2000th Post

A first frost and an icy sunrise across the East Field

In the last epistle, I drew attention to some votes happening in Ireland and said that I might let you know the results, this mainly for my UK readers. Well the standing President (Michael D Higgins or "Miggledy") did indeed get re-elected by a huge margin and stands for another 7 years. The "crime" of blasphemy was also voted to be removed from the Constitution.

Vicky doles out breakfast on the early morning livestock rounds

Farewell to the Help-X lasses, Vicky and Judith who were our final Help-X guests of the year. We have received a couple of requests since but, honestly, we are so tidy and so ready for winter after the last couple of sessions, that we cannot see a week's work for even a single volunteer.

The ducks get their breakfast.

Vicky and Judith were brilliant, hard working, enthusiastic, hugely useful around the house and pure pleasure to host. They also bonded very closely with the dogs, especially Towser and Poppea (Deefer mainly chose to stay with her 'Dad'). We have never had the dogs so 'loved up' by any volunteers and we are sure the girls will really miss the dogs and vice versa.

First frost for the Help-X-ers' final morning

The last working day for the pair was Saturday and they chose to continue the pressure-washing job, this time on the back terrace, an area of shamefully broken up concrete which is forever growing grass in the many cracks and can be quite skiddy, partly with chicken poo in the wet. This is a high traffic area as it is the route from Kitchen to Utility Room, and is also in the "when we win the Lotto" plan; the concrete will be ripped up and replaced by new block-paving PLUS it will all be covered by a lean-to "cloister" arrangement. In the meantime, a good blast with the pressure washer at least has it free of grass, mud and chook-poo and a nice pale grey, dry, clean, concrete colour.

The ducks hesitate when they see the frozen pond. "There's
something wrong with the water, Dad!"

The Help-X-ers woke up to our first frost on their final morning. We were able after the breakfast rounds of poultry, to watch the young ducks discover the frozen pond and try to work out how to cope with it. The clocks had changed to GMT over night, so it was also bright sunshine. They were very wary. All 6 hung back, peering over the brim and wondering what was wrong with the water. Even the 'Mother' duck who had lived through at least one winter stopped but it occurred to me, she had lived up till we got her in a concrete yard with only paddling pools for water, so may not have needed to cope with ice.

Khaki drake does "ice breaker"

Eventually, having worked their way round the pond a bit to see if there were any less 'scary' places to jump in, the Khaki Campbell drake slid in and promptly skated across the pond to the 'beach' as if  frightened by the unfamiliar feeling under foot. This broke up the ice enough (it was only thin) that the rest of them felt safe enough to follow.

That was pretty much it for the girls. Elizabeth did them the house speciality "Eggs in Purgatory" as a light lunch before I dropped them to Castlerea railway station and hugged them a fond farewell. They would spend a couple of days in Dublin doing 'tourist', flying home to Germany on Monday (yesterday). They are, you will recall, 5 years into their Doctor-training, so they have completed the basic course and now get a year of learning their chosen 'specialities'  (one "radiology", the other "internal medicine"). This is going to be a parting of the ways for them after spending 5 years as best mates and fellow students. Judith will do one of her specialities in the island of Reunion, off Madagascar. They were sure they would meet up again in the future but possibly not work closely together again.

I have taken up card-patience again as a way of passing the
time while I can't work any sense.

We will miss them a lot, but we also love to get the house back. Help-X-ers are dead easy to host but they are here full time and sometimes you just want to be on your own, or just the two of us. I also get 10 days of making sure I am up for breakfast for/with them and sorting the  out tasks, showing them the machines or the jobs and generally feeling like I need to be on my best behaviour. It is a bit unrelenting and the end of it comes with a big sigh of relief.

200th and possibly final post 

...And so, my 2000th post. 12 years or so of posting 2 a week. Maybe I should have saved something momentous or land-markish to go in this one but, no, it has just come out with the usual hum drum everyday tale of small-holdering folk. I should probably say a huge thank you to all the readers out there and supporters - there are now around 130 to 200 of you look at each post. I must confess I am wondering whether to park it for a while, to give it a bit of a holiday. This being ill thing has me at a bit of a low ebb and, unable to actually DO anything round the 'farm', so it is a struggle to come up with material to put in here. Ah well. We will see. If a post does not appear on Friday, you will know what is what. Good luck now.

A Bunch of Weirdoes

Troughing but in a strange order. 

This season we seem to have accumulated, by chance, an odd bunch of weirdoes for livestock. Friends of the Blog will recall that I was mildly worried about the pigs' lack of enthusiasm for food. Well, they are hungry enough now and wake up and trot out to receive their breakfast or supper and they leave none in the bowl by the next meal but I am amazed by the order in which they take their 'courses'.

Pride sniffs a slice of galia melon

I give these snufflers mainly a commercial pig ration which is a grey/brown pellet looking a bit like the Layers' Pellets, poultry keepers would be familiar with. Worried that this looks just plain boring, I shake the ration up with a handful of flaked barley and throw in on top any cut up fruit I can get really cheap in the supermarket 'reduced' racks. It makes a nice varied meal for them while still giving them all the nutrients they need.

Empress checks out the breakfast potential.

All the pigs I have known or owned so far have taken one look and piled straight into the choicest items first, squabbling over the tomatoes and apple, and only eating the boring old ration when there was nothing else left. Not these two cherubs. They are first at the pig-nuts, shoving the lovely cooked new-potatoes and chunks of melons to the side of their bowl with their snouts the better to avoid accidentally biting the "dessert" course.

Kitchen progress. We pick out some floor tiles.

I have got bored and left by the time they must eat the fruit - it is certainly all gone by the time I return with the next meal but I have never seen more than a tentative exploratory chew on it. Never any enthusiastic schhhhlurrrping and dribbly, juice-leak, chewing like with previous piggies. Ah well, happy enough that they are eating and thriving, I guess. There is no rule that says pigs must eat melon.

These chooks have taken themselves off to 'bed' on this
perch 5 feet off the ground. The rabbit is on the bunny
'Maternity Unit' roof next to them.

Next up on weird-world, those rabbits. Having escaped their apiary pen they are now free range but if you expect them to run for it and end up eaten by Mr Fox somewhere 'out there' then worry not. These guys seem to naturally gravitate towards the house and yard and the out-buildings and prefer the grain thrown down for chickens to the 2.5 acres of good green natural grass and herbs (plus precious flowers and young trees!).

At 'bed time' for chickens as it gets dark, the chooks all take themselves off to their coops and their perching ladders in the out buildings. The rabbits go with them and one even climbs up somehow onto the former rabbit Maternity Unit roof, 4-5 feet off the ground so that he can "perch" alongside the chooks. They get locked in safe from the fox and are always sat just inside the doors when I go to let the birds out in the morning. They chase out to be first at the chicken feed and then go back to being grass-eaters once they've had their fill of breakfast. See? Weirdoes (or should that be "Weirdos"; I guess as it's only a made-up word I can do which ever plural I like).

Egg laid in the laundry pile.

Then there is the chicken who has taken to laying eggs in the 'waiting' laundry pile in the Utility Room. That room has a split door "stable door" style and in summer I generally leave it with the top half hooked open. One rainy day I was in and out of there and left the door fully open and returned to find all 5 of the new hens and their rooster (Herme) sheltering in there from the rain. Not wanting chicken poop on the 'dirty' clothes, I hooshed them out and shut the door and only later found an egg had been laid down in there on an old towel in the corner.

That scary looking Spanish goat cheese in the previous post
was nothing like as alarming inside and proved to be a lovely
strong flavoured crumbly-soft, pale cream coloured (slight pink
tinge) delight. "You know you've had cheese!" said our visitor

Well, it seems that the egg laying bird has now locked onto that site as a GOOD THING and goes back in each day to lay her daily egg even if I have the bottom half of the stable-door closed and she must have to fly up over that to get in. Determined lass, that. I will just have to be careful when sorting through my laundry for the machine - coloured, whites, delicates, woollens, eggs...oops!

The bugle from Charie Moss gets planted into the side of the
driveway. Pick-axe gardening. 

That's it for mad in this post. What else have we been up to? We have started into planting the various goodies from our trip to C Moss Perennials. This has meant getting the pick-axe out again; the bee-friendly plant, bugle (Ajuga reptans) is going in at the side of the drive to do ground-cover but needed a start-hole "drilled" into the compacted gravel there. That should get away nicely.

Waiting for planting. Pick axe at the ready.

This week we play host to the last in the current series of house guests, this one being our most excellent friend John, husband of the late Diane (Diamond, to this blog), who lives in our previous town, Faversham in Kent. If there are guests who are "difficult" and those who are less so, the John is definitely at the 'easy' and 'low maintenance' end of the spectrum.

Gifts from "home" - Micro-brewery beers and some Deep-South
Cajun flavourings from our old favourite world-deli and farm shop
 'Macknades Fine Foods' plus some new Kent gin flavours for Lizzie

Not only does he call to check whether there is anything from home we might be pining for (Gentleman's relish, Marmite etc), he arrives bearing gifts and there is nothing he likes better than a chance to help me in MY garden with the weeding, planting veg and other allotment-type work because he'd be away from his own plot for a whole week. He also loves a craft-beer and would regularly nip round for some of the 'take-away' (Tetra-pack 2 pint style) guest beers from local pub 'The Elephant' when ever we were round to Diane's for supper.

That gives me a chance to indulge here - Ireland is seeing a real flowering of the craft-beer, micro-brewery market and even the standard supermarkets like SuperValu stock a huge range with great long racks of display showing them all off. John and I headed for the SV in Balla-D and came out with 9 different beers to try (not all in one night!).

In the interest of research, you understand. 

I was intrigued to find that they even had a little promo-display for a new supplier, Sligo-based "Lough Gill Brewing Co" who seemed to be doing cans rather than bottles. A fun aspect of this trend is some of the funky funny names they dream up to make the beer more memorable and eye-catching; in the UK we are well used to the Hobgoblins, Old Speckled Hens and 'Waggle Dance'. One of Lough Gill's beers is called "Thieving Bastards" Pale Ale. How could you NOT pick one of those up? Blimey, we nearly have as many different beers in the house as Lizzie has types of gin! Sláinte!

The Loneliness Of......

Friends will know that neither Liz nor I have a whole lot to do with jogging, running, athletics or other sporty pursuits but today we managed to get involved a bit in a Half Marathon. We had no idea such an event was to puff, sore-legged and aching of lungs, past our front gate, till a red car pulled up and a lady hopped out to drop a letter into our post box (and set off the dogs a-barking). This note told us that the 'Ros go Run' Half Marathon and 10 km were happening today (Sunday) and subtly asked that we, the locals "ensure our pets are safe and secure during the run" which we took to mean "please don't let your doggies chase our runners!"

The note's writer also thought we might like to join 'Ros go Run' on the day as a participant (unlikely!), by cheering on the runners or by 'leaving out bottles of water'.  Naturally they had a Facebook presence and there was also a website where we could see the route and found that it passed us at nearly the 12 mile mark, almost home, and was going eastbound, so would crest the hill at Una's, just up the road, and then relax (comparatively) with the long down-slope to 'Shannon's Cross' junction. We decided we could have some fun setting up an impromptu water-station with a sign 20 yards out, our table full of cups of water, and then our wheelie bin for the spent cups a few yards further on.

I had a go at recreating the font of the logo and added 'Downhill from here'; green fence paint and red gloss on an old (unbleached organic cotton, no less!) duvet cover. We woke up and got organised on the day so that we could do all the morning jobs, walk the dogs and be through lunchtime sandwiches by the time the first runners, on their 11:30 am start were likely to pass (about 1 pm, in fact). We had lots of marshals and organisers 'bibbing' us up and throwing thumbs-up signs as they drove by and the Parish Priest even stopped to chat and to thank us for "such encouragement". Most of the 60 or so runners accepted a drink, some just up-ending the cup over their over-heated heads and many exchanged banter and joked with us as they jogged by. By the 12th mile they were well spread out so that we only had one or two in view at any one time and I could not take my hoped for 'knot of runners' picture. The loneliness of the long distance runner? Fair play to them; by the time they reached us they'd run about 11 miles more than I could manage, and were raising money for MS Ireland, the Éire Óg GAA Club and Lisacul Community Development ltd. We could hear the cheers and tannoy noise going on at the GAA Club just down the road as the runners started to pull in, their Half Marathons completed. Eventually, about 2 pm, the course closing car came through to tell us we had 'had them all now'.

At last, colour break on the beef toms

We enjoyed the event and we assume our little bit of volunteering was appreciated by the club and the locals; it certainly was by the thirsty runners. This was the first such run organised by the Ros go Run team and is described as 'inaugural' on the website. They were pleased with their 60 entry as the event clashed with a bigger run in Westport which was thought to have maybe drawn 'the Mayo lot' away, and today was also a huge day for the GAA sport 'hurling', with the All Ireland Senior Final happening in Dublin. Just in case they come this way again next year, we will keep the sign.

7.2 kg of blackberries in about an hour and a half.

In other news, John Deere Bob invited us down to pick the blackberries in his home fields. It's a job we both like and it was a lovely warm afternoon, so we wandered down and picked 7.196 kg between us in a leisurely hour and a half. In some places the berries were so close packed on the ends of branches that it looked like there was a 'super-berry' made up of a dozen or so berries and in others individual fruits were better separated but very big, approaching the size of the top of your thumb. Thanks you very much, Bob.

Onions tied into ropes in the car port

Pirate the Cat is settling well now in his 'compromise' accommodation, our Utility Room. Although not part of the indoors, it is an indoor style room with dry-lined and plastered walls, lighting and a central heating radiator. It is also warmed by the 'exhaust' from the three freezers one of which, at least, will be extracting the heat from all those blackberries. We have pegged the cat flap half-open and he is happy nipping in and out through that. He does not like the cat flap to be closed as he bonks his nose on it, failing to see the transparent flap.

One of our apples and a slice of Liz's apple cake.

Now that we know him better, we are sure he has only around 25% of normal sight and walks into things which he does not know or realise are there. He will come in through the front door and then try to walk out through it even though it has been closed - it is dark red so we think he assumes the opening is still there for him. If I move the bits of sheep wire around to manage sheep movements, he will walk into any new barriers I create - sheep wire is fairly thick gauge but a 4-6 inch square mesh so I guess does not cast much of a profile on clouded cat-eye retinas. However, the Utility Room will stay unchanged for the foreseeable future, so he will get to know where his bed and food bowl are and the access 'hole' so he will be safe and sound, as well as warm and dry.

101 uses for an old barn roof. Shoring up the pig defences.

Finally, those who predicted I might need electric fence for the pigs might have a smile at this paragraph. Although the sheep wire with its ground level strand of barbed, has worked everywhere else, down in the ditch/wallow I have not been so sure of it. The ditch started as a nice 'V' shaped 4 feet deep cut, about 6 feet wide with the East Field fence a good 2 feet from the edge of the ditch. But the piggies have enjoyed the wallow and have expanded the width of it by rootling into (and undercutting) the banks, so that it is more like an 8 feet wide 'U' shape, with the edge now creeping up on the bottom of the fence. I am in the UK soon for a short while and I did not want the pigs to decide to break out while Liz was in charge, so I have shored up the bank with some of the curved corrugated sheets which came off the hay barn (see, sometimes we 'hoarders of junk who keep old scrap because it might come in useful some day' get it right!)  so that the pigs cannot rootle any further into my banks and pop up, butter-wouldn't-melt, among the sheep!

Wood and More Wood

With rain falling on Thursday 10th I am snookered for outdoor work and decide to attack the next indoor project, this set of shelves for the Utility Room. The ultimate plan is to have our two room-height fridge/freezers at either end of the left hand side of the Utility Room, with 7 feet of free standing shelves down the left hand side between. Most of the stuff due to go here goes into the stack-able crates you can see bottom right of the shelves; spare jam jars, Christmas Decorations, Bread making stuff and so on. These slot neatly into an 11 inch space, so I went with 12 inch shelf spacings, 20 inches 'deep' and knocked up a simple design with uprights of 2 by 1.5 inch and laths of 2 by 1. Even my basic carpentry skills could manage that! I left any diagonal bracing till the end in case the structure was rigid enough without and this proved so, and I got away with it.

On January 11th, John Deere Bob generously gave me another lend of his tractor so that I could shuttle back and forth collecting the logs from the big ash tree down across the fields. Bob was out for the day and left me the keys and instructions to come and collect it from his cow pens. I walked down to get it at about 11.30 and then made 6 trips back and forth from the field loading the logs including some of the huge bits of trunk (one of which almost made a load on its own).

The big trunk bits had proved a bit too much for my saw and were also starting to blunt the chain on it, so I decided to lop them into 3-5 foot lengths and bring them home like that. I can stack them in a corner pending a chance to sharpen the saw again and then cut them into sensible rounds for axing up. We have so much wood now that these are probably going to be 2013/4 winter fuel so I have plenty of time.

With my wood store choc-a-block full and overflowing at ground level, I started a new stack on the wall of the yard. This I have now given a make-shift roof of coal sacks and corrugated iron which should allow it all to dry out. I will split the bigger bits with the axe once they are a bit dryer. Ash is much easier to split when dry. We are finding it a joy to burn - it gives a good fierce heat in the range. Bob advocates alternating ash with the spruce logs turn about as you lob them into the range which we will do but I must admit that the last huge load of ash filled the front row of my store, so that I can only get at the ash at present - we need to burn a bit to make space to play 'solitaire' games with the stock.

Big thanks to Bob, then for the use of the tractor. We have now pretty much met the need and we can close the gates and try to repair the tractor ruts I have made across where the pond garden will be this year.

The only other fun and games to report this week was a blocked sewer. We'd noticed around Christmas that the plumbing was starting to belch and gurgle when the washing machine was running. The washing machine is out in the Utility room but its outflow runs under the kitchen where it unites with the outflows from the two sinks before passing on into the kitchen garden. Here the upstairs outflows from shower, sink and loo join in the fun and everybody heads for the septic tank.

We thought nothing of the belching till Sat 12th when I noticed that while Liz showered, water was coming up from the inspection cover a couple of yards outside the kitchen window. We had a blockage which had possibly been slowly accumulating since April, when we finally moved out of the caravan and stopped using the chemical toilet. Still an hour of rodding with Liz as chief observer and sluicer of clean water plus flusher of loo at the end soon had the backlog hoofed down to the tank and we were flowing as clear as a trout stream again. This being a solid Irish farmhouse system, the main issue we had was that the inspection cover downstream and the septic tank cover are not lightweight galvanized or even paving slabs. They are huge thick concrete slabs which took two of us to prize up and "fold back" so that we could see what was up. All good fun on a Saturday lunchtime.

Dust Collectors

At risk of being seen as dust collectors, Dad has enjoyed being able to bring over to the new house his esoteric collection of 2CV models etc. This sat around the bay window in Faversham and was probably the bane of anyone's life who ever tried to dust in there (hey Angel B?). Well it all made the journey via BGL to the new house and is now being broken out again and has earned its place lined up along the book shelf-cum-mantle shelf in the spare bedroom. Some of these models are mini works of art. In France, where the 2CV is obviously an icon you can find all through the flea markets and tat shops, little 2CV models made from old tin cans, usually with the original design of the tin left on, so your 2CV will carry Schweppes soft drink logos or Coca Cola. One of our favourites is made from the tin which used to contain cockroach killer (Anti-Cafard). It always amused Mum, Dad and Diamond that the French go in for whole shops proudly geared to rat traps, vermin control, cockroach sprays and so on. None of your hidden-in-a-back-shelf delicacy for these French traders - great big logos in the front window with huge pictures of cockroaches, rats, mice, fleas etc and in-your-face gung-ho pictures of dead ones, weapons to kills them and so on. The "Anti-Cafard" shop in the 18th Arrondisement (Montmartre) was always a must-see landmark in their tours of Paris. So, finding an actual Anti-Cafard 2CV model was a treasured find! Also a picture of me finding out what the sink in the Utility Room is there for. I'm told this is because I rolled in some Charolais poo, but I can't see that's a good justification, can you? Mad Deefs

More Utility Room

Good progress this week too on the house's newest room, the Utility Room. With the boys unable to tile indoors on the Friday due to the non-drying self levelling compound, they brave the chill weather and get the 2nd 'coat' of torch-on tar felt laid on the Utility Room roof. Inside, the floor gets its layer of screed. Dad channels Maurice the Midnight Joker (who laid the floors indoors) to mix his own screed 'dry-mix', rake it flat then level and smooth down with the float, producing a decent surface (not bad for a beginner; Sparks proclaims in one of his "that is acceptable" builder phrases "Grand Cake, Nora!"). This screed layer will get a coat of self levelling compound to seal it and will then be tiled with the same floor tiles as are in the house. It looks amazingly different from the water containment 'tank' we first saw. It is now a room with a nice floor, plastered walls and a good high (and watertight) roof. The tar-felt needs wrangling into 'hems' at the edges but that will wait till next week.

Deefs

Utility Tank

In terms of transformation, the jobs in this project do not come more transformative than the story of our Utility room. This out building on the eastern end of the house was a small, dingy damp cold 'shed' with a low and mouldering roof which featured corrugated metal sheets, tar felt and chicken wire, the door on the end hanging off its hinges, half rotted away. It was full of wood worm infested desks, chairs and drawers full of old farm paperwork and, curiously, old school books and stuff relating to the school time of the Three Sisters and TK Min. We called it the "office", and wondered what to do with it.

It was Sparks's suggestion that we actually use it as part of the house, a Utility room for washing machines, a sink, chest freezer etc and that we therefore re-roof it, slab it with insulation sheets and have it plastered, wired and plumbed and give it a new door. Further, we could increase the size of it by knocking down the inner wall which ran along parallel to the house wall and 6 inches away, the gap between having long since been used as a dumping ground for scrap metal, bottles, bags and junk of all sorts. We could also build a new roof, attached to the house wall and sloping at a more useful, water-shedding angle.

That is what we've now done and these pictures show some of the stages. We rebuilt the roof and are giving it the 2 stage torch-on tar-felt treatment. The extra height was made with timber frames mounted on the old walls, covered with waterproof plywood, then meshed with "expanding metal" (mesh) to which render would stick, and the whole rendered by the plasterers on the Friday as a bit of a parting gift after all the plastering. It is now an impressive, clean space, a whole foot wider following ripping out the wall.

During the demolition phase of this we found that all wall-corners coved and there was 'plug hole' at the lowest point, so we wondered whether this might be a design made to enable jet washing the room. Perhaps it used to be a slaughter room or a butchery room where you'd need to hose down the walls? No such thing, we now know having met and shown round Anna-the-Vendor (more of that in another post). The room, prior to the door being cut in, was actually a rain water container - 4 walls of water-tight concrete. This explains the 6 inch separation from the house wall and the bizarre aiming of a gutter down-pipe straight at it, which we'd always been curious about. Apparently, once the TKs had got mains water, they no longer needed the huge water tank, so they cut the doorway into it and used it as an outbuilding. You live and learn.

Deefs

Spring in Rocommon

Dad has his first go at shuttering up and mixing concrete. This was the run of cables and pipes from kitchen to utility room (the former "office"). The walls of the house here are 50 cm thick and it wasn't realistic to drill through from utility room into the dining room, so the run of 2 cables, 4 water pipes (hot tap, cold taps, hot feed to radiator, cold return from radiator) and the waste pipe from the utility room sink were run outside the house at the base of the wall, then in through the kitchen wall which is a sensible thickness. The waste actually then falls down below the new concrete floor and unites with the kitchen waste to go out to our sewer/drain on the west end of the house. These pipes and cables were fixed to the wall at heights to give the waste a fall (slope). Dad then erected shuttering made of wood and old slate and poured concrete in to enclose the whole and protect it from the weather. The cable is of a special grade (NYM-J) which can handle being buried in concrete.

The other pics here show general spring-ness. Haggis is at the back door gazing out, we think wondering when the job will all be finished and he can finally lie down and sleep in front of a warm stove. There is a picture of the front door with its tete-a-tete daffodils in their pig-mash boiling cauldrons. The other picture is of the Tígín looking in the outer door and through to the yard through the other door. In our dreams the yard is a lovely sunny place, especially in the morning. Finally free from mud it is flattish and covered with pea-gravel, populated with nice terracotta pots of flowers and herbs, plus maybe a decorative piles or groups of the big boulders we have dug out of the house floor and apron. A white painted metal café table and chairs provide the breakfast coffee support. The resident coal tits, wrens and chaffinches nip about and the dogs laze in the morning sunshine.

Ahhh... soon.
Deefs