Teenagers Leaving Home

Silvergirl with her chicks.

In a story which will be familiar to all parents who have seen their babies grow up to and through teenager-hood, our 5 baby chicks hatched under 'Silvergirl' were sent on their way this week. They are 6 weeks old today and fairly well feathered but still look very tiny and vulnerable to me, but Mum and Mother Nature know best.

A final lesson in sunbathing for the chicks

Two nights ago at lock-up time I found the five in the yard happily milling about as they had every other night, waiting to be led into the Tígín (lambing shed) where they hatched, by their Mum. But where was Mum? Nowhere to be seen. I soon tracked her down to the main chicken shed where she had gone to roost up high on the perching ladder where there was no chance of the babies joining her. They'd been abandoned.

Silvergirl's chicks quite well feathered up

We are used to this, of course, at about the 6 week stage, so I shoo'd them into the 'bedroom' and left them to find a suitable corner to sleep in. They chose the normal corner and huddled up without Mum. It was a lovely warm night. She is not, in fact, as fiercely negligent as this would suggest.

I'd been waiting for some blue skies to show
the flowering cherry off to good advantage.
They finally arrived yesterday.

When I released the birds in the morning, the 5 rejoined their Mum and spent all that day off and on together or happily apart. That evening she left them again and I repeated the bedtime shepherding. By chance tonight they were together at bedtime, so I shoo'd them all in including Mum but I think they are pretty much done, reared and chucked out of 'home'. Silvergirl has come back into lay and may well take up 'Stumpy's baton and go for a 2nd bite at the broody-ing cherry. We'll see.

The pigs have found the ditch.

A couple of bits of catch up news. Remember our recent visit from (Mr) Dan, the "struggling writer" who was over here to write his LSE Thesis? As he flew home he'd not quite finished dotting the i's and crossing the t's but was confident he'd finish and submit by the Thursday 08:00 deadline. Well, he did and sent us a celebratory message through Facebook saying "It's dooooooooooone!" We all have to wait for the marking system in LSE to know how he has done and how well received. He is hoping for, and reasonably confident of, a 'Distiction'. Watch this space.

Funky socks for my Birthday.

Our Ozzie visitors finished the last leg of their tour of Ireland and Facebooked us all (if that is a verb) with various updates as they handed the hire-car back, caught their shuttle-bus to the Departures building (3 pm yesterday), boarded their plane (half past 5), stopped briefly in Abu Dhabi (03:00 this morning) and finally arrived home at 3 pm this  afternoon, sending a final message that read "Home safe and sound! Can barely keep my eyes open so night all". They must be exhausted. Good luck you guys. We may see them again but it won't be for at least 18 months, they think, just for the cost of the flights.

Not easy to 'get' in Ireland. At least, not here in land locked
Co. Roscommon, but Elizabeth found some yesterday on our
wonderful local fish-van. Scrummy.

Not too much else going on. We are in a gap between all those visits finishing and the arrival of our first Help-X student, a German lad named Carsten early next week.

Our always reliable plum tree covered in
blossom.

In the gap, both of us had a serious go at collapsing with chest colds, possibly picked up by me at The Play and generously passed on to the Lady of the House because... you know... sharing. Mine was quite quick - just 2 nights of coughing like an auld git but then followed by a gurgling left ear for 2 weeks which clears and re-blocks disconcertingly.

Latest knitting project is a fancy shawl and
a ball of nice blue yarn has also arrived.

Elizabeth converted this to a more normal "flu like symptoms" with the mandatory runny nose, coughing, aching tiredness and retreating to bed for long naps during the day. Fortunately the naps could be slotted into empty gaps in the schedule and she has not had to take a 'sickie' from any appointments, work or college.

We are both recovering now and should be able to shake it off in time for the Help-X lad.

Fox Watch

Just for a laugh, our biggest snow-drift of the recent cold snap.
It formed in a eddy in our yard and must have been... oooh...
6 cm deep at least! The turkey-hen stepped in for scale. 

Yes, Fox-Watch. This is the new buzz-word name given to our newest and most time-thirsty 'hobby'. It is, exactly as described, time spent watching out for our persistent and so-far uncatchable furry friend. Brer Fox. I might sound upbeat and light hearted about this but inside, both of us are starting to get very annoyed and increasingly ground down and frustrated.

Our cat, 'Soldier' looking very 'Miss
Haversham' in his cobweb fascinator.
Presumably sticking his head into some
dusty rat-hole. 

Previous foxes have come and done their terrible stuff, but then turned stupidly predictable in their raiding or their routes to and from. We have been able to trap and shoot them within days so that we can then relax and forget about foxes for periods of 15 months+. This guy (or gal) nips in at random times in the afternoon (or 11 a.m. once) to just snatch a single bird from the orchard or the bit of land behind the goose-house. These are the places you cannot see from the house and cannot hear very well.

We have an excellent alarm system involving the 4 Guinea Fowl who scream blue murder at the sight of him, which works when they are out in that bit too and we now know to drop everything and race out there at the first shout. We also have the 3 dogs who are now expert at zooming out there, down through the veg garden and out through the hawthorn hedge in hot pursuit. They know by now to ignore all the 'not-prey' species (poultry, lambing sheds etc) and they know what Brer Fox looks and smells like. We let them go when we dare and they vanish for 20 minutes or so. We don't know whether they even get close to the fox, but the fright seems to make him rethink his tactics for at least a few days.

The 'beastly' winds turned the knitter's thoughts to hat and gloves

The trap is now permanently baited with tinned sardines or kippers but has so far caught only a 'foreign' cat, a manky looking grey and white yoke who was very fed up at being caged all night, lucky he didn't get rained on but presumably happy to have a belly full of my tinned fish. My heart missed a beat when I looked across and saw that the trap had been sprung. When I let the cat out he shot off like the proverbial scalded one and I have not seen him since. I was worried that he'd get trap-happy and come back for more fish, safe in the knowledge that he'd come to no harm, which would have made setting the trap for our fox a bit of an issue. I do not even know that the fox has smelled the fish or found the trap, never mind cunningly decided not to go in it. Patience is, as ever, the thing.

Apologies for this terrible (heavily cropped) shot of our
male reed bunting. 

We are left, then, with the need to stand 'Fox Watch' in person out there for all the at risk hours and indoors for all the less risky hours that the birds are out free ranging - about 8 a.m. till 5 p.m. currently. I do the outdoor stint from about 3 pm to lock-up. I am well bundled up and brought cups of coffee periodically by Elizabeth. I take my binoculars out there too, partly to help me scan the far horizons for russetty red, bushy-tailed varmints, but also so I can indulge in a bit of bird watching. When 'The Beast' is not blowing through this is actually quite a pleasant way to spend the 2nd half of the afternoon. I sometimes relieve the boredom by taking the dogs out with me, the better to keep a visible fox-deterring presence out there and scent-marking the boundaries. I just hope I can soon report the capture and despatch of this red bastard and put an end (for a while) to the need for all this nerve-twanging, tense, vigilance.

What else is new? As suggested above, we finally saw the end of our brutal cold-snap, "The Beast From The East" and in fairness we got away with it very lightly compared to some parts of the island and, of course, the UK and other countries. Over in the East and SE friends were reporting being snowed in by 7 foot drifts and I've seen today, pictures of Chinook (helicopter) supply-drops to cut off farms in Cumbria for solid fuel and food. There have been all the usual footage of hard pressed farmers digging out their sheep, alive if they were luckily but frozen to death if not found in time. Even so, the first thing I noticed when I went outside on Monday (5th) was NO WIND. Bliss. By afternoon the smoke from our chimney was pouring away into the NE, no longer at the beck and call of that horrible NE wind. Today we've had proper wet rain. A few chunks of broken ice float on some of the stock drinkers, but mostly we are 100% thawed.

You'd not fit any more sheep pens in that
 shed. Lady in Waiting, Rosie here is
next door to Polly and her twins. 

The ewe, 'Rosie' continues to keep us waiting and makes me feel like a proper beginner "panicking" and dragging her indoors a week early (OK, it's only 4 days so far). We joke that she is conning us to get some nights in the warm, 'bagging up' a little bit (yeah, yeah, show a man a flash of pink booby and he's putty in your hands!) and then holding out for the arrival of our next house-guests. We have the baby-animal-mad Danielle and Cousin Cathy arriving Friday, so Rosie will be able to do her thing to an audience. Ta daaaa! Look what I did!

Sun 3rd saw me at the end of the 13 week Garden Bird Survey
for Birdwatch Ireland. 

The ewes are in the small concrete/stone building we call the Tígín (wee housey) which is a proper man-shed with man-junk and tools stacked and shelved to roof height and some bits hanging from beams that run across the room from wall to wall. I was joking on Twitter that I couldn't tell whether she was really "star-gazing" or just looking up at the dusty, cobwebby, man-shed mess; the former is a sign of labour and imminent parturition, the latter just a natural female horror-reaction to the man-shed scene. Ah well. She'll make up her mind soon enough. Mother Nature knows best. Patience is the thing. 

Rent a Reverser (?)

A first look for Tigger, at the soggy, puddle-strewn front lawn

At just a week old, newest lamb 'Tigger' is thriving. I have been getting him out of the Tígín (along with his Mum, Lily, of course) each day for a run around on the front lawn. He seems to love this, following his Mum around as she grazes but often charging away from her a few yards in a mad, bouncy 'pronking' tip-toes gait of a deer, and then zooming back to her side.

Staying close to Mum

I am 'doing' them alone on the front lawn for the moment because I am not 100% sure of the ram Pedro leaving him alone and because it makes the process of letting him out and getting him back in of an afternoon, a whole lot less complicated. Trying to extract them from the East Field while not letting the rest out to play is more risky a prospect than I need.

I am not sure about Pedro anyway - I have seen him chasing the big ewe Myfanwy about and butting her a bit too aggressively for my liking so, even though he has not had a go at me, we may part company soon one way or another. At the moment I have him up for sale on the Irish 'classified ads' website (DoneDeal.ie) but I have not even had a 'tickle' so he may end up in the freezer. We'll see. If his chasing of 'Myf' is due to her not being pregnant yet and now coming on heat, then that might see him forgiven, but nobody needs a ram trying to 'T-bone' their in-lamb ewes in the midriff.

A house favourite use for a sheet of belly-pork. Mini porchetta.

Talking of animals going to the butcher's, I was involved over the last 24 hours in our good friends Sue and Rob finally getting their 2017 pigs off to Webb's in Castlerea. Friends of the blog may recall that Sue and Rob came with us over to the breeder's place near Boyle on the day we went out to collect our own pigs, 10 week olds Pride and Empress. They chose much younger babies, maybe 6 weeks old, so they were already a month behind us on schedules.

Thanks very much 'Steak-Lady' for this framed print, latest
Paris-themed picture in our collection. 

Their pair came ready about a month after ours (end of October) but Sue and Rob had little space in their freezers, so decided to keep the pigs on till after Christmas. It was very wet and now the time came, they asked me for help extracting the pigs from their 'swamp' and getting them into their trailer. Also, Sue, by her own admission "cannot reverse the trailer for a toffee" (and Rob can't drive anyway) , so could I help out at the other end of the journey, reversing her 4x4 and the trailer into the tiny narrow 'slot' between buildings which is the butcher's answer to a "loading bay".

Paris scene

That all went swimmingly in the event. Rob had constructed a really good, pig-proof 'race' up from the swamp to the hard standing and those pigs had been kept hungry so that they would be suckers for the bribe of a rattled food bucket. Pigs never explore anywhere new fast - they just amble along with their noses to the ground, taking an occasional step. They will not be hurried and you are a fool if you try. If you did spook them and made them bolt, you are not going to stop 80 kg of charging pig, so the best bet is to let them amble along and just gently (but firmly) close the ground behind them by nudging up against their bums with a big board. By this method, Sue guided them up the 'race', and Rob and I nudged up behind them till they eventually went up the ramp and we could close the trailer on them.

Pig haulier's breakfast.

In the morning, I'd set the alarm for 7 so that I could meet Sue with the 'load' at the butcher's nice and early while there was not much traffic about for us to upset. It is a known bad manouvre - the narrow gap is at 90º to a narrow but busy main street in the town. The gap is only about 6 feet wide, so as you slot your trailer neatly and professionally in (ahh shucks!), don't go in past the kerb with the truck or you will not be able to open the doors and get out! We managed that OK with Sue seeing me back and then, with the pigs unloaded and safely into the lairage, Sue finished all the paperwork, I bought a pack of Webb's superb dry-cure rashers and we adjourned to local Deli, Benny's for a celebratory coffee. Job well done. I even grabbed some croissants and Danish pastries 'to go' so that Liz and I could have a nice breakfast back at the ranch.

My new favourite Irish author, currently filling the gap left in my
reading due to running out of Maeve Binchy books.

In other news, we have been quite deeply involved in a local funeral. No names, no pack drill for the usual reasons. I think if you ask any Brit who has moved over here, what is the biggest single difference in local village or community life that they noticed compared to the UK, it will be the Irish way of death. In 55 years in the UK I probably went to half a dozen funerals at most and all of them small, quiet affairs which involved you to attend for only a short time.

Comparatively, the Irish funeral is massive, especially in rural areas where everybody would know the family of the deceased especially if they have lived in the community for all their life. Hundreds of people will attend and the proceedings can easily take up the evening prior and all of the day of the actual burial. Family and friends who have long since left Ireland in search of work or what-ever will make the trip home to be part of it. The deceased may even be one of the 'diaspora' wishing to be laid to rest in the family plot back in the village of their birth.

I apologise hugely in advance if I have any of this wrong - please do comment and I will make corrections. The last thing I want to do is cause any offence to anyone involved in 'this' or any other funeral. The proceedings follow a sequence something like this, with every bit attended by a good many of the mourners. First is the 'reposing' where the deceased is laid in the coffin at the Funeral Parlour  - you queue outside for yards down the pavement to get in one door and you slowly process, shuffling forward to view the departed and then shake hands with the immediate family . It is good to have something to say to each - I have taken to using popular local expression "Sorry for your trouble". You then shuffle down the out-corridor to the exit, passing the book of condolences on the way. This stage takes a couple of hours to get everyone through. It is common for the coffin to be open at this stage, so that you see the deceased - I have not got used to that bit yet.

Next is the 'Removal', where the coffin is taken by hearse to the church, commonly followed by all those mourners in dozens of cars - an impressive cortege threading its way down the country lanes. The hearse may pause at the house where the deceased lived, or was born, letting the 'late' soul know that he is really home, I guess. This is followed by the Mass itself. Mass going is way more popular here than (taking Communion) in the UK and churches are packed every Sunday, so it is no surprise that all our mourners pack the church for this bit, likely to be the most familiar to mourners in the UK.

Next we move to the graveyard. Depending on distance this might be all back in the cars or walking. This is the 'Burial' and can involve, again, a big group of mourners gathered round while more prayers are said and the coffin lowered into the grave. Some of these graveyards can be on quite bleak, windy hilltops, so the wise mourner equips with a warm coat, hat and gloves. We then adjourn, if invited, to a suitable location for 'Refreshments' - in the case of my Father in Law (Theo), this was a nearby pub for drinks (obviously), welcome hot soup and bread, with sandwiches or even a full 3-course meal, maybe stew and veg and a dessert. This stage can go on as long as you want - there will often be live music and happy chatter as family members and friends who may not have seen each other since the last funeral catch up on gossip and each others lives.

You Brits can see that this all adds up to quite a day, an impressive event. More amazing (to us) is that this all happens generally within days of the passing away of the person, the whole 'machine' fires up and all the stages are organised and slotted into place. In the UK, that is normally the work of weeks - we hear that person X has died and maybe 3 weeks later we find out the arrangements for the funeral. They KNOW that this is all a bit special here and there have been some excellent (including funny in some cases) books written and TV programmes made explaining the process. I hesitate to compete with those, but thought my UK friends might like a small flavour of what it means when someone here says "There was a funeral".

Additional reading - Try the book "How to be Irish" by David Slattery

https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Irish-Uncovering-Curiosities-Behaviour/dp/1871305241

Mud Pies for Grown Ups

Lime plaster with hemp fibres

We are sopping wet. It has been raining pretty much all day as we 'enjoy' the back end of the skirts and train of Hurricane Gert. A big vigorous frontal system sits just off the NW coast aligned SW to NE and sliding slowly along that line. For most of the day it has been a heavy drizzle but occasionally it gets all inspired to downpours of almost Biblical proportions.

Lime-plastering the wall behind me the 'old' way.

As I was leaving SuperValu in Castlerea this morning I was not so much hopping between the puddles but walking with very flat feet across a sheet of water hoping that nowhere would the depth exceed the vent-hole 'draft' of my Crocs (about 18 mm if you're interested). Don't usually need wellies for Supermarket shopping here but that would not have been a bad choice today.

Smear a 'patty' on with the palm/heel of your hand and try to
level the lumps and bumps of the pointed stonework. This was
just the first "coat". 

I have been feeding the birds indoors today (the layers' pellet in particular turns to mush on contact with water and the birds will not touch it), in the sheds with the lights on. The pigs have long since mushed up the dirt inside the bit of fence over which I was passing food, so we have moved along a bit to dryer ground and moved along again this evening. The half apples would just plop into a foot-print and vanish, tho' I dare say the pigs' powerful noses would soon root them back out again, truffling-style.

Pinned down by the rain and feeling a bit 'meh' a blog post on "mud pies" seemed appropriate. Archery coach, Con and his good lady (Niamh) are doing up an out building like our Tígín and as part of this, they are plastering the inside with a trad old mix of white lime mortar and hemp fibres. They are doing this by encouraging the likes of me along by organising a free 'workshop' where the volunteers get to learn and try out the skills and hear all about the history in exchange for all that fascinating info, the fun of it and an epic salad for lunch.

First coat applied to one wall. The plaster is finished by applying
 a thinner, smoother coat and finally polishing it, when nearly dry,
with the heel of your hand in little circular motions.

I had seen the results of this method and material before (much of Con's place is plastered like this and Anne and Simon have a straw-building lined with at least the lime, if not the hemp fibres), but had never met it as a wet building material and a technique. It arrives as a 350 kg pile of lumps in a plastic-lined bulk builder bag, in this case from Monaghan.

A least the thoughtful cats leave their mice neatly stacked
among the china on a shelf. Thanks Blue!

It looks like very pale grey mud flecked with the (very short) pieces of hemp fibre, like "wholemeal" mud, if you like. It is pre-mixed (as a powder?) by the company, then wetted a bit and left for weeks, months or years to 'make'. Our job was to soften it in the cement mixer to roughly the consistency of sticky sausage meat (no lumps!). This involved a fair amount of stopping the machine and slicing through the bigger lumps with a pointing trowel. (Health Warning for the new builder - NEVER put your hand, arm or tools into a cement mixer when it is going. It will happily twist your arm off).

Does my bum look big in this? Lizzie tries
out the three cat-power insulation for bum and
back of legs while curled up on the sofa.

I was singled out (OK, I volunteered) for cement mixer duty as we also needed standard cement/sand mortar for some of the pointing etc and the machine had to be cleaned spotlessly between each of the 4 mixes as we didn't want nasty grey cement in our lovely white lime, or vice versa.

At 8 and a half weeks, Connie's 3 "chicks" are well grown and
fully feathered. More like half-scale hens than babies now. 

The plaster now at suitable wet consistency (you squish some 'patties' of it in your hands to check for no dry, hard lumps) it is time to stick it to the wall. First the wall gets wetted with a watered down slurry of the mix. The technique for applying the actual stuff is to scoop up a palm-full and smear it onto the wall with the heel of your hand, flattening your palm as you push. You try to leave it thicker over the dents (and squished into any cracks) and thinner over the peaks where stones stick out proud. It needs to be fairly flat, though it will be rough textured. The 2nd coat will sort that and finish with a rather more 'polished' (all be it rough to the touch) outer surface.

Back in the Feta cheese game. These the curds
from 8 litres fresh goat's milk, a gift from Sue
and Rob.

I love all this stuff and the old techniques anyway, but it was a superb day working with my co-volunteers, Ivan and Paul, swapping stories and banter and at one point breaking off completely to hear a 45 minute Master-Class (by Con) on the history of the material(s) and their use including all the history of hemp as a source of fibre ("retting" and the like), later as a chill-out weed (so all the fascinating chemistry of cannabinols and stuff) and most recently as a possible alternative to 'chemo' in cancer treatments - I will let the reader look for those him/her-self if interested enough). An epic salad lunch followed. Thank you very much Con and Niamh for sharing you knowledge, skills and food with us. I can't wait for Lesson 2 (Top Coat).

Rather sponge-y curds. It looked to have 'risen' better than
my bread!

Other than that we have been plodding along with everyday life. We received a nice gift of goat's milk from Sue and Rob which we have tried to turn into Feta cheese. For some reason this formed excellent curds but then stayed a bit sponge-y, like last week's puff-ball fungus. Still, we went with it, did the dry-cure and have now drowned it in 15% brine for 3 months shelf-life. When we use it, we dunk it for a while in clean water to soak off the worst of the saltiness.

TOPP left-overing! Sausage meat, bacon and apple PIE. 

I've been carrying on with the bread making. Liz has been building slowly to her involvement in the 'Ros go Run' half marathon etc (Sept 3rd) which this year will include for the first time a little Treasure Hunt / 'forage' walk for the kiddies; clues tied to gateposts etc. Should be great fun. We are thinking we will do rhyming couplets for the clues. We have also had another promising 'tickle'  on the Help-X website so we may be getting another volunteer but more on that when it is really happening. Good Luck now.

Missing the Cut....Twice!

A recent presentation to the village about grant money
available for improving energy efficiency of houses and
buildings. 

Once, so they say, is an accident. Twice is careless. Three times starts to look deliberate. Being your average poverty stricken (well, OK, maybe not so bad) farmers we always have our eyes and ears open for any new grant aid or assistance schemes dreamed up by the Government or the Min-of-Ag to support rural communities, prop up farming and try to stem the flood of village depopulation.

Followers of this blog back in 2011/2 may recall that we deliberately set up a small out-building behind the house with a mains water and electricity feed in case we might, one day, want to convert it (back?) into a small dwelling. We even left a hole in the concrete path there so that we could, if necessary, graft a sewage outflow from it, onto the existing pipework with a saddle joint without having to rattle up concrete. This building, which we call the Tígín (Irish for 'wee housey') was the one we lit with fairly lights at Christmas and I posted pics of it then. We are sure that it was once a dwelling (maybe even the main dwelling) because it has a front and back door, a window and a fireplace and chimney; not features commonly found in cow sheds!

Back in 2011 we had heard of a grant scheme called "Roscommon Leaders Partnership" which was giving money to anyone who was trying to enhance tourist facilities locally. We toyed with the idea of adding that build to the existing house project, still using 'Sparks' as our main man, installing a tiny kitchen/shower, re-roofing and slabbing out the room to make a nice cosy holiday let or sleeping accommodation for B+B guests. It all never quite happened as we got buried in the frantic, long-hours, days of April and May, finishing the main house and were delighted to be able to move in and start on the garden and live-stock spaces. It remains, though, in the long-term plans and the 'dream'.

Step forward 5 years to 2017 and we look just as bad at actually applying for these grants. We failed on 2 more recently for totally separate reasons and will not be converting that Tíg any time very soon either!

The first was a re-publishing of that 'Leader' money we missed back in 2011/12 - this time Liz heard about it in January and even printed the down-loadable forms and brought them home. This was just for what they call an "Expression of Interest" (EoI) to allow them to gauge how many people would be likely to apply for the real grants with all the architect drawings and signed off tenders by local builders which that was likely to entail.

Well, we got as disorganised as normal around early January and the forms sat and sat, part completed for a "few days" before I slotted in the last few bits of information and managed to remember to get them to the post office for posting. Unfortunately that crashed into the closing date for EoI forms and today I got back a rather forlorn e-mail saying that my application had been rejected because (tick box) "Ineligible". Reason - closing date was 16th, form was received on 17th. Ooops. Ah well. That one, at least, will probably still be there in 2017/8 and we have put a note on the calendar to get cracking.

The 2nd case was less frustrating and more amusing. Liz's work place, the 'village hall' is looking to improve its insulation and general facilities (incl. kitchen area etc) so had been batting around the idea of grant-aid. They had focused in on an organisation called "The Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland" (SEAI) which is currently doing presentations around the villages with a view to attracting anyone who wants to improve the energy efficiency of their dwelling, church, community buildings and even retail/commercial set-ups. The village invited SEAI along to do one here in the village and we went along to a well attended session to see what might be about.

It is a very good scheme which is willing to grant-assist you up to 80% in certain circumstances and, in fact 95% in special cases but it is aimed at improving poor buildings for, especially, those people who it categorizes as 'Fuel-poor' which includes pensioners on Fuel Allowances and so on. We turn out to be ineligible again, mainly because our lovely 'new' house is already up to scratch in too many ways (slabbed, loft-insulated, low energy lighting etc). I was amused and interested by some of those cut offs. You would be "Fuel poor" if you had been on Job Seeker's allowance for more than 6 months but also had a child under 7 years old in the house. Are they more expensive to keep warm than 8 year olds?

The other aspect that caught my attention was that they would pay for a replacement stove but only if you did not connect it to the water heating / central heating and only if it was a new fangled 'bio-mass' one or oil-only. Basically nothing that could burn solid fuels like the locally-ubiquitous turf-sods, logs or coal. The bio-mass ones take only chipped wood. The reasons have to do with carbon-credits from the EEC and the need to be 90% energy efficient, which no old turf-burner can match. As I understand it, the turf and logs need so much air to burn them that you pretty much HAVE to have a big chimney which conducts 25% (at least) of your heat straight up into the frosty night sky. This is true even of new stoves like ours which have a convoluted air flow inside where the flames/heat wrap round 3 sides of your water jacket before they depart up the flue. The SEAI mission is to pull as many turf-stoves as possible out of these little cottages and ask the residents to pay for oil or chipped wood instead of the turf they have cut for themselves in the local bog for generations and have stacked in mountains in their hay sheds. Good luck with that bit, SEAI.

A shiny new and beautifully flat and level
concrete floor in the kitchen-to-be.

Meanwhile, not all building activities have been snookered by lack of grant money. I have progress to report on the 'new' kitchen. We have a floor. A nice, smooth, shiny, dead-flat sheet of fine concrete. That was Wednesday afternoon's job and took about 3 hours all up. We mixed our own concrete in a huge 'Flexi' bucket using a 2-handed stirring paddle, carried it across from the pile of 'gritted sand' to the kitchen and tipped it out, before K-dub did the honours spreading, tamping and generally working it to spirit level flatness.

Because this area was originally outside the house and formed part of the concrete path surrounding the place and designed to shed rain-water away from the foundations, it had quite a fall on it away from the walls. We could not, realistically dig up the original concrete as it was new and hard, contained steel reinforcing mesh AND the sewage pipes from the house, so we went in over the top. The new concrete, therefore, goes from mm thick at the old kitchen wall, to nearly 3" thick at the new doors/windows. The area is about 8' by 11' and used around a tonne of sand and 5 bags of cement. We now have to stay off it while it sets/dries, before we can let the electrician in to do his first fix.

That, then, was a post almost devoid of photo's as befits my new 'post-365' status and the camera being mainly on the shelf for now. Until next time, then.....

Dances with Sheep

Unusually a post with few or no pictures for the simple reason that the camera is currently in the car and the car is currently not here; Liz is off gallivanting again. I may add some pics at a later date so that the post does not look so bare. Bear with me.

Rosie and Lucy shelter behind the bulk of mum from the wind

We are relieved to be able to report that Lily seems cured again of her infection but her route out of the Doldrums is almost an exact copy of the last edition - a day of 'doubtful', then picking up so much that were we silly we would be tempted to think we didn't need the 2nd dose of antibiotics, due tomorrow. This copy-cat cure is good in that she has recovered quickly, but a bit un-nerving in that we thought she was sorted last time and 2 weeks later, down she came again. Charlotte has re-assured me that this does happen in sheep and Lily could well take a few weeks to sort out. We will, of course, do the 2nd jab tomorrow and keep a watchful eye on her, and her 'sisters' in case of any repeat.

The sheep are all currently enjoying nights indoors, 2 because they have very little lambs who would not get on so well out in all this frost, wind, rain and (today) snow flurries; the 3rd (Lily) because she is sick. We are not over-run with sheep sized housing here, so this has us under a bit of pressure and some of the birds are now sharing a bedroom with some woolly companions. We have the Tígín and the former 'milking shed' both of which open onto the main hard yard. In the Tíg I was able to shift feed dustbins around a bit and create a patch of floor about 8 feet square (-ish) which, covered in straw, houses 2 ewes and 4 lambs but the place is a bit of a 'man-shed' so there is a risk of animals leaning on dodgy shelving or on the ends of tools hung up on the walls and waking up under an avalanche of bits and pieces.

The 'milking shed' is already sectioned off three ways with chicken wire 'walls' to create separate sections for geese, chickens and (later) the man-shed tool-ery bit of this was taken over by turkeys and Guinea fowl and a freezer we are babysitting for our house-move/build friends. This middle section left me just enough space to erect my 4 foot by 6 foot sheep-hurdle pen and now houses the third ewe and her lambs at night with the rafters above blocked in to stop the poultry roosting up there and poo-ing on the 'sheeps'.

All these bedrooms open, as I said, onto the hard yard but are also, thereby, quite a distance from the field gate. Liz and I temporarily have a little dance session we have to do to get sheep out and lambs out of the field in a controlled way and across the space to their bedroom doors, with the correct lambs staying with their mothers  and only 2 families going to the Tíg, and one to the Turkey house. The goat has also to be controlled to stop her nipping out of the field and going walk-about chewing the tops off tulips etc. We end up usually with Liz controlling the gate, sometimes while holding onto one lamb while I romp through the sloppy mud at the gateway trying to catch the other lamb or steer the Mum in the right direction. It usually works but has been known to take a while as ewes start to mill about confused, or make decisive darts towards the wrong doorway (e.g. the Turkey house which has already got an occupant at that stage).

In the morning it is easier and I can generally get everyone out of bed and into the field on my own mainly because if you feed the goat first, she is so focused on eating all the meal before any sheep get it, that she is not going anywhere. You could take all the fences down and she would still not go straying. You can certainly leave the gate a-jar while you steer a few sheep across the gap - the sheep are quite keen to get to that grass and the field anyway. I don't need to train the Westies as sheep dogs just yet. Come by!

A load of sheep and a goat.

Meanwhile, talking of bedrooms and housing, excellent progress is being made on the Sligo house rebuild. The internal walls are getting 'slabbed' (plasterboard or insulated dry-line slabs) so that you can now see what rooms look like (as opposed to looking at a forest of vertical stud-walling timbers). The main range has gone in, had its flue completed and spends some days lit, making the inside of the house beautifully warm and drying out the stone work of the old, original-retained fireplace superbly. Today we cleared the bathroom (which had been a bit of a stacking area for tools and bits) so that we could lay the bath, toilet and sink bits in some trial positions to make sure the shower location would work (and the changed them all and put them back). Once happy with the bathroom layout we were able to start Kango-ing up a bit of floor and drilling holes through walls for waste pipes and so on.

We also hung the posh new front door on the 'end' of the new porch and were then able to cut out the old, shorter one (pre-dating the porch) and its frame. Both K-Dub and I are 6 foot plus and if we had a quid for every time we have banged our heads on that we would be rich men.

Enough for this one, I think. Our next entertainment is to host Liz's Mum, (Steak Lady) here for a few days. She's up on a visit and wants to see the new baby lambs and generally enjoy the place and getting spoiled. Liz has a chance to do the hostess thing which she loves. See you soon, Mum. More on all this in the next post.

The Complete Tail

Burning the old broken end of your muck fork out of the
metal socket by sticking it in the range over night.

Our cold winds and haily, showery weather look ready to make this the coldest, most miserable May anyone can remember. I don't think the temperatures have topped 12 or 13ºC all month and the bee keepers at our meeting last night in Longford were saying that their hives are not getting any 'flow'. This is the word they use to descibe the huge in-pouring of nectar which foraging bees can bring to a hive when the suitable flowers are out - you get a "dandelion honey-flow" or a "horse chestnut flow".

New toys! Sheep shears.

This year, though, everyone is waiting for the hawthorn (they call it 'whitethorn' here) flow to start and they are wryly commenting that it is 19th May and not a whitethorn flower open yet! So little nectar and pollen is coming into the hives that the nutrition in it is going straight into the brood comb for the young larvae. There is little left over for the bees to stash away in the honey-comb for stores. On the plus side, the colonies will be slower to swarm, if they have that in the back of their minds.

New toys - sheep shears and a butcher's bone-cutting saw.

There is also better weather forecast. I'll be happy if the chilly wind just eases off - I'm not too worried about the showers. I am well set up with my raised beds as regards drainage and not having to walk on the seedbeds, so as long as it has not actually been torrential overnight I can work. I get down there with my knee pads and hunker down in the 'trenches' between the raised beds, protected a bit by the hawthorn hedge and the tall stuff like purple sprouting broccoli, artichokes and raspberries and I'm warm enough. Only when I stand up to lug a full weed bucket to the compost do I get reminded of how bloomin' cold it is.

The rather alarming business end of those shears. 

They say you are never too old to learn something new, and yesterday, down in the 'allotment' I took on one more grain of gardening know-how; one of those which is obvious when you think about it but had not occurred. Back in April, with frost forecast, we raced to throw some protection over the newly emerging 'baby' asparagus crowns. I used some hay, being the first thing that came to hand. When the frost was done, I left it there thinking it would do no harm. Yesterday I went to see why the thriving shoots, which I had been so anxious to protect, were not now doing anything and noticed one keeled over with obvious slug/snail tongue-rasp marks. Pulling up the old damp hay, I found, to my horror, Slug-Central - dozens of the little critters hiding under all that nice warm damp hay and presumably feasting on my precious asparagus overnight. Moral: if you use hay to protect plants from frost, take it up again when it warms up.

Mary's face showing her intriguing white eyelashes

New toys for 2015; we have invested in a set of sheep shears and a butcher's bone-cutting saw. I plan to learn to shear this year so that I am not beholden to a neighbouring farmer or sheepy colleague remembering to invite my 2 or 3 girls over to be included in their mass-shearing. People here use traveling contractors who drive from farm to farm with portable pens, shearing 'stages' and shears. They expect to be doing dozens or hundreds of sheep and the economics don't work if you only have three, so small holders like me would normally try to sneak in on shearing day with our few.

Isabelle (nearest camera) and Mary.

This works as long as your host-farm remembers you and as long as you get warning to keep your sheep indoors to make sure they are dry - you cannot shear wet sheep. In the case of Mayo-Liz, we have also been promised that if we turn up on shearing day, the "bloke doesn't mind" showing anyone how it's done and giving them a small master-class training session with plenty sheep to practise on. I am wondering whether to go with that this time for training purposes, or whether to shear mine if I get a dry three days and go for the practise anyway.

The bone saw was a bit of a luxury and quite pricey but anyone who has tried to use a standard carpenter's hack-saw on bone will know that it is very necessary if you want to butcher up your half-carcass in a reasonable time. Hack saw blades quickly clog with bone shards and bits of membrane and sinew. A bone saw blade has teeth of a special size and shape designed to shed this debris and allow the blade to keep working.

A first chick hatches under the broody Buff in the Tígín

We are still very much enjoying the pigs. They are complete charmers. I am intrigued by Mary's face, which has the big white stripe up her snout but also a bright 'spray' of white eyelashes on her right eye. The other side, and all Isabelle's eyelashes are black. Pigs also have a bristly row of hairs above the lashes as a thin 'eyebrow'. I also love their curly tails which are always in motion being unwound and wound up again as they move about and which they wag like a dog to show pleasure. Our Tamworths last year had had their tails either bitten off or docked when they were tiny, so that we only got a few inches of curl, but Mary and Isabelle's are intact.

Thereby hangs a tail.

Finally, 'breaking news' just today, as the first baby chick hatches under the broody Buff Orpington in the Tígín. This is something of a relief, as the girl had cruised past due date (Saturday) and then Sunday and Monday too, looking a bit more agitated but never letting those little cheep-cheep noises out from under her skirts. Today she hopped off the nest to go do her toilet just as I went out for a check, and I spotted the new chick. Unfortunately, there is also one in there who didn't make it - you can see the rather mashed looking egg directly behind the new chick in the pic. This was a fully formed, almost hatched, but dead and stiff chick who never quite escaped the egg for whatever reason. Mum is back on the nest now with the baby but without the dead one, so maybe she will tempt some more out overnight.

Free Range Guineas

The Guinea Fowl have now been with us a week and have settled down well to the routine, living in the Kitchen Garden and sleeping in the Tígín. I was confident that they would stick around if released to range with the rest of the poultry and would be home tonight to roost back in the Tíg'. It was another beautiful, blue skied warm, almost windless day so with my chores all done I opened their gate and their inner door and sat down with a coffee. I love these 'release' days what ever the species and new group, clutch or family. I am proud that we are able to do full free range on our birds and that they get good green grass underfoot and the sun on their backs. It is pure joy to watch them start to explore their new environment.

Henry and Min were as good as gold (those are the Goon Show names we have given them inspired by them looking to me like the old folks on the road sign walking hunched forward as they do, and being (by all accounts) rather dim). They quietly and calmly explored the yard, the chicken and goose houses, the cattle race and then out towards the Secret Garden and the big pond. They creep about rather tentatively muttering high pitched 'chat chat' clucks to each other. They met some Hubbards first and were confident and unperturbed. When a Hubbard 'roo' decided to square up to one of the Guineas, the Guinea squared up right back at him and he backed down in a hurry. I watched them for the first hour and then went about my business, calling back to check on them during the day.

The Guineas claim the centre of the scattered seed.

At one stage in the afternoon I went to throw my usual handful of wheat and oats onto the ground of the yard to give the chickens something to do their 'feeding frenzy' on and something amazing happened. The Guineas had not yet approached me at all, tending to back away nervously at my approach, but as all the chooks came running (as they do), the Guineas joined in the charge and raced towards me in the thick of things and then, even more surprisingly, claimed the centre ground of the scattered food, pecking it up furiously and shooing away any competition so that I had the two Guineas at the centre of a ring of confused chickens (even William) who were left to pick up the crumbs from the Guinea's banquet table! Go Henry and Min.

600 g parsnip.

With the first frosts now well under our belts we have been enjoying some root vegetables, notably parsnips and more recently some Jerusalem artichokes. Many of the parsnips are grown huge and fat. The one pictured weighs 600 g. They are, though, still delightfully tender and young tasting. Liz cooked a roast beef on Sunday with all the Yorkshire pud and onion-gravy that goes with and the roast parsnips that came with it were pure delight. Our only problem, with the parsnips being this big, they were roasted in chunks which looked very like the roast spuds in the bowl, so we were having to look carefully to make sure we got some of both.

The Jerusalem Artichokes have also done remarkably well. Their 8 foot tops looking like sunflower plants have now started to die back and go black with the frost but the soil is so loamy and crumbly that you can harvest the chokes just by pulling up the main stem. This bowl with its 2.1 kg of chokes comes from a single plant. These are, if my plans are to be believed, the old fashioned knobbly variety, though they look as smooth, swollen and clean as any I have seen. We have also grown a ridge of the modern 'Fuseau' variety which purport to be less knobbly. It is possible that I have cross labelled (though I doubt it) so it will be interesting to dig some of those and see what shape they are. Liz has been surfing the net for interesting artichoke recipes and I think we have something along those lines on the menu for tonight. I will let you know how we got on.

Finally, Joy of Joys, I found in the bottom of a drawer an old English tin of that elixir of boot cleaning potions, Kiwi "Dubbin". This stuff is brilliant for keeping work boots and hiking boots waterproof and the leather supple but try as I might, I have been unable to find it for sale in Ireland. I have been smearing my boots with goose grease which kinda works but is a bit messy and does not seem to stay put very long. Now, though, all is well with the world. The tin did not have much in, just enough for half a dozen 'goes' maybe, but for today my boots are clean, dry and with that lustre that neutral Dubbin lends to them. I am a happy 'stockman' clomping about after Henry and Min.