Dee and Luke

Dee, Luke and some sheep

Happy Birthday to me! 61 today and starting to wonder just how long you can go on saying "Yes, but that's not REALLY old...." We had planned for a nice quiet weekend, relaxing, eating and drinking maybe a little too much, avoiding doing anything unpleasant or arduous, and we had no idea we were in for quite a treat from an unexpected direction. This would rather snooker the "quiet" bit of the plan but left everything else intact.

Dee takes her turn at the bottle
feeding of Bábóg

Welcome to the happy home, long lost cousin Dee and her son Luke. Dee is the same age as Elizabeth but her whole family emigrated to Australia back in the 60s when the girls would have been only 6. There is famous family story that when Dee (and the rest of the children) were being brought round Dublin to say farewell to the various cousins and relatives, young Liz so didn't want to lose her playmate that the pair conspired to hide Dee in a wardrobe buried under a pile of clothes.

Luke, Elizabeth and Dee

Well, it seems the missing Dee was eventually liberated from her hidey-hole and taken away to the airport. Dee has never been back since and grew up and had her own family out in Gold Coast, just south of Brisbane in Queensland. One of those family is eldest son Luke (30) who has joined Mum on this trip.

The by-now-traditional dippy Lisacul goose-egg breakfast. All
our guests seem to love this.

48 years later, Dee decided on a trip back "home" - a 3 week mission to see a bit of Ireland and to catch up on as many of the rels she had left behind, as she could. She already "knew" us a bit from Facebook and this blog. She and Luke are now 2 weeks into this and have done a lot of the tourist-ing and have met 'Steak Lady' and the 'Silverwoods'. This weekend is our turn before they head on to Mullingar to find 'Sparks' and Kim. Thanks for coming, Dee and Luke, you have been a pure pleasure to host and you are welcome back any time.

Dee is obviously delighted with the toast.

One amusing anecdote from all this is that Dee has only now found out how her old family name "should" be pronounced. She has spent 50+ years saying it with a hard 'T' and a long 'U' vowel, as kott-yule-y. When she arrived in Ireland 2 weeks ago she found they were all calling themselves with the very different pronunciation , 'kotcherly'. It was quite a surprise, she says, like suddenly finding out you are adopted. She has a whole new family.

Fox deterrent - 3 dogs, a male turkey, a human and a
smokey fire

That visit has obviously eclipsed the rest of the news, such as it was. I'd just been quietly bimbling around enjoying the increasingly warm weather, the spring flowers and everything warming up. It was nice to be able to spend some quality time outside.

Making smoke

One of the mornings I decided to burn some of the brushy wood brought down from the larches by Storm Eleanor. This would kill 3 birds with one stone. I would be out there for hours in full view of any foxes peering in. I would burn a pile of brush behind which the fox could keep hidden while getting dangerously close to the chickens. I would also remove that same pile which the turkey had been trying to lay an egg in when she got mauled by our foxy friend last week.

Flowering cherry

So, we are all tidy now and that risk is removed. It is a bit ironic that we spend all day trying to stop our chickens dying at the hands of the fox but then, occasionally, we have to 'off' one ourselves. This was the fate of a surplus rooster recently. This bird was becoming increasingly aggressive and amorous so that a level of stress and intensity had built up in the chicken flock without us really noticing. Once we'd ended his little run, we are both delighted and amazed by how relaxed calm has descended once more.

Flowering currant.

You can go outside and watch the birds for hours - nobody is squabbling, battling or trying to sneakily 'tread' anyone else's harem. That's the way we like it. Millpond smooth and still-quiet. That's if you don't count the bleating baby lamb, the 'buckwheat buckwheat' cries of female Guineas, the gobble gobble and chirruping of turkeys, the occasional cock-a-doodle-doo and dogs barking and the cackle of a successful and proud egg-laying hen. Or 15.

Horse chestnut "sticky bud"

Ah well, That's enough for this one. I must away back to my guests and my Birthday.

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.

In with the New, (Not) Out with the Old

Roscommon has the eye of Storm Eleanor
pass overhead at around 6 pm.

Fox! My one word text brings Liz running to join me in the garden but we can hardly hear each other over the cacophony of Guinea Fowl alarm calls. We've not seen one on the property all year, since the November 2016 attack but now, two days into the New Year we are back in the firing line.

A new gin for Liz to try. Blackwater.

It was fairly calm (though we were expecting the latest named storm, Storm Eleanor by evening) but lashing down with rain. I was just wandering about looking for eggs, and had come round the corner of the barn, headed for the orchard when all hell broke loose 30 yards away at the top of the 'allotment'. Guinea fowl were exploding into vertical flight and shouting blue murder about foxes.

...and a weird new beer for me. Loved the
goat logo. Very quaffable. 

I saw the fella straight away, with a bunch of feathers in his mouth (but no bird). He was a fine big adult looking first a bit put out that he'd near-missed the Guinea but then a bit concerned that I was running towards him, flapping my arms and roaring swear words at him like some lunatic. He took off smartly through the hedge and was gone. That's when I got a chance to text Liz.

The Guineas having a fox-free dust bath in the tunnel.

The Fox-Success Gods were on our side this time. The pouring rain had most of the birds hiding in the sheds anyway and it was an easy job for 2 of us to shepherd the rest home - geese and ducks. The Guineas now settling down and chuntering and scolding loudly (as they do) could not wait to go 'home' either, so by 15:15, still broad daylight, we had everybody locked up for the night, safe in case Brer Fox should try again.

A baffled turkey?

Well. For a given value of 'safe'. Eleanor is now roaring around noisier, if anything, than the 'Orange warning' one, Dylan. I fear, as ever, for the tarpaulin roof of the chicken house. (We have just been out for a check round at half past six and so far all seems OK. It's just very very noisy. We mainly feel helpless and powerless.)

Meanwhile, away from Storm Eleanor and her kind, all is chugging along nicely as we chug gently through New Year and welcome 2018 in. The remaining turkey hen seems somewhat baffled but that might just be us anthropomorphising like we shouldn't. We were amused to ponder whether she is thinking that she has nothing in her folk-memory or hard wired into her DNA to tell her what to do with the 25th, 26th, 27th, the New Year and so on.

Baffled Turkey Hen

She is also a bit lost-looking now the Guinea cock-birds have  dropped her like a hot potato when they received their new 'women'. Up to then the boys viewed it as their duty to shepherd all three turkeys around and mind them. Now she wanders about wondering where her 'brothers' and her 'minders' have gone.

New Year's Eve supper.

New Year's Eve went very well for us, and nice and quiet. We ate the celebratory haggis supper and sipped Scotch Whisky (no 'E' because this was Famous Grouse, a gift from Santa). We watched a nice Irish-flavoured 'rom-com' movie ("PS I Love You", based on the Celia Ahern book) to fill the long evening and then did the 'First Footing' thing. We have both decided to try our hand at 'Dry January' - no booze till the 31st EXCEPT that we are taking the Scottish Amendment which allows for a dram of whisky on Burns Night (25th). We are not alone, by all accounts. Cousin 'Win'  and  her Peter are doing the same and bro' Mark is taking a gin-drinkers version in Swindon. There is a pre-booked gin tasting on 15th Jan which it would (obviously) be churlish to refuse, though he's not too bothered about Burns Night and Haggis. I'll keep you all posted on how we all do.

One off design handbag by Con and Santa

I can now, at last, post pics of this Santa delivery which I have been dying to show you but unable to do so lest I spoil the surprise. Friends of the Blog may recall that my good friend and archery coach, Con, is also a fine leather worker. He is the national go-to expert on Medieval footwear, frequently called upon to create repro shoes for museums and 'interactive' exhibitions (i.e. where the museum visitors get to try on the items) and asked to try to make a shoe using the archaeologists/historians' suggested techniques. "Nope, they WOULDN'T have been able to do it that way!"

Con also makes items for sale through the website - archery gear as well as shoes, 'jewelry', bangles and (ta-daaaa!) one-off design hand bags. With Santa's help we conspired to get Liz involved in the design without being allowed to know what the final result might be. She'd 'chosen' a cocktail glass for her 'logo' and Con was able to sneak off and contrive a cocktail-glass-based design for our bag. Liz is over the moon and the new bag is now the bag of choice, filled with all the usual 'clutter' of notebooks, spare tissues, lotions and potions and 'stuff' that keeps herself on the road.

My old favourite billhook may be 100+ years old.

Finally, that line in my title about "Not out with the old". I have in my 'man-shed' a treasured favourite farm implement, my bill hook, bought over 30 years ago 2nd hand in Surrey. It has a forged blade marked with the forger's stamp. "I.H.   J Harrison   Warranted" I was chatting away about favourite tools on the Internet and got talking to a lad who is a bit of an expert on old English toolery.

The stamp on mine told him that it was made by the company 'I Harrison', long since absorbed into Spear and Jackson, and forged by the son of the firm, John Harrison. The chap has all the pattern books from these firms and was able to identify my billhook as being originally from 1916, over a hundred years old! I loved it in an obsessive way before. It was my most precious piece of kit. There will be no stopping me now!

Silvergirl. 

And there you have it. In the time it has taken me to type these last 8 paragraphs the roaring wind of Eleanor has quite died away... unless she is just teasing us as we sit right under that eye. More on all this soon. Happy New Year to all our readers and don't throw away those old tools. They might be historically important!

Possibly taking the love of Prosecco a bit far? Now you can
emerge from the bathroom smelling of it!

Just a couple more pics because I have them.

Final loaf of 2017.