Like a Duck to Water.

Shearing the first ewe, helped by Charlotte

The main story today (certainly the freshest) was the shearing of the sheep. We were coming round to that time of year and the forecast spoke of a heatwave held back only by a Northerly air-stream which had been keeping our temperatures down in the 14ºC area. Sheep-folk begin to worry about heat and the dreaded fly-strike but we need 3 rainless days to make sure the sheep are dry.

Charlotte tackles Polly, our grey Jacob cross ewe.

Waterlogged fleeces and electric hand held clippers are not a good mixture even for we smallholders; the commercial boys worry more about the wet fleeces not being sale-able to the buyers as they are 'dishonestly' heavy. Our wool all ends up on the compost heap so that side of things does not worry us. This year I have ace sheep-wrangler and stock-person, Charlotte (of the mini-horses) back down from Dublin, working locally and keen to help with any shearing I do on her days off. Elizabeth is happy to step aside and we all benefit from the "shearer's chocolate cakes" which get baked while we shear.

Self conscious 'naked' sheep?

So, there we were, all organised from Tuesday and delighted at the lack of rain come this morning, so I raced out to Sligo to collect Charlotte and then we were all go. I love working with Charlotte and even now, 6 years in, I still learn from her. My shearing technique is to zoom up the sheep from dock to neck in long "blows" which can be fast but can leave the sheep striped like larch-lap fencing. Charlotte tends to scoop little blows out, rolling the cutting edge away from the sheep almost as soon as she has 'delved' into the fleece. It's a bit slower but very neat. The whole sheep has maybe a few mm more 'pile' left but there are none of my 'almost pink' patches or any stripes.

All done here. Charlotte is just practising her 'upside down'
technique on one of the lambs. 

We are both impressed by how much heat 'comes out' when we open up that fleece with the first 'blow' up the spine. On a sunny, windless day, the girls are living inside a 3" to 4" pile woolly overcoat and I am sure their skin temperature must be up there at blood heat. When you first glide the shears up the spine and 'unzip' the fleece, the sheep's skin is way, way hotter than your hand - probably 10-15ºC hotter.

Nobody wants the old fleeces so they
go on the compost. 

Healthy sheep have temperatures of around 38.5ºC. By the time you finish shearing, 30 minutes later, the whole animal has cooled down and the skin is more like human skin temperature. They get a whole new lease of life and go scampering round the field with relieved expressions.

The gang spent some time in the orchard prior to shearing.

The other thing we all love is the sudden change from spherical, broad-in-the-beam shaped sheep to tiny, thin, angular, goat-bony light-weights who look not that much bigger than their lambs. They were possibly rounder than normal this year because we'd been struggling to get some good grass into them to get some condition on after them lambing in the hard Winter, and we'd moved them into the orchard for a couple of days. My hope was that when we called them into the cattle race to be 'done' they'd not be so starving that the small amount of 'crunch' they'd get wouldn't leave them bleating piteously. That went OK.

The oak (left) before the ash? You decide. 

Friends of the Blog may also recall that the biggest ewe, Myfanwy, had not (yet) lambed, and I do not actually know whether she is pregnant. Back in February when we 'offed' the ram, Pedro, one of the reasons was that he had started attacking Myfanwy and I did not know whether this was just sex fore-play or annoyance at her rejecting him. In theory, as he was with us till Feb 5th, she might still lamb till 5th July. I was keen to get Charlotte's assessment once the ewe was sheared and we could all get a look at her shape and her udder. The consensus is that she's just big, having not needed to feed a lamb (or two). Ah well.

Hen with ridiculous hair (Donaldina (Trump)) goes broody
in the duck box.

Meanwhile, I am amused to note that our drakes, newly bereft of their last lady-duck have suddenly taken to going on the pond. For 2 years they have showed no interest and I have been delighted that they've left the pond alone with it's gin-clear water and healthy plants (and fauna). Back on Wednesday I may have been witness to the tiny, short, insignificant-looking event which changed all this. I had gone out to sit by the pond with the dogs all milling around harmlessly at my feet. A Guinea Fowl was calling from the 5 acre field behind me and then came zooming over to land on the grass nearby.

A new sight here - ducks on the pond. 

The dogs, excited by this flurry of movement took off at a run towards the Guinea which set one of the drakes off also flying about 2 feet from the grass. Quite by accident, I am sure, it touched down right near a dog and opted for a bounce and sidestep which pitched it into the pond for possible the first time in it's life. I watched with amusement at it's change of body language and facial expression as it went from "Oh crap! Now I'm in the pond!" via "Coo... I seem to be floating....perhaps this is not so bad after all" to finally "Mmmm... I LIKE this... look... I can paddle my feet and swim!".

Our 3 young lime trees are suddenly
covered in leaves.

There has been no holding that drake back since and he has now taken his brother on to the water to share the joy. The pair go every morning for a dabble, a swim and a water-borne preen and splash about. It remains to be seen how much damage they do and how long their welcome lasts.

Another wishbone for the car. €170 supplied and fitted
(incl. wheel alignment)

There have been just 3 other stories brewing. The car has had to go back to the garage (ker-ching €€€€€) to have to 'other' side wishbone changed and the steering re-aligned once more, for uneven tyre wear. "State of the roads round here," said the man, "I'd recommend to anyone to get alignments checked every 6 months" Never heard of that before in the UK, but there are many potholes here, plus savage 'sleeping policemen' and just general yumpy-bumpy bog roads.

In with the new, out with the old. Lidl's at Castlerea.

Our local and much loved Lidl supermarket is temporarily erased from the face of the earth. The new shop has been under construction 'next door' for a while but for 3 weeks the old has been shut while they make final changes and move all the trading across. I was impressed by how fast 'they' cleared the site. I had shopped in there on Tuesday 8th May. By the time I tried to shop again (Tuesday 15th) it was shut, demolished and cleared away as if it had never been. Impressive feat.

The pigs look great under the now fully in-leaf beech.

Finally, we are now expecting the arrival of our next Help-X volunteer, Laura D, our first try at having a helper of the female persuasion. She was booked in for Monday but has since asked if she might arrive on Saturday (tomorrow). We have no problem with that except that Elizabeth has the car down at Steak Lady's place (There's a Royal Wedding on, apparently and the Ladies are going to do it justice in their own Living room, sat around the TV with the fancy hats, party food and drinkies). I would not be able to nip and collect her from the railway/bus stations. So Laura, not to be put off, is going to try her 'travelling' skills out against the trains, buses, taxis and possibly hitch-hiker picker uppers and try to get here anyway. Good luck, Laura. Safe journey. See you soon. Just don't know HOW soon.

Rattle and Hum

Polly a little better shorn than Lily was.

When I signed off for the last post, I left you with the impression that our sheep might never get sheared properly, what with the inept, beginner fumblings of my attempt to shear Lily. This post is by way of a post-script to that one, improving on the  shearing ability as well as the mood. Having struggled more than I thought should be right even for a beginner, I had gone off to re-read the instructions that came with the shears, translated from (possibly) Chinese into English and decided that the lack of smooth sweeping cut ability from the hand-piece, might be down to tension in the blade. When I ran the shears free in my hand and turned up the tension I could hear the change which was described as "muffled", the change from the rattle of a blade-pair vibrating too loosely together, to the hum of the pair pushed closely enough one upon the other. Carloyn had also given me some advice on how to hold the blade (and clean the equipment afterwards). I was sure when I tried this on Polly I might have a whole new result and some smooth sweeping "blows". This did, in fact, prove to be the case.

With 4 inches of mountain-proof, Jacobs
fleece taken off all over, Polly is not much
bigger now than her twin lambs.

As it happened, the Polly job was delayed by the (welcome) interuption of a visit from our new friends, Sue and Rob, but it was a hot, sunny day and the sheep would not be enjoying waiting on the concrete of the cattle race so, having shown the visitors round the place, I let Liz take them indoors for tea and cakes and decided to get on with it alone with Polly. Polly is bigger and tougher than Lily so it was a bit of a wrestling match, but as soon as I turned on the shears I could tell that this was going to be a whole better 'fight' than I had had with Lily. I swooped through the 'brisket' wool and down the belly. out along the hind legs, with the fleece peeling back like orange-peel. Yes, the task still took 45 minutes and there were still two rests for breathers (Polly as well as me), but the fleece was off in 3 pieces instead of the jig-saw puzzle of Lily's fleece and I was back indoors doing a 'happy dance' before the guests had finished their tea and cake.

Polly's fleece. Very little 'shoddy' this time

Now that I have more idea what I'm at, I need to go back and tidy up the too-long stuff I left on Lily, but I have decided that rather than wrestle her onto her rump again, I will train her to accept a halter rope and then tether her to the gate standing upright (which she will much prefer) so that I can do back and sides (where all the long stuff is) without stressing her out too much.

Lupins do really well in our climate.

Meanwhile Carolyn has bought herself a new spinning wheel and put her name down for our fleeces so that she can try out the processes of washing, carding and spinning. Apparently you must wash all the lanolin oil out of the wool but you have to do this in cold or luke-warm water; a hot wash and the agitation of the machine would reduce your lovely fleece to a football sized wad of felt. I saw some of Lily's wool post wash today and it does look nice and white. You could believe in a garment knitted out of it.

Sorry about the poor pic but you may just be able to see 2 bees
at the entrance hole to the swarm box. 

On the bees, big excitement today when I spotted that the swarm lure-box was receiving attention from 30+ bees. These would be, we guess, scout-bees spreading out from someone else's lost swarm, house-hunting. We read that these scouts, if they are impressed enough by the 'cavity' as a possible nest site and new home, zoom back and perform waggle dances over the outside of the swarm-cluster, attracting more scouts to their find and away from competing possible homes. After a day or two the swarm as a whole makes a democratic decision to go with one of the possibles (we hope it is ours) and the whole swarm gets airborne and makes its way to the new site. We think we are mid-point on that process, and hope that we are chosen by this swarm - we would then get that lovely  'gift', a bonus of a free bee colony. Things are looking hopeful.

A stash of 12 eggs including 6 Guinea Fowl eggs (the small,
pointier, spotty ones)

As I said, this is a bit of a PS to the last post. Our decision to build the secure run around the 'Elderberry Buff' has displaced the egg laying of a couple of the other hens, so that we are now finding stashes of eggs in new places under the hedges. Most recently I found a stash of 12 further along the bank which included 6 Guinea Fowl eggs - we had had no idea she was actually laying as she is quite secretive. Meanwhile our fears of the turkeys being brother-sister, seem to be unfounded as Sue has started her hatch and the chicks have all been sound of limb and joint. As we still have the borrowed incubator, we have set another 5 turkey eggs in it, for a second attempt.

Some people should be allowed to keep poultry......

"Elderberry Buff" (see story)

Some days in the smallholder life you really feel like you have got 'it' nailed. The sun shines, the bees buzz (and mercifully do not swarm), seeds germinate all round the 'allotment', birds sing and all the livestock goes about its assigned tasks and stays healthy. Some days are not like that. I suppose I should say that "some people" should be allowed to keep poultry and other people should not be allowed near the group. I should quickly re-assure readers that this is not going to be a self-pitying tale of woe - we all survive in the end.

Turkey chick at Day 3

It is the poultry right now which has me feeling like such an incompetent that I wonder why anyone ever gave me licence. Regular readers may recall that life here has been beset by a few problems in the poultry department before, including in-bred geese and possible rabbits; you might think we'd learn from such 'mistakes' and not repeat them. We have also had issues with not managing to keep birds separated, so that you end up with a nest full of eggs of uncertain age and uncertain parentage. You get dodgy hatches and poor health and survival.

This year we have already had the Buff Orp that went broody in the Tígín next to the chemical toilet, got in a muddle of other chooks laying on top and successfully hatched only one chick. To be fair she is doing very well with it and it is thriving as an only child. We now have another gone broody in the woods and try as we might, we could not move her and the clutch, so we ended up bringing a secure rabbit run to her, cutting back bushes to squeeze it in and re-covering the run with the cut branches so that she is hidden. The geese, despite our best efforts of stealing all the eggs, eventually went broody. The first one, we relented and let her sit on 2 eggs, but she was then nudged aside for a couple of nights by other geese who laid into the nest and then went a little broody. We now have a team of three taking turns to sit (or sometimes 2 or all three at once). Chaos. We have a tentative date pencilled in for the first possible hatch, but after that it's anybody's guess. I really am too soft on them.

Blue and Soldier all loved up now.

Finally along came the turkeys. A "breeding pair" the lady said (just like our goose supplier told us that the three birds were "a good trio"). She even produced for Charlotte, 5 eggs to hatch and these, incubated by Sue and Rob, came really good - 4 healthy chicks from 5 eggs. We have subsequently given Sue half a dozen eggs which really came from Tom and Barbara and we wonder how those did, because the 8 we put in our borrowed incubator did not do at all well, and have us thinking that T+B may well be some aul' left over brother and sister. Three eggs hatched, three more were almost fully developed but dead in shell, one was addled and the other just looked like a 'fresh' egg. Of the three which hatched one had good legs and stood up straight away. One had badly splayed legs but we guessed it would be OK and now, 3 days later it too is up and about. The third had such a bad leg, stiff and jutting out to the rear with its foot clenched like a claw that it could only flop about on the deck trying to shuffle along with the other. We had to cull that one out. These things happen, but if Sue and Rob had similar experiences, we will be convinced that these two adults are no good as breeders and will be looking for another hen.

Taking notes from a You Tube training
video.

So, would you give us a poultry flock number? Ah well, maybe a sheep flock number? Today we took out 'first born' ram lamb, Feste. now aged 5 months, off on his final journey to see Ignatius in town. He was possibly a bit smaller than lambs we have 'finished' in the past, but we had concerns about him getting his own Mum in the family way (she was 'got' last year before we bought her and hence the 6th Jan surprise birth of Feste). He was a sweet little chap but strangely quiet and lazy - you'd never see him frolicking around except for the occasional play head-butt fight with 'auntie' Polly. We put this down to him being the only lamb born then, so not having any playmates. He was a 2 and a half month 'adolescent' by the time the twins came along and Polly would not let him near them to start with. Ah well, he's gone now, our firstborn, ear-tag 00001(F). Tomorrow we nip down to collect the heart, lungs, kidneys and liver, and then next Monday we get the carcass cut up.

Trying to open up a 'blow' in the belly wool

So, with lovely sunny weather, I was determined to get the Mums sheared, all cocky, armed to the teeth with my new shears and full of technique from YouTube training videos on which I had even taken notes. These describe creating great swathes of baldified skin while peeling back a single sheet of fleece "blow by blow", whizz round a few legs, avoid vulnerable tendons, udder, vulva, ears and so on, while wrestling your sheep around while she sits on her bum gripped between your thighs with none of her feet on the ground. Easy peasy! Zoom down the neck and flanks from cheek to 'dock' (tail) working your way up the left side of the sheep till you hit spine, then down the other side, bingo! Sheep shrugs off the fleece like a cardigan and runs off into the feild feeling grateful and cool, and you roll the fleece into a beautiful Swiss-roll for sale to the grateful spinning fraternity. 5 minutes, tops.

Getting started, right front leg up to brisket. 

Maybe not. I struggled. It was VERY HARD. Wrestling the sheep was not as easy as it looked and we all got a bit hot in the sunshine. The shears did not seem to go through the fleece cleanly (I now think I may have not had the tension set up correctly). Also I managed to nick the top of my left index finger on almost the first 'blow' which bled very well and the sheep, even though unhurt, was quickly spotted with (my) blood so she looked like a real train crash.

Not beautiful, but patchy and cooler. 

The wool was very dense and thick (maybe a Southdown thing) and we quickly collapsed from trying to do long 'blows', to sweating through the fleece inch by inch, holding the fleece up away from the skin to avoid nicking the poor sheep's flesh. Some bits came away as decent slabs of wool, but much came away a "shoddy" (the bitty stuff which you can't sell as fleece). Also I struggled to get down deep enough - the sheep is meant to come away almost bald - in my nervousness of cutting her I left some areas a bit long and may have to return for another tidy up.

Poor Lily does not love us this evening. She lost her baby,
her winter coat and her good looks all in the same day!

Then there was a subject which was a definite problem for us but not really shown in the videos - that of 'dags', little dreadlocks of poo-encrusted wool hanging all round the bum, down the back end, underside of legs, round the udder etc, some dried and harmless (we have done dagging before with the sheep upright and dog-clipping scissors to get the worst 'klingons' off, but these were more like just soiled un-usable fleece. They added to the 'shoddy' pile (and detracted from the fleece roll) till we reckon we had more weight of shoddy than of sale-able* wool.

As to "Five minutes".... even with Liz helping and me trying to shear, we were a good hour and a bit doing the one sheep (Lily) and stopped three times for a breather and to let Lily stand up and recover a bit between 'bouts' of wrestling. We postponed Polly till tomorrow and I promised to go re-read the instructions now I would understand them a bit more having used the machine. They are not well translated into English (are they ever?) but the stuff about tension screws and listening for the change of note from rattle to hum makes a bit more sense now, so we may get on a bit better with Polly. We were exhausted (and Lily probably was too!) and adjourned to the shade for a regroup. Liz had a mountain of baking still to do for a craft open-evening tonight, and I wanted to keep an eye on the bees, while also strawing up the strawberries. That was enough chaos for one post. Lily may not be a beauty any more, but she must, at least, be cooler as the ambients in the West come up through 15 towards a very welcome but rare 18ºC. Iss prackly a HEATwave!


*not really sale-able - we were going to give it to Carolyn to play spinning with, but you get the picture.