The Archers as being the quote which is rolled out for "Stir Up Sunday", the Sunday "next before Advent", the day traditionally (in some circles) used for mixing up your Christmas Pud ingredients. This gives the pud a good chance for the flavours to meld and mature by the big day. 

For us it dawned crisp and frosty, with the grass nearly as white as the chickens, at first bright and sunny but then turning misty and dull and later thawing to a drippy wetness. It felt nice and Christmassy, like the true start to our Season of Good Will.

This is actually going to be our first Christmas in a sense, despite us being 19 years married. We were always invited to either Pud Lady's place in Hastings, or to Ireland for which we are, obviously, mightily grateful and we loved every one of them but now, with our own 'new' house we are determined to do it here and take our turn at being Host and Hostess.

So off we went on a special shopping mission yesterday to Castlerea armed with our list of ingredients. Liz is following a recipe from Pud Lady's beaten and battered 'family heirloom' cookery book which (Pud Lady may correct me here) I believe may have been a Wedding present to Pud Lady and Stamp Man way back and is called by us "Flo" (I think it is by a Florence Jacks, who was an equivalent to the more famous Mrs Beeton). This is the recipe Pud Lady has used for all my life and certainly for the 19 years Liz and I have been together. 

This being our first Christmas, it was pointed out to us by friend Mazy-Lou , it is also a good opportunity to start our own portfolio of 'family traditions'. To a degree we are there already because although we have never done the meal, we always decorate our house anyway and have a proper real Christmas Tree which we try to keep to a tasteful small amount of colours (this generally fails and we end up as garish as the next man) and clear (white?) fairy lights, plus we have traditionally purchased one tree decoration each new each year from some significant location. We have two, for example, from the market in New Orleans from when we were there, a crawfish and a 'beignet' (a New Orleans pretzel-type bread roll). If anyone reading this is coming anywhere near here at Christmas please do feel free to join in. Bring a tree decoration - big small, silly, serious, beautiful or kitsch, plain or garish - we will happily adopt them all and know that you were there to keep our tradition going.

Another tradition which is probably more widespread is for everyone in the household to take a turn at stirring the mixture and to make a wish. I can remember doing this when we lived at home and Liz tells me that the family photo 'archive' has almost an annual shot of kids round the kitchen table chopping peel and so on. We kept this alive this year with both Liz and I doing the honours but later on John Deere Bob called by on one of his drop in visits and Liz passed him the bowl and spoon to have a go. He was happy to oblige and joked that he'd wish for loads of money. We reminded him that money is one thing you are not allowed to wish for, and, anyway, he mustn't tell us or it wouldn't come true!