Out-Foxed

Hubbard chicks at Day 21

Either our bushy tailed red 'friend' got wind of our evil intentions for him or he's way too cunning and wise to return to the same place the morning after when you might be waiting for him. He has failed to show on the last 2 mornings and the dogs have had neither scent nor sound of him and none of us have seen him. Nor did Mike the Cows who came to check on his cattle with a shot gun (broken) under his arm see anything.

All cleaned up, his fighting days done.
Our current alpha-male, Buffers.

Mike tells me that strolling around at 06:30 is no way to 'get' your fox anyway. You never see the chap, never mind get time to un-break, aim and fire. 'Round here' they would tend to go out as a gun club of a night 'lamping'; using powerful searchlights mounted on 4 x 4 trucks and shooting the yellow reflective pairs of eyes. It is unpopular though and many residents object to the engines and gun shot noise in the fields at night, so the more common method is to set snares (they say 'shnares' here). Mike happily explained this all to me, telling me where I could get good 'shnares' for 'a fiver' and how to set them in the little nip-through holes that Mr Fox uses in the hedgelines; preferably where there is a drop down so that the fox, having caught his neck in your wire, then hangs by his neck on your shnare over the drop with his feet unable to touch the ground. Nice.

Goldie's kittens are now exploring the grass. 

Well, I am sorry, but I am not about to start snaring (or even shnaring) any kind of animal. I do not mind despatching them in a quick and clean way, but the thought of a fox being slowly throttled from 8pm or so when I set the snare, to 6 am when I check them does not sit well with me. I suspect even Mike may be spinning me a yarn about how frequently they use these deadly methods. He has told me on another occasion that he bought his gun (which looks like a good one, though I've no idea really) 8-9 years ago for €2200 and has only fired it about 10 times in that period. Also that unless your cows with calves are well used to the gun noise (and he suggested that very few are) then they get really upset by the noisy intrusion. No over-loaded gibbet of corpses dripping fresh blood there then!

These later quince flowers only got a little wind-burned

So 'our' fox remains at large and seems to be staying away, at least during daylight hours. I did see him today, however, nipping across our lane at 4pm in front of my dog-walk, so we are not complacent and we are being very careful to lock everybody down as early as we can get away with it. We wonder whether he might be able to explain the disappearance of 'Blondie' but he's not coming forward to volunteer his testimony.

'Goz-1' on his hot water bottle before we rigged the heat lamp.

Meanwhile, I left you at the previous post (in a comment, anyway) with our first hatch of a gosling. This should be an exciting and happy time but sometimes these things do not go quite to plan. I had a dream of a little row of a dozen goslings following Mum to the pond for a sunny photo-shoot. Sadly we have only had the one so far (despite Black Feather and her original 12 eggs now being 8 days overdue; of which more in a later post) and that one has been ignored by the Mum and Aunt.

It floats!

We did not see them actually eject it from the nest, but they were definitely not helping it back in, so twice on its 2nd day we had to rescue it and try to return it (which got us soundly hissed at and pecked by the sitters, though they did 'allow' the baby back in to the nest edge but did not draw it back into their warm skirts). The third time it was shivering in a corner, so we rescued it and Liz had the idea of sneaking it under the broody Buff hen. That seemed to work.

Cuckoo Marans 'hin' strolls on the lawn.

We fancied we could see a new contented look come over her face as the unaccustomed warm wriggling form moved under her breast. I sat and watched for half an hour and then all seemed to be well; we left them to get to know one another. Half an hour later though, he was out on his ear again and this time Mrs Buff was not letting him back, and she tried to peck him. Well, now we were out of birdy options, so to cut a long story short he is in the brooder box under a heat lamp and we are trying to hand rear him. Thank you to Anne for the advice on this one - there is plenty to worry about.

Evening, 3 Westie romp in the orchard

If your 'chick crumb' feed is medicated for coccidiosis (many brands are) then it can be lethal to waterfowl. (Ours isn't, luckily). You need to worry about the baby 'imprinting' on you the human, thinking you are parent and then not being able to socialise properly with geese. We seem to have got away with that one - this baby spent the vital first day and a half in the goose house and met both females and George the gander. Today we showed him to George while safe inside his crate and the pair bonded gently through the bars - George seeming to be 'showing' Goz-1 how to pull and eat grass and chuntering at him, Goz-1 trying to touch beaks with 'Dad' through the wire. No-one tried to kill anyone else. It was a touching scene.

The old apple tree almost swamped by the beech and ash.

We are hoping that if more goslings hatch we might be able to sneak him back into the clutch. It can also help to suspend a mop head over the pen so he can sneak under and feel like he is being mothered. Ah well. He is drinking plenty of water and from today (his day 3) taking plenty of food from a tea spoon and from the ground, so there is more hope currently than there was when we rescued the little mite, his pathetic body wracked with spasms of shivering, while still wobbling in that half-co-ordinated way baby birds have who are still too young to have left the nest-bowl yet and should be just flopping around between the unhatched eggs, all warm under their Mum.

Hairpin bend in the apple tree trunk, the 'elbow' leaning
on the big ash. Bottom arrow shows main trunk. 

It's not all worry, mind. We have made a rather nice discovery. An old apple tree dating from TK Max's day, right down on our North border by a collapsed corrugated iron toilet-shed, is in bloom! This tree was first remembered by John Deere Bob is a gnarly old bent and ancient thing. Only about 8 feet 'tall' it actually has a main trunk perhaps 15 feet long but it grows from a bank almost horizontally till it leans an 'elbow' on a big ash tree and turns back droopily to get its branches and foliage almost back into our new pig-patch. This tree was so bent and broken looking that we assumed it was lost in the hedge, 'buried' under beech and ash growth and well over-topped by the black spruce. But today Liz found blossom on it, so we wonder whether it might bear fruit and, even if we can't rescue this tree, we might be able to take a scion and graft it onto a root-stock to save the DNA and the potentially old variety. Perhaps this old fellow has out-foxed its historic, neglectful human keepers?

Waiting for the Eleven

Change of day-length vs days through year (50N).

We are doing really well for eggs at present, what with it being, I suppose, peak season, Equinox an' all that. We have 11 hens and have had two days in the last week where they have laid, between them, 10 eggs, though the norm is around 7 eggs. We are also getting one every other day from each goose and, we think, a daily Guinea fowl egg since the 18th. Today we thought we might be on for the 'full chicken house', 11 from 11 - we had already collected ten and there was a cackling, clucking racket going on mid afternoon as if someone was proclaiming another arrival, but no, it was a false alarm and the girls are keeping us waiting.

Min (left) and Henry (right)

I love all the physics around Equinoxes and day-length, At the Equinox, most people know, we have equal daylight and night-time hours (well, almost, there is some detail around this to do with latitude and the not-exactly perfect elliptical orbits) but this is also the time of the fastest CHANGE of day length. We are effectively accelerating towards summer at the fastest rate, with days getting longer at around 3 minutes per day, 21 minutes a week (spread across both ends of the day, of course), which is why you can easily see and feel it. This currently affects us more intensely than when we lived in the UK, because chicken 'bed-time' moves with darkness hours, and is currently around 7 pm, earlier on gloomy, cloudy evenings, later on bright sunny ones. Our 'bee school' starts at 8 pm, an hour away in Longford town, so for yesterday's we'd been worried since the previous class that we might have to be late for this one as we chased the last few chooks to bed before we could set out on the journey. It was close, but luckily Monday evening was cloudy, rainy and I could lock everyone up by 6:45 pm. For the next two sessions, it will not matter because the clocks will have changed.

Enjoying the spring sunshine

We also do very well for meals created from left overs; we throw very little food away which, in turn, means we do not have to worry about cooking too much. I have been enjoying a superb parsnip soup born out of big dig of the roots. Tonight was cold roast lamb (leg of Dora) with that lovely, soul-food, winter-warmer "Champ", mashed potatoes cooked back up with left over leeks and sprouts with some runner beans added and, beautifully, including the golden "burnt crispy bits" (BCBs; a food group in their own right!)

The entrance to the turf 'mine'.

Talking of left overs and springtime, the lovely weather has me out in the garden re-starting some jobs abandoned last autumn as it got too wet and cold, one of which is the earth bank which houses the half buried horse-drawn hay-rake. At the hay rake end we were uncovering some old hand 'won' "sausage" turfs and wondered whether we have in fact a 'clamp' left over from the TK-Min or even the TK-Max days. Well, I am now working in from the other end, a good 15 feet away and have come across what may be the other end of the clamp. We suspect that this is not any kind of official clamp, more a pile of turfs which got buried under some bulldozed topsoil, but they are lovely. They are up to around 5 inches diameter and cylindrical, the longest bits up to a foot long. They are buried like the ice-cream in a baked Alaska and it is a simple matter to lift them out from the entrance to the 'mine' as I work my way along the bank - I am getting barrow loads. Free fuel for next winter if I can get them dry.

Finally on the spring theme, we hear from our sheep man, Kenny O'C that he has just started lambing with a first batch of 5 lambs born on a lovely sunny day. We have put our order in for 5 again as last year, including one for the Sparks's and one for the Silverwood tribe. We'll probably get them, all being well, around July time. Their field is currently resting after its horse residence through the winter, and is already starting to look visibly greener. It is also pleasingly free from the rushes which badly infested it when we moved in. That is down to the mowing, strimming and sheep and horse grazing and gives us a little glow of pride at having improved the pasture we took over.

Calm Before the Storm

Calm Before the Storm? No, actually I am not talking about the current run of thunderstorms now coming through each afternoon and nicely filling our water butts, refreshing the grass and topping up the pond. We are setting up this weekend for a week-long visit from the Silverwoods; just Mrs S and the children this time. Mr S has to work (we need someone to pay those taxes and keep the economy afloat!)  and the dogs are staying home tended by the lady from whom we got the cats last year so I do not have the slightly worrying prospect of 6 Westies chasing my sheep, scaring my poultry and harassing my rabbits.

This army arrives tomorrow delivered by Mr S who will the retreat till next weekend. We have the Silverwoods, then some barge-friends the following week and later in the month, Diamond, Mazy and John coming over from Kent. All roads seem to lead to here at the moment. We decided that our tired and eclectic mixture of guest beds would not really do any more, so we ordered 2 new beds from local supplier, Mulligan's of Balla-D. We'd selected a less expensive option on the beds from our short list of 2 types but in the event the shop found that they only had the one so, knowing that we'd want 2 identical beds, offered us 2 of the more expensive option for the same price! Only in Ireland, I am thinking!. These beds are now delivered, assembled and even made up. The futon, which was here, is now retired to the caravan stroke teenager-den. We are just about ready for the invasion. Bring it on.

Tourism in Ireland this year is all about a big nation-wide promotion called "The Gathering", the idea being that the Irish diaspora from all around the world descend on the country this year in one massive 'clan gathering' and all the towns and villages round here are supporting it and, presumably hoping for lots of tourist dollars (or Euros). Our own local village has produced a book which includes a lot of local history, stories (including, sadly, a rather horrible eviction from a local house by an evil landlord) and lists of the local families as at the 1911 census.

Our friend John Deere Bob has obtained a copy for us  and we are delighted to find that we get a mention, now listed as the new owners of the property formerly owned by TK Min and TK Max, all be it our surname has been lost in translation, we are Matt and Elizabeth Keigher. We finally got a real Irish name!

No sooner had the ink dried on my comments about the sheep not loving us very much and not being that easy to train to the bucket-feeding and close approaches, than they seem to have warmed to us. I can now appear with a bucket of feed, rattling it, whistling and calling, and they will all troop up from what ever corner of the field they are sleeping in to come to the gate and accept a handful of grub in the buckets. They do not let me touch them yet, or eat out of our hands, but we are getting there.

Good progress in the veg patch. I have pulled all the over-winter onions and dried them on a mesh rack. They are now tied into strings hanging up while they dry some more. I dug the garlic this morning - three varieties. This is now taking up the drying rack and, you can see from the picture that the 1050 litre water butt is brim full from the car-port roof 'catchment'. We are well through the calabrese pick now, still using the side shoot re-growth for eating and freezing but plants which are finishing and flower heads which are starting to open into yellow flowers are proving very popular with the rabbits.

The ducklings continue to thrive under Broody Betty's parenting and we are hoping they are not too madly 'imprinted' on her (or her focused on them) as, come Thursday, we want to 'steal' the ducklings back for Mentor Anne and substitute in our day-old Hubbard chickens. We hope she adapts quickly and just accepts them. If not, we are into 'brooder boxes' and heat-ray lamps. We will cope with that but it is so much nicer to see the 'hen-and-chicks' story played out in the free-range environment.

Attacking the Bank with a Pick Axe

OK - I'll come clean! This is not some tale of anti-hero outlaws extracting violent revenge on the Bank of Ireland for their cheque book charges, fat-cat bonuses or other wrongs; this is a genuine earth bank. Regular readers will have met it before as the place of rest of the horse-drawn hay rake and the site of our disinterment of the rusty metal fertilizer spreader. It runs along our western boundary 'under' the hedge which divides us from Vendor-Anna's 5 acre field. It is a mess. We can only assume that for 30+ years (easily more) TK Max and TK Min used it as a dumping ground for farm junk.

The hawthorn hedge which was there is now easily 50 years old and has long since been pushed through by elder trees. The elders have dropped branches, as they do, and these have been grown up through by ancient and venerable stinging nettles. Old fashioned peat-turfs have been piled against the hedge - the old "hand-won" shape cut with a "slean" (pronounced 'shlee-un' ish); a long narrow spade with a knife coming off one side at 90 degrees to give you an L-shaped cut. These have either been deliberately or accidentally covered with black silage-bale wrap, entombing them (so at least they are dry-ish!) before topsoil has been bulldozed (?) against and over them to make the bank. Big round bales of hay have at some stage been leant against this.

You'll know that we have worked really hard here since moving in battling with various bits of the garden, cutting down tall stuff, mowing, pruning and generally trying to force it to be a garden rather than a jungle, but 'The Bank' we have to admit, has been a bit neglected. The Bank looms over us like a dark cloud, clearly visible from the big pond, the pond garden and the orchard. Its thickets of stinging nettles rise up from the rotting hay-bales and the Queen Anne's Lace (Cow Parsley) tries to out-height the unkempt hedge. The holes we have made extracting the spreader and un-burying the hay rake look like tiny, pathetic breaches in the curtain-wall of a castle.

Now, though, I am done pond-digging and I am on top of weeding in the 'allotment', so I have decided to add it to my 'hour-a-day-whatever-the-weather' job list, the not-so-pleasant tasks I make myself do in order to earn the more pleasurable jobs or a rest or a cup of coffee! Liz is also involved and gets stuck in when she can. It is hard, heavy and frustrating work because you just can't get a shovel down through the nettle roots, baler twine, plastic wrap and bits of tree.

The only way to beat it seems to be to rip into it with a pick axe, pulling loose tufts of root and then going through it by (gloved) hand sorting what you can get loose into types and degrees of usefulness - hay and green weeds to the compost, metal, twine, wrap and nettle root to the non-recycle bin, stones and rocks to the reserve rock pile, wood and turf sods for burning if big enough and that lovely top soil onto various new beds. By slow degree we will dismantle the bank dropping its level to one of 'raised bed near hedge' and un-ship all the rubbish. It is hot work, as I said, and the 9-week old chickens quickly adopted the bare crumbly top soil I am exposing, for dust bathing. Watch this space for progress.

Meanwhile, as I also said, the allotment bit is under control and I am delighted with it. It is better looking and more productive, seemingly, than any attempts I made in Kent (I have loads more time here) and is streets ahead of last year's flat cultivation, washed out, as it was, by the masses of rain and prey to crop failures all around.  I have today been able to pick some first over-wintered broad beans.

These bushes were almost completely wiped out by the terrible drying east winds which blew for 3 weeks continuously in Feb/March but have recovered well and are now 3 feet high and covered in pods low down on each stem. The pods are not as full as I would like as there were very few bees about back when these guys were in flower, but that is the kind of thing we will help as we get more into the 'wildlife garden' side of things - the self seeding insect friendly flowers and so on.

To this end, a huge Thank You to a Facebook friend who has picked up the nickname (on FB) of 'Backchat Black'. He lives in Spalding (Lincs) and is mad keen on this kind of gardening and has posted me seeds of teasel, comfrey, pot marigold, tansey and feverfew. Also to Pud Lady who is sending me regular supplies of the free gift seed packets which come with subscriber gardening magazines. Between us we should achieve a riot of colour and a heady buzz of insects. The photo (left) is of a common spotted orchid now appeared in our orchard meadow. We are on the starting ramp.

A Little Drop of Rain

Coo! When it decides to rain round here, there's no messing about. Buckets came down overnight, hammering on the roof and windows, blasted against the front of the house on a strong southerly wind. From no puddles and reasonably dry last night despite a bit of rain on Wednesday morning while we were fencing, I woke up to the biggest puddles I think we have had so far. The local lough, Lough Feigh has trebled in size overnight from a raggedy ribbon of wet between rambling beds of rush and reed, to an impressive expanse of open water. The reed/rush beds are submerged and the 'banks' are now grass fields further out. The local river, the R. Lung has risen from showing a yard of exposed bank, to brim full. A pipe-drain emptying into it under the bridge with a gurgling splashy drop of 4 feet is suddenly half submerged so that the water joins the river on the level like a tributary stream.

My part-dug pond was an almost complete sheet of (muddy) water. I will not be digging any pond today; that's for sure, but it is comforting to know that the pond is pretty level and is also in the right place in terms of catchment area. We are actually on top of a low hill here so nowhere is going to be that 'right' but we do have a small hollow centred around this part of the garden, partly because of the TK Max and TK Min apparent habit of bulldozing all the top soil off the yard and piling it up in heaps against our western boundary hedge. John Deere Bob tells us that many locals see topsoil as an expensive resource worth stock piling, so if an area was to be used for storing bales or farm machinery, then the soil (they say it "sale" here) would be scraped off. The result here is a big dam of soil along our boundary which prevents rain running off so we have a bit of a 'bowl' in which to construct the pond.

There are other dints and hollows which collect nice puddles much to the delight of the gander who splashes about dipping his head and neck under the surface, then rearing his head to shower the water backwards across his back, wings and tail. Suddenly he will honk excitedly and charge across the puddle splashing his feet down like a child playing in his wellies. We guess he wishes his womenfolk were not focused on being broody and might come out to play.

It's comforting to know that at least it drains away almost as quickly as it arrives. Almost, but not quite. Within a few days of no rain these puddles will be gone and even the pond will be dig-able. The house and yard area are the same - one of the main driving forces to our building project was to get rid of the damp and let it stay away - ivy was stripped off the walls, rainwater goods and guttering were all replaced with new, down pipes were linked to gullies (4 inch pipes) under the yard to take water quickly away to the ditches we had had cleared by mini-digger. The septic tank got a huge pebble-filled pit dug just 'downstream' of itself to ensure 'water' cleared fast and efficiently. My veg plot got its ridges and raised beds and these were aligned up/down the slopes to help clear water and our use of mini-horses and sheep on the East Field is mainly about repairing the damage done by heavy cattle squelching up the ground into a non-draining foot print divot mess ("poaching" in grass management parlance). All the overgrown areas of this hectare have been cleared and turned, for now, into short grass to help drying out and run-off when it does stop raining. Our living-hedge wind breaks are nice, thirsty, willow.

Let it rain - we can cope!

A Kind of Inheritance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Big Trees

Well, we're at 29,910 page views, so this could well be my last post. It's time to hand over the keyboard to Dad.

The 21st comes and goes and the broody hen still sits on the eggs and the baby chicks still sit inside their egg shells (we hope). To keep from everyone getting bored, I decided to do a post about trees; specifically some of the huge trees we have growing on the property. The biggest is pictured in the first three pics on this blog-post, with the first showing Dad's 6 foot 1 inch frame (in yellow circle) for comparison. For fun we did that triangulation thing to estimate the height, where you hold an inch-marked pencil out half a yard from your eye and measure the tree height against the pencil, then factor up by how far away from the tree you are standing. In Dad's case he was 35 yards away and the tree a foot tall against the measuring stick, so this, the biggest tree on the plot is, we reckon 70 feet tall. The girth of this giant at 4 feet from the ground is 94 inches (7 feet 10 inches) or 238 cm.

The second picture shows these trees as seen from down in the allotment; the big fella is the one on the right of shot. Locally these tree are known by the tree surgeons etc as "Dale Trees" and many people try to tell you they are sitka spruces but we've looked them up in the book and run their features through an identification key and we think they are Black Spruce (Picea mariana). They grow all around here and all over Roscommon, Lietrim and other counties and they all seem to have been planted at roughly the same time, starting maybe in the the 30's and 40's so perhaps some local forestry concern got hold of a job lot and they became a fashion.

Our 4th picture is of the trees along the 'Secret Garden' which we have mentioned before but not properly depicted. This was originally the veg garden and we know from talking to Vendor Anna that these were planted rather foolishly by her Dad (TK Max) as wind break saplings in about 1961. The Secret Garden has these up the inner west side with a nice row of beeches (showing Autumn colour in this shot) on the outside west, and some nice ash on the east, which may be coppiced for logs in a future Winter. These are the trees we'd like to have down but were going to be charged €1000 for the privilege by local tree surgeon and log splitter guy 'Oliver Splits'.

There you go.
We'll go back to excitedly watching over the broody hen for signs of eggs 'pipping'
Deefs

The Poetic Plumber

Our campaign to get onto mains services marches on. We've paid the money and signed all the forms for the ESB (Electricity Supply Board) and have been given a 12 week predicted lead time. Sparks thinks this is nonsense because they are assuming we are a brand new connection which would involve erecting telegraph poles and digging up roads. He thinks if he has a word in the right ear someone will realise that all the hardware is actually there and only a new fuse is needed plus an official turn-on. It might be far fewer than 12 weeks. Meanwhile though, we are buying a 3kW generator to see us through and to be there after the build in case of power cuts.

Broad band and telephone are on the way, but need power, obviously.

Water starts off a bit more complicated. The address has only ever had an "agricultural" feed, so we are liable for the €1600 (gad!) fee of a new connection. We must also engage a local approved contractor willing to connect us up out in the road and also insured to the tune of €6,400,000 as demanded by County Roscommon Water Services. We contact our Estate Agent (and now friend) John C who suggests a local man (Lough Glynn) whose name is the same as a poet in a famous Irish poem, so he becomes "The Poetic Plumber" in our cast of thousands. He's a brilliant bloke, silver hair, quiet spoken and with an accent to die for and both Mum and Dad fall in love with him. He knew our former owners (TK Min and TK Max) and went to school with the "Three Sisters". He knows our 'vendor', Anna L, quite well. He lives in a similar house to ours and is impressed by the hard work we have put in so far. He comes up to the house to see the job and even volunteers to come back after dark to see us in the caravan to stamp and sign the application, suggesting that we take the paperwork into Castlerea on the Friday morning to pay the fee and we could be connected as soon as next Saturday (he almost whispers the word, with the accent on the 'Tur'). He has a JCB, of course, and we are keen to engage him in also digging some french-drains for our roof run-off.

Progress!
Deefer