Few Words, Fewer Pictures

We are in the quiet times between the end of a  busy fortnight of hosting our latest Help-X couple and anything else happening. In line with my policy of "If you've nothing to say, then say nothing", this will be the shortest post in recent weeks, with few words and even fewer pictures.

That turkey-tom got himself plucked and jointed up for the freezer. He was enormous - we didn't weigh him but he must have easily been up at the 10 kg mark. The thighs alone were over 500 g each. The Woman of the House estimated up the portions for each freezer bag and thinks the bird will go 29-30 portions total.

I have mentioned before that turkeys form a very strong pair-bond and the surviving bird, when he/she loses the partner, can go into a decline and pine away, dying of what some would call a 'broken heart'. I'm not so sure about that, but we have had a male bird die in the past for no apparent reason and after some odd symptoms (heat stroke?) when his wife went off to go broody in a hedge off site and never reappeared. Fox attack? We have no idea.

At times like this the catering goes into 'tidy' up mode, using up a rake of small bits of left overs from the Help-X meals (pig kidneys and apple sauce anyone?). We hate food waste here and we are pretty good at the left overs. This form of cooking we call "bottom of the fridge".

An opportunity, perhaps, to give you a health update. I was called in to the GP yesterday for a flu' jab and a pneumonia shot. Elizabeth tells me I may well be in a "high risk" category. Can't imagine why, can you? :-) So, I am now 10 weeks out of hospital and have achieved the planned "stable" state - neither getting particularly better or worse. I am not congesting up with fluid and most nights I sleep soundly from 10 pm through to 7 am, with very little now of that ticklish cough which was killing my sleep. The cough gets me some nights, but usually when I've maybe overdone the day-time napping I'm not as tired as I should be.

I am still very short of breath and any attempt to walk at normal speed or lift/carry anything results rapidly in a tightness of chest and internal 'Whoa' warnings - slow down, lean on that fence and gaze at sheep while you get your breath back. I assume that the leaky heart valve just leaks more when put under stress, so I do not get the expected surge of good, oxygenated blood. I am waiting, then, on the valve replacement surgery which will happen when I am called into Dublin Hospital (St James???). I am relying on this work to give me a good effective heart again and to relieve me of these frustrating and depressing feelings of being, simply, SO BLOODY ILL. In my dreams I will then be able to start IMPROVING again back to normal breathing, normal strength and ability to work.

If I'm not struggling for breath, of course, and if I've been sitting or standing still, my oxygen sats come back up to 96% and I am in the pink of a healthy, smiley, farmery glow. Friends and visitors come expecting me to LOOK ill and relief spreads across their faces..... "You look WELL, Matt.. good to see you back on your feet". They assume I am fixed. It makes me feel almost fraudulent to have to disillusion them with my "Well, not actually....." On the plus side, this reminds me every day that I am a long way from being the worst off heart patient out there.

More news next time, I hope.

A Muck Sweat

Hi. As I write this it is half past 5 in the morning and a beautiful peachy-orange sun is rising into a(nother) cloudless sky right outside the back door. It is going to be another scorcher peaking up into the 29º to 30º area. The Woman of the House is still very much enjoying them, ambling about in her shorts determined to get "at least some colour" into her legs while batting away the mozzies. I must admit, my appetite for heat is a tad jaded at this stage but you will not see me writing a word of complaint; you only have to look at the endless cold, wet, snowy, windy blog posts from about September to April to know that we get enough of the "other stuff" and our memories are raw.

Blue skies

My current state of health has added its own seasoning to this mix. I am messed up completely and unable to do a stroke of work. Those antibiotics in the previous post ran their course and finished this Monday and although they had given me a promising explosion of 'productive' coughing, a muck sweat or two, bursts of dead-tiredness that had me snatching 2 hour naps morning and afternoon, they did not seem to free up my lungs. Shortness of breath still has me leaning, gasping on a fence after the shortest walk or easiest job.

Young ducks discover the pond.

I was back to the doctor's on Tuesday to see what was progressing but, not only was the real doc still away, but the very competent nurse who saw me was away too, and a locum was taking the calls. Obviously this means telling the story all over again and, in this case finding the locum unwilling to do anything positive as my notes were still not back from Sligo Hospital. So, take it easy Mr Patient and none of that heavy lifting / mucking out now (kinda got that one, thanks) and come back and see us next week when another new medic will be on hand to tell you whether your notes are back yet.

So, another week for me of shirking round the place doing a lot of healing sleep, while for Elizabeth, the stock tasks made a bit more interesting by the heat. All the birds and animals need extra attention to their water supplies, shade sheets for their runs (and even freezer packs for some). There are buckets and tubs everywhere. Those young 'Appleyard' ducks have outgrown their big Tupperware "bath" and the Duck-Master General has invented for them a paddly pool made from a big blue plastic fruit-juice barrel split in half and propped at a jaunty angle. Filled with a hose, this gives them a nice depth of water for some total-immersion baptism malarkey, one at once, supervised by Mumma-Duck.

St John's Eve fire heap

The perceptive among you (and those not knocked sideways by an excessive need to sleep in the shade) will have noticed that this post is 2 days late. I don't know what happened to Tuesday. I'd been a bit short on stories going into the weekend but on Saturday (23rd), Bonfire Night had happened so I was looking good for the Tuesday, business as usual.

Arsonist #1 soon has a good blaze going

Regular readers will know that the only day we can legally light bonfires in (Republic of ) Ireland is 23rd June, St. John's Eve, one of these Christian-ised festival dates presumably derived from Mid Summer's Day. The Ladies are traditionally meant to engage in lots of leppin' about, singing and dancing, while we blokes go in more for the feats of strength and athletic (cough) stuff. There was jumping through the fire and, I guess, the odd drink was taken.

Tha Appleyards get a new pond

There is also a fair amount of the 'warding off bad spirits' stuff. I read mention of a tall, herby plant which has the Irish name "hocusfian" (though I've not manged to find out what this is in English). Bonfire attendees would run round tapping their plant off as many folk as possible to pick up the bad vibes before throwing the plant in the fire. You could also pull up examples of all your most troublesome weeds and thrown them in which would ensure they were not so troublesome next year. Look out 'creeping buttercup', I say. I can see that working...hmmm..... the actual plant you throw into the fire would not trouble you again, I suppose.

January born lamb Tigger comes back from the butcher

In the morning, you could then scatter the ashes from the fire about your land to spread the good stuff about. If there was a new built dwelling in the village it was good to light the first ever fire in that hearth from the glowing embers of the St.John fire.

Apricot flan

Especially auspicious

Plant More Peas, You Fool!

Pear blossom

Dog owners will know that every now and again dogs get sick. #1 Daughter here, my 12 year old bitch (Westie) is, fortunately, one of those who will tell you in advance that she is feeling sick and needs to be let out to eat some grass and sort herself. Even at 05:00, that's better than her leaving it till she actually 'produces'. Deefer 'tells' me by whimpering miserably every couple of seconds which wakes me up and I can then hear that her belly is squelching and gurgling dangerously. I cannot sleep through that and it wouldn't be fair to.

Apple Blossom

So, at 05:00 on Monday morning, I am out on the front lawn with all three dogs (you can't leave two indoors - they would bark and wake the Woman of the House). You know what? It was beautiful. It was barely light with dawn just starting in the East. It was warm and windless, dry and calm.

For the first time this year, our young greengage tree has blossom

The Dawn Chorus was going at it hammer and tongs and (I think) four cuckoos were calling from the four points of the compass. A cock pheasant was throwing in the odd 'ker-chang!' and a wood pigeon was cooing energetically. In Sussex, they say that the wood pigeon shouts "Plant more peas, you fool!", or so an ancient, weathered, son-of-the-soil farmer (Les) I used to work for told me back in the 70s, anyway. It sounds about right. At one point a large-ish bat flew through in a straight line... possible Liesler's Bat then but I'm no expert.

The beech leaves are coming out. I love that 'acid green' colour
and , yes, that is an out of focus pig in the background. 

We did our quarter of an hour of allowing Deefer to eat the long grass and try to be sick, then we all trooped back indoors. We did it all again at 06:00 and then gave up and woke up and got up properly at about quarter past 7. Deefer declined her breakfast but you'll be relieved to know, she was OK and sorted by lunchtime.

Polly the ewe enjoys the longer grass round the
willow archway.

Meanwhile we have got ourselves firmly into the routine of letting the sheep out twice a day to get at the longer grass outside the field. So far this has held no fears and caused no escapes. We supervise them out for between half and a whole hour. Either the two of us do it or either of us are happy to do this single handed. I say 'supervise' - what we actually do is stand around leaning on fences, chatting, or take a coffee and sit in our 'Darby and Joan' chairs out by the pond in the warm sunshine. It is a thoroughly enjoyable and pleasant "job".

Ewes and lambs round the pond.

The sheep, including all the now weaned or nearly-weaned lambs do a brilliant job mowing the open spaces but even better, nibble in close all around the edges, trees and fence-bases where you'd not get with a mower. They take grass, ground elder, creeping buttercup, selfheal, cow-parsley (Queen Anne's Lace here) and any other herbs they can get.

Tightly curled tail is the sign of a happy pig.

They fill up that rumen in about 45 minutes, at which point you can see they are losing focus and would, given the chance, go for a lie down. You would have to supervise that, too, which might get a bit boring. Luckily, at that stage they are very biddable and more than willing to follow any human carrying a bucket of grub back to the gated field to take their rest. They have a small helping of their 'crunch' as a dessert and we leave them be for a few hours (or over night) to ruminate that lot (cudding) before we do it all again. As a result, they are puttying on some good condition and I have not yet had to fire up the mower.

Plant more peas, you fool!

In other news. and as a nice segue from those Wood Pigeon calls, we have been thoroughly enjoying this proper improvement in the weather and have made a good start on the vegetable gardening. Elizabeth went off today in the car with a wad of cash and returned with trays and trays of seedling plants - caulis, cabbages, carrots, parsnips etc, plus pot-grown herbs and packets of seed - peas of course!

Elizabeth trying to garden 'helped' by chickens. This involved
a lot of shouting at birds and shoo-ing them off with a stick. 

Friends of the Blog will know that with Help-X Carsten's assistance, the three 'empty' railway sleeper beds in the Kitchen Garden got a  thorough weeding and a good mulch of compost. The two strawberry beds have also now been weeded. The empty ones are now well planted with the new plants but with space allowed for succession planting. Inevitably this involved the chickens all trying to get involved so there was plenty of repelling 'boarders' and the new rows are now securely protected by our chicken-wire cages and frames.

Kato trying to work out how to get up to the
starling's nest above that overflow pipe.

I have also been down a couple of times to help archery friends Con and Niamh with various 'many hands' tasks down at their place including today putting the conical canvas 'hats' on the two round-houses they have in their repro fort. It's a bit like putting up a small marquee and involves plenty of wrangling canvas while balanced at the top of a ladder clinging to the central upright pole of the house. All good clean fun.

That is probably enough for this one. Talk again soon.