Tiddly-Om-Pom-Pom

Rocking the hi-viz coat and wellies in this
rendering by our artist fella, Brian John
Spencer

With our series of inbound visits last week barely seen off the premises (see previous post) I needed to get packing for my out-bound mission, off to the UK to see family in Hastings and old mates in our former stomping ground of Faversham in Kent. Family these days is my big-bro, Tom and 'me dear aul' Mum, 'Pud Lady' in these pages. Mum is about to go, like me, through a 'significant' number Birthday - she is soon 90 as I am soon 60 so I wanted to spend a bit of quality time with her this time instead of my all too frequent "flying visit" style trips.

Shiny Vauxhall Astra hire car, only days old, outside Mum's.

The mission was to take the normal shape - an Aer Lingus flight, Knock to Gatwick, and then hire of a car in UK for the running about. The first part of that was easy, the 2nd nearly came unstuck and turned into an hour and a half in car hire hell at the airport, and got me indoors at just after midnight.

Primroses and magnolia in Mum's front
garden

It was partly my fault and partly that of the Aer Lingus website where I booked my flights (and car) on line. I saw no-where who the car hire firm actually was (Hertz? EuropeCar? Avis?) but that's not been a problem - you just wander round the big foyer and try your name and booking reference at each till you strike gold. Aer Lingus have also moved their flight from mid afternoon to 8pm-ish too, but I didn't think that would be an issue either. Anyone hearing warning bells yet? What I'd actually written down was Aer Lingus's ref number for my car.

Battle Abbey. Mum in wheel chair centre bottom of pic.

We touched down at 9 pm and I walked to the car-rental 'room' and started my hunt, frustrated at each by having to stand in a short queue before I could even ask my question but also running out of desks to ask at. Finally, I was advised to go try the 'Inter-Rent' porta-cabin out in the dark where the 'indoor' desks said the guy had been evicted from North Terminal by building works but hurry as he didn't normally work late and might be closing.

Mum has map and is ready to explore
Battle Abbey and Senlac Hill

Off I went, increasingly fed up, to find one man soldiering through a queue of 8 customers at the end of a 13 hour shift. I suspected that if I queued for the 45 mins I might still be blown off with a "not our reference number" line. No such problem. The guy (Alex was his name) was as helpful, friendly and professional at my end of the queue as he had been at the 'beginning' - a true hero. Above and beyond. He had my name on his list, sorted me out a Vauxhall Astra and sent me on my way at 10:30 pm. Aer Lingus and Inter-Rent get my vote. You can keep your Hertz, Avis and EuropeCar. I got indoors by just after midnight to find Mum and Tom waiting up for me - Thank You very much, both.

At the Queen's Head, Icklesham, near Rye (Sussex), left to
right, myself, Mum and Tom

To cut a long story short, I had a lovely time both at Hastings and in Faversham and very pleasant company with friends, family and former neighbours all delighted to see me and me to see them. My time in Hastings was blessed by 2 superb, warm, sunny, blue sky days, so we took the hire car and Mum's wheel chair and went on a series of little scenic tours, interspersed with meals, coffee breaks and the inevitable games of Scrabble.

Fish and Chips. You can always rely on the Queen's Head
for a decent portion. Top left of the picture is an equally
generous crab salad. 

On Saturday, we drove all round the lanes 'behind' Hastings looking at the spring flowers - carpets of Lady's Smock, primroses, wood anenomes, celandines etc and the chance of an early orchid. We drove down to Hastings sea-front along by Marine Parade and pushed the wheel chair all along to the newly restored and re-opened pier, out to its very end (it is all nice and flat for this pusher's 'maiden voyage'). We headed out to the family's favourite pub/eaterie, The Queen's Head in Icklesham (near Rye in Sussex) where I managed a fish and chips 'fix'. We bimbled out to the famous Great Dixter garden (Northiam) where there was advertised a "Plant Fair" for Mum to buy a specific Clematis she wanted ('tangutica').

Mum surveys Senlac Hill from the top. I reckon if those Normans
had had to push their Mums up in wheel chairs then they would
not have won the Battle.

On the Sunday we headed out to Battle Abbey and Senlac Hill, the site of the famous 1066 Battle of Hastings, where the pushchair crew had to step up a gear. This battle, as any school boy knows, involved the Normans (and William the Conqueror) charging up Senlac Hill to knock the pesky Saxons (King Harold's mob) off the top. The Abbey was build on top of the hill (afterwards, obviously!) to commemorate the victory and the bits open to the public include the hill. Even the wheel-chair friendly walk route which is lightly gravelled just to slow you down a bit, includes some of the top-slopes of the hill inside the 'skirts' of the abbey, so there was some good heavy-breath slog up the slopes even though Mum is not 'heavy' to any degree. You put any 'little aul' lady' in a good wheel chair and try it, be my guest.

Oh we do like to walk along the prom, prom, prom? Hastings
sea-front and Pier shrouded in sea mist.

On the final morning (Monday), Mum and Tom had a funeral to attend, so I nipped back to the sea front to get some pictures, having deliberately not taken the camera on our walk, my 'maiden voyage' as wheel chair pusher. Sadly there was a thick sea-mist and although it always looked like it was just about to burn off, there were to be no sunny pictures that morning. The sun did not break through till I was heading off after lunch, bound for Romney Marshes and Faversham.

Tom, Mum and myself. 

In Faversham I was to meet our good friend John W, former husband of Diane (Diamond on here) and their disreputable looking Patterdale Terrier cross Ragworth. The plan was to spend the evening with John (we had a lovely stroll round the Front Brents area and north side of the Creek), have a bite to eat and then I'd stay the night in his spare room. On the Tuesday morning I could then work my way round as many former neighbours and friends as I could net before I had to head back to Gatwick in the afternoon for my flight home. Thanks you to all of you who I did meet and who I missed - better luck next time maybe.

Plenty of sailing barges still in the creek despite 'bogey-man'
developer, Michael White allegedly killing all the ship-wrightery

I got to meet and have a nice chat with a friend who I only really know since leaving Faversham (chatting on Facebook etc), Griselda C-M and her husband, staunch supporters and 'activists' of the Creek Preservation campaign. I met film maker Mike M who I know from Cambria days (he made the "Red Sails" film). I had nice chats with neighbours from both sides of our 'old' house in Whitstable Road (Jackie and then Betty and Jim). I met another good friend (Dave) in town as I was wandering about and I also got a good look round the Standard Quay and Iron Wharf areas of the Creek (the south side).

Every town should have a Pirate Ship.

A footnote to that last sentence should probably include mention of the latest "attraction", a rather mad Pirate Ship. This rather disreputable looking piece of fakery (a load of wooden 'topsides' added to an old wooden hull and flying the requisite 'Jolly Roger') turned up in Faversham a few months back, mooring up for a rest en route to Spain, crewed by half a dozen lads from (John tells me) ages about 30 to 50. They didn't manage to stay long as they didn't fancy paying the mooring fees (Why should we? We're Pirates!) charged by Faversham's 'bogey-man' waterfront developer, so he had them 'evicted' using a local tug-firm. These boys rather robustly (I was told) untied them from the quay and towed them down to moor them outside the sewage works outflow where they remain to this day. They have to get aboard and disembark by scrambling across a dodgy grass bank and some mud and then teetering up a long, springy plank in best pirate tradition.

The Creek's main developer finally gets
permission to convert the first of these
 lovely wooden weather-boarded grain
warehouses into a restaurant and wine bar. 

That's about it. I grabbed a spot of lunch with John and then headed for Gatwick, there to hand my car back in with none of the Friday night dramas. I flew home painlessly to be met at the airport by the Lady of the House and got a noisy welcome from dogs and livestock. And so to bed in MY OWN BED (well, my half of 'our bed'). No matter how lovely it is to go travelling, there is something special about finally getting home and being able to sleep on that old familiar mattress.

Thank you to all involved in this break. If I have forgotten to name you specifically, then I apologise for that.

Enda Vaneera

Way, way back I posted that we in Ireland had had a General Election. I *think* it was actually 70 days ago. Nobody won (which is no surprise here in this land of coalition governments) and the various factions have been negotiating (or failing to talk) ever since so that even the political journo's have started to sound weary and impatient. Would the 2 main parties (Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil) actually get together after 100 years of the main differences being what they thought about Partition (Ireland split into the Republic and 'The North')? Would we need some kind of Rainbow coalition of Fine Gael plus assorted minor parties and some Independent Members (TDs)? Well, they finally came up with a solution today and re-elected the previous "Taoiseach" (=Prime Minister, say it 'Tea-shuck'), Enda Kenny, though for how long this fragile peace can stick is anybody's guess. It got me to thinking about our various milestones and anniversaries here.

Looking decidedly nervous in this 4 year old pic, releasing
our first Irish chickens

Facebook has to take a lot of the 'blame' for my train of thought. They have got into a 'thing' now where they ping you pictures which you posted exactly 2, 3, 4 or 5 years ago and ask you if you want to share them back onto FB and comment on them. They dug up this 4 year old one of me releasing our first ever Irish chooks from their carry-box. I look very nervous. Nowadays I'd just tip the box on its side and let them walk out. They were our "Lovely Girls"; 6 (quickly reduced to 5) Sussex Ponte Hybrids. We were so green I'd even bought the "wrong" chooks - I'd intended to buy proper pure bred While/Light Sussex (Hadn't heard of Sussex Ponte). 4 years on we are evolving over to Buff Orpingtons and Cuckoo Marans and we have only one of these original birds left - we call her Enda (as in Enda Vaneera....geddit?.... and, yes, I do know Enda is a boy's name).

Meanwhile the piglets come up towards their 14th week and the ducklings and poults are going on 6 weeks. We are charmed by the ducklings now starting to change from the 'peep peep' noise of new hatched ducklings to some proper throaty quacking. Their voices are breaking, Bless 'Em! Both these clutches are now let out all day as long as it is sunny and one of us will be around. They tend to stay in the main yard, though the chickens have wandered as far as the front lawn before 'zooming' back to safety in that amusing wings-flapping sprint young poults have.

Buff Orp poults at 6 weeks

Today we decided to try to herd the ducklings as far as the big pond. They were not that keen and very perturbed at being hooshed out of the familiar yard. I wondered whether the sight of that big body of water might kick some instinct in and they'd happily dive in and play. Not a bit of it. We let them go at the water's edge and all 6 sprinted back towards the cattle-race and the familiar safety of their tiny cat litter tray 'pond'. That can fit only one or two at once now and then only paddling up to their ankles. We may need an interim "kiddies' paddly pool" solution in the yard so that they can experience water where their feets do not touch bottom.

Brooding in stereo. 

Our long-term brooders (the geese and Barbara the turkey) are still playing the waiting game. The geese, we know, are sitting on at least 12 eggs but we can not know how long these eggs have been in there. 3 have been in from the start. We may have the usual goosey chaos as the two Mums (Aunts?) hop on and off the nest and steal each others eggs for safe-keeping while the other female is out grazing. We hope that they will also do the 'aunt' thing once hatching starts. I'll take these 2 day old out to the orchard if you could just sit on those other eggs in case we get any stragglers hatching. Madness.

Not a happy bunny. Tom the turkey misses his woman.

Tom, is feeling very woe-begone with his 'wife' away in the fields (we hope). He mopes around all day and does not display even to us when we are seated by the pond. Hang in there, Tom. The 16th or so might see herself re-appear with babies. We'll give it a fortnight more and then possibly, try to find you a new love.

Damsel fly pupal case

I am still plugging on with the '365' project and trying to ring the changes to give the village website a good variety from which to choose. It is going well. Liz has upwards of half a dozen contributors now (and is trying to encourage more) so we have pics of children, ride on mowers, vegetable seedlings, the hand-ball courts, sunsets, pictures done by the pre-school (and flags by the National School). I am still here as 'back stop' to make sure we have no blank days. The end of April had us all a quarter of the way through the project. Fair way to go yet.

New log stack in the making.

I have managed to blag a couple of old pallets locally, so  the project for the end of this week has been to create yet another log stack against the barn wall up in the "Rose Walk". K-Dub would be proud of me. I am trying to build this with near vertical faces and even binding in the corners with log versions of "coin stones" like a bit of stone work. The plan is to roof this stack with my curved corrugated iron sheeting from the hay barn (you can see this in the photo, centre left).

Hornwort in the big pond.

This stack will be a good 4 cubic metres so should represent years 3-4 (maybe 5) of my store. It is a good feeling to be in May 2016 and to know that we probably have wood stored now round to Winter 2021/2. It will certainly have a chance to season (dry out) well and would also be a good hidey-hole for plenty of mice and voles safe from our cats.

Big boys' toys? Wide-track turf-cutting machinery

Ah well. That's probably enough for this one.

Bucket List Item....Tick!

Back in November I wrote a post in which I noted that the Silverwoods had managed to find some archery and that I was going to join them and fulfill a life long ambition. The post is at

http://deefer-dawg.blogspot.ie/2015/11/patterns-and-toiles-bows-and-arrows.html

 if you would like to re-cap. At our age we are all supposed to have a mental or written "bucket list"; a list of things you would like to see or do "before you die". I am not sure why it is called a bucket list but my mental one includes plenty of pricey stuff we are never likely to achieve now that we are no longer DINKYs swimming in cash (African Safari, Mountain gorillas, terracotta warriors and Great Wall in China, drive a Mk 2 Escort (preferably red and with a POO 505R number plate) with respectable speed through a Welsh forest stage... that kind of thing). But one item which I should have ticked off years ago is the archery and now it seemed I would finally get this done.

'Playing' in the back garden - lots of bad
technique here (flappy sleeve, 4-finger
grip, stance etc) but I had not yet had
 a proper lesson.

Then along came one of the named storms of late November and made it unfair to leave Liz minding the farm overnight, and then the loss of Theo, then Christmas and so on, so I got postponed until January. We finally made it this weekend just gone. I drove down to the Silverwoods' Saturday lunchtime, met the gang all there. We had a first play and demo of the bows and arrows there - Steak Lady has a nice car-width drive up the side of her house ending in big thick solid gates, where Mr S sets up a serious, woven straw, circular target on a tripod so that they have a mini archery range out there. We adjourned for a lovely curry (Thanks, SL!) and then headed for the proper evening club session in a village near to Portlaoise where club-founders and instructors, James and Tom put a gang of around 17 of us (including myself and 2 other complete, Day 1 novices) through some paces.

None of your bendy yew tree wood
for us. A modern "riser" .

They use a big church hall where 5 archers can stand in line and fire arrows down the hall to either thud successfully into the foam targets or to be gathered up by a heavy drape curtain behind designed to catch and stop any misses. It is all very safe. Your group of 5 fire off a set of 4 arrows each before everyone puts their bow down flat in the floor, once all are ready, the instructor tells you "Go collect". You then get another 4 shots and on till you must stand aside (behind) while the next group of 5 archers take their turn.

'Caging' the balloon north, south east and west

The name of the game at this early stage is nothing to do with trying to hit the bullseye or even the target circle, it is about finding a consistent technique and stance so that all 4 arrows in your set land in a tight group. You can be anywhere on the target board as long as all your arrows hit within a few inches of each other. Beginners tend to see one go low left and mentally adjust up right etc, spraying arrows all over the gaff. You need to learn the correct process and stance (feet just so, Right* arm straight and rigid, left hand with thumb in and main three fingers round string, pull back till your first finger is at the corner of your mouth, breathe, relax, steady and release). You don't aim by looking straight down the length of the arrow with the feathers (fletches) poking in your eye, but rather along the top of the arrow and lining the point up with a likely place on the target. That way, says the theory, if you always line up on the same place and use the same pull and technique, your 4 arrows will all fly the same trajectory and all land together. What could POSSIBLY go wrong?

Happy Beginner

Ah well, I had an absolute blast and loved every minute of it. I did reasonably OK at the archery but also had a great time meeting people and talking to them. Towards the end of the session James clipped a load of balloons to the targets for a bit of fun and had us shooting at them. I achieved a certain notoriety by missing with all 4 of my first arrows but managing to cage the balloon with an arrow touching in north, south, east and west. The balloon was undamaged but held firm. "Bet you couldn't do that again!" they said. I nailed the thing with my 6th arrow. It was a brilliant day and my heartfelt thanks to the Silverwoods and SL for their hospitality and letting me play. Also to the newly formed "Laois Archery" club, James and Tom. I must now go off and find a more local group (There is one in Castlerea) to save me the 2 hour drive and to practise more and see whether this is something I do, indeed, want to take up properly and even get good at.

I pass the 700 Tweets mark on 'my watch'

The other pastime mopping up all my spare hours last week, you will recall, was the curatorship of the @SmallHoldersIRL Twitter account. That was good fun too but I am not a natural 'tweeter' so I was quite tired of it by the end of the week and happy to hand the account on on Sunday evening to the next man. He is a pig and water buffalo farmer on the Beara Peninsula (I kid you not - the buffalo are apparently the perfect solution to the rough grazing and wet bogginess of County Cork). My stuff seemed to go down well and I was quite popular as a poster. We had plenty of sharing and banter going on. I may take another turn in the future but it will not be for a wee while yet.

*'I am left-eye'd despite being right handed, so I shoot holding the bow in my right hand.

The Wild Bunch

The turkeys seem to have melded into an all-age gang. Here
one of the first hatch is far left, then Tom and Barbara, with the
surviving 2nd hatch ('Solo') far right and the other plus the young
Guineas at the back.

First in this post. a quick note to close out the story of our sparrowhawk and, more specifically, whether I could have done any more for her. Anne told us of "Eagles Flying", a falconry centre half an hour's drive away. I e-mailed their office describing our situation to see what they could offer in the way of A&E vets and recuperative care.

One 'Lothar' replied with

"Having an absolutely fresh fracture, it is not a major challenge to reset the bones, as long as the joints are not affected. Ideally the bird will be anaesthetized before the procedure. Of course 9 pm is not the best time to find a working Vet,  but the wound could have been dressed up, the bone ends disinfected and kept moist (saline solution) and the bird kept dark in a box until the next day. A Vet being very good with these things is Dr. Niall Curran, Animal Hospital, Moneen, Castlebar"

Steak Lady (left) and Mr SL (r) bring the sun with them for
a quick visit to look round and catch up. 

Fair play to them for a good, helpful and professional reply. In answer to a follow up question they replied that they would of course be happy to accept the 'fixed' bird to do the recuperation and possible rehabilitation and release back to the wild. If you are ever in our situation then, as they say. "now you know" but for me, reading between the lines from my slightly guilty viewpoint, having destroyed the bird, I could see a couple of issues which still lead me back to having done the right thing. One was that Niall Curran, though no doubt an excellent vet, probably does not work for free and Eagles Flying looked a bit like they were swerving the vet costs in my direction. The second was that I was not 100% sure the hawk could ever be released back to the wild so that I might have just created one more captive 'zoo' bird. So, there it is. Make of it all what you will.

Ear tag number 274. I love this bullock. 

My other continuing saga is of JD Bob and the cattle which you will be delighted to know are now pretty much sorted, all be it with 2 new twists in the plot. Bob himself has now been diagnosed with a possible broken bone in his foot and hence his failure to 'get better' as quickly as he'd like and we therefore have a run to Roscommon's embattled hospital next week for X-rays etc. Then last night quite late we took an anxious call from Bob who had spotted a break out. One of the groups of 7 bullocks had managed to break a fence post and escape into the neighbouring farmer's land, hungry for some female company. We had a bit of running around today, then (another example of Bob failing to rest his injured foot!) to extract the 7 from the girls' territory and repair the broken fence.

The original 'Wild Bunch' (those who were jumping the fences "like hunters") were finally corraled and collected by the meat factory. Everyone was pleased to be finished with them.

Theo, who is a tiny little man, is almost eye to eye
with our enormous turkey, Tom as they warily
check each other out. 

On Tuesday we play host to Liz's Mum and Dad, Steak Lady and Mr SL who come up to give Liz a bit of an early birthday treat and presents, to have a look round and to take a light lunch. With impeccable timing the sun bursts through the cloud and we can all enjoy a beautiful warm sit out front like normal people do in warm sunny August in places other than Roscommon (!).

Those biro-thick feather shafts emerging from Tom's tail.

Tom the turkey comes over to check out the 'strangers' but quickly decides they are harmless and welcome and joins our matey little group at the terrace table. As he grows back his new feathers after his moult which had him very threadbare and woe-begone, he is now starting to look magnificent again. The 'shield' feathers on the lower wing are a beautiful burnished bronze colour and the tail fan is starting to look a bit peacock shaped. We are impressed by the size of the feather shafts for these big feathers, which are as thick as a biro.

This lovely set of books were part of Liz's birthday present.

Finally a bit of sad news to relate as we lost a good friend, Sean R suddenly. He was a lovely, popular man and always so full of life, the father of one of the students Liz teaches and husband to Dawn, who has appeared in these posts. They were the family involved in recent goat-move posts and the people who gave us the cat, 'Soldier' because they were planning to move back home to the UK. Our thoughts are with the family at this sad and difficult time. Rest in Peace, Sean; way too young and taken too soon. We will miss you.

Meat Birds

Hubbards at week 10, having a lie down to rest from all that
eating and all that growing.

At this time of year we start to feel a bit 'over-run' with chickens. Our Hubbard 'meat birds' are 10 weeks old now and seem HUGE, like good sized white, honest, chicken-shaped chickens; they have left all traces of fluffy chick babyhood behind them. They are also lazy things and their idea of free range is to hang around in the yard and by the back door waiting for the next dole out of food, so they begin to feel a bit as if they are under foot. This is no doubt bad tactics for a meat bird, because we humans find ourselves starting to appraise them in a new, not quite so benign way - look at the legs on that, feel the heft of the bird, feel that breast-meat and so on.

Busy hands for about an hour per bird, but they are fairly
easy to pluck. There is more risk of that tender skin ripping
 than of leaving any feathers in. 

Going on previous years, when we have not 'harvested' (now, there's a euphemism!) them till about week 12 or 16, though we know that the commercial boys will have had them all sorted by weight/size long ago, we would not normally be starting them yet, but we decided to try a couple at this stage. Our process involves me killing them and passing them straight in to Liz while they are still warm. Liz plucks them dry, singes them if they need it and then guts them out and tidies them up for either cooking or the freezer, jointed if appropriate.

Oven-ready at 2.45 and 2.75 kg respectively. 

The Hubbard is an excellent bird for meat - we certainly think it is the meatiest, tastiest and most delicious chicken we have ever had. We enjoy them in all manner of recipes but we rather fancied having our first one of the year just roasted with oil and salt and with just lemon and garlic stuffed up its 'fundament', to get the full flavour un-enhanced by sauces or fancy marinade. It did not disappoint and the bird was so big (at 2.75 kg oven ready) that we actually only had the legs and a wing at that first meal. Like the Christmas turkey it reappeared as risotto the next day and will join me for a solo supper of stuffed pepper tonight, with Liz off on another Silverwood run minding 'Daddy' while Steak Lady whizzes up to Dublin.

"Gribbly bits" - not everyone's taste but we like the  livers, hearts
and gizzards off our birds too.

They say that every part of the pig is used except for its squeal, and we seem to come pretty close with these Hubbards. Liz saves the hearts, livers (for paté) and gizzards. If you have never had gizzard, I recommend you try it. The gizzard is a powerful food-grinding structure like the stomach of a mammal which also contains grit to help with breaking down the corn and therefore has a very tough lining to stop the grit damaging the gizzard (stomach) muscles.

The finest roast chicken you can come by.

That part is inedible, but if you slit the gizzard open you can easily then cut out the sheet of tough lining, leaving you with pure, lean, fine-grained muscle as good and red as the muscle of heart or steak. Cut it up into bite sized pieces and use in stir-fry or toss, fried, into a salad. We tend to use the hearts in the same way; they just need trimming to remove any membrane and tubular bits which you do not fancy. I'll leave the liver to you - everyone has a good liver-paté recipe somewhere.

New potatoes from the poly tunnel. "British Queen", I think.

That meal turned out to be a first for this season of that lovely and satisfying thing, a menu sourced entirely from your own 'farm'. We had gone exploring in the polytunnel and found, to our delight, that the spuds were ready; our first go at new potatoes in the tunnel. These had been planted on 20th March (Solar Eclipse day, if you remember) so were only 15 weeks old and they were streets ahead of any outdoor crop, but I was worried that in the tunnel, where you never seem to be able to get enough water onto things, we'd have no crop. We were wrong, and the goodly bucket load in the picture is from one plant. The soil left behind is so good, that we are now thinking we might do more spuds across the rest of the tunnel in the future or, possibly now for Christmas as crops finishing permit.

That front garden gravel strip gets its first (Rhapsody in Blue)
rose and then, with the encroaching grass of the drive (right)
 close-shaved, it looks even neater. 

Spuds, then, and chicken, but we fleshed the meal out with purple-sprouting (ex-freezer) and a salad of lettuce, radish and chives. Gorgeous. Only the PSB was not killed/harvested on that very day. If we'd not had a bottle of rosé to hand, even the drink could have been ours - that lovely sharp, lemony elderflower cordial.

Shepherding the "flock" home to the East Field of an evening.
It's more like them scampering and me trying to keep up!

What else is new? The baby turkeys have now passed the 4-week stage, so have finished with all that "electric hen" heat-pad pandering and being rescued back to the spare bedroom at night. These nights are lovely and warm, so they are now outdoor birds, all be it in a rabbit run with a lovely warm, dry, draft-free "bedroom" into which to retreat. They are doing really well and have you in mind of Hubbards with their growth rate but, as Liz pointed out, they have a good deal of growing they NEED to do to reach Christmas Dinner weights. The 2nd batch is still in egg-form, with hatch day due in a couple of days. Regular readers will recall that I am a bit worried on behalf of these 5 possibles because of the nasty, long power cut we had in the middle. We were minus power for a good 6 hours and I was putting mugs of boiling water into the incubator and throwing blankets over it to try to keep the temperature up. At about 3 pm I was contemplating sitting with the eggs tucked down my shirt when the power came back on. We'll see, I guess.

Tom is on the right in this pic by younger brother, Mark, which
was actually taken in 2013. I have no more recent picture.

Finally on this one, I need to say a big Happy Birthday to "big brother" Tom, who is 60 today. Tom does not do internet or on line, but he does get to read this in hard copy when Mum gets one through the post, so all the best, Tom. Hope you had a great day. When I spoke to him today and asked was he doing anything special he said, "No, just working". That would be fairly typical for we three brothers, never great ones for 'ripping it up'. I certainly spent my UK time trying to keep mine quiet and my head below the parapet; the fewer people who knew it was my Birthday the happier I was! Good on yer, Tom. Many more.

Red Rag...

Red 'rag' to a 'Stag' Turkey? Liz's scarlet pyjamas

Liz got a nasty surprise recently when normally placid, wouldn't-hurt-a-fly, male turkey, 'Tom' decided to attack her. He did the proper rearing up, both feet off the ground, flying kick thing and caught her a couple of quite nasty bruises and abrasions one on each thigh. We'd seen him do plenty of displaying at both of us but only actually seen him square up to our 2nd-in-command rooster, 'Captain', so Liz, who had stepped out into the yard still in her PJs to enjoy the morning sun,  saw him stalk over and thought no more of it. She was taken by surprise when he launched himself and then she nipped indoors a bit quick to slam the door on the rude lad.

Is this the biggest single geranium plant you ever did see?
The variety is 'Orion'. 

We wondered if perhaps the bright red PJs had anything to do with it, and we are now sure that's what was riling him. Turkeys do very red facial displays, with all their fancy excrescences going from dull blue-grey, through bright blue to bright red, so it would be logical for red to be an unwise response. Liz has since tried the same move in all the other colours she wears, to no effect. She then tried the red PJs one more time, out at the front of the house just to test the theory with Tom way away over by the pond. He spotted her and made a bee-line charge across the drive and car port, so that she had to grab a Curver-bucket and plonk it over his head while she retreated backwards indoors. Mad bird (Tom, not Lizzie!). Generally, like most poultry keepers, we would not tolerate an aggressive cock-bird, but we are forgiving Tom for now as we can manage the behaviour by just not wearing bright red PJs out of doors during the breeding season.

In the 'craft' department, Liz has a new weapon in the armoury, a good second hand sewing machine found for her by local expert Carolyn (of the mini horses). Carolyn used to service and demonstrate machines to customers and now runs evening classes for the likes of Liz who is experienced but rusty and would be unfamiliar with these new machines with their fancy electronics and broad choice of stitch-types. Liz has one such class tonight and takes her own machine along to be shown new stuff on.

Carding Lily's first-cut wool

Meanwhile, Carolyn herself has been restoring and exploring an olde spinning wheel, using the fleece we sheared from our ewes, Polly and Lily. This is mainly Lily at the moment (just because she got that first and has put it through the washing stages and has now carded some of it). This turned out to be a bit of a problem because where I had made such a 'Horlicks' of shearing Lily in two halves (outer and inner wool), the wool strands are only half as long as they should be (2 inches instead of about 4) which makes carding easier but spinning is tricky. You have to tease lots of fibres out of the carded mass of wool and feed them onto the spinning wheel without the not-yet-spun strand of wool breaking.

Lily's wool on the spinning wheel. 

The spinning wheel is an old one from (Carloyn thinks) around the 40s and they have had to get it going again with no instructions, just from working out engineering "first principles" with only some explanatory videos on the web (and a helpful expert at the end of an e-mail). They are getting there but suffering from the machine over-spinning the wool so that it knots up and struggling to create knit-able, even wool strands. Nothing if not determined though, this wool is going to get spun and a garment or test square knitted from it "even if (she) then puts the machine away in a cupboard and never touches it again!" It is fascinating to watch the process but we think that maybe Liz has the easier task, mastering the modern electronics of the sewing machine. We all believe that there are no evening classes for this spinning skill for miles around.

Gorgeous lamb's liver paté

In the cookery department, several nice recent successes including 2 new recipes which will become 'keepers' and get filed on our repertoire. Both the new ones are from internet friends, one of whom has made a move a bit like ours, out of a long-term career (Accounting in her case) into a brand new life (professional cook/caterer). She had posted a version of cous-cous salad which sounded interesting mainly because it had no cous-sous in it (!). We like cous cous, but were intrigued by this alternative - cauliflower florets 'whizzed' up raw into tiny crumbs the size of cous-cous bits which you then steam only enough to cook them but so that they keep the nutty, lots-of-bits, mouth-feel of cooked cous-cous. You don't want them turning to veg-mush like overcooked courgette, Yuck. Then of course, you make up your salad with the usual fried/roasted peppers, toms, onions, garlic or what ever you'd normally use in a cous-cous. We were delighted.

We always say soufflé is easier and nicer with your own
good, very fresh, free range eggs. 

The other new-comer was a version of lamb-liver paté using allspice. It was suggested that if you were not an over-keen liver nut, and lamb's liver can be VERY liver-tasting, then this recipe reduced the 'livery-ness' a bit. What ever the truth, this paté was gorgeous, one of the best I have ever tasted. I like my paté a tad 'coarse' (bitty) in texture, so this was only 'blitzed' to a degree, but if you like a smooth paté then there would be no reason why you couldn't do all the fine sieving rigmarole to get the bits out. It would taste just as good. The third notable success was a cracking set of cheese soufflés, always easier and nicer with your own good, very fresh, free range eggs.

Not one to be proud of - probably should get the brake linings
checked before they are stripped bare and down to the metal!

In other news we are getting the car ready for sale (actually part-exchange) and we may have found a replacement but more on this in the next post. We do not want to tempt fate by describing a car and then it all going "Pete Tong" on us. Suffice to say that we could not look a salesman in the eye knowing that the front end of the car was making those metal-on-metal grinding noises (aside from the risk of driving around with rubbish front stopping-power), so the car was off this morning to get shiny new front discs and pads. Yesterday we had to play take off the tow hitch games. We may just buy a car for which the hitch was compatible and the said salesman had already said he'd be perfectly happy for us to excude it from any deal. No-one wants a tow hitch, he assured us.

The baby turkeys at three weeks old - they get to go outside
on warm dry days but get rescued back indoors at night. 

And finally a nice surprise greeted me under the elderberry bush. Regular readers may recall that we had what we thought was a rather hopeless mother Buff Orpington hen go broody under the bush and gave us some hand-wringing times with her fierce determination to stay right there, rather than get moved to somewhere safe and fox-proof. In the end we gave in and created a fox-barrier round her but she seemed to be too bored to be a successful broody. She first evicted one egg and left it, all lonely, outside the nest, never pulling it back under her skirts, and she spent more than an hour off the nest, sometimes two times a day just wandering around. We were sure the eggs would be chilled and lost but today (while she was off again) I checked the eggs and could see one was well into 'pipping', with the little chick's beak clearly visible moving about inside the hole it was making through the shell. Now, we have been in this game too long (even the short time we HAVE been!) to start counting babies when they are only half way out and Mum was quickly back on today. Only she will know what's going on under her skirts but Liz is joking that if she hatches more than "Hen with One Chick" she will be unbearable. We are suitably chastened and humbled by our lack of faith. The 'hopeless broody' has at least brought one to full term.