Chicken House Roof

Stripping off the old 'tin'. 

Away and by far the biggest news for this post is our superb progress on the chicken house roof replacement. Having surprised us by turning up 3 days early on Friday to make a start, builder/carpenter buddy 'K-Dub' carried on the good works on Monday and today (Tues). With me on light duties and the Help-X lad having blown us out, K-Dub was working solo for a big part of this time, but assisted by Elizabeth when there were chunks of new timber to be brought round from cutting-place to the shed, or chunks of old rotten roof to stack away for burning later.

Dismantling the electrics.

The jobs, in roughly chronological order were to carefully remove the good tarpaulin and the small two tarps which went on first back in the post Storm-Doris days. Next up, the electrics had to be peeled away from any wood which was now going to be removed. Next, K-Dub stripped off the old 'tin', sliding the sheets down for us to stack on the ground. Sharp edges on those rusty sheets, so gloves were vital.

Nifty chain-saw action while balanced on a wall.

The next stage involved some rather nifty 'high wire' balancing along the tops of walls (none of the woodwork would have taken the weight of anyone the size of K-Dub (or me)) armed with a chain saw. We'd shut all the fascinated chickens out of the building so that K-Dub could go all round cutting old rafters till the roof woodwork, almost in one piece, collapsed into the shed. He then went into the shed and chopped it up into bite size pieces that we could haul out and stack. Finally on the demolition phase, he had to dig out the wall-plates (timbers which sit a-top walls to take the bottom end of rafters.)

Here the old roof timbers have completely collapsed into the shed.

You know how these builder types, when asked for an estimate, suck in a breath between their teeth and say something like, "We won't really know till we get going - you can find all sorts of horrors when you start demolishing roofs!" Well, here, I could see that minor escalation in action and I couldn't argue with the man. The walls of these barns are almost a 'dry-stone wall' construction with very little in the way of mortar between the stones, maybe some mud thrown in on top to fill some gaps.

Some new timbers going in, mainly so that we could sling the
tarp back over the unfinished roof on Monday night.

Well now, 150 years+ later the wall tops are not so much 'wall' as loose small rubble and dusty dry soil. As K-Dub prised the old wall-plates out of their grooves, the sides of each groove simply land-slid in. We decided that this roof should get, for safe keeping and to ensure that the wall plates did not 'walk' away from each other under the load of the new tin, sagging our nice new ridge-beam, 2 extras.

It's not all chicken houses. Elizabeth, Queen of the Pointy
Shovel takes on the mighty job of digging that raised bed over.

Firstly we would span the building with 4 horizontal 'joist' beams. We actually used the spare 4' length off-cuts to make the rafter pairs between these joists into 'A' frames, which neatly gave the Guinea Fowl back their perches. Secondly we would mix a sloppy cement and pour/spread this along the wall tops around and under the new wall plates to give some grip onto the loose rubble. The top 6 inches of wall is probably now the strongest bit, and would be called a 'ring beam' if we had done it all round the building.

Those last 2 jobs were today's and, for another night we have slung the big tarp back over the work to give the chickens a bit of shelter in case it rains in the night. K-Dub is sure we can finish tomorrow. That would be the remaining purlins, the new tin, 'flaunching' the tin in to the gable at the 'windy' end, fitting the ridge pieces and a capping on the East end, strapping down the roof to the walls, re-assembling the electrics and cleaning up. Busy old day. I will tell you all about it in the next post.

A spindle bush recovering from sheep browsing in our 'Woods'

Meanwhile, in the down time (Yes, we do get some! Light duties, remember) I have been enjoying the various groups of birds coming of age and starting to sort out their grown-up family dynamics. The ducks, you will recall, are a young male Khaki Campbell hatched by us this spring, and a Mum and 5 youngsters of 'Silver Appleyard' variety bought in a couple of months ago.

Well, now they are all full size and the KC has started doing odd 'display' moves to various other ducks. He alone has differentiated into a definite drake (dark head, bassy 'quack', curly-up feathers just above the tail). We know that Mum is Mum, but the 5 youngsters are keeping their sex secret for now, from us anyway. KC-Drake's moves include a rearing up on his back end, standing up on the water with his chin pressed down into his chest, and zooming forward across the water with his neck stretched out forward and his chin almost touching the water. Are these moves designed to impress any coming of age males, or females? We have no idea.

Then yesterday, early in the morning, our alpha rooster, Gandalf came into view followed by an entourage of 15 adult and half grown chickens. Up to now the half grown babies have pretty much kept to their clutch-groups. Are they now feeling the changes of teenager-hood and starting to align with the dominant male, playing their cards right, as it were. More on these stories in future posts. Now I must wrap up as the Woman of the House is off out tonight to a meeting for which she needs this lap top. Talk to you again soon.

Eleanor and Fionn

The top limb of a larch tree blocking the driveway.

Friends of the Blog will recall the fun and games here last February when Storm Doris came raging through ripping the roof off the main chicken building and felling a decent sized spruce across the driveway. They may also recall more recent entertainment provided by Ex-Hurricane Ophelia and Storm Dylan. Those two were equally well advertised and came with Met Éireann 'Orange Alert' warnings for high winds, though we mercifully escaped any significant damage from either.

The topless larch. Lots of new sky!

In the last post I described the latest storm (Eleanor) who came with no such warnings (only 'yellow' status) but which, at the time of writing sounded noisier and more scary than any of the previous crew, certainly for the hour or so around 18:30 pm, when I was typing that post. A real screamer - Hurricane style noises howling through the tree tops. We learned a new meteorological term that night - a "Sting Jet". This is a narrow area of intense wind formed as an eddy inside the storm spiral-system. They never had these when I was at school learning Geography / Meteorology so they may be just a more exciting, 'tabloid-y' expression for what has always been there, or they may have been 'invented' as storm-science moves on and learns more detail. What ever the case, we were impressed and we could certainly believe it.

It was with trepidation then, that I went my rounds of the place looking for damage. Relief too, obviously, that we humans were unscathed and even more so to find that all the buildings and livestock were unhurt. That poor, long-suffering 'Doris' tarpaulin over the main chicken house was still hanging in there. The only damage was that the drive was blocked (again!), this time by a big branch broken off the top of one of our lovely, gnarly larches down by the main gate, a small, weedy spruce had been thinned out of the row at the top of the East Field and a hedge-row hawthorn had been felled across the veg patch.

Horizontal hawthorn

The rest was just the usual wheelie-bins gone walk-about, twigs all over the grass and other light stuff (flower pots etc) in some unlikely places. Nothing we couldn't handle with my little chain-saw and some strong-arm branch-dragging.

Silver lining for the sheep. They get to browse the ivy leaves
off the broken branches we toss in to their field. 

The spruce had fallen across the sheep fence, so needed some nifty cutting up and moving lest the sheep walk out over the now 6" tall barrier. That proved to be one of those you get warned about in the chain-saw training manuals, where the (incomplete) break is still under a lot of 'bend' tension and cannot wait for you to uncouple the weight of the tree's 'top' before it springs back upright taking the saw and arm/chin of any idiot, unwary chain-saw man with it. In my case it pinged up so fast it passed through vertical and whip-lashed itself backwards, completing the original break. I'm still here, obviously, so you'll know I was ready and saw that coming.

Not that many logs once they are all tidied up.

It continued more reasonably windy for that whole day and into the next (Thursday 4th) by which time we were getting a bit fed up with 'windy' as an idea. It turned out that a smaller storm (Fionn) was being pulled along behind 'Mum' but that lad mercifully followed a more southerly track and only really affected the island's SE corner, Wexford mainly.

That spruce that came down across the sheep
fence at the top of out East Field.

So what else is going on for us at the moment, in between the blasts of gale-force wind? Mercifully, no more appearances by our fox - and we have been doing a lot of waiting, watching and listening, believe me. We have sprinted out to check at every alarm call from the Guinea Fowl and every burst of goose-based cacophony.

A neighbour's hay barn was 50% shorter after Eleanor and his
cattle-race a bit fuller of scrap iron.

Naturally, in the absence of real fox scares, I had to give myself a self-inflicted DIY scare-myself-silly. On Thursday, I had a 'thing' in nearby town Balla-D at 5.30 pm, so I was racing about a bit trying to get some bread made and all the birds locked up by 5. That would usually be calm and no problem but one of the young Guineas managed to get 'trapped' in the East Field; happy to fly over the gate one way and then can't work out how to get back. I had shepherded the ducks home and then had to back-track to rescue the Guinea, but then very happily sorted her and closed the door behind her as she sprinted indoors to join her 3 colleagues.

Storm Fionn slides by to the south of the island.

Off I went to my meeting, came back at 8 pm to a late supper and a relaxed evening, then went out to do last minute checks at 10 pm. Ooops. The ducks were 'still' out and now very upset at being in the cold and dark and unable to get home; locked out! They had been vulnerable to fox-attack for 5 hours. They must have strolled back out for a final nibble of grass while I was rounding up that Guinea Fowl and I had missed them in my relief at re-capturing her. Lesson learned and a stricter roll-call introduced for lock-up. How can you miss 5 noisy ducks?

Blue perches on the full but still open crates
of Christmas. What could possibly go wrong?

We also dismantled Christmas and stashed the stuff away back into crates in the Tígín. Tomorrow (6th Jan) is the date for that much-loved Irish tradition, Nollaig na mBan (say it nollag na morn) , Ladies' Christmas or 'Little Christmas'. This is those hard-pressed ladies' 'Day of Rest' where we blokes take the helm of the 'farm kitchen' and they get to relax and be spoiled after 2 weeks of solid hard work giving everyone else a superb Christmas. Liz likes to dismantle Christmas and pack it away on the 5th including wrestling with the drying out Tree or, she says, she would just end up hoovering up needles on Nollaig na mBan. Nobody wants that. More on how that went in the next post.

Stay safe, people.

Soft you now, the fair Ophelia...

Hurricane Ophelia's predicted track. 

Like a rabbit caught in the headlights, this post finds us sitting here wondering whether the next few days will bring us brutal weather and the tree-toppling, airborne chicken house roof dramas of our former 'girlfriend', Storm Doris. If you believe the more dramatic and alarmist weather forecasters, we are looking down the barrel of Hurricane Ophelia.

Ophelia's southward track so far.

This angry young lady has already shown herself to be a bit weird, having formed up off the coast of Newfoundland and tracked SW down the US east coast before doing a small loop-the-loop and hanging a left out to sea off Florida. Not for her the usual targets of Haiti, Houston,Texas or Puerto Rico; she's steering well clear of Trump's Twitter storms.

The beech in the pig run starts to turn
colour.

I am, naturally, quite nervous despite this jokey bravado. We do not need any bad storms this winter. Friends of the Blog will recall that Storm Doris ripped a good bit of the roof off our main chicken house and this building spent the summer shored up with a nice new tarpaulin.

Hops

The plan was for K-Dub and I to replace the roof this year with corrugated iron salvaged from his house in Sligo, but the need to do the kitchen extension kind of got in the way. You can only do so many buildering projects a year. Re-roofing weather is probably done now till next spring, so our chicken house must go through this winter and Hurricane Ophelia (and friends) on a wing, a prayer and a hopefully strong tarpaulin. What could POSSibly go wrong? Soft you now, the fair Ophelia - be gentle with us.

Bank behind the poly tunnel now cleared of nettles and brambles
and over-hanging elder branches.

That said, we have had reasonably good weather so far and rain and wind have not yet interfered too much with the Autumn clear-ups I have been doing, working with my Help-X volunteer, AB. This is still mainly the wilder areas of perimeter including various neglected banks behind the poly tunnel. As well as nettles and weeds, these often have dumped piles of tree prunings and hedge cuttings which I could not burn on the day I cut them.

The bank also known as "The Turf Mine". Every home should
have one?

On one of these, regular readers may recall, we came across a buried stash of turf-fuel. The previous owner had obviously had a clamp of turf there which had at some stage been sheeted over with old (used) silage wrap and then piled up with good top-soil scraped from some other part of the farm. It has been, for us, the gift that keeps on giving - every time I need turf for fuel, I just clear some more weeds, burrow into the bank, pull out a few barrow loads to dry in the poly tunnel. Bingo.

Poly tunnel becomes turf-dryer for a few months. 

As part of the Autumn thing and part of battening down the hatches for the storm, we also decided to take down the Honeybee swarm 'lure box'. This, readers will recall, gets hung optimistically from the big ash tree down by the bee hive in the hope of tempting any emerging swarm to take up residence and not vanish over the horizon.

Brace comb created in the swarm-box.

Well, apart from a little flurry of comings and goings by scout bees from the hive when I first hoisted it into the tree (when you deploy it you load it with 'bait' of old comb, old honey and lemon-smelling plants like lemon balm or lemon grass), I had seen no activity.

Goat's cheese. Delicious. 

Bit of a surprise then, on getting it down and opening it, to find 4 nice chunks of "brace comb" in there. All dead and redundant now but there were some dead bees in there and some of the comb cells had obviously contained honey or pollen at one stage. No signs of any egg-laying or a brood nest, though.

I have perhaps been over-critical of the veg garden, suggesting
it was a disaster this year. It is giving us plenty of kale and chard
at this back end.

We are not experts, but we imagine that at some point during the year, while we were not watching, there was a swarm or a proper swarm followed by a 2nd "cast" swarm, probably with either no queen or a problem, infertile queen. These bees would have come out of the main hive, decided to set up in the swarm box and started to create wax comb where the new colony would be able to start storing honey and pollen. When no queen showed up or started successfully to lay eggs, this colony would have faded and died along with its new (start-up) workers, each bee only living about 6 weeks in summer here. Nice to know and Liz, at least, got the few ounces of beeswax from this.

Finally a bit of fun and a new experience for me. I have sheared sheep and clipped dogs but I had never done any human hair cuts. Today our Help-X lad decided that he was fed up with his flowing locks and that they were getting in the way of his 'farmering'. I joked that I could take him to the local barber's shop (lady rather nicely named "Barbara"!) or I could run the Wahl dog-clippers over him. He rather warily inspected the clippers (I think he thought they'd be as big and industrial as my shears!) and then decided that, hey, at least it'd save him the €10.

AB takes one for the team. Pics by Liz.

So, much to Liz's amusement we set up shop out front on the terrace furniture, I looked him in the eye one last time to check it was REALLY what he wanted and then went for it. No going back now, AB. 5 minutes later he was a "Number 5 all over" and delighted. For some reason Liz didn't choose to have the same and, when we went back indoors it was to find Towser, worried by the clipper noise, hunkered down in the tiny gap below the oven.

Young Scots pine all set up for next year. 

That's a bout it for this one.

Venison pie.

Keep your fingers crossed for us over the weekend and I hope to be able to post a safe, intact 'All Clear' post on Tuesday.

Mullein still in flower.

Mazy Lou and Airy Fox

Happy chickens out in the sunshine.

In celebration of the lifting of the avian flu restrictions, I bring you a post full of pictures of happy out-door birds, scratching in the dirt, pecking at the grass and feeling the warmth of the sun on their backs. This is as it should be and in my humble opinion the Ministry's avian flu restrictions had absolutely zip, zero to do with the welfare of 'our' free range birds and was all about protecting the livelihoods of the commercial, factory-farming, (not very) free range boys.

Suzy's Six gather round the sheep feed trough.

In our own flock an interesting dynamic has developed. Friends of the Blog will know that we have been nurturing 6 youngsters since Storm Doris (24th Feb), given to us by our friends Sue and Rob. Back then we chose the 6 from one of her big rearing cages, trying to pick out the ones which looked like hens, though sexing birds before 21 weeks age is notoriously tricky. We had great hopes that all 6 might be female and that the new group, called "Suzy's Six", would neatly restock our depleted (by the fox) flock. Also that the two which are good Cuckoo Marans colouring would fill the gap left by the deaths of Bubble and Squawk.

Cuckoo Marans, but are they female?

Well, no such luck, it seems and our success with sexing birds has taken a thorough knock - we think that almost certainly five, and possibly all 6 are roosters. As they come of age, various of them have crowed, squared up to one another with capes flared, grown upright, iridescent greenish tails and started strutting around like lads. More recently they have taken to trying to jump Galdalf's ladies, sometimes more than one at once. Enough, we say! Time for a rooster cull. Good for the freezer but not a lot of fun.

Herme, our 'sex change' hen/rooster. 

One rooster my be given a stay of execution. Our friends Con and Niamh from archery are in need of a rooster and rather fancy one of our "grey" ones (the Cuckoo Marans. The other "grey" is the chicken we hope is a hen - 'she' has quite yellow legs which can be a sign that the bird is starting to build up yolk proteins in her body prior to laying eggs. Ah well. It will all come out in the wash, I guess.

Our five ducks.

Our existing hens, who now number only 7 fit and well, will certainly be relieved. 7 on 7 is not a good ratio. Hens like their 'manly' attention diluted down to about 1 on 7. We are also pleased that the restrictions have been lifted because that means the local poultry sale is also now back in action and we might be able to go and buy some genuine hens. We hope there are either Buff Orpington or Cuckoo Marans available.

Left to tight, LIz, Mazy and Airy

You may recall from my previous post that we were 'between visitors' awaiting the arrival on the Friday of our most excellent chums from the UK, long term Friends of the Blog, Mazy-Lou and Airy-Fox. Originally Internet friends, these ladies have been part of our story for almost as long as this blog has been running. They currently live in Dorset and this would only be their 2nd visit each.

Rhubarb Pavlova

It was, as expected, a lovely visit and we thoroughly enjoyed the company and 'doing' the hospitality. Liz created marvellous food with, on the second night, the help of Mazy who is also a brilliant cook.  First was a superbly tender roast pork - it was actually "steamed" over a shallow bath of beer under a little tin-foil "hood" to keep the flavour in.

Gifts from Dorset - local cheese and a jar of, new one
on me, "bacon jam". A delicious relish. 

The joint-effort second night was a chicken-based curry with a rather good dahl (lentil) and sag (spinach) veg course plus a cooling bowl of mixed yogurt, cucumber, mint and coriander-seed. The chicken was boneless, skinless, cubed up breast which had been marinaded 24 hours in spiced up yogurt. The whole was served with poppadoms and flat breads. It was all really good. Huge thanks to both chefs.

Naturally a little drink was consumed (only a little. We are very sensible these days) and the chat flowed the way it does in such lovely companionship. One little aspect which amused us was that Airy voiced that she would rather like a dog, specifically a Beagle. Mazy is currently holding hard to the 'No Dog' line but her guard may be beginning to crack. At one stage she asked 'how many' dogs should one have if dogs were, after all, to be part of the picture? We have 3, of course.

We DEFINITELY don't want dogs.

Of course, our dogs were happy to get their wooden spoons out and stir this brew on Airy's behalf, climbing onto her lap and schmoozing Mazy up shamelessly. Time will tell on that one. It may take a while. The girls departed Thursday morning headed for Dublin Airport, where they needed to drop off the hire car by 1 pm. The remainder of their tour they will do sans car. Good luck you two and safe home. It was lovely having you.

That was it for visits in this burst. We now have a bit of a break till mid May when we get three more 'sets' of guests.

Pub Quizzing and Extreme(?) Archery

Snow flurries are very fashionable this week

With Storm Doris now a memory and her successor (Ewan) a comparatively mild (though very wet) one I should have been able to report by now all the damage repaired and secured and the mess tidied away. Sadly, the weather has lately been a succession of wet, windy days featuring a bitingly cold NW wind and flurries of snow and sleet and hail storms. The ground is very wet underfoot and we have returned to puddles everywhere. We have been rather pinned down and not keen to go out and do garden stuff, so the entertainments have all been indoor flavoured.

The ewes in a sleet-flurry

Liz got back involved in our much-loved Kent-days hobby of pub-quizzing. The 'Centre' (really the 'Village Hall') where she works, organise a table quiz annually as a fund raiser for the Hall and Liz, in her 'admin' role was looking at doing 'scorer'. I had cried off on the grounds that the questions would all have an Irish flavour and leave me feeling foolish in my ignorance of Irish history, politics, geography, GAA/sports and so on. At the 11th hour another scorer volunteered and Liz was free to join a table and compete.

New dark green tarp turns white in the wet snow.

In the event it was a hugely successful night and Liz had a great time. Her table came 4th behind the winning (Chairman's) gang and 2nd placed table Captained by her boss, so appropriate, politically correct decorum was maintained! The questions were not very Irish at all, so my fears were groundless and I regretted not going - I have put my name down for the next one. In fact, Liz won a decent meat-voucher in the raffle, so she came out of the night in profit. Everyone's a winner!

Assembling the target 'tug' - that little
Mercedes by Paul's right foot.

My indoor entertainment came in the form of a rather silly fun-shoot at archery, jokingly called "Extreme Archery, Moving Targets" on Sunday. Club coach (Con) had decided we should all shoot at balloons towed behind a radio controlled, battery operated toy car which he would drive up and down in front of the big, arrow-stopping, target 'butts'. Helium balloons would be used to hold up the ends of the tow-rope and the shoot-able balloons would be tied on half way up this. That way, the car would zoom across the range dragging all the targets in its wake like an upside-down bridal wedding train. Mad? It was.

Three archers start shooting as the yellow balloon (sorry,
 barely visible in this pic) enters the top right corner of the
killing zone. 

Just in time we established a rule that you could only shoot at targets while they were in front of the butts. That way we should get fewer arrows embedded in the nice, clean, new plastered walls.

About to let fly. 

You were very rarely able to hit the helium balloons because these only trailed down into the zone when the car was going full speed, straight across the range. I finally nailed those (both with one arrow!) late in the game and we found that the one remaining helium one was not buoyant enough to hold up the train. The game was over and we had to go back to serious target-shooting. It was all very silly but good fun.

Warming Winter food - roast chicken 'saddles' and 'champ'

Which brings us to pancake day. As I sit here and write this, I am comfortably full of pancakes expertly cooked, as ever, by the Lady of the House. Liz is long established as the best pancake cook 'we' know and we spent many a Shrove Tuesday with Diane and John. plus D's step-father Denis consuming Liz's output so fast that she had to put her foot down at the end and save some for herself, or she'd have used up all the batter watching us hoover them up. For me, the ONLY WAY is lemon juice and sugar but Liz does occasionally sneak a 'Nutella' one down.

Liz is off tonight at the latest play rehearsal while she digests hers - these days 'we' let all the pancakes get cooked and stacked in the warm oven before either of 'us' starts one. I don't suppose I actually could keep up with her 2-pan cookery but it'd be fun trying. Pass me the next lemon and the jar of vanilla sugar, now.