Tom and Barbara

Tom and Barbara in our woods.

It was almost inevitable. Great fans of "The Good Life" and frequently 'accused' by our friends of being like the Richard Briers and Felicity Kendal characters, it is no surprise that we have named the turkeys "Tom and Barbara". Ahhhh Felicity Kendal.... be still my beating heart. I was one of those (millions) of blokes who sat glued to the TV watching her every move and was very fed up when she went on to star in 'Solo' where she actually had a boyfriend. No, Felicity! You can't do that! You mustn't! Ah well, teenage dreams (I was 18).

Handsome chap.

This isn't so much as a post, more a chance to flash up a few better pictures of the new turkeys now that they are out in our beautiful April sunshine, not a cloud in the sky, wall to wall azure. The pair spent the first daytime shut into the middle section of the goose house where they could relax and recover, and then yestereday I built them an 8 foot square pen just outside the door, so that they could spend the day familiarizing themselves with the sights and sounds of our yard and the comings and goings of me and all the other livestock.

She may go off lay after the move but she must have  still
had one 'up the pipe' for us. 

The plan here is that they don't bolt out of their crates when you first arrive and vanish off across the fields in unfamiliar territory, never learning what 'home' should now look like. On day three (today), I make sure I have a quiet day when I can be around all day and I let them out to explore, establish that they are happy and likely to stay, and then just keep a watchful eye on them while they find their way about.

A turkey egg for comparison.

It has gone well and it has been enjoyable as well as interesting, learning what they are about as they learn our ways here.  Tom, it seems, is a very show-off-y lad given to displaying at every opportunity. He does it if he sees me, or either cockerel, or even if Barbara wanders over. Amusingly, he and Min, our Guinea hen also seem to have taken a shine to one another, I guess she's on the look out for a male of roughly the right shape, and he's got an eye for the ladies.

That swarm box all varnished up.

He puffs up all his facial bits - the blue skin of his head and neck blister up with scarlet lumps (this is his caruncle), his snood (the retractable but long dangly 'nose' bit above his beak) and the wattle (big, bright red flap on the front of his throat which ends in big red lobes at (roughly) the collar-bone. His tail stands erect and fans out like a shorter peacock tail, his wings drop and scuff hard along the ground sounding like a cardboard box being dragged. His puts his head back against his shoulders and gives loud, bassy "chuff" coughs which seem to vibrate the very floor. He throws his head forward, his snood waggling as he 'gobble-gobble's and the feathers all over his chest and all along his back stand up so that his body looks enormous.

He also seems to be a bit of a 'male chauvinist pig', or maybe Barbara is just more cautious. I let them out at 20 past 8 this morning but only he came out. Barbara remained on the perch in the house making pathetic wheedling noises identical to those made by our older bitch 'Deefer' when she wants help being lifted onto a high chair. He was quite happy, strolling about, exploring, displaying to one and all, meeting all the chickens, cats, geese and so on in the bright, warm sunshine. I don't know if he'd told her to stay put while he made sure it was safe, but this was till going on at 11 a.m. when I decided enough was enough. If she didn't get some sun and air today she'd be left out. I tried to tempt her down with some food on the ground, but then just picked her up (she made no protest)  and carried her out of the door where she could see him. The pair have now spent the afternoon together and seem quite happy.

One of last year's Buff Orpingtons - all
growed up. 

The lady who sold them to us explained that come evening they may not naturally make their way home to roost, so I might have to shepherd them home the way I do the geese. I am told that she will go first and he will try to keep his body between me and his wife to protect her. He will also not want to take his eye off me as we move in case I try anything sneaky, so he will try to walk sidways or backwards home. Could be fun.

And tonight's the night. My good lady, the lovely Lizzie comes home to me on the 8 o'clock train after her ten day stint of minding Mr 'Steak Lady' as his own good wife returns from the Malta sunshine. The sun is 'splitting the stones' (they say here), the sky blue and cloudless, so she may wonder why she needed to go to Malta but they are a gang of Bridge players and they always have a whale of a time. This was Malta, past ones have been to Egypt and to North Africa. She jokingly calls them "SKI" holidays. Not the snow and zooming downhill on planks, you understand.... the SKI stands for "spending the kids' inheritance". Go the Steak Lady!

Of Cookery (and Other) Failures

The best laid plans, so they say.....

Here is a picture of our very disreputable and grubby looking 'project cat', Pirate, the starving stray who has been hanging around and seems to want to be fed by us and possibly move in. Since the last post this story has moved on. We had been feeding him for around 3 weeks but he was only showing up for food and then slinking away. Suddenly a week ago he was all over us like a rash, accepting food and strokings, yowling for attention if he heard us talking by the pond or in front of the house.

Pirate the Cat

Suddenly he was here for most of the day and sleeping in the shade on the roof of the 2CV in the car port. The plan is to get him some vet attention (mainly a spay, worming and a look at his poor eyes, one of which is absent (there is just a pink, open empty socket which is a bit spooky to look at), the other looks very misty; we are surprised he can see at all). This would involve catching him and putting him in a cat basket, so I put the basket on the car roof with a bit of 'Vet-Bed' blanket in it and the boy adopted it immediately. He slept there a couple of nights and in the morning, when he heard me feeding breakfast to our two cats, would emerge, stretch luxuriously in the sunshine and stroll across to get his share. I was suddenly able to brush him through to ascertain he had no fleas, which was a relief.

Accepting strokes and even a brush-through for fleas.

We thought we were on for the vet and contacted Aoife. We started to arrange check ups and what meds she could bring to get the ball rolling. Also, by the by, neighbour Una invited us down to pick her black currants and in the tea and scones chat afterwards, when the subject of cats came up she said that she had been seeing a dirty white cat with bad eyes for a while - it had been calling on her for food but had recently stopped coming. Pirate is obviously one of these fellas who keeps a lot of options open. But now it seems to be all over for the moment. As quickly and as decisively as he decided to 'adopt' us, he seems to have dropped us again like a hot potato. He has gone back to showing up very late (10 pm+) and quickly eating food left down before slinking away. He is not staying the night and not using the cat basket. He did not show for breakfast this morning and we have not seen him all day. Perhaps he heard me planning his treatments with Aoife and has skedaddled.

Bronze fennel

Also in the 'failures' department, we finally got round to trying our pea-pod 'Burgundy' made last August. I must admit I had not been confident. I made an awful lot of wine as a teenager and the best stuff was always made from fairly promising raw materials - sweet fruit or full bodied stuff like root veg, rhubarb stems, grains and, of course grapes. The stuff made with flavoured but 'gutless' materials never seemed to be worth much unless I was going for the strongly scented light wines like rose-petal or elder-flower. I could not see pea pod working but we made it for a laugh mainly because it is mentioned in the 'Good Life' TV series. Ah well, we tried some today prior to bottling it off and it just tasted thin and very pea-pod-ish, so it was glugged unceremoniously over the compost heap.

Gooseberries

And then, we have had John Deere Bob, who is a diabetic, fondly remembering a local confection called 'Brown Cake' but, being Bob, he has no idea what's in it - he thinks maybe ginger and treacle. We asked around the local ladies and Vendor Anna and were able to come up with two local delicacies which he 'might mean', one a gingery treacle-bread, the other a version of soda bread with treacle added. Rather dubiously, Liz had a go at the first one and the complete cake was set aside to await Bob's next visit. It was brown alright and looked OK but a bit un-interesting. 3 days went by and Bob hadn't appeared, so we decided to try a slice with this afternoon's coffee. It was dry and dull and mainly tasted of the burnt/caramelized tones of treacle or dark brown sugar. 'Ooooh no!' we said, sure that this could not be anything Bob (or anyone) would be fondly remembering. We whistled up the chickens and, being way less discerning than we are, they happily polished it off. Ginger and treacle flavoured eggs, anyone?

Lovage - a gift from Steak Lady

But it's not all failures. Liz has made some excellent paté from the less talked about parts of rabbits and culled out chickens and, today, we knocked out 7 jars of delicious black currant jam from Una's fruit. We have also bottled up 14 bottles of elder-flower 'champagne' which tastes very promising so far but now needs a week to fall bright and build up some 'fizz'.

Lettuce. The red leaves are from the heritage variety
'Little leprechaun' from Brown Envelope Seeds.

I have been back onto the DIY projects, creating a nice run for the ever growing guinea fowl keets. Pictures of this when it is finished, but I am delighted to be able to make this for almost zero cost - about a tenner in hinges, bolts and 'big staples', plus €20's worth of fruit-cage netting for the 'roof'. The chicken wire for the 'walls' came as a cast off roll from our fencing contractor, Paul. The posts were pulled out of a bit of redundant fencing inside what is now the pig paddock. Up-cycling.