All Good Things

All good things, so they say, must come to an end, and we are now at, or coming to, the end of some crackers. Once again, I do not have many pics specific to these subjects (at least, not ones I haven't already used), so I will fill in with some nice '365' pics. That is one of the "things" anyway, so it works... ish. The other two are Christmas itself and my week of being curator on 'that' Twitter account.

We would normally dismantle Christmas here at some convenient weekend between New Year and 12th Night, demolish the tree, pack all the 'stuff' away into its crates but we were both enjoying this one so much that we had decided to do the job on the 5th (the 12th Day and all that). However, one of the delightful kitten-cats (we think) did a very smelly poo, we thought, under the tree and Liz, faced with a pot-holer style elbows-down crawl under the low branches to locate and remove the offending item, unilaterally decided that enough was enough. Demolition day is today!

Some of the hens are coming back into lay at last and the
surviving Marans hen has started (dark brown egg)

This afternoon, then, we have been finishing Christmas including me going back over the rooftops etc and all along that 48m fence you have heard about in other posts concertina-ing up the fairy lights. We're done. We both agree that this has been our nicest and most enjoyable Christmas for a while though it is hard to pinpoint any specific reason. Everything about it seemed to go off well from the start - planning, lists, preparations, the visit and everything we wanted to do. The food and drink were well judged and superbly executed, the present buying/giving was a success and the subsequent wind-down has been beautifully relaxing. Peace and good will to all reigned. We are all still smiling even as we pack the paraphernalia back in its crates. May we have many more as good as this one was.

Horsehair caught on a fence.

I noted in the previous post that inter-leaved through the back end of this Christmas was my week of being curator of the @smallholderIRL Twitter account. That too went very successfully and well and seemed to hit the right note(s) and has met with widespread thanks, approval and praise. That is always nice because you are always aware that you are firing off these soundbites that you think are funny, wise, appropriate, pithy or what ever but the 2500 followers out there are 99% unknown to you. They might vehemently disagree with your opinions, not find your quips funny, be irritated by your timing or tone. Some (we call them 'trolls') are just miserable gits who get their kicks by saying rude, nasty or provocative things just to see if they can get a rise out of people. All life is there and it can be tricky finding the right approach.

First 365 pic of 2017?

Lovely when you do though. I was fortunate in my assigned week running from St Stephen's Day (Boxing Day) to New Year's Day, so I had a couple of rich veins from which to draw my 'copy'. I had all the 'Wren Boys' tradition on St Stephen's Day, all the leftovers cookery, cold turkey sandwich jokes etc and then I came up with an inspired plan for New Years. Again, no idea if it would work - it might have fallen flat. I decided to 'First Foot' any followers who might not have a bloke to do it, or might not have heard of this Scottish tradition.

Happy New Year! First Footing 'treats' for the
Twitter account

I had set the account up during the day, telling them what to expect and all about First Footing, told them they needed to have the back door open before they open the front, to let the old year out, then I'd "arrive" (on Twitter) to greet them and hand them (a picture of) the plate containing the bread (signifying food), coal (warmth), salt (savour) and whiskey (good cheer). It was easy enough to do and went down OK - there was a reasonable smatter of comment, 'like's and thanks, though I did get the impression that most were a bit flummoxed and plenty had either gone to bed early or were at a 'proper' celebration with real First Footers. Ah well.

Icy Puddle

Nobody boo'd me off stage anyway and I woke up that day to run the account till 5 pm. when I had to hand in the 'keys' so that boss-lady (Margaret Griffin) could set it all up for this week's curator, a lady who does her small-holdering in up-state New York (would you believe - the account does 'foreign' guests now and then). This lady is currently amazing us all with tales of farming among her neighbouring 'Amish' folk and lovely pics of the area with snow on the ground and all those lovely Amish horse-drawn carts and buggies trundling through it. She tells us that they sometimes see bears and moose strolling about. They are, I think, only 'small' by USA standards - she talks of 100 head of cattle including a 60-70 head milking herd of Holsteins. They are within spitting distance of (I think I have this right) a National Wilderness Park called the 'Adirondak Park' - a MILLION acres of wilderness!!! Makes my week seem quite pedestrian!

Incoming female Mute Swan. I thought for a while she'd
land on my head but luckily she veered off. 

Also now in its final month, a project of which I have spoken countless times since we started back in February 2016 (and before it was actually born). This is our '365 Lisacul' thing, a photo 'diary' of the year (actually 366 as it was a leap-year) in, of and from the 18 townlands around our village. This was Liz's 'baby' really; she had borrowed the idea from our good friend Nathalie Banaigs who was in charge of the one done by Faversham, the town we lived in in the UK. This with Nath's blessing, of course.

I agreed to be the safety net / back stop. I would take at least 1 (actually always 3) usable picture EVERY day without fail from 1st Feb 2016 to 31st Jan 2017. I am delighted to be able to say that, so far at least, I have delivered this with no missing days. It has had its moments and frustrations and I have been unable to make some of the pics I had dreamed up work but over all it has been a blast. I have learned a lot and certainly hunted down all manner of nooks and crannies in the 'patch' which I would probably never have been to without the incentive.

I guess I know more bridges, lanes or corners where one townland finishes and another starts, than do most of the locals. I have also met lots of lovely people whom I would not otherwise have encountered. Plenty of them stop in their cars when they see me nose-down in a ditch trying to get just that angle on an orchid or something, or trying to pick my way through a bog where they know there is no safe path! Oh, so YOU'RE the camera guy!

New Year's Day sunrise through the trees.

Well, just 28 more photography days to go on that one - wish me luck. I'm not out of the woods yet. Then Liz and the team have the fun job of selecting which pics go in for what day. She has 30 contributors at this stage. It would be quite fun to be a fly on the wall that day.

Roast lamb, sprouts and chestnuts.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we are now settling into the New Year and starting to think about 2017. 2 livestock issues are pressing. We are off to meet our prospective piglet supplier in a couple of days. This guy is a new breeder of Oxford Sandy and Blacks (OSBs) who was setting up last year when we got our pair of gilts from our man in Kildare - you may recall that we had only to do the short drive to Boyle because he was driving up here anyway. It was to this new guy that he was going, to retrieve a sow, to take her back to Kildare to get her 'in-pig' (pregnant) by one of his home boars. Secondly, we have some duck eggs in our buddy Sue's incubator. These were laid by our surviving duck and we hope, fertilized by our surviving drake. Those two (William and Mary - some kind of connection with the 'of Orange' royals due to the Duck and Orange thing) are now our "parent generation" thanks to Mr Fox removing all the competition. The slap of tiny webbed feet is expected any day now (5th to 8th -ish). This will be our first Christmas (Re)Stocking. Geddit? OK, sorry. I'll save the witticisms for Twitter.

Show Some Decent Restraint

Santa did us proud this year.

There it was then. Christmas has come and gone. I am not about to bore you with a blow by blow account of all the food, drink, presents and all that; I will just give you a few details and comments and post up a few nice Seasonal pics. Over all it was a very good one in which we thoroughly enjoyed a very relaxing few days with Mum-in-Law (Steak Lady) here to stay for 4 nights.

She will, I am sure, not mind me saying that we thoroughly enjoy her company and she is one of those ideal kind of guests who seem to get along superbly with our style of hospitality. She needs no entertaining or keeping busy and completely relaxes. She loves all the food we serve to her and has all the drink she needs. She sleeps well and we are like a pampering spa-bath to her sense of well-being. She comes out with expressions like "I feel so much younger" or "I woke up so happy" and "It's like a 5-star hotel" or like Lourdes.

An Eve pint

She arrived on the Friday, so was here for the whole of the Eve, the Day, St Stephen's Day (Boxing Day to you Brits) and part of today. She came with us on an Eve visit to Carolyn and co (where-at the new house has that open-to-the-rafters kitchen and there is room for a 12 foot tree!), went to 'Midnight' Mass (9:30 pm) with Liz and came out to Sue and Rob's with us today when we nipped over to return the fox trap and the ram, Silas. We packed her off this afternoon with a wicker basket full of cold meat and left overs, a sack of ash-logs and a tray of 30 eggs (from Sue). A very successful visit. If we ever need to get into B+B ing we feel we could cope.

Regular readers will know that the main meal on the day was to be roast beef, a change from normal imposed by Brer Fox. That was not the only change away from our "normal" traditions. Normally we have a mad wrap-ripping fest as soon as we awake, up on the bed which leaves very few presents for downstairs. Steak Lady was likely to prefer a bit of a lie-in so we decided that we would just do the whole thing later. We would wait for everyone to wake up naturally, have a nice leisurely scrambled egg and salmon breakfast and only then do presents. In practise that took us round till gone 11 am by which time I needed to walk the dogs, so I sneaked that in too. We finished up at around midday.

In my family, such patience would be known as "showing decent restraint" and although across all the meals we ate enough to be as fat as fools, we also found ourselves (rather to our surprise) being restrained in the drink too. Maybe we are growing up at last. We had bought a rake of booze and more arrived from Santa but we would sit and sip happily at a Gluhwein, a wine, a whiskey, a beer or a G+T according to taste. Nobody got unduly 'squiffy' and there were no hang-overs. All in all a great success.

St Stephen's Day ham. Fans of the supermarket version may
think it not bright pink enough but that would just be because
they do not know that the pink is an artificial effect of using
dubious chemicals like nitrites in the cure.

Food and drink might go off at a tangent over the few days but the smallholding and stock 'show' must go on. Today we needed to head over to Sue and Rob's with the fox trap and the young ram we have been using to service our ewes.

Silas says his goodbyes to the ewes. 

The ram, Silas, is a tiny, 2016 ram lamb who we employed more for the practise than in any expectation of high lambing success. We are not 100% sure he managed to mount anyone but whether he did or no, he needs taking off the ewes now. The gestation period for ewes is 5 months, which brings us now to the end of May and I will need to be shearing the ewes to prevent fly-strike. You should not put pregnant ewes through anything as stressful as shearing, so we dare not risk Silas doing any 11th hour 'jobs'.

Silas walked out for loading into the trailer
behind me. 

On the fox front we are becoming a bit convinced now that we shot THE fox and solved the short-term problem. We have not seen hide nor hair of a fox since very early December despite our 24/7 fox watch and my frequent torch-beam hunts for eye-reflections after dark. I am not being complacent yet and I get the horrors at the thought of having to confess to you guys that we relaxed, left the chickens out unprotected and came back to another blanket of torn feathers all over the grass. However we did think that the fox-trap was no longer useful (for now) and Sue asked for it back, so that got loaded into the trailer alongside Silas.

A memorable trifle - the 'fruit' was a compote
of cranberry, apricot, date and raisins cooked
in orange juice with cinnamon and cloves.
The custard was of duck egg yolks. 

While we were on getting rid of surplus 'males'  it also became apparent that Mr Fox had left us out of balance in the chicken dept. with regard to the rooster/hen ratio. Ideally this should be around 7 hens to one roo'. That way he can cope with getting round them all each day to keep the eggs fertile, but each hen gets only a manageable share of his 'lurve'. We had 4 new Marans roosters coming of age and had lost a good few hens to the fox. We were starting to witness distressing 'gang-rape' scenes and some hens were getting threadbare and very unwilling to come out of the coop of a morning lest they got jumped by the roo's, sometimes 2 or 3 at once.

Hard to beat, bacon and cabbage. The cabbage gets cooked
in the liquor from the ham-boil which, in this recipe includes
ginger beer!

Time to 'off' some roo's. This is the least pleasant part of poultry keeping but you have to be able to do it. It is not fair on the hens to leave that situation to run. In fact it is not too difficult but we had Mum-in-Law up and I did not want to do any of these dark deeds with her present. I decided to crate the roosters for the day and sort them once Mum had been packed off.

The '365' show goes on too.

They roost high in the rafters of the barn (roosters seem to claim the highest, safest perches) and chickens cannot move about in the dark, so the wise poultry-man knows to catch them at night with a small torch. In this case I merely had to reach up and lift them by the legs, lowering them down into the crate without a fuss. Then I could move them easily to sort them once Mum had gone. They are now 'late' and will get plucked and dressed tomorrow. It may be my imagination but an air of calm and serenity seems to have descended on the rest of the birds. They now only have our old #1 Lieutenant Colonel Buff Orp rooster and one Cuckoo Marans boy. I will let you know how we get on.

Finally you might recall that St Stephen's Day here is the day for a rather bizarre but nice old tradition  of 'Wren Boys' when gangs of youths would work their way round the village carrying a caged wren and threatening to kill it unless the householders gave them gifts of money or food treats. They would wear straw 'mummers' costumes to disguise themselves. One old boy locally says he can remember when there were plenty but that they used to visit the "singing pubs" rather than houses. The tradition has almost died out now but we got one group last year and we were hoping for more this year.

Well, we got some. They were rather tiny and young, they were driven round by Mum, they arrived wearing Christmas jumpers and Santa masks and singing 'Jingle Bells'. Ah well. They tried - Mum said it was their first outing but that she remembers doing it as a kid herself. We gave them a good supply of chocolate biscuits and euros to encourage them.

IS(S) That Really Santa?

No rest for the girls on the 25th.

The boys at the International Space Station must have thought that all their birthdays had come at once in (British Isles) PR terms. They managed to get the beast to fly over Ireland and the UK not once but twice in full view of the excited Christmas Eve, Santa-obsessed children at a perfect time in the evening. For those who have not kept up to date on this project, the ISS is still 'up there' 16 years after the first bits were 'launched' (via a shuttle), all estimated $100 bn of it and is now 98% complete with just a couple more bits of laboratory to be banged up (this time in a Russian rocket). It 'flies' round in the lowest possible orbit, 242 miles above the earth (modern commercial long-haul jets fly at about 40,000 feet, or 7 and a half miles but in a series of loops like the wires on a balloon whisk, tracking a bit further north over 'you' at each pass. It takes about 92 minutes to orbit.

The geese survive to see their own Christmas Dinner of
spent sprout plants. 

It is so big (356 feet 'wide' and (soon) 240 feet long, roughly football pitch size) and it is made of shiny metal so it reflects so much sunlight back at the earth that, when it is there, it is the brightest "star" in the sky and it moves across the whole sky in 4 minutes or so, so it is moving as visibly 'fast' as a commercial jet, dead easy to spot even by the smallest 'Santa spotter'. With superb timing and by complete coincidence, it would be visible high in the sky at 5:20 pm on a clear, cloudless Christmas Eve night (!), going from SW, pretty much straight over, and then pass over again at 2 minutes to 7, lower in the sky. Parents everywhere were taking their kids out to show them 'Santa' flying past once to check up on them and warning them that he'd be back in 92 minutes to check they were all in bed. He's making a list, he's checking it TWICE. Excellent. We 'grown ups' were out there too, with a glass of wine watching both passes and raising our glasses - we two are in awe of this technology and knowing that it "is us up there". Fair play to them.

Comfy PJs for the 'duvet' days. 

Well, no obsessions and over-excited kiddies for us; we had a nice quiet relaxing Christmas planned and that is what we achieved, but I'm not about to bore you with all the details; you will probably have done your own thing and once was enough. We were sensibly restrained, though, in the event, with no obligation to eat more or drink more than we wanted to (nothing to prove, nobody urging us to take seconds or manage just one more drink, No forced jollity and certainly no games). I did get Shanghai'd by Bob, mind, who pounced on me when I was out with the dogs and forced me to drink a glass of Whiskey. Rough job this 'being neighbourly' but someone has to do it!

Tígín and the house from the back I nice inviting plume of
 smoke promises a toasty warm Living Room. 

Even our main meal was not the 'obligatory' turkey or goose (the geese were delighted!) - we did a baked gammon/ham with new potatoes and a mix of greens (yes, sprouts did feature); there was no starter and pud was our homemade Christmas Pud with just double cream ( I can't abide brandy-butter). Even our "Christmas Movie" was the not-very-seasonal 'Casablanca' with Bogart, Bergman and Paul Henreid. We turn the internet off for the whole day, adopting the Silverwood's policy of actually talking to each other! I know. We lit fires at both ends of the house, so the place was toasty warm. Very relaxing. Just what was needed.

Geriatric bunnies Ginny and Padfoot get whole carrots with
the leaves still on for Christmas. A firm favourite - they eat the
leaves first. 

Boxing Day (they call it 'St Stephen's Day' here, or more unusually "Stephens's Day" as if the guy was Mr Stephens already with an 's' on the end) was equally relaxing and unplanned, no visitors and no visits out. We'd done the 'in' visit earlier week with The Airy Fox and we are not due down to Silverwoods for a day or so. We woke up to a heavy fall of big wet snow flakes, but no laid snow. We wandered along to our friend and little aul' lady, Una and were plied with excellent home made mince pies and porter-cake (porter as in Guinness), 'tay' and brandy. We nipped out for milk and bread; Una did not need any shopping. I then walked the dogs along in the other direction and got Shanghai'd by Bob again (only tea this time).

A goodly selection of excellent books.

This time he asked me had we "seen any Wren-boys?" (he says 'Wran'); at that stage we hadn't but this reminded me of the Wren Boy tradition locally which I have, I am sure, described before. The local children would dress up as Mummers in straw costumes and parade round with a wren in a cage, demanding money and treats with menaces lest they kill the bird. I think, though the rhyme that Bob told me sounds like the intent was quite opposite

"Up with the kettle and down with the pan / now give us a penny to bury the 'Wran'! "

Mid-bake, the gammon joint gets its skin sliced off, the fat
cut into diamonds and dredged in brown sugar. A clove is
pressed into each 'diamond' and then it is back into the oven
for another 25 minutes.

These days of course, the wren is a protected species and anyway, the children are a lot less murderous (we hope!) so the kids come round ready to sing or play music for their donations. They don't seem to do the dressing up, either. Bob had had two lads who "played the mouth organ" to him. As I type this we have just been visited by a young lass being driven round in a car. She had on a Santa hat and played us a tune on a penny whistle. It was not that sure-footed a rendition and we think we heard strains of 'She is handsome, she is pretty' in it, but we clapped her vigorously and dropped a stack of Euro coins into her fist. She declined the Clementines. So, we have now officially been "Wran-boy'd" all be it by the female of the species

The newly planted daffs by the drive are starting to emerge. 

The incoming gifts this year included a nice healthy stack of excellent books (Thank you all concerned - we will be thanking you properly, of course!) with a good leaning towards food growing and cooking as well as a toehold into my 'new interest' of exploring history. It is only Boxing Day, so I've not done much more than open and flick through most of them, but I have delved into 'Gubbeen' and am very impressed. The 'Gubbeen' here is the famous artisan cheese which comes from the farm and dairy in Co. Cork, way down almost on Mizzen Head by the Fastnet Lighthouse. The 'team/family' there farm dairy cows and outdoor pigs as well as running a kitchen garden and all four main characters have contributed to the book. Hence there are sections by the main farmer and cattle-man, the pig products and smoke-house charcutier (who also makes kitchen and butcher knives), the wife who is also the main cheese-maker and the kitchen gardener and herb grower. As well as covering all these subjects (which fascinate me anyway), the farming and production is done in as sustainable and chemical-free way as practicable/possible - soil fertility has always been mainly by collecting sea-weed from the rocky shores; the kitchen garden is run on 'bio-dynamic' lines. I thoroughly recommend it if that's the kind of thing that floats your boat.

Muddy parsnips, dug for the 'day that's in it'.

Meanwhile, I hope you all continue to enjoy your Christmas and the run in to the New Year. Ahh, the Haggis.

George and the Ladies' Christmas

Red Kuri Squash - nice fudgy texture when roasted.

Hot on the heels of my 'Wren Boys' post comes another tradition from these parts which was new to me, that of Ladies' Christmas. Mrs Silverwood's post in Facebook has it thus. “Nollaig na mBan” or “Little Women’s Christmas” is an old custom that’s still celebrated by women all over Ireland. It goes back to the days when large families were the norm. Men never lifted a finger in the house to help, and were never expected to. If a man washed the dishes, he would be called an “auld woman” by other men. No full blooded Irish man was prepared to risk that!

Ominous sky precedes our latest "Category Orange" storm, Christine

But each year, after the Christmas holiday, tired women finally got a break – for one day, at least. On January 6th (the same day as the Epiphany), men would take over of the housework, offering women a chance to go out to relax with each other." Nollaig na mBan would be pronounced 'Nollag na Morn' or there abouts. Now call me a cynic but I think this tradition might be more 'fondly dreamed about' than actually happening. I cannot see those kind of blokes, Irish or otherwise, who'd let their women do all the work and never lift a finger, suddenly bringing their women folk tea and toast in bed on Day 12 and happily volunteering to knock up a delicious curry for when they get back from the pub.

George and the author. Note rainbow.

Readers who have been with me for the past 12 months, will know of our goose in-breeding problem. Our first three geese, Goosey, Goocey and Gander joined us last January advertised as a breed-able trio and we didn't know enough then to spot that Gander had serious wry-tail (or to realise that this might be a problem). We also suspect that they may have been a sibling group possibly even from the same clutch, brother and sisters. They settled in and got nice and clean and healthy; it was when they started breeding that we got some problems - infertile and dead-in-shell goslings, deformed babies with necks twisted round, goslings who went lame after a month or two, completely losing the motor control of their legs or just fading and dying. Out of 17 eggs incubated, we ended up with just 2 full grown young ones.

We decided to cease breeding with these three birds and to either just collect eggs (which one of the geese is still producing every other day all through Christmas and the New Year) or to swap out the gander so that we could out-cross rather than in-breed. Step forward then, our friends Carolyn and Charlotte of the miniature horses who had come out of geese after all sorts of fun and games with mink attacks but had been left with one lonely successful gosling.

This bird, named George even before anyone could sex him was hand reared by Charlotte and is as dotty and tame as anything, loving to have his neck tickled and to be cuddled and handled. As he was on his own, he grew up with Charlotte's motley mixture of call ducks and 'Swedish' ducks and most recently was running with a couple of drakes whom he used to marshall and follow around. We THINK he is a gander. A friend of Charlotte's who keeps a lot of geese thinks he is, from the stance and behaviour but admittedly did not pick him up to check his equipment.

George meets his women (He is closest to camera)

To cut a long story short, we have swapped out 'Gander' with 'George' today and George, after an hour in a holding pen to make sure they'd not fight and to let him see his new surroundings in peace, is now released into the orchard with the girls. They were a bit shouty when their previous fella suddenly disappeared, perhaps anxious to attract him back, but seem to have settled down now with George. I am hoping they have bonded enough to be able to shepherd all three 'home' tonight and shut them up in the relatively confined space of their sleeping quarters. I may have to quarter them apart for this first night. So.... welcome aboard George.

Nearly finished. Raglan sweater.

In other news we are currently surviving the recent wind storms (latest was named Christine; I don't know when Atlantic anti-cyclones started to get names) with, thankfully, no more damage. We experimented with a red kuri squash, a gift from the Silverwoods, and found that roasted it has a lovely delicate flavour and a fudgy texture. We will keep some seeds and try to get it to grow in our calf muck heap. Liz has almost finished my raglan knit sweater, the biggest thing she has attempted in this recent burst of the craft. Meanwhile we are sploshing about in wellies with mud everywhere after the recent, seemingly relentless rain, and wishing spring would come and it would all dry out a bit.

The End of the Year

Last of the cake

Our local lough, Lough Feigh, is full to bursting after recent rain and resounds to the beautiful noise of the 30 to 40 swans who spend their winter there. They are either Whooper or Bewick's Swans (I am not very good on the smaller swans and these two are very similar) and I have not been down to the lough with binoculars for a close look. We just enjoy the musical honking calls which come up on the wind to the lane as I walk the dogs along the top there, and to the front garden. We wonder whether our own geese feel some kind of 'Call of the Wild' yearnings as they hear them.

And so we come to the end of the year. Christmas left overs are starting to run out. The Christmas Day goose has reappeared in a number of guises since, sneaking back as cold meat, then a superb pie and most recently as small jars of 'rilette' (finely shredded meat mixed with apple, garlic and butter, a bit like a paté). The spiced cabbage has brightened up a few meals, served alongside a risotto and the pie. The cake will go a few more slices and the pud will supply a few more portions lubricated with the ice cream.

Chestnuts for the sprouts tonight.

I feel a bit of an urge to sum up the year but I promise to keep it short and sweet; just the one paragraph. In (very) short it's been a really good one for us. The small holding has moved on a-pace in the warm dry weather (the rain is only recent) and we have produced mountains of veg. I am particularly pleased with the onions and spuds and we have a freezer full of beans, peas and calabrese. We have produced a million eggs and plenty of chicken, goose, rabbit and lamb. We fenced the East Field, built the poly-tunnel and completed the pond. We made some new friends and consolidated existing ones. Liz got involved with the local knitting group and has got into knitting and has also expanded her cookery skills into a wealth of cakes and pies. Not everything went 100% to plan, of course. We lost the use of the 2CV. I killed one chain saw but inherited a perfectly good, and superior, replacement. We celebrated with a delicious Christmas. All in all a good 2013. Roll on 2014.

Our surprisingly good, well ripened
and now stored onions

One 'hin' however, will not be seeing 2014. She was one of our old original Sussex Ponte hens which have already given us a brilliant first year of egg laying but have lately gone off the boil. Yesterday this young lady managed to injure herself in a serious and debilitating way we believe, by pecking on sharp piece of wire or broken glass, both of which we have too much of in the soil not yet dug over and cleared. I am not going into any more detail in case you are eating your tea, but suffice to say that we had to cull this girl out and even as I type this, Liz is plucking her in the kitchen. She is going to be a tiny carcass despite being full grown. I doubt if she will be even one kilogram 'oven-ready', way smaller than the hulking Hubbard birds we have been processing most recently. She is a neat shape though, so she is 'petite' in the same way that Guinea Fowl and poussins make small carcasses, rather than scrawny or thin. It will be nice to roast a whole bird between 2 of us, rather than (as with Hubbard birds) having to dismember them first and make 4 separate meals out of them.

Ooops. Despite my care the tractor cuts up
ruts in the soft ground

Not tonight, though, Josephine! Tonight we are on the slow-roasted shoulder of lamb, in this case 'Dora', one of our ewe (they say 'yow' here) lambs.

Finally, I was in this morning to visit our lovely old neighbour, Una, who is still struggling with a finger injured on and infected by a rose thorn in her own garden. I nip round every couple of days to bring turf and logs in to the house from the sheds and today took her round some eggs, leeks, sprouts, parsnip and a beetroot as a mini food parcel. She sits me down in her beautifully old traditional Irish kitchen (range, painted wooden furniture) for 'tay' and home made scones and jam and today she was telling me all about the 'Wren Boys'

Naughty or Nice? Lego from Santa

The Wren Boys is an especially Irish tradition which my UK readers may not have heard of. We had heard of it here but have still not seen it in action and it is now fading fast and may soon pass into memory. It happens on St Stephen's Day (Boxing Day). In times past the 'Wren Boys' would capture a wren and then dress in motley clothing and hats and capes made of straw (like 'Mummers') and parade it round the village knocking on doors and persuading money and goodies out of house owners as a bribe not to harm the bird ("A penny or tuppence would do it no harm...." etc). They would sing special songs, make music and recite appropriate poems.
They would also call round the pubs and 'perform' for the clientele.

More recently no actual wren is used and it is more likely to be the kids going round rather as do Carol Singers in the UK, but at lunchtime in daylight, rather then in the evening. Our friend Charlotte of the mini-horses has done this as a teenager in a group and apparently done quite well out of it. Una tells us she can remember when great gangs of children would go, quite often driven round in cars by parents, but recently the kids have come to enjoy the pub-side of things less. They were, says Una, all quite sweet kiddies and sang and played their penny whistles and other instruments beautifully, but the local 'Herberts' in the pubs of particularly Balla-D, presumably 'with drink taken' would start heckling them and making rude and tasteless comments. The groups Una knows don't go there any more and, in fact, have now dwindled to a few pairs or singles of children being taken to pre-arranged 'friendly' houses to do their thing and get a €5 or so. What ever the story is, none came to see us, so we still have this only at 2nd hand.

Happy New Year! Bliain Nua Sásta Dhaiobh!