Curlew Fidelma

The redcurrant jelly has a lovely colour this year.

This blog post nearly wasn't! Mid morning, while Liz was indoors and I was out shopping, the Internet died. Liz phoned the fault in (land line as well as the web) and was told that they had no idea what the problem was yet, so it might take up to 3 days to fix. THREE DAYS! How could we survive that? Ah, what did we do with ourselves before the Internet? Got on with real life, I guess.

This lovely pic posted by bro' Mark of (l-r) other bro' Tom, Mum
and Sis-in-Law Sue at Herstmonceux castle. Pronounce it  "Hurst-
mon-zoo" for that correct Sussex effect. 

We also told them that our elderly neighbour needed checking as she has no broadband or a mobile; they were pushing the boundaries a bit when they tried to suggest that both we and she may have suffered a coincidental synchronised equipment failure. All OK in the end - the fixers went out and did their stuff and a phone call told us we were back up by 3 pm.

Curlew - image blagged off the Internet

So, who, I hear you ask, is "Curlew Fidelma" then. She is the latest contact phone number added to my phone. How so? Well, friends of the blog will know that the curlew is a large wading bird which has become increasingly rare in Ireland for the usual reasons - changing farm practices and loss of habitat. It nests on the ground in wild places but is now quite unusual to see and even rarer to find nesting.

From little acorns.....

Step forward, then, our good friends and fellow archers, Con and Niamh who, on their smallholding south of Castlerea, have just had 5000 native, broad-leaved trees planted as a baby-forest, a move for which government grants are available because the Irish Government are obliged to up the % land-use as "forestry" under EEC rules. It had been languishing down in the 4% area. These grants are mainly for commercial forest but they are also available for 'amenity' and 'conservation' projects.

First 2017 chokes

In the conservation ones you get involved with the good folk of the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) who are, as expected, interested in the wildlife potential of your new forest, so Niamh has been visited by one of their people, the Fidelma named above. She was particularly interested in curlews and Niamh knew that I might have 'spotted' some in my comings and goings. So we had, a group of 18 seen from a road nearby but no nesting ones. These would just have been a migrating group moving through (it was October) but Fidelma was delighted to have "found some" and asked me to save her number so that I can tell her if we see any more. Happy to help.

Mullein (Verbascum thapsus) flowers.

The forest, incidentally, is quite fiercely controlled - you don't just take delivery of the saplings and dig them in. The work is all done by professional contractors who bring diggers and other gear, they ring the whole site with high deer-proof fencing and an inspector comes along a while later to check that you do have oaks in the mixture here, or that the trees are planted upright there, or that they are all sprouting leaves from the apex across the site. Any wrong planting, sloped trees or those showing die-back and side-sprouting have to be ripped out and re-planted. Only then does the contractor-man get his money.

New 'Jakoti' shears and the new-old "double bow" sprung-steel
type. 

Meanwhile, I promised an end to the sheep shearing stories for this year with a quick mention of my new 'Jakoti' shears and how brilliant they turned out to be for trimming the 'frilly knickers' and other tufts of wool off sheep I did not do very well with the electric shears.

Ewes with tidy nethers.

You may recall that back in May when I was doing my own animals, I was still very nervous of cutting the sheep's Achilles tendons, ears, folds of skin at 'armpits' and so on - anywhere I thought the wide teeth of the stationary 'comb' part of the shear might fit round a narrow edge or corner. I tended to ease off and pull back near these places, so I left tufts of uncut wool around knees and heels, under throats etc.

The last knockings of that first 'Parma'
ham. The bones have gone for soup.

The new 'Jakoti' shears have proved themselves the perfect weapon for tidying up these frills and tufts, so Liz and I penned the sheep into our hurdle-pen in the cattle race and nipped round them all in fairly short order. I am pleased with the results, the now tidy sheep.

Ever bigger, the fast growing turkey youngsters.

Other than that we have just been chugging around here looking after the first two clutches of baby chicks (joined today by a possible third for 'Mint Patch Girl' but more on that in the next post) and releasing the Hubbard poults into their bigger pen.

Very first raspberries. 

All serene here.

The Donegal Postman

The pond is brim-full and still the rain falls.

After having finally found a break in the weather and enjoyed a whole day today out of doors in the gardening catching up with some much needed weeding and pruning, it seems mean to still post this post. Disloyal, ungrateful, even 'moany' perhaps, but I had this one all set in my head and I need to unload it to make room for the next one. We have had so much rain through July and into the first 6 days of August that even the locals are complaining. We have felt like we did on some of those narrow-boating holidays when we were all cooped up in the 56' by 6' floating "tube"; 8 of us and three dogs all steaming up the windows, wishing we could move.

Puddles on the drive.

Normally well used to the wet and stoic through the wet days the Irish seem to have run out of 'sense of humour' and given up on praying through the official channels. They turn their rain-splashed faces to one Michael Gallagher. "Who he?" I hear you ask (and well you might). This meteorological Messiah is none other than a country postman in County Donegal who has acheived local fame (and now, briefly, National renown) for being "always right" and, in the middle of the soggy month of July, was dishing out hope in the form of a predicted hot August. He is reported to be a keen studier of nature, convinced that the birds and animals KNOW stuff. This is not quite the clichéd "cows lying down" or "crows flying clockwise round t'spire" but it is close.

The 'waxies' get a re-coat of the protective wax. 

"For instance cattle and sheep will hide deep in the mountains in search of shelter when a cold spell is on the way.

Michael also said that a cold May is a good omen and a sign that we are in for a hot summer.

The cry of the curlew bird is usually a sign that we are in for heavy downpours but the postman has noticed a lack of them recently.

He also said that the fact that animals are not venturing to the upper plains of Donegal means that the good weather could be here to stay".

A lovely dark Delphinium drips after the
latest shower. 

Yes, I know it is all a bit of silliness on a slow news day (This one was in the Irish Mirror) but they lap it up here and the story was everywhere including all over National radio and everyone (including us, of course) was commenting that it might be wet but "there was some postman from Donegal who is 'always right' (apparently) predicting a hot August". Last year it was the turn of a sage from New Zealand who had a pet theory about the moon and planets aligning and who publishes an almanac which (allegedly again) "all the farmers buy". We looked it up and it was €22 plus postage from NZ so I doubt they do!

Dark purple buddleia. The bees love it but I've not seen any
butterflies on it yet. 

Well, I guess Michael Gallagher has gone a bit quiet as July's rain was replaced by rain from 1st to 6th of August but fair play to him. We hope he got a few pints in the pub from journalists trying to get hold of the story. Never say never, of course. It has been glorious today so we might be onto something. Met Éireann might not know it all with their gloomy talk of more anticyclones and frontal rain.

Up to their trotters in muck and mire.

It has been ironic that the piggies in August are wading about in 4-6 inches of sloppy mud around the entrance gate. We deliberately timed them to start in the (wet) spring and finish in the dust of August this year. Last year's Tamworths arrived here in June and as they came up ready in October we were worried about getting the trailer up to the gate to load them. If it had turned wet, we might be slithering about trying to push trailer and 180 kg of piggies through a morass to reach the car which would be sticking to the hard standing. I had visions of having to borrow JD Bob's tractor to tow the trailer to the hard ground.

The bees found the buddleia at last.

In the event, we had no such worries - the weather stayed dry and the trailer was easy to wheel across the ground. We could even have backed the car across the grass to hitch it on. But the 'fear' was there, so we decided to buy our pigs from the first litters in March/April, and have them finish in the nice reliable dry month of August. How we are laughing now! Now, obviously with pigs you must expect some chopping up of the ground - some people get pigs mainly for that purpose. We luckily have a well drained piece of territory for Mary and Isabelle but they have chopped up the earth round the gateways quite impressively and I have taken to feeding them over the fence away from the gateway, rather than continue with my twice daily, wellie-clad wade through with them "snapping at my heels" to the old feeding station, trying not to lose a wellie in the muck and mire.

This (deliberately)  poor address still made it.

Finally, while we are on postmen there has been another bit of national 'silliness' following the fun and games with the new 'Eircodes' (post codes) system. People have been trying to test their postmen by writing very short or jokey versions of addresses to see would the mail still get through. Our friend 'Airy Fox' told of one where a student had addressed a letter to his friend (also in Donegal) with "Your man Henderson; that boy with the glasses who is doing the PhD up there at Queen's in Belfast, Buncrana, Co Donegal" The punchline was inside the envelope, with the sender ribbing his mate that if he got the letter then he must live in a village.

Hen and Two still go off to roost in the gap where they hatched.

We were joking around that we bet that even if an envelope was addressed to us as "your man with the three white dog-eens, near Lisacul, Co Roscommon, then local postie Ger' would find us. Unbeknownst to us, Airy did exactly that (well, nearly, she did put 'Matt and Lizzie' at the top) and, yes, it got here. We wonder whether you could now be found if you merely put your post-code and Ireland but we think that this 'fun' is a bit irresponsible and must waste some postman time, plus they may have had a flush of these and could by now be getting tired of them. Credit to An Post again, though, for getting this one and thanks to Airy for the fun and the lovely card contained there-in.