Pods and Pump Out

A size-able machine for manouvring on your precious
mown grass. 

Friends of the Blog will know that I have been eagerly awaiting the arrival of a man to do the pump-out on our septic tank. Probably not the best subject for a blog-post (I hope you've had your dinner!)  but a vital part of servicing a small-holding in the West of Ireland, where no mains sewage system comes within tens of miles of us. Also a service not met by some dinky 'Council' contractor with a small truck and garden-friendly equipment.

The huge tank and massive pipe make the "tiny" septic tank
 look really silly!

Here it is some local Agricultural Contractor who will turn up with a huge 4WD tractor and a slurry tank capable of taking massive doses of cattle slurry from the underground tanks below the big "slatted floor" of a winter cattle-shed. These rigs look to be 30-40 feet long (must admit, didn't actually measure it!) and need BIG spaces to manouvre in and to turn around.

For the first time in 5 years we can see the tank empty. The guy
also advises us to fit a 'T' and an up-pipe to the end of that exit
pipe you can see in the pic. 

When you book one and start to worry about this, you realise the lack of wisdom in all your decisions to put a rinky-dink gateway here which is OK for your Fiat Panda and a 6' by 4' 2-pig trailer, and a fence to contain your geese, or a few new trees planted just so. There is also the issue of the guy turning the rig round on your precious grass just so close to your pond. I ended up ripping out some fences and gateways just to get the guy to the tank.

Ah well, he came, he saw, he managed to turn the 'rig' with only one tractor tyre dipped into the pond (!)  and he sucked us all up. His huge tank/pump did such a good job on the 'water' that we might have been left with all the floating solids sitting on the sediment, but the guy turned the pump the other way and whooshed a great dollop of the 'water' back down into our tank to stir it all up and then sucked up the loosened up mixture.

Ooops.
Just the one tyre dipped into the pond.

The tank, we can now see, is a good solidly built sound affair, about 6 feet by 4 and 5'9" deep. Our man advised us to enhance the outflow with a vertical up-pipe and a 'T' - that way apparently the floating solids cannot block the outflow because the outflow draws 'water' from half way up the tank. We live and learn.

The other interesting aspect of this to us was that you are expected (most people.....) to have a place for the guy to empty the tank - a handy chunk of bog for example. They do not normally get asked to take it away and will charge you more for that add-on. Well, we have no such handy bog-field and I did not want 4000 litres of human "waste" spread all over the veg patch or the sheep grazing (even assuming the rig could get access). I happily paid the extra and watched the half-full tanker trundle off down the road. The guy was actually from nearby village Gortaganny and was off to a wedding after my job. He'd already met his friends for Breakfast in Balla-D where they'd joked with him that he better wash the tanker down before he arrived at the Ceremony. A nice lad. We will definitely use him again if we need someone, but we hope the tank with it's newly enhanced outflow will go another 6 years first!

In some lights this gnarly old bit of hawthorn reminds me of a
spooky dog. 

Meanwhile, while I'm on the entertainment value of Septic Tank emptying, I thought you might appreciate a list of our newest version of 'entertainment' out here where we have chosen to eschew TV, where we've watched all the 'old TV' we felt like buying as boxed sets, where we can't reliably get Radio 4 and we cannot get anything 'big' through the rubbish broad-band. That is the relatively new medium of Pod-Casts, or "pods".

We still follow, to a degree, the American politics pods from outlets such as Crooked Media, 538 and NPR (National Public Radio) but after the initial excitement of Trump's coming to power, these have waned a bit because nothing much is happening.

https://crooked.com/podcast-series/pod-save-america/
https://crooked.com/podcast-series/pod-save-the-world/
http://www.npr.org/podcasts/
https://fivethirtyeight.com/tag/politics-podcast/

Baby Horse Chestnut doing its Autumn thing

We are glued, currently, to the Guardian's Brexit one, "Brexit Means" which seems to be standing aghast and watching with increasing horror as the Brexit process stutters and stalls and comes unravelled. The most recent, which covered farming, was truly scary.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/audio/2017/oct/25/what-will-become-of-food-and-farming-brexit-means-podcast

Misty Autumn Morning

We also enjoy a series of pods from a pair of friends who cover modern Irish culture and direction by also describing the history of these aspects and how Ireland arrived at its current position. The most recent covered the very controversial abortion issue and the planned Referendum next year to "Repeal the 8th" (Amendment to the Constitution).

https://theirishpassport.com/podcast/episode-11-abortion/

I am glued to a farming one by a guy (Will Penri Evans) who farms in Wales and who is on a mission to 'sell' farming to the wider public as a good thing. He gets a different guest on each week for an hour long interview, the guests being the great/good/influential from UK (and overseas) agriculture, particularly when they have a Twitter presence, most recently Tom Edwards who has, over the last few years, set up a company making a 'craft' gin (Warner and Edwards Rhubarb Gin)

http://rockandrollfarming.libsyn.com/website/028-united-in-spirit

Finally, there is a nice one I have only recently locked on to, done via Radio Cardiff by a friend I have 'met' through the Irish Smallholders' Twitter account. She is either Helen Joy or Valerie Chicken (according to taste) and the pods are called "World of Joy". The most recent one covered attempts to re-vitalise the rural economy in the Vale of Glamorgan.

https://www.mixcloud.com/RadioCardiffPodcasts/

If you fancy any of those, be our guests.

Queen of Lists

Mum returns from her wedding in Derbyshire making record time down on the clear roads and arriving well before lunch. Dad is out. He's given us a good walk round the cemetery but then taken off to the SB Cambria to join the army of volunteers down there in the warm breezy weather slapping yet more undercoat onto the barge's flat belly. One new face among the volunteers today, Dad's 2CV chum 'Enthusiastic Pete'.

Mum has thoroughly enjoyed herself, being part of the wedding of cousin Danielle and meeting all the others. Danielle, she reports is a one for her 'lists'. Anyone who knows Mum knows she will make a list for any event - holidays, social gatherings, special meals, jobs and tasks as well as the run-of-the-mill shopping lists. This girl though, is in a league of her own, says Mum and family member, fellow guest and official wedding photographer, Ian had the list of required photo groups saved to his 'blackberry' and had to keep referring to it lest he miss one vital shot.

Talking of which, Dad is one for his photography and Mum is now gently teasing him into 'camera envy' having admired Ian's collection of Canon bodies and lenses. Dad says... 'look - there are worse sins and worse ways to spend your hard earned cash'.

Nice day for a... white wedding

Good Friday, but Dad works in the "depot that never sleeps", so he's in in the morning. Big day for one of his colleagues today - Ebonie's getting married. The forecast is not good and, as part of the do, the happy couple have booked an open-top horse-and-carriage ride from the wedding venue to the evening "do" venue - a few minutes by car but an hour and a quarter by h+c.

Luckily the weather, here at any rate, holds off and it's sunny for several hours round about the time of the ride. We know this because Dad grabs the chance to head for the allotment with chitted spuds and onion sets all in need of planting. We aren't let loose at the allotments at present because too many plot holders have finely manicured tilths and perfect rows of seedlings in seedbeds, but we're taken up later on our walk, so we can see the results of his labours.

There's another squirrel taken up residence in the rose and honeysuckle tangle on the back of the house. It's a small and probably young animal, so is way too agile for us, and drives us mad by scampering towards the house, in full view of the back windows, along the top of the neighbour's fence. We can only squeak and hop about inside, driven mad by frustration.

Ah well, it just remains to wish Ebonie and Craig all the best so, in yer best cock-a-ney karaoke voices-ah! Orllll togevvah nah !

.........I gotta be there in the morning - ah!
Spruced up and lookin' in me prime.
Some bloke who's able
Lift up the table,
And get em to the church on time! ah!
If I am flying
Then shoot me down.
If I am wooin'..... etc to fade.......,

Deefski Doolittle-Ah!