Mists and Mellow Fruitfulness

(Apologies to John Keats, I guess). All the people round here that I know of who were interested in the blackberries have long since taken their fill from the hedgerows, made their wine, jam, cassis, desserts and pies and moved on. There are still many many left in the hedges for the birds and these are now being joined by equally bountiful crops of elder berries and hawthorn haws. The birds and small mammals are going to go into this winter very well fed and good luck to them.

Let's hope they don't need it too badly - so far we are enjoying another 2013 warm spell. Our first two complete years in Ireland really have shown us the extremes of what is possible for the warmer seasons - from the absolute unrelenting drenching of 2012 when we always seemed to have puddles and standing water, to the droughts of 2013 starting with our 19 rain-less days in February. We can't believe that it can do either wetter or drier and we are assuming that all our remaining years will be in between; we think we will be always saying "Ah well, it's wet alright, but do you remember 2012?" Never say never, of course.

The season too for gentle slowing down, die-back, decay and mushrooms. I've been enjoying these guys who come up in their delicate dozens where ever I have spread calf muck about. They are a real early riser of a fungus. At only about an inch across and 3 tall, they stand proud with their new white caps at 07:00 as I do my early morning feed and release rounds, but by 09:00 or so the caps have auto-digested to a blob of black ink atop the stem, presumably dribbling their spores away, their job done. By the time the sun touches them they have collapsed and shriveled back to nothing.

I have no idea of the name but they are a lovely thing to find on these misty moisty mornings. For a while we were also getting edible field mushrooms in the lawn but these now seem to have finished and the bigger mushrooms are all now centred around a long-since sawn off tree stump.

These look a bit parasol-ish so might be edible but I know enough about mushrooms to know that their identification can be tricky to the non expert, sometimes involving detail of cap colour, gill shape and colour, detail of whether there is any kind of skin-collar left around the stem and even the colour of a spore-print left overnight to form on white paper by the spores falling from the cap laid on the paper. Pud Lady used to be very good at it and knowledge-able and we all survived her cookery experiments but we tend to leave them be.

It is also the season when we can start 'harvesting' our meat products so we have been enjoying some meals of young rabbit and also of this La Bresse rooster who was starting to be a problem for William the Conqueror and some of the ladies. He was 22 weeks old and a hefty lad, so that he came out oven-ready as this fine 2.475 kg carcass, at the time, the biggest poultry lump we'd produced. Liz actually jointed him up and just cooked the legs and wings on the day but even that was more than we needed so Liz left a drumstick and me the wing on the side of our plates for cold left overs.

I said the biggest "we'd produced" meaning up to then. We have since had another young goose unexpectedly up and die on us for no obvious reason (possibly another victim of the in-breeding problem we already know about). This one cleaned out at 3.605 kg, not huge for a goose, but not bad for one at still only 4 months old.

On other news, our lambs continue to thrive and we are sure they must be approaching the target 50 kg weight but we have not heard a whisper from sheep mentor, Kenny about coming to weigh them and decide on their dates. Here they are joined at the feed trough, rather cheekily, by some of the Hubbard chicks, our other thriving babies who are 60 days old today. They are reckoned, in a commercial set up, to need only 90 days but we are looking at their huge feet and thinking they might go a bit longer than that and get huge. We should probably take advice from Anne on that one - huge and late may not be good attributes in terms of tenderness or flavour.

Finally we have one of the mini-horses, Falabella 'Cody' back with us for a while. You will remember that we had him and the other two amigos here in the spring time, keeping our grass short and doing a favour for Charlotte and Carolyn when fodder was hard to come by. Cody is the stallion of the gang, being the only one who is still 'entire'. Not for long, it seems. He has been making a nuisance of himself escaping and going in search of mares. The market for miniature foals, along with most other Irish markets has collapsed so that nobody needs the boy at stud at present and his fate is sealed.

He can't have his 'op' just now because the current hot spell has brought the horse flies (locally 'creabhars' or 'craws') out again en masse and it is not fair to create an open, healing wound on a horse with those about, so he is waiting till mid October for his visit from Aoife (Rhymes with Deefer). Our field is secure though, he loves it here because we fuss and spoil him, there is loads of grass despite the 5 sheep, and he is, we are told, OK with sheep. He likes the company, apparently. So he's back among us for now.

That is about it. We are ambling along happily doing lots of tidying, weeding and some planting as well as all the muck spreading in this lovely warm dry weather.

An Update on the Update

Sixteen days now without rain so we are now officially in drought. Please send any Aid Convoys and water bowsers soonest. Seriously though, we are enjoying the current dry spell and spending most of our time outdoors working together. I am cracking on with the pond and we are also moving a temporary compost 'site' to a more convenient position. This set of heaps were established in a hurry while we were still buildering and slung together using a rather ugly collection of corrugated iron and of wooden off-cuts banged into the ground as uprights.

There was an old broken down fence which used to run across from the cattle race to the gate into the 5 acre field (part of the land we didn't buy). Only the bit near what is now the orchard gate was still standing; the rest was lying flat or part-buried under mud and weeds, it's barbed wire looping out of the ground Loch Ness Monster style as a superb trip hazard. We had pulled much of this out but we used the standing section as the backs of two back back-to-back heaps, one for good stuff, one for rough. This set up now part blocks the entrance to the orchard field and is unsightly, so the sheet metal is going to go, the compost get moved to new heaps 'behind' the wall of the cattle race, the messy barbed wire extracted for scrapping and the posts pulled out and logged up for burning. We will then have another bit of nice flat bare spoil for gardening on.

The 'inherited' chain saw proved to be a very good one and in excellent, nearly new condition. Our man Felix-the-Fix (Chainsaw genius) serviced it and set it up for the outrageous sum of €6 (£5.18 to you Brits - I know... where does all the money go?) and even showed me how to start it etc. It turns out that Stihl equipment is date stamped, so we know that this saw was made in 1998 although, obviously, not when it was purchased. It might therefore have been bought by TK Min while he still lived on this site and it might be him that used it for the very few times it has been run. Felix could tell this was 'few' because of the very small amount of dust and rubbish under the chain guard and the lack of scuffing and wear on the chain 'bar' (big flat 'blade' sticking out of the front, around the edge of which the chain runs). Anyway, Felix declared it as safe as a new one. He also accepted the offer of my old one for salvage and bits. Oil pumps and air filters are apparently the thing.

We were just done pond-digging and compost heaving and we were sitting down on the outside chairs for a coffee, when two livestock things happened in quick succession. First some bizarre noises from the goose 'pond' drew our attention to the fact that Gander was doing naughty things to one of the gals (which, we are told, only happens on water). The other goose was hopping from foot to foot and flapping and honking. We do not know whether she wanted a turn, or was worried he was trying to drown the lady. This is the first time, to our knowledge that this has happened (though we are not there all the time to watch) but may portend the girls coming back into lay. That would be nice. We are also wondering whether we might get broodiness and goslings.

No sooner had we got over that excitement than Blue appeared with something big in his jaws which we at first thought was a bird with its wings spread. It was, in fact, a decent sized young rat, so it's good to know the cats are still on the case. Not to be outdone, Rolo was later also walking around with a dead mouse and even visited Liz while she was sitting on the 'throne', but his was stiff and cold so we think he just un-stashed it from some hidey hole to prove a point.

Sorry no pics today. More soon.

A Drought in February?

According to textbook Meteorology a 'drought' in the British Isles is any period of 15 days without rain. My paper-diary had it's first mention of "warm sunny spring-like days" on Feb 14th so if we manage tomorrow without rain (and it looks as if we might) we are officially in a drought situation in County Roscommon in February. This is unheard of! Given that if felt like we had rain every day through November, December and January it is a very pleasant change and we hope that it is a portent of a decent spring. We are starting to enjoy plenty of 'signs' by now. We have primroses open in the 'Primrose Path' and our daffs are starting to turn down prior to showing the first colour. The buds on the cutting dogwood from Vendor Anna are opening and plenty of other plants have signs of expanding buds.

Our rabbits in the big run had grazed their grass down to the clay and were running to the fence to 'ask' me for food as soon as I appeared in the garden. They were gobbling up cabbage leaves and broccoli stalks, carrots, feed wheat and the last remaining 'Fast Lamb Crunch' mixture like it was going out of fashion. They have now been moved to their new runs and the front lawn, where they will graze the whole of their 1 m by 2.5 m area in one day and we are moving them on to new grass each morning. They are leaving a snooker-table-like baize with a few pellets of poo in their wake as they proceed across the lawn.

We nipped out to beyond Carrick to a place we had heard sold poly-tunnel plastic sheet by the yard and bought enough to produce the Mark 2 version of my raised-bed cloche. The Mk 1 was only made out of an old bit of plastic wrapping and had been shredded by the first decent gale. You will know from reading the job list a few posts back that I had in mind to create a 'greenhouse' using a wooden frame and corrugated transparent plastic, maybe fibre-glass. Mentor Anne (who had played this game before!) suggested  that while we were out at the poly tunnel place (North West Tool Hire, Kilclare, Co. Lietrim) we ask the guy for a price on the corrugated. She was suggesting that it might be very expensive and was steering us in the direction of poly-tunnel plastic, at least for sections, if not a poly-tunnel itself.

 Well, Anne, you will not be surprised to know that the corrugated sheet plan is now withdrawn. The plastic alone was going to come to €1400+ and that was without wood, screws and so on. Instead we have been persuaded that the way to go is actually a poly-tunnel, so we have ordered one measuring 20 feet long by 14 feet wide (and 7'6" tall) which will fit in the same space. It was only €700 all in and is being delivered, we hope, this weekend. We have spent part of today clearing the site which is, you will recall, the western bay of the former hay barn. Liz is now planning all manner of tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and basil to cram it with.

With the soil nicely drying out in the DROUGHT (did I tell you we were nearly in a drought?) I have got back into pond digging. It is pure pleasure. The shovel-fulls are so much lighter when not weighed down like a sodden sponge and the barrow loads bounce across the firm ground. The plan for this is to not need an expensive rubber liner (estimate €860) as two 'spits' down, we hit yellow Roscommon clay. I have nearly taken the first 'spit' off so you can clearly see the shape of the pond now. I will then come in a bit all round and start on the next level. When we get down to clay I am hoping that we will be able to 'puddle' the clay into a waterproof layer or at least. waterproof enough that the replenishment from the rain (when we are not in DROUGHT) would keep up with any seepage.

I have just noticed that the picture above appears to show a headless chicken. This is just William preening his right side out of sight. The strange grey cloud which you can just see rising to the left of me (as you look) turns out to be because one of his daft hens decided that the old bonfire ash would be a good place for a dust bathe. She got well involved in this and was there for half an hour at least rolling and writhing about getting completely covered in the grey ash and sending up plumes of dust into the windless air. She got up, shook herself and was obviously well satisfied with the result but spent the rest of today looking decidedly grubby compared to her sisters and with very grey wattles and comb. If we'd not seen her bathing we would have been very concerned for her health. Oooh. She does look poorly!

Meanwhile we have started planting some of the Wispy's and Ardcarne plant purchases. We are trying out a new sort of raised bed as an experiment.  This is Liz's cunning method. We make a circle of stones to mark the patch out from the grass, drop a layer of well rotted straw-bale onto the grass and then shovel on a mound of spare soil from the pond. The chickens and rooster inspect this for worms and grubs and then sign it over to Liz for planting, in this case with foxgloves, Ismene (Hymenocallis = "Peruvian Daffodil") and geraniums. It then gets a chicken-wire cover to deter the geese for the first few days while the plants get established. The picture is the first ever one, a Pilot Project. There!

Did I tell you we might have a drought? Oh yes, so I did.