Biker Boy

Our first 2016 'clocker' goes broody in a completely useless
place. And sitting on NOTHING. No eggs. Nada.

In the last post, in all the excitement about the Lisacul 365 project, I managed to completely forget to note 2 good signs of Spring. The first is that lovely burst of realisation when your eye falls on a 'new' clump of crocus which you obviously planted at some point last year but then promptly forgot. I have two nice ones in the bank beside the driveway. One is nicely backward so may do OK but the other came out into the teeth of the last named storm and it's little retinue of fronts.

Barbara on some hay bales.

Crocus should (and like to) push their flowers up through the warming grass into the Spring sunshine where they can open the top part of their flowers nice and flat and bright. These poor things emerged into a howling gale and lashing rain, so they have sat and sulked, firmly closed, for the last week and I fear are being knocked about so much they may never open properly before they rot off. Our other spring note was our first 'clocker'; one of the Buff Orps went broody in the worst choice of place ever - in the car port. Yes she was well hidden behind the wheel of my pushbike and she was on the remains of a good, dry bale of hay. She was also slotted in between the 2CV and the hay-barn wall but she was, too, exposed on 3 sides to Brer Fox.

Progress on the Sligo house. The pale upper walls in the centre
are 'scratch-coated with a pale clement. 

We think from her subsequent behaviour that she is the one from last year who was fiercely determined to go broody under an elder bush and had to be protected in situ becuase we couldn't persuade her to move or quit. No option to do that this year and anyway she has gone broody on nothing - not one egg, so I am reduced to gathering her up at lock up time and carry her, chuntering angrily to herself, back to the safely of the main coop. When we release her in the morning she makes a beeline back to her little slot and humpily sits down on the empty nest for another day. Idiot bird. I expect when we want her to go broody on some pure Buff Orp eggs she will have lost interest.

The porch - I get to lay some blocks!

Good progress out on the Sligo house rebuild and, for me, 2 new experiences. The exterior is coming on well with 90% of the fancy stone work done and now the upper 'half' of those new walls given their 'scratch coat' (rough plaster) of special pale cement made with crushed granite sand and white cement powder. This looks gorgeous and sets off the darker stonework beautifully. The outer finish coat will be the same pale buff colour and will not need painting. The chimney stack has now burst out through the new roof and is being dressed with a stone capping and that same pale cement covering. The roof is now 99% covered with membrane and battens ready to take the natural slate which was delivered today. The 99% thing is due to the old western chimney still having the original electricty supply lashed to it and needing that removed (by ESB) before we are allowed to take down the stack and finish off that gable.

The way that day worked out found K-Dub minding his poorly young son in the mobile home while Mum shot off to the shops, giving us an enforced, rather long lunch break. I'd finished and was ready to go back to work but was on my own. We were all set up to lay blocks up into the gable of the new porch so the boss suggested I just start on my own. Never laid a block or brick in my life but I've (now) seen quite a few laid and anyway, if I made a complete Horlicks of it, it would have been the work of minutes to tear down and start again. I did OK. When I step through that front door now and look up, I will know that up there, above the 'head' (lintel) stone are 2 courses of 4 inch "solids" that were all my own work! "There's kudos in building porches!" said K-Dub. My work stood and he carried on up when Mum returned to look after the boy.

An old gravestone for the 365 Project

My second treat that day was to be given a lift home the 20 minutes riding pillion on K-Dub's 'serious' motorbike. This, I am told, is a BMW 1150 RT, a cruising bike with saddles like armchairs, built for comfort rather than racing performance. I have not been on any kind of bike since the 70s (I was asked to ride a moped home from the hay fields to the home farm) so all the leaning was a bit of a surprise (a thrill, if you like) but K-Dub was very gentle with this rookie who was hanging on tight round his waist. I survived and was delivered safe home intact.

Dead now, my faithful Canon EOS D1000

Finally, who knew that you could fry the mother board of a Canon EOS digital camera by taking too many long exposures of night sky in succession. I managed to make my lovely, faithful but old camera go sick while photo-ing the Perseid meteors (or, rather, failing to capture any on film). It was suddenly unable to stay turned on and would power down at the first hint of work (auto focus or the need to use the pop-up flash). I parked it and have been using a little 'compact' ever since but with all this 365 photography going on I decided to disinter it, find out what was wrong and whether it could be fixed. Liz was off to the local camera club to do a presentation about 365 to them, so I asked to come along too in support and might as well bring the EOS and see if there were any experts in the club.

To cut a long story short, long exposures can warm up the mother board on "some Canons" and successions of long exposures overheat the board. They only have a design life of about 10 years anyway so my 7/8 year old one is now not economic to repair (it would be €250 touch). This  thought-process and research has now led me to a rather unwanted conclusion and , combined with the imminent need to acquire archery equipment, to making a hard decision and a life-changing move BUT, that is for another post so you will have to hold yourselves in patience till next time. Mean, huh?

You Live and Learn

Oven ready Hubbard 'roo'. Apologies for
the imperfect plucking and torn skin. 

First up today, the weights on that Hubbard rooster, as promised. He was at 97 days old and had a live weight of 3.645 kg ( 8 lb and half an ounce ). In oven-ready form he weighed 2.470 kg ( 5 lb 7 oz ) so a fine big lad and one we would not normally roast intact for just the two of us, so Liz has jointed him up and we will get 4 meals out of him easily. We started that evening with a roast thigh and a 'fore-arm' a-piece which Liz deliberately cooked with just oil so that we could assess the full unadulterated Hubbard flavour. Meaty and delicious served with potato wedges, home made coleslaw and home made mayo, all washed down with a very nice Italian red wine, Montepulciano which we are getting currently from Lidl at just under €30 for 6 bottles. These Hubbards are declared a success and if we get a chance we may do them again. This is an 'if' just because we only ever got these through a bizarre sequence of events (you may recall) - our 'clocker' (broody hen) was rearing some very young ducklings having incubated the eggs for 28 days and we wanted something to slip under her when we took the ducklings back to their owner, Mentor Anne. Anne happened to be driving right up to the hatchery on the Northern Ireland border to collect some day old Hubbards for herself and a friend and offered to collect 8 for us on the run.

I said that when we decided to buy a pair of Guinea fowl we knew next to nothing about them - only what we'd read in books, been told by the seller and found out by a quick internet search. We have since had some fun picking the brains of Anne and Simon and the many many poultry experts and keepers on a couple of internet discussion forums, one of which I am one of the Moderators on. Well, now we know all sorts of facts, myths, legends and 'what I reckon' comments, probably more than you need and definitely in some cases a little 'embellished'.

They can be a devil to persuade to stay around and difficult to teach that new home is a their new home. They love to roost up high in trees and one lad suggested that they can predict the weather better than Met Éireann, choosing to roost out on nights where it will definitely not rain, but roosting in their coop when there is risk of rain. They free range like crazy - another member of the group said he'd often seen his out half a mile from home during the day but that they were always home by supper time. It is said that they might attack your chicken-roosters. They are allegedly as thick as a plank - more stupid than any other bird. Anne, who keeps quail and does not have a very high opinion of quail brain-power, says that Guinea Fowl "make quail look intellectual". Another lad says they are "far from stupid". The eggs are apparently nice but a very pointy shape, almost triangular (says Simon) and Anne commented that the shells are so tough that if you are trying to do the eggs and toast soldiers thing, you almost need a hacksaw to do the neat decapitation. Pick the bones, as they say, out of that little lot!

We have had to part company with our friend, miniature Falabella cross stallion Cody. He'd been in our sheep field since a month or two back because his alpha-male hormones had been driving him to escape the 'home field' and go in search of mares. This had led to an interesting hour one day for Carolyn when she'd had to go 'rescue' him from a field of three full sized mares who were playing 'hard to get' teasing him as he chased them in his randy way while they tried to kick his head in, playing rough. Carolyn, who is not much bigger than Liz, had to dive into this mêlée and pull Cody out for his own safety and get him to the gate without any of the mare kicks connecting, while Cody wanted to stay in there and work on his seduction technique.

Cody ended up in our field where he'd be OK with the sheep because he was such a chilled out lad that he was OK with anything and, indeed, that was the case. He became a boss-sheep and used to give the 5 sheep the run around occasionally but was only playing and never seemed to be trying to do them any damage. Happy days. He was going to be gelded by Aoife (Rhymes with Deefer) the Vet but the warm autumn had meant that the risk of fly/maggot infection in the gelding scar was too great and this has not yet happened. Then yesterday it seemed to turn nasty and a bit serious. I went out at 4-ish to find Cody beating up one of the ram lambs, Cody had the ram pinned down between his front 'knees' and seemed to be trying to bite chunks out of the ram's woolly flanks. I raced into the field and, yelling at Cody and smacking him on the nose, managed to separate the 'protagonists'. I got Cody into a head collar and tethered him to the fence. The sheep seemed to be OK, just a small reddish wound near one eye and chunks of wool hanging off, but they all piled into their supper and certainly looked OK by this morning.

We phoned Carolyn for advice and she decided that the lad had better be brought home, so Charlotte was dropped off to walk him home. He is now back home in the sand-school but where he can get to a lot of grass growing round the edges. His gelding operation is now timed for some point in the next 2 weeks and fairly soon after that our sheep will have gone for their last journey anyway, so he can safely come back into our field while his hormones calm down. Then he can be reunited with his two amigos, Bob and Romeo. Complicated this horse management, isn't it? Maybe we should stick to our highly intelligent Guinea Fowl?