A Lucky Rooster

Puff balls

"At last!", I hear you cry, "A post devoid of Doctors, health, hospitals and medical stuff...... well except for here in this first sentence, anyway". September now, season of mists and mellow fruitfulness and all thoughts turn to small-holder-ing, harvests and preparing for the Winter. Here that means a variety of meats - duck, chicken and pigs at the moment, plenty of fruit (mainly plums and apples), veg obviously and then. always taking us a bit by surprise, the puffball "pop-up-crop" out on the old muck heap behind the goose house.

Lamb shoulder cooked over a bed of veg which included
our puff balls. 

I spotted 2 nice new puff balls this time around and their delicious mushroominess has enhanced a number of dishes. Elizabeth included them in a lovely mushroom tortilla. I had a try at just cutting one into chips, and frying-pan frying them as part of breakfast, which was delicious, but the Main Chef used them as part of the bed of veg's under a roast lamb shoulder. This made for some delicious 'veg' to accompany the meat first time round, but then enhanced a superb shepherd's pie made with the left overs. Obviously you need to catch them young - don't wait till they are just a thin-skinned bag of dark green 'puffy' spores!

Plum jam. Needs another boil to improve the 'set'.

It has been a very good year for plums. All the heat wave weather ensured a good blossom and fruit set and the plums seemed to all survive the drought, unlike the cherries, quinces and pears which suffered a serious "June Drop". We picked a good 6 kg yesterday and I made 3 kg into plum jam.

Only a few figs this year but it is a very small and young tree.

This morning, though, I am not impressed by the set. I am never very good at setting jam; I never seem to boil it long or hard enough. This batch will go back into the big saucepan when I get the chance, for another good hour of rolling boil and reduction. It has also been a good year for apples but we are not so mad keen for apples in this house, so the pigs have been enjoying the lion's share of our Katy and Red Windsor bounty. Other varieties are more interesting but, this year, a lot lower cropping - 'Irish Peach', Egremont Russet, Braeburn, James Grieves and Bramley, plus cider apples Camelot, Dunkerton Early and Dabinet.

The 'bonhams' enjoying a water melon treat. There is nothing like
water melon for  shlurpy, juice-flying-everywhere, pig-saliva,
lip-smacking show of deliciousness. Happy pigs.

In the Meat Department we have now declared the two boy-pigs (bonhams) "ready". They have caught up well on the late Sister. I have booked them in to the butcher in town for Weds week (12th). That means we just have to do all that trailer-familiarisation malarkey on the Monday and Tuesday, but these guys already know the trailer from when we were doing it with their 'big sister' (Daisy - see earlier post). We will collect the carcasses on the following Monday (19th) to give them a chance to 'set' in Webb's cold store.

A nice clean drake carcass.

Meanwhile, our new ducks have now made their decisions on whether to be ducks or drakes and, unfortunately for them, the 5 babies proved to be 3 drakes and 2 females. This gave us a way out of balance ratio in the 'flock' (do ducks have 'flocks'?) of 4 males to 3 females. We need to 'off' all three of the new drakes to restore the balance, especially as any matings would almost certainly be brother x sister in-breedings. We will then be left with the Khaki Campbell as our drake. He is definitely NOT related to the ladies - he is a different variety.

Let a wet dog on your lap and they will autograph your knee.

The original Mum and 2 daughters will be our egg layers come next Spring. It's a shame that in Appleyards, as in the original mallards, the boys are the pretty and colourful ones. The females tend to be brown and flecked, well camouflaged, but can have a bit of white on their chests. So it goes.

The chickens, of course, have the same problem. Regular readers will know that we run here with a hen to rooster ratio of between 7:1 and 12:1 which gives us good cover (fertility) in the eggs but avoids any unwelcome harassment and rape. Sadly, like most species, baby chicks hatch as roosters and hens on a 50/50 basis; way too many boys. The day someone develops a chicken variety that yields 1:7 someone will make a lot of money.

This 'spare' rooster got lucky

We are, as you know, over-run with 2018 hatch birds, a lot of which hatched around May, so they will be coming to "point of lay" (or not!) between now and Chri***as. We start to see the signs as young poults start to square up to one another, flaring their little baby 'capes' and bowing their heads. This can be from very young ages - 6 weeks even. There is no market for them as roosters, especially the mongrel cross breeds we produce.

The ducks playing on the pond. Much quacking, zooming about
swimming under water like penguins and splashing. 

Normally these guys get 'offed' before they start to cause a problem, but one here at the moment has got lucky. Our archery friends, Con and Niamh have just had their rooster and a couple of hens taken by the fox. The rooster was taken right outside the kitchen window - Niamh saw him bite through the poor fella's neck and then carry him off, limp, before she could get out there.

Sad slew of feathers. All you get to tell
you Brer Fox has been.

We thought our own fox might be leaving us alone - he'd not been (as far as we knew) for several weeks. But 2 days ago, he came by just before 9 o'clock in the morning to invite a Buff Orpington hen to breakfast. My bad. I was downstairs and had just shut the dogs up for yapping at a magpie, lest they wake up Elizabeth. When they started yapping again I assumed it was just more magpie and did not respond properly. The fox had come onto the front lawn in bright sunshine and snatched a hen from the flock out there. Elizabeth spotted the sad slew of feathers on the lawn and a couple more where Foxy had adjusted his grip on his way out through fences etc.

Leaf fall.

Meanwhile, we are now set up for a few visits. The first, today, was by Mum-in-Law (Steak Lady on here) accompanied by her friend/neighbour/minder/factotum, Michelle. MiL had recently broken her wrist and had had it in plaster, so no driving for her. The plaster cast is now off but this would be a first chance for MiL to show off our place (largely built by her son, 'Sparks', of course!) to Michelle and also for them to check up on my recovery. We would catch up on the chat over tea, enjoy a bit of lunch, and then the ladies were off for an afternoon at the lovely Strokestown House (The house, the National Famine Museum and a lovely old walled garden).

Lovely poster from Michelle.

They came (as they say) bearing gifts including a very thoughtful and generous present from Michelle. She has a friend in the printing business and she had had him make up a couple of posters from the newspaper article which featured our garden back in December 2017. See also my previous post on

https://deefer-dawg.blogspot.com/2017/12/too-much-bio-diversity.html

The poster had the article in the middle, surrounded by some more recent pictures extracted from this blog. We are very grateful and delighted. The ladies even brought a poster-frame for the item. We are spoiled.

Geese and their reflections

Tomorrow, it is the turn of  'The Dans' (Dan and Danielle), long term Friends of the Blog. Cousin Danielle, in particular, was deeply distressed (well... OK) that I had sneakily gone sick without very quickly calling on them to come and help, and they have been meaning to get over and support us ever since. We really have the best and most generous friends.  More of that visit in the next post.

All for now. Good Luck.

On Not Getting Your Ducks in a Row.

Our 3 young ducks prior to yesterday's dramas. 

Ducks. A sore subject round here at present and definitely not our strong suit this month. Not only have we only produced 3 hatchlings from the first 2 sets of eggs in the incubator but now we have had a total fail on 14 eggs set, due to hatch last Thursday.

Badly mauled duck in the sick bay. It did
not survive the night.

To add to our tale of woe, our attempts to introduce the 3 new birds to the old-hand drakes have resulted in a load of bullying and rape and now a youngster chased into the jaws of terrier, Poppea. That unfortunate bird was rescued to the sickbay but was badly mauled and died during the night.

Enormous poppy.

The eggs were a motley collection of our own plus some gifts from Sue and Rob. We are not at all convinced by the fertility of our drake/duck combination(s) and all the gifts were from untried, very young birds including Sue and Rob's new Muscovies; these were the first ever eggs from those ladies.

At least we are good at chicken chicks

The complete lack of action despite having candled them at day 12 and found the majority to be under way, has me wondering whether we have overheated and 'cooked' them in the incubator during that hot spell. The incubator is a Covatutto, so a low-price model. We know they are good at keeping things warm, but how good are they at not producing any heat when the ambient temperatures approach 27ºC.

On the left the little grey chick I saved the life of on hatch day,
now 2 weeks old.

One part of me was going to keep them going till Help-X Laura's last day to give them every possible chance to make a late showing. The more pragmatic half says this is a waste of time, and I might, instead, break the duds open in her presence so she can see them part-formed. Maybe I'll leave it up to her.

As to the dog-attack, I'd been doing the standard thing when trying to introduce new birds to established ones. The youngsters had been in a rabbit run in full view of the very interested drakes for most of their growing up weeks thus far. They are now 12 weeks old and plenty big enough to take care of themselves.

Elizabeth is delighted with this self-seed aquilegia.

What I expected to happen was the usual flurry of mad excitement while they all sorted out who the boss was, plus a bit of 'rape', which is normal for ducks. What we got was several days of the drakes making nuisances of themselves and giving the new birds (male and female) no peace. The drakes kept coming into the yard, where cowered the new ducks, hunt one down and chase it about till it submitted to being 'jumped upon'.

The hot spell has given us some lovely sunsets. 

Sadly, on one of these hunts, the frantic youngster tried to escape into the dog-pen where sat a very excited Westie, Poppea. The dogs have been good as gold and can now move among the calm chickens without anybody getting eaten but this squeaking, flapping, terrified runner was all to much for Poppea's 'red mist' instincts. She fell on it and bit it badly across the pelvis and 'saddle'.

Thriving on neglect? This climbing hydrangea,
stuck in by the dustbins and the water butt,
has finally started to look the part and is
producing flowers.

I rescued it's limp, wet-with-dog-drool form and we quickly did all we could in terms of hospitalising, checking it over, cleaning it up and bandaging the wounds. Sadly, it died during the night.

We went all Moroccan at supper - slow roast lamb, tomatoes
roasted with goat's cheese, aubergines with onions, flat bread
and hummus. 

After all these duck-failures we are left with only 4 living ducks - those horribly aggressive drakes whom we may never trust again with our youngsters, and the 2 slightly traumatised 12 week olds who are back in safe custody. I am not sure how this will end. Some tough decisions needed here over the next few weeks.

Round and round and round she goes. When she'll stop,
nobody knows. Loves her mowing, this one!

Meanwhile, in most other areas, all is well. Our current Help-X volunteer, Laura, who earned (above and beyond!) a third week with us is continuing to delight with her hard work and her dessert cookery. We've had her back at the mowing and the nettle-pulling. She has helped me strip old rotten wooden panels out of the stock-trailer, then make up replacements using all the carpentry tools and a tin of varnish.

Laura at work on the trailer.

She has come with me several times when I have been helping a friend repair fences. She has helped clean out the geese even with a broody goose in attendance, and has since done those ducklings and our geriatric hen Doris. She has also walked some more of those huge walks she loves doing.

A very careful coat of Yacht Varnish. 

On Sunday I was at indoor archery, so we were in a different part of Castlerea but not to be outdone, Laura worked out a route home on her smart phone up through the 'Demesne' (park with river) and back through the lanes of Cloonboniffe and Lough Glynn. Most evenings she takes herself off upstairs to watch a movie on 'NetFlix' through her 'tablet'. She is absolutely no trouble. We will miss her when she leaves. That is currently likely to be this coming Saturday when she is off to her next posting in Kilkenny via a weekend off with a friend.

Easily our most used book these past 3 weeks.

That is probably enough for this one. Hopefully a more upbeat, happy, positive post next time. Apologies for the sad tone at the start of this one.

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.