Silver

I couldn't quite stay away. In particular, I couldn't let a major milestone like our 25th Wedding Anniversary slip by without a mention. 3rd November 2018, High Noon, as Elizabeth loves to point out.

Plan A had been to take the weekend off in Westport at a nice hotel, nice restaurant. We had Charlotte of the Mini Horses* lined up with time taken off work to cover the farm baby-sitting. Then I got sick and the hospital visit  and op were looming over us, threatening to scupper any plans we might have involving hotel bookings plus I'm on restricted fluid intake so I'd have been the one ordering quarter pints of Guinness!

We decided to rein it all in, stand Charlotte down and re-schedule a 25.5th  or 26th Anniversary when we are over this hump and we know where we are. Plan B was to be a home version of the fine dining, some wine and with the place set up as much like a hotel environment as we could manage - house gleaming like a spotless new pin., best table linen and fancy candlesticks, best china (I'm pretty sure the china is also 25 years old - it was surely a wedding present).

Near neighbour and local florist supplied these gorgeous
flowers.

It was a miserable, wet, cold day, so we also had fires going at both ends of the house and a goodly stack of logs on hand. I was set up to "cheat" a bit surreptitiously on the fluid volumes - saving myself (almost) enough cc on the water bottle that I could join Mrs C in 2 glasses of the fizz, a glass of the posh Beaujolais and a 'tint' of Teelings whiskey with the cheese.

The menu was as follows......

Salmon Fish Cakes with salsa of tomato and cucumber.

Steak with roast-on-the-vine cherry toms and duxelle (mushrooms)

Pear and chocolate tart

Cashel Blue cheese with slices of pear and water biscuits

'Fizz' - McGuigan's (Oz) frizzante

'Fleurie' Beaujolais from Francois Dubessy

Teelings whiskey

Nom Nommetty Nom!

Ooops. Looks a bit black in the pic but trust me, that's
just the mushrooms (Duxelle). Steak was deliciously rare
inside

It all added up to a superb, splendid day and evening and, for me, a lovely relaxing spoil. The Lady of the House, of course, was on duty for which I am so, so grateful, swapping between accessorising her floaty dress and pearls with a champagne coloured shawl and the kitchen apron, one minute 'Domestic Goddess', the next 'Domestic Help'.

Pear and chocolate tart to the right..

The steak had come from our good friends and local butchers, Ignatius (and Joe) Gannon down in Castlerea, who "deal with" our lambs when required. Joe had thrown a couple of burgers into the bag for good luck and both congratulated us on the 25 years.

When you can't have many cc of liquid in
the day, might as well make them count.

After a suitable rest (a 'trou Normande'?) to let the pear and chocolate tart settle (I love that combination of flavours) we segued into the Cashel Blue cheese and with that cleared away, we played a couple of games of Quixx (one to me, one drawn) and adjourned into the Sitting Room for a nice long evening of reading and total rest congratulating ourselves on a Celebration well planned and excellently executed.

We also thoroughly appreciated the blizzard of congratulations and good wishes that come to us via Facebook and Twitter whenever we have one of these family type things to 'announce', so if you are an FB-er or a Twitterer and happen to be reading this too, then thank you very very much if you supported us that way. Plenty of jokes about the "next 25 years" too of course - I'd be 86, which is quite do-able if I can get through the current hiatus. Who knows what the future holds. 

Ah well, just a couple of unrelated pics to use up. The 'pie' is my Turkey-Shepherd's pie. 

Deefer.

The picture of Deefer is one Elizabeth took of her asleep on my lap last night. Have a good weekend, all.

* Charlotte of the Mini Horses has pretty much handed the horses (Romeo, Bob and Cody) back to Mum and has branched out into 6 (at the last count) goats. Good luck with those, Char' ! 

(A Very Polite) Bollox to Brexit?

Season of open fires in the Sitting Room

Good progress on all fronts for this post.

Progressing especially well, this Help-X 'session', 10 days with Judith and Vicky. I have gone in constant fear that they will use up all the jobs and we will have nothing left for them to do, they are so fast and efficient. Having mowed their way round all the nominal 'lawns' and grassy places, I sent them off yesterday to 'top off' all the old nettle patches in the sheep (East) field. One had the mower set to its highest setting (and no grass-box), the other the brush cutter.

Sheep field mowed in stripes

The brush cutter is quite bad for vibrations into your hands and wrists, so we always advise the volunteers to swap over every hour, to avoid anyone getting coal miner's "Vibration White Finger" (OK maybe not that bad).

A bit lost in the acre field. Our 16" cut mower.

As I said, my intent was for them just to buzz off the old nettle flower-stems, but not only did they run both machines out of fuel, they had started to join up the 'dots' running the mower between clumps of nettles till it was easier to just mow the whole thing like a lawn. We have, I suspect, the only sheep field in Roscommon mowed in neat stripes. They have not, in fact, taken much length off the grass, so we hope they have not damaged our supply of winter grazing.

Towser is in the sink here and has both girls "at" him!

The girls have also fallen more and more in love with the dogs and are now always found with a dog on their lap during 'down time', bathing the three on one occasion and now taking them for their daily walks, either down to the bridge or out across the big local bog, 'Kiltybranks' (a favourite walk of mine before I got sick).

Veg lasagne, Medical Student style! Delicious.

We like our volunteers to cook us a meal from their home-place (if they want to). Vicky and Judith went for a superb veggie lasagne and very delicious it was too. They also expressed an interest in trying our goose eggs but NOT in cooking them as we would for breakfast with toast 'soldiers'. They wanted them 'a bit stiffer' than I had described the 'UK Dippy eggs', so a 12-14 minute boil rather than our ten. They like the yolks to be nearly set.

Goose eggs for breakfast, Cheers!

Then for bread, they had a slice of my good sourdough each on-the-side and in Judith's case buttered and smeared with jam so she could swap between egg spooned out of the shell, and mouthfuls of bread/jam but ne'er the twain shall meet. Each to their own, I guess.

Finally on the Help-X-ers for this one, they took today as a day off going touristing to the coastal town of Westport. I dropped them to the railway station for a 10 am train and collected them again at 20 past 7. Elizabeth and I had an easy, free day.

Brushing the dogs out after their shampoo.

But what of my Brexit reference in the header. When I am not just focusing on this, my own blog, I sometimes wander over to the one being written by the brother, Mark.
  http://caretowers.blogspot.com/
Mark is similar to us in having retired early and now 'living a dream' but his dream (as is only right) is very different to ours. He was never a one for the farming. He and his wife (Susan) spend their days travelling all around the world, cruising or rolling their own holidays, walking nearer to home, seeking out good eateries or interesting shopping in cities. They are an amusing read on occasions, especially knowing Mark well and being able to see how he is seeing things.

His most recent post has them headed to London to see an exhibition of "affordable art" but accidentally clashing with a gazillion other people packed like sardines into the train, headed for the "People's March" for a 2nd Brexit Referendum. The 'madding crowd' had them changing travel plans quite a few times as they tried to get to the art and then later to Fortnum and Mason for some shopping and I was chuckling away at his description of the polite, middle-class, 'protesters' obediently leaving their placards with the Fortnum's door man while they nipped out of the march for a little shopping on the side, presumably to collect them later. Nice one Mark.

A Visit From The Dans

Welcome aboard, Dan and Dan.

As promised, a post mainly about the current visit from Friends of the Blog, 'Dan and Dan(ielle)', a.k.a. "Mr and Mrs Dan". These two have been here before several times, but normally as a rest cure (though once Dan came alone, to write up a Masters thesis). This time they wanted to support us in our hour of need for volunteer labour, so were determined to be more like Help-X students than holiday makers. Most welcome and huge thanks, Dan and Dan. It had been lovely to see them again.

All three dogs adopt Danielle on the black sofa. Here, Deefer
seems to be doing a 'High 5'

They flew in to Knock on a very early flight on Wednesday having been woken up in Milton Keynes by an 0430 alarm. They hired a car at Knock; previously they have brought their own car across on the ferry but that loses them a whole day at either end, travelling.

Danielle on the mower. It was a bit random, but eventually the
mown patches got joined up.

I wasn't at all sure how the 'volunteering' would work out. They are city types with no garden and no experience of the physical jobs we might need doing round here on the small-holding; mowing, splitting logs and so on. Also, these two are family and good friends, so I did not want them to fail at anything or get upset, so I wondered if I might have to be a very gentle 'boss'.

Team effort alternating the mower pushing with the bag empties

In the event, I need not have worried. They are also enviably full of youth, strength and fitness, so they went at every task with enthusiasm, power and increasing skill and speed. They have LOADS done. Despite the early start and long travelling time, the first afternoon had them master the mower and mow the entire pond-garden.

Refreshments near Westport.

Day 2 and we all woke up to heavy drizzle, so mowing was off and the pair decided to go touristing, taking their hire car off to Westport, a look at Achill Island and some of the twisty, mountainy country roads of the "Wild Atlantic Way". They stopped, of course, at the odd pub for refreshments. Some of the pictures in this blog post are theirs, taken on their phones.

Dan getting tight into the edges by the living willow arch/tunnel

Today, then, back onto the treadmill with more work. They really got stuck in; Dan was still mowing at 5 pm! Other jobs today included breaking up the messy stack of old roof timbers from the chicken house into single clean lengths.

Attacking the pile of old roof beams.

This had been cut up as it stood, with all the 'A' shapes and 'T' joints intact, making for a very untidy pile. With Dan on the nail-bar and lump hammer and Danielle putting all the bits together like a giant jig-saw puzzle, the big random heap was quickly re-assembled as a neat efficient stack up on 'skids' out of the wet and flat of top for easy sheeting from the rain.

Dan goes lumberjack on the old hawthorn
hedge

One day I will be fit enough to zoom round it with the chain saw and reduce it to 16" lengths for the range. I pray! The chain saw is one piece of kit I do NOT let the volunteers play with.

The next job was unusual and, I suspect, a unique one locally. Friends of the Blog may recall that we have a decapitated hawthorn hedge up between the front lawn and the 'Primrose Path' and that we also have a ewe (Myfanwy) with an itchy patch in her middle back which we are just now starting to cure. Among the ewe's favourite scratching posts are some of the "overhanging" limbs of the old hedge which she can get right under and itch upwards.We want to put the sheep back on the front lawn (to save the mowing) but we needed to cut off all these offending limbs before we let Myfanwy anywhere near them, or she'd just open up all the nice new tender skin again.

Feast fit for a heart-patient? Don't worry, I
reined it in a bit!

Obviously, this was also a visit by cherished cousins, so the catering dept has also swung into full, 5-star, envelope pushing action. There has been duck in Guinness sauce followed by choc-cake and home made lemon ice cream. There has been a superb, creamy, cidery 'Somerset Pork'. There has been a gorgeous fish pie and a lunch time version of the full Irish (breakfast) fry. These have been well accompanied by interesting salads and side dishes.

Somerset Pork.

Danielle is a cider drinker, so she has been working her way through some local small-brewery, artisan type ciders and Dan loves the local "red ale" style beers, so he's been ranging around those.  I'm still on restricted fluids, so I get to taste these goodies but can only look at these pints getting poured and quaffed. One day......

Good Night all.

Ah well. That is surely enough for this one. Dan and Dan are here with us tomorrow and then head off back for their flight home on Sunday, so more on the  visit in Tuesday's post. Good luck now.

Daisy Cutters

Cat Basket Lady with 3 of her 4 chicks

Friends of the Blog may recall that we are now down to our last broody birds at what will probably be the end of this year's breeding season. The last indoor bird, Cat Basket Lady, came off the nest this week with her 4 successful hatches, 3 yellow and one black. She is now well into the "teaching them to be chickens" phase and we see her all around the site, the yard and the grass.

A lovely vegetarian Mex spread for one
 of the suppers

That leaves us with just 2 birds AWOL who we hope are out there somewhere, hidden up in the hedges, sitting on eggs and trying not to be eaten by the fox. One is the Guinea hen who went "off piste" 5 days before I came out of hospital. If she's still out there, that makes her due in a week and a half. Just maybe she will shepherd any successful babies ("keets") home to us and delight us (and her 3 patient 'husbands') one day.

We passed our NCT (= MOT) and I was delighted to be reminded
that this car is still not 10 years old, so NCTs are only every OTHER
year. Expires 2020.

Also out there but not quite so promising is a white hen we call Connie. As of now she has been out there way too long, her eggs will be well past it and we also have a mini-tragedy in her motherhood career.

2 nice steaks made a change to the diet of vegetarian food.

Last week, one morning, when I was the only one up, a commotion of geese in the yard called me running, thinking we had a fox. The Guineas were screaming and I let the dogs go to do their thing. Well, there was no fox, but as the geese moved off I saw a sad, lemon-yellow fluff-ball lying in the yard where they'd been. I also noticed that Connie the hen, AWOL for 3 weeks or so, was back in the yard and chuntering in an upset way.

Daisy the Pig as back seat passenger.

The fluff turned out to be a very new, but dead hen-chick, so my best guess at what had happened was this. Connie had come off her AWOL nest with a single successful chick, but then led it into the yard and way too close to the goslings. The geese would not have tolerated that and quickly killed it. Poor Connie. She stuck around for the morning, chuntering, and then disappeared AWOL again. She may have gone back to the nest to try some more, but the eggs will have been badly chilled in the interim, and she will almost certainly fail, get bored and return to us. If the fox does not find her first.

Have new OSB apron. I'm going in!

The Help-X lasses have gone a-touristing, a train journey to Westport yesterday and then a bus trip out to very popular tourist destination Achill Island, to stay overnight and return tonight (Fri). One of them is a vegetarian and we have been exploring the veggie repertoire out of solidarity with her but, 2-3 weeks in we were starting to crave meat. With the girls off site, it was the perfect opportunity to have steak and chips. Also, by happy chance, it was also the day we collected the pig carcass from town, so we would have a chance to butcher that up without inadvertently upsetting anyone, and squirrel it away in the freezer, out of sight.

The new pork-butcher extricates a sheet of ribs

We had a thoroughly enjoyable time at the cutting. With me being still restricted to 'light duties', we did this one on a 50/50 basis, Elizabeth doing her sawing and knife work while I took a breather and advised her. This was her first pig. It was great teamwork and we had the whole pig (Daisy) cut up in about an hour and a half. That is now wrapped, bagged, labelled and in the freezer. All except for a huge 'ham' joint which we will brine up and keep for Christmas.

Hubble bubble boil and....... The split head gets boiled down.

We also got back the heart, liver, the head (split) for brawn, and a bonus couple of trays of sausage rolls. This morning The Woman of the House took on the boiled head and has produced some rather lovely looking brawn (low salt, by all accounts, for the sake of the 'heart patient'), a rillette made from a pot of neck meat so tender and light looking it might be crab meat, and a stock so rich it sets as jelly when cool. The dogs will get the ears and tail roasted and chopped up as treats, the chickens get a few gribbly bits and we only threw away the skull bones.

A good size ham joint waiting for its fancy spiced brine to cool.

We are now coming to then end of our little time with these Help-X-ers, Emma and Flora. They are home again tonight from Achill, then around for Saturday (we will not make them work!) but on to a train or bus on Sunday morning bound for Sligo and their next 'placement'. On the Monday we take delivery of our next Help-X, a lad this time, Rafael, another Frenchman.

Cuts of Daisy the Pig

He is with us for 3 weeks and by another happy coincidence we may be replacing that chicken house roof. Builder friend K-Dub has us booked in for the 13th and has come to measure up and given me a list of timber and materials to buy in the interim. With me 'Tom-Dick', I was worried I'd not be able to help, passing timbers and sheets of corrugated up to K-Dub up his ladder, but with new guy Rafael here we should be well manned up. That poor 'house' has been under its "temporary" tarpaulin roof for 18 months now and I'd be very worried asking the tarp to survive another winter.

Butcher's bonus. A gift of sausage rolls.

Enough for this one. Good luck now.

Final Fry Up, Final Milk Feed

He looks well served. What will the rest of
us be having?

Our normal procedure for seeing guests off the premises involves giving them a "proper Irish Fry" breakfast on their final morning before dropping them off to the airport. The fry, which would be well loaded with sausages, rashers, white pudding, black pudding, beans, mushrooms, scrambled eggs etc sees the guest right through the flights and any onward journey without needing to eat airline or motorway services food.

Last year's pigs and I make the May pages
of the OSB calendar. Bottom left here.

Our Help-X lad, Carsten, however, was not a great one for the breakfasts, preferring a light meal of just bread and butter, glass of fruit juice and cup of tea. Also, he was not flying, only catching a train at 2 pm headed west to the town of Westport; with that timing, The Woman of the House was always going to do him a fine packed lunch.

The Amelanchia is looking like doing us
a fine job flowering this year. 

Carsten still wanted to experience this culinary delight though, so we opted for having the fry as his final evening meal. He definitely enjoyed it and dipped back in many times for seconds, thirds etc.

The sheep in 'The Woods'

The rest, as they say, is history. I dropped him to the railway station for his train and he is by now, we hope well installed at his new job on Achill Island. Up to now I have always said that the best kind of Help X guest are the ones you'd use all the good adjectives for - fit, strong, able, helpful, fast learner, safe, happy, positive etc. For Carsten I am going to up the 'ante' and add another clause. - ones where you wish they weren't actually leaving! I could easily have used Carsten for another week or more. Ah well. Welcome back here any time, friend.

By chance, Carsten was also the last guest to bottle feed the lamb, Bábóg. I had 2 grass-related problems and we solved both on a '2 birds with one stone' basis, plus a third thrown in for good measure. Out in the East Field the grass is still very shorn (by the sheep) and is not moving much yet in this slow Spring. The sheep were shouting hopefully for hay or crunch every time a human appeared. Meanwhile, in the wooded bit by our drive, the grass and herbage was getting long enough to need mowing.

First class transport for ducklings to their
new, outdoor quarters

The fence there is not good and certainly not sheep-tight, so I'd been wary of letting the sheep at it in case they headed for the hills. Elizabeth, fortunately, is braver than me about these things and thought that the sheep would be so delighted with this new grazing and browse, they'd stay around, at least till their bellies were full. After that they'd be biddable enough to be led meekly home to the secure field for a lie down and a ruminate. So it proved and they have now had 2 days at this.

What's this odd green stuff under our feet?

On the first day we both noticed that bottle-fed Bábóg seemed to be tucking into the green stuff with gusto. Weaning bottle fed lambs is quite a tricky process because you have to do it hard and fast. Their little rumens get out of balance ferment-wise if you keep giving them big shots of milk.

Dad introduces himself. 

The advice is to let them get to 7 weeks old (tick) and "make sure" they are eating around 250 g of 'solids' per day, then just STOP the bottle feeds. We both reckoned that she was eating easily that so Nurse Elizabeth (I/C Maternity Unit), dropped the axe and lo!  the girl is weaned. Even she seems to understand and her hopeful bleating has all become very uncertain and half hearted. After half an hour in the woods, her little tummy (OK, huge fat gut) is bulging and she needs a lie down with the rest of them. So that is it. She's done. Does anyone need a third of a bag of Lamlac formula powder?

Turkey sex here seems to involve a lot
of standing on top of your wife and not
a lot of contact between the vital 'bits'.

Our other progress since Carsten departed is that the ducklings have now been moved to their new quarters, a rabbit run with a 'bedroom' section. It is so warm at the moment that we think they can do very well without the 'electric hen' which never really works for ducklings anyway. It is designed for baby chicks to creep in under it as they would their Mum's skirts, and feel the warmth on their backs. Ducks is different. If they tried to creep in under Mum they'd be under water, so their instinct is to climb up on her back and blag a piggy-back ride. When they sit up on top of the electric hen, they do not get much benefit from the warming plate.

Towser climbs onto the keyhole bed, the better to observe
proceedings.

So, they spent the day outside in the lovely sunshine meeting a succession of our other birds who all happen by in the course of their free range circling. All three of our grown up ducks came and said 'Hello'. Time enough for them to meet face to face when they are big enough to cope with those drakes 'laying down the law'.

Roast Lamb supper.

That is probably enough for this one. It is 9 pm and I should probably go and have the now-nightly argument with the Guinea Fowl about the need to go to bed before Mr Fox comes calling.