O Sole Mio?

Yes; I've been making my own entertainment this week, with Lizzie off down in Silverwood-land "minding" Daddy (Mr SL) while Steak Lady steals some time in the sun in Malta off with her gang of former Bridge Club chums from Portmarnock. Not that Mr SL needs much minding, you understand; he's all well again from his Hospital scares so this is not Intensive Care we are talking about. Liz tells me that he instructs her not to get up and start "fussing" before 9 a.m. because he likes to wake up and potter about gently and if she'd be good enough to leave him alone till then he'll bring her a cup of tea.

Some first-year shoots from those English's Nursery crowns
only in the ground a week or so!

When she dives in and tries to start clearing the meal table and do washing up he good naturedly shuts her in the sun-room with a glass of wine and insists that HE will do it because he "knows where everything goes" when it comes out of the dish-washer. Yes, it's a tough old job this "minding" but Liz will survive. She is also getting plenty of opportunities to go visit the Silverwoods and be visited by them.

Let loose in the kitchen, I am trying my hand at a few scones.

And I do NOT want you to get the impression that I am feeling sorry for myself here. I am quite self sufficient, me, so though I miss the wifely presence (it would be impolite not to!), I can chug along happily here on the 'farm'. There is always plenty to do and the dogs, cats and livestock are all good company (if a bit thin on simulating conversation). I do a little bit of this and a little bit of that - gardening, the bees, shopping, photography, blogging, facebook, cooking stuff for myself, entertaining the occasional guest, housework and even some baking. The latter always feels a bit "bold", like interfering where you are not normally allowed to go. Although I can cook perfectly well, we have slotted into a rhythm here where it is Liz who rules in the kitchen and does all the fancy cookery while I am mainly outdoor jobs. So if I stray into the kitchen I always get the impression I am being 'watched', the same way I am sure Liz feels if she were to wander out into my veg plot and start weeding.

Possibly not the brightest place to sit, Blue.

Just for a bit of fun, I also had another go at taking some video footage and uploading it to the internet, one short chunk of the new twin lambs, and one of the new piggies. These are the links if you are that way inclined. Unfortunately, they are facebook based links (I failed to grab the Youtube addresses which appear briefly when they were first put up there and I have no idea how to find these out again)

This is the pig one https://www.facebook.com/matt.care.54/videos/vb.100002645805158/769903719774481/?type=2

and this the lambs one

https://www.facebook.com/matt.care.54/videos/vb.100002645805158/769526129812240/?type=2&theater

Apologies if you can't get at them. Equally, if anyone knows how to find them on Youtube, then please do let on. Perhaps the solution is to upload them again and take notes?

Lots of activity fom the new bees. 

We have also had our very pleasing result (so far anyway) in the bee keeping department. When I last posted I had just done my moonlight flit over to Killashee in County Longford to collect my new colony from the wonderful BO'D and carefully set it up next to the old hive. Any worries I might have had of bees suffering in the car journey were quickly dispelled when the new workers were out and buzzing first thing the next day, even though it was a bit chilly. There were bees pinging everywhere, certainly more than my 'old' hive has done this year. A good few were doing the face-the-hive, fly-backwards and spiral outwards flights which we know are 're-orientation' flights, the bees emerging from the hive to discover an unfamiliar landscape and having to learn the new map.

The twin lambs now thriving again at almost 3 weeks. 

I have set the hives next to each other so that in a few days we can slot all the frames from inside BO'D's boxes, into the old white boxes, which will have been cleaned and sterilized just in case, and then spirit the old brown boxes away. The bees will then (so goes the theory) cope with the fact that their home has suddenly 'turned white' because they will come back and mill about for a while, confused by the visual change, but then smell the familiar smells of home coming from the entrance slot of this funny white box. It is almost beekeeping mantra that you can move a hive less than 3 feet or more than 3 miles, but never anything in between.

Cheeky happy pigs, scarfing more fruit.

Bees find their way about by a remembered map. They will find the hive again if it has only gone 3 feet, but if it has gone further away they will mill about at the old location, lost, till they run out of fuel and then simply die on the ground. If you move the hive less than 3 miles, which is the bees natural forage range, they may accidentally come across an old remembered route to the old location and follow that back to the former home (where they will, again, die of lack of fuel). If you want to move your hive ten feet, then you have to move it 3 miles to an out-station (a friend's ground for example), wait 3 weeks while they re-orientate to that and forget the old map, then move them back to the old apiary but new position. Strange but true.

George the Gander. You lookin' at me?

And I have had that birthday, of course, which was looking to be a non-event, with the celebrations postponed till Liz came home. All my friends and contacts, though, must have had other ideas - I received a veritable blizzard of greetings on Facebook, I got a card and gift from the UK through the post (Thanks Pud Lady and Tom!) and visits from friends who wanted to meet the piggies plus one from Anne and Simon who arrived bearing rhubarb and stayed for a cup of tea, a sit down and a chat. Also some phone calls about the bees and a nice call home. May also have pinged a few texts back and forth to/from the absent Lizzie. It all made for a perfectly good day.

(Probably Not) Art

Chutney, Chili-jam and paté awaiting storing away

I have been messing about lately with two new 'art' forms; movies and the well known genre of "Dustbin Lid Enamels". What do you mean you'd not heard of that one? Read on. We have inherited from Diamond, a tiny but very sophisticated camera, a Sony Cybershot 8.1. Although this beast could (almost) fit inside a standard cigarette box I am constantly amazed by the sophistication of these tiny cameras, as compared to the hulking 'standard' sized SLR that I normally carry about, a Canon EOS. As well as a respectable flash, the Sony has all the time delay, zoom and other toys plus, I was amazed to find, a 'movie mode'. Our 'proper' movie camera is currently parked with a flat battery and we cannot find the charger, so I decided to test out the Sony and then to explore uploading my 'films' to the movie sharing website 'youtube' just to see could I successfully link back to this blog, to Facebook, Twitter and so on. So, for the first time ever, I give you links to videos of geese and of our dozen young Buff Orpintons. Don't get too excited. They are 30 seconds long each, or there abouts and of seriously bad quality, but they are a start.

Geese in the morning http://youtu.be/iU_mXzEZNtM Gorgeous George leads the ladies noisily out to the orchard.

Geese in the evening  http://youtu.be/LLJzxj2vyOY The gang race home to their supper.

Buff Orpingtons emerge from the 'bedroom' http://youtu.be/7tUCC-wU7Pw Lots of bleary eyed gazing about and fluffing up of feathers.

The 'artist' concentrating.

For all the camera is an impressive technological achievement, I must say that from a photographer's point of view, the 'movie' function is disappointingly basic and has no adjustments (no zoom, mainly) - you either have movie or no movie. Youtube has a function at upload which allegedly spots that you are shaky of hands and 'fixes' this but I could not see any difference. Our main problem here is that the horribly slow broadband locally means that even these 30 second bits take 5 minutes to upload each so, enjoy these short clips (and comment if you like) but I can't see myself doing many more of them.

The 'Dustbin' thing was just a silly idea I had to use up a bit of long, dark evening and to pretty up my chicken house feed store. I had 6 dustbins of various feed, identified only by felt pen writing as "Layers' Pellets" , "Sheep Crunch" and so on. I decided to paint an appropriate logo-style design onto each. Anne and Simon, who know about paint, suggested that enamels would be the thing for a galvanised bin lid, and I went on line and bought up 7 colours of the tiny tins of modelling paint; a real buzz of nostalgia from the days when we three brothers were crazy into Airfix kits and had dozens of colours between us. In those days it was mainly military and camo colours but I was sure either Humbrol or Revell would do me a usable red, green, ginger (for the pig), gold (for the wheat), and a flesh-pink for the egg shells.

Revell in fact do a whole range of the tiny 14 ml tins called "Email Colour" at less than €2 per colour (about £1.50). I found some silly designs for pig and dog from the internet. The dog looks a bit like a Westie and the pig is perky enough for anyone. Hours of harmless fun. We are not sure if we'd call them 'art' but they made the pair of us smile and they do whenever I go into the feed store.

I have a date now for the sheep, the 13th of Dec (or any time after that, says Mayo-Liz). This gives our 2 adult ewes enough time to 'dry off' (finish their lactations)  having been separated gently from this year's lambs, to come back onto heat and to be served by the tup (a fine Hampshire Down purebred chap). Then, also, to wait the 17 days in which they might come back on heat if the tup did not do his job properly the first time round. He would spot this, being a very concerned and loving kind of bloke, and give it another go. If they do not 'return to service' then they are almost certainly pregnant. Fingers crossed.

Thawed haggis, neeps and tatties 'ready meal' served on this
occasion with steamed black (Tuscan) kale. Times is hard.

Today saw us on a Christmas shopping trip to Galway, our nearest city, an hour and a half away by car. I'd never been into the city, though I'd been round it and past it on trips to Kinvarra or Connemara but I'm not a great lover of cities and the teeming shopping throngs, so I'd not missed it. Today though we needed to visit Marks and Sparks and TK Maxx plus to browse around various other shops to find suitable presents for folk. Galway, you will not be surprised to know, is like any other city in terms of traffic jams, rammed multi-storey car-parks, ring roads with multiple roundabouts, shopping malls and business parks, just in an area smaller than most cities. In our case, today, we also had a teachers' strike, so there were a million young teenagers strolling about and 'hanging' by the milk-shake outlets, the mobile phone shops and sub-culture magazine/video shops. We survived, though, getting in and parked eventually, then making forays from car-park to shops, returning to offload goodies into the car in between forays. We made sure to be all done by 3 pm so that we could race home (ha! In that traffic?) to rescue the geese in daylight before Brer Fox might come a-calling. Not a bad day and plenty of list items ticked off, but painful enough on the traffic, parking and crowds, that we'll not be rushing back any time soon. Certainly not to use Marks and Sparks's generous €9 food-hall voucher which can only be spent between the 19th and the 23rd of Dec. That truly would be one of the 7 circles of Hell.

GAA Action

Don't Panic! Your old mate and blogger has not suddenly gone all sport orientated. Those who have known me for a while would probably KNOW that this was impossible or at least highly unlikely. I managed to survive the first 50+ years without knowing the first thing about soccer, my main objection being that the sport was (is) boring to watch and can happily go the whole 90 minutes of a game without anybody scoring at all, even at the top, professional levels. GAA Football (Gaelic Athletic Association), I am assured is a whole different kettle of fish being fast, exciting and high scoring. This time of year in Ireland is also when the "All Ireland" finals take place and our nearby county of Mayo (also the country where my lambs were born) got through their semi final a couple of Sundays back and this one just passed would see Liz's Dublin team in their semi against Kerry. The place has gone mad decorating gateposts with flags and houses with bunting in county colours. It is a regular subject of conversation - the barber's where I was this morning, the local post office and even John Deere Bob who drops by. My curiosity was piqued. This was an important part of the culture of my new life and friends.

Here then is the only sport related blog post you are likely to get for a while, borrowed from another web post.

"On Sept 2nd, I am woken up by Quoth, our local raven who swings by occasionally. He/she was shouting from the spruce trees and getting a bit of abuse back from the crows and magpies. The morning was spent gently bimbling in the garden, spreading calf poo on the cleared potato ground and picking beans. I walked dogs and got talking to near neighbour whose kids were in the middle of clothing a big cuddly-toy dog in a Roscommon GAA football jersey. Seems that as well as the 'big match' (an All Ireland semi final Dublin vs Kerry) there is an Under 21's ("Minors") match on at 13:30 featuring our own Roscommon and dodgy 'nordies' Tyrone. 

I came in early pm and caught Liz listening to the match commentary IN IRISH. I am in awe. Not only do I have no interest in sport, soccer, rugby and stuff, I also have no Irish worth a light and this guy was rabbiting away as only sports commentators know how. Wandered off back to my weeding. We lost narrowly by all accounts.

Later in the afternoon came the 'real match' in which Liz had more of a vested interest, being a 'Dub'. Out of nowhere we also suddenly had enough broadband to actually stream the televised match programme. Our BB is usually so poor that we measure it in kilobytes (700-900) as opposed to 'megs' and can only watch short Youtube clips without it going all stuttery or dying all together and refusing to perform. But No, here we were with uninterrupted visuals, so I decided to watch my first ever full GAA match.  I'd been told that GAA is a whole different kettle of fish and so it proved. For them as don't know, you can score in the goal below the cross-bar (3 points) or between the posts above the bar (1 point). This match had half a dozen scoring moves in the first 10 minutes. As boring as soccer it definitely wasn't. It stayed exciting all through and Liz was even getting a bit sweary at the midway point.

Her Dubs were looking a bit shaky at one stage and she was voicing those ol' '3 times' superstitions - Man U had lost, the Roscommon Minors had lost and now..... However, the Dubs put in a late surge right at the end and saved the day, winning 3-18 to 3-11, i.e. the two teams scored 35 times between them!" 

So there you are. The Dubs now play Mayo on 22nd and it will be all over for another year. In the two weekends in between now and the 22nd, the Hurlers get their turn - their game is even more mad, frenetic, crazy, fast and dangerous. They all run around armed with a hockey-stick 'club' (Camán) and the ball (Sliothe) seems to be a rock covered in leather. Face masks are almost obligatory these days.

Meanwhile it is all getting a bit Autumnal here. We retreat some evenings into our Living room where we either light candles or the real fire for extra coziness. The blackberries are turning black in the hedgerows and John Deere Bob is happy for us to raid the hedges of his cut silage fields. The sloes will also be red by now and turning black soon but ours out front were annihilated by the contractor hedge cutter so I need to take a stroll round the sheep fields to find some bushes with sloes still on them.

The front lawn has gone all 'Food for Free' on us and is now yielding a good supply of field mushrooms. The first of these took us by surprise under one of the big trees and had reached 8 inches diameter before we spotted it. This one Liz simply cut in half and fried like that, serving it up on its own slice of toast. Poor man's beef steak? More recent ones have been smaller. We are back into beetroot now and 'succession planted' radishes and, soon, peas.

For me, though, a weekend back in the UK looking up the Pud Lady and some Faversham Friends including 2CV Llew, before I head for St Katharine's Docks in London to help man our sailing barge Cambria. She is on show to the public as part of the St Kat's Classic Boat Festival which is , in turn, part of the Mayor's River Thames Festival. Liz gets to look after the 'farm' for a while so she is in training on livestock and the differences between milled barley and seed wheat. Wish us both luck. I will be 'off air' for the duration and will post again when I return.

Newport Newport Newport

Ah, we don't reccomend you to watch You Tube many times on this blog, but this superb spoof on "New York" is a must

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNfbX6uvA6s

Nice walk today. As we're leaving the house we meet my sister Ellie out with her Mum ('Trish) so we latch on to them for an off-the-lead loop of Rec and Cemetery. She can't believe that Mr H is 13 already!

Deefski