Only those Hubbards....

The Hubbard chicks at 1 week get a first chance to feel the
warm Roscommon sun on their backs. It's the hottest day of
the year so far  and they will come to no harm. 

Another week passes and there is still no sign of our AWOL turkey hen, Barbara so, naturally, we are becoming convinced that Brer Fox has had the pleasure. Yes, she MAY still be out there, rearing her chicks in the (now) cattle fields and a miracle may happen and she'll stroll back in with a little 'crocodile' of adolescents. Ah well. It does not matter physically for the moment as we will not be deciding whether or not to replace the turkeys any time soon. Emotionally, of course, we will miss them - they were an intriguing and fascinating couple to have wandering about and liked to home in on us if either of us were out gardening or sitting by the pond.

Misty morning across the bog to our North

No babies either yet for the geese or any of the chickens. For our fix of chicks, then, we only have those Hubbards, 7 days old today. We are always impressed by their speed of growth and development - if you want photo's of that clichéd image of the spherical ball of fluff body with two legs at the bottom and a head at the top, then you really do have to get there in the first 3 days. By day 4 and certainly by day 7 they are already growing taller, with an obvious neck and pin feathers are sprouting to give them definite wings among their side-fluff.

The Captain's table? Our former rooster re-appears coated with
a rough and ready BBQ sauce but even though we slow-cook
him, we'd both admit that he was a tough aul' bird. 

Of course, in commercial terms, they are not fast growing at all. Free range, they take a good 100-120 days to reach good carcass weights. Commercial broiler birds housed indoors and grown on a diet of growth promoters under controlled day-length can be harvested at more like 40 days, still covered in chick-fluff. As I understand it (and I'm no expert), those would not be Hubbards - our Hubbards are bred (designed?) to do well under commercial scale free range or organic conditions. We are actually slowing them down by giving them fully free range conditions, too much exercise and a diet supplemented by worms and grubs scratched from the ground.

Breakfast in the early morning sun. 

Meanwhile in other 'babies', our little gilts continue to charm and delight us. They are almost 4 months old now and suddenly seem to twice as long as the day they arrived. We were delighted recently to be visited by the couple who did my pig-training down in Tipperary 3 years back and with whom we have stayed in touch and would now call firm friends.

I love the light under new beech leaves. This is in the pig run.

They were in the area, by coincidence, to collect a puppy and recognised the name of the village as being one I had mentioned. I was delighted to show them around the place and particularly to show the two pigs to Alfie. He pronounced them fit, well and a credit to us. "I love to see HAPPY pigs" he said as the our pair scampered round our feet deciding whose footwear to chew first.

This lovely foal and mare combo (plus the
other filly behind) have moved in next
door as lawn mowers. 

I should add that it's not all sweet perfection, however and a nasty incident between dogs and pigs soured relations between these species for a while.The 3 westies were enjoying their half hour off-lead exercise and gazing through the fence as the piglets wandered over to sniff the dogs.

This pigmy shrew was only slightly chewed by the cat.
Liz rescued him and I got a quick chance to take his pic
before we released him to the safety of a log stack.

Faster than I could react, a pig had got too close, a dog had thrust his head through the sheep wire and grabbed a chunk of pigs ear. The hullabaloo of squealing and barking had me sprint over adding my own roar to the cacophony. The dog let go the pig and the pigs both ran off to hide in their ark while I reprimanded the dogs. I went in to console the pigs and was relieved to find that the ear was only a bit bitten, not actually torn, though it was bleeding quite impressively. First-aid for piggies, anyone? Luckily, no lasting damage done though I note the pigs stay well clear of the fence now when the dogs are about.

Small white (?) on dandelion. 

The 365 photo project chugs on coming to the end of its 4th month. Last week the 'Tidy Towns' group in the village wanted to take part in the (national) Bio-Diversity week, so the 365 photographers were asked to specialise in wildlife related stuff. I have had some fun trying to give them a good choice of subjects and not just the cute and fluffy - slugs, snails, dead wood and so on have all featured. I am not sure I am 'allowed' to be pleased that Blue the cat caught a timely shrew which Liz rescued and then, while it was still frozen in shock and a-trembling, take its picture before it suddenly came to, realised its good fortune and scampered for cover. Sensible shrew.

The long border at Strokestown, still a bit
'early summer' and green. Pic by Liz. 

In the extra-curricular area, we found out about a plant sale happening in our favourite guest-visit destination, Strokestown House. This was not Strokestown selling stuff from their brilliant walled garden, but merely acting as host to a dozen or so traders. However the traders were excellent and the plants were in gorgeous condition and very reasonably priced and, included in the €5 entry fee to the 'fair', was a chance to walk round the walled garden. Despite showers, that was us sorted for a very enjoyable Sunday morning.

Strokestown House walled garden.

For not too much of a dent in the wallet, we came away with a good haul thanks, mainly, to one of the traders doing a "6 plants for €20" deal. All perennials needed (and longed for for a while - Ireland is not a natural gardeners' country and the Garden Centres are few and far between and not well stocked with unusual stuff) for our big raised bed. Some inspired by the lovely plants growing in big drifts in the walled garden - the blue Centaurea particularly.

Admiring the old equipment in the restored working area.
This a lovely old Allen Scythe

We shipped a couple of tall clump-forming grasses, that blue centaurea, a nepeta (cat mint), a sedum, salvia, Solomon's seal, a hemerocallis (day lily) and a frothy-flowered thalictrum (I think) with granny bonnet leaves (aquilegifolia). With all this haul home we go into designer mode placing them out on the bed in their prospective positions to see if it works.

The gardener - muddy knees to prove it!

We are still enjoying the fact that this is not our overcrowded garden in Faversham. By the time we'd finished there we had no space to plant things we'd buy so they sat in pots for too long, or some other plant was evicted to make room. Here, we have 2.5 acres, so we can still buy 'thugs' that will take over space - mint, the Solomon's seal etc or will happily self-seed. We'll get there.

'Plane' Sailing

No, not a spelling mistake, this really was an aircraft (a Boeing 767 no less) taking a trip by sea up the West coast of Ireland from Shannon all round Galway and Mayo to end up in Enniscrone on the N coast of Sligo. Only in Ireland I suspect. The story caught the imagination of the social media (the Twitter feed was tagged as #planesailing) and then National radio and we just lapped it up.

Blue the Cat rolling about on the roof of the car.

Businessman David McGowan is mainly an undertaker but in a big way (runs training courses for other undertakers etc) but is your essentially eccentric entrepreneur and turns his hand to anything and has a very amusing and love-able way about him in radio interviews. He has started a transport based 'posh' camping site (glamorous camping = glamping) and already had a load of taxis, buses and other vehicles in there but he needed a focal point. A plane! Why not? Hunting about he found a de-commissioned Russian 767 at Shannon airport and was not put off by not getting permission to move it by road; he spent €25,000 or so hiring cranes and a barge and took it out of Sligo airport "via the back door".

The apple trees are LOADED with blossom
this year.

I think he had the whole country rooting for him in the end and following the every move of barges, tugs, tides and winds. Even the weather man co-operated and only a heavy swell in Killala Bay held him up for 12 hours trying to land the barge on the beach. The plane is now safely delivered to the glamping site and the media circus has moved on but I don't suppose David McGowan was that upset by the massive publicity. Fair play to him!

Scorchio

As ever, much more parochial here. We have been blessed by a succession of scorching hot, blue sky days which have brought out the fruit blossom in bounty and the bees have been having a field day pollinating them. OK, this is Roscommon, so it has only been up to about 21ºC but we are not used to it here and we wilt in heaps and stop working for a good siesta, sit by the pond and watch the blue sky.

Whole leg of Tamworth, salt cured then air dried for 8 months

Even slower at its 'work' (tenuous Radio 4 style link there!) has been our first attempt at 'Parma' ham. You may recall that we 'saved' this whole leg of Tamworth pig when we butchered our pair of gilts at the end of August 2015. We smothered it in a spicy salt-cure for 3 weeks, regularly replacing the salt and draining off the brine that the salt "sucked" out of the meat.

Salt cured air dried ham. 8 months in the making.

We then wrapped it in a purpose built muslin bag made by Liz and hung it up in the spare room (all the heating turned off and window vents open); our "cool dry place" for 8 months round till now. Well, this week, curiosity got the better of us and we interpreted the instruction to "hang it for 4-12 months" as 8 months. We took it down, unbagged it, scrubbed the (allowed) minor mould off the outside with vinegar, then cut away the surface skin and fat. We were delighted - it is lovely! It smells sweet and sound and tastes perfect. As an added bonus we have eaten some and NOT got food poisoning or died in the night, so we guess it is a success.

The ever-more adventurous ducks at 6 weeks.

In '365' project land we have a new mini sub-project. Next week is "Bio-Diversity Week" and the village is submitting an entry in the national "Tidy Towns" competition as their environmental category. This is, of course, right up our street and we were heavily involved in our Kent days in the local equivalent "Calor Gas Village of the Year", even judging. We have both offered our services and been to a meeting discussing the 'Action Plan' but for now we are just asked to do website stuff and to gear the 365 photos that week to flora and fauna. No problem. Happy to oblige.

5 of the ducks have a bath. The 6th, for some reason, sits this
one out under the honeysuckle top left.

On fauna, a little hiccup in the local pollination department. Our good friend T McC who keeps bees one ridge away in a neighbouring townland has 5 hives and was steaming along in his bee keeping work, pushing way ahead of our beginner-ish efforts. However, last Autumn he was hit by that problem all bee keepers fear, a bad allergic reaction to a sting. He suffered mild anaphyllactic shock and as he was on his own, called an ambulance.

One of my girls on apple blossom. 

In fact he had started to recover by the time the paramedics arrived so he spent the winter wondering whether to give up the bee keeping and getting medical tests done, gearing up with tablets and an 'epi-pen' (epinephrine auto-injector). He hoped to be able to start back into it this Spring at his first hive inspections, with me as stand-by / back-up able to summon an ambulance if it all went a bit pear-shaped again. Well, his bees jumped the gun on him today and he got stung while he was just wandering in the garden and came over all woozy again. He decided that this was too risky and too silly and that this would be the end to his bee keeping. He is going to disperse the hives to good homes and sell off his mountain of brand new, unused equipment to friends in the game. The silver lining on poor T's cloud for us is that I have put in a bid for one of his colonies and he is happy for me to buy this and then to give him 'visiting rights' and the odd jar of local honey.

The new poults are also fully feathered at 7 weeks.

Watch this space for our adventure collecting this colony soon. T McC is not strictly speaking far enough away from us - some of the bees out exploring from our hive site may come across bits of 'map' that they recognise from their old missions and follow the old 'roads' home to T's place, but we hope not too many and, anyway, 'summer' bees only live 6 weeks so pretty soon the hive will be full of new workers born and hatched here, who have never seen T's place. Sympathies, T McC. We'll miss you bee keeping and our mutual cross-support at inspections and manipulations.