Royal Relief

Honey bee on swede/turnip flower. I left the last half dozen
to run away to seed and the bees love them.

Bad weather, strong winds and heavy showers have kept us a bit pinned down of late. I have to admit to having got badly behind on the gardening. It has been fairly warm, so the weeds have charged onwards even when it's been too wet to get out and tackle them, so I have ground still needing clearing before I can plant things, and seeds still sitting here in packets which should have been in the ground long ago.  Any big projects have been parked for the moment and we have been snatching opportunities to do little jobs in the sunny intervals. These have mainly been livestock, so this post will be a bit of a livestock update.

Our bees on our apple blossom. We are delighted with this
'first' for Feigh. 

The biggest news is that we finally got a chance to crack open the bee hive and were quickly able to establish that we had larvae in the brood frames which told us immediately that the Queen Bee must still be alive. This was a huge relief as we were worried that we might have squashed her in our clumsy, amateurish efforts to re-hive the donated colony. This would have been serious and embarrassing. To lose one colony in a year, as they might say, is unfortunate.... but to lose two...... But no, it is now 25 days since our re-hiving, so any eggs laid by the queen prior to that would have long since completed their larval stage, pupated and even emerged as adults. We are happy bee keepers.

The swarm-box is strapped to the big ash tree, top right. 

At this time of year, beekeepers start to think about swarming, potentially losing their queen and half the work force, possibly catching them or, even better, bribing someone else's absconded colony to fetch up and stay at your apiary. We have our swarm-box strapped to the ash tree but this year, anyway, it is unlikely to catch any prime-swarm of ours. Our queen, we know has been wing-clipped as well as colour-marked, so if our workers decide to swarm, they would boot her out of the colony but then instead of flying off with them to hang in a tree, she will fall to the ground and probably get lost in the grass.

Colour codes for queen-marking.

Some bee keepers do this to try to stop the swarm taking off (the idea is that they realise they have lost Her Majesty and return to the hive). If we are lucky she will gather a small number of workers around her on the ground which we might spot and be able to rescue into the skep, where we can then gather some of the swarm or some workers from the hive to make up a new colony. It's a long shot. You have to hope that the swarm only leaves the hive when it has set up replacement queens ready to emerge from their own pupae and that these (virgin) queens get successfully mated on their mating-flights before returning to the hive to carry on the good work.

Poppea talks to Mary through the fence while Towser watches

Meanwhile, in the pigs dept, our two young ladies have reached the 3-month-old mark. They are thriving, very strong in the appetite area and now grown bigger than the dogs by quite a way. We are very happy with them. They have also become quite tame by now and allow me to measure them with the tape measure (see earlier post) to estimate weights. They seem to be about 17 kgs, possibly a bit smaller than last year's Tamworths but we did not manage to measure those till they were a bit older. I am being a bit more careful to control food intake on these girls as we are aiming for a carcass with a bit less fat covering. They also seem to be a lot more into rootling and churning up the ground, but again, when we got the Tams the ground was dry and hard for their first month, where these animals have had plenty of rain and easy-peel turf.

The Hubbards at 3 weeks feel some first sun on their feathers
and grass under their feet

The Hubbard chicks are cracking on too and have quickly out grown the bodged-up brooder box (made from 2 big potato crisp box 'outers') we have them in upstairs in the spare room. Luckily the weather has turned nicely warm, so we have been letting them out in the sunshine in one of the rabbit runs, all be it with one end well wrapped against the rather chilly breezes and a good layer of shredded wood and hay in the 'bedroom'. They are also just outside the front window where Liz can keep a close eye out for any signs of chilling - there have been none - the birds race about happily chasing each other, scratching for food among the grass and doing some practise play-fights as they set up their pecking order.

The old tumble-down apple tree is in full bloom. It never
ceases to amaze me. It looks almost rotted through at the
broken base but there must be just enough intact sap-wood
to keep it going. 

We rescue them back indoors at night for now, but will soon be letting them do a 'sleep over' in the rabbit run. They are only 3 weeks old tomorrow but these are no ordinary 'little cute fluffy chicks', they grow and put in weight like no other bird we have met. I should probably weigh some tomorrow but in the commercial world these guys make oven-ready weights in 80 to 100 days. It will take longer in our free range set-up - we normally give them 4-5 months. At 6 weeks we usually let them start to explore properly by lifting the end of their run in the morning so that they can escape, and then, for a while, we chase them all back home with a food bribe in the evening. They may voluntarily start to use the proper chicken coop.

New ear tags for the twins. 

Also cracking on are the twin lambs, who made their 6-week birthday on the 7th May. This means that they need to get ear tagged, so we had some fun rounding all 5 sheep up into the cattle race so that we could tag these and check everyone's feet, trim and spray if necessary. No foot problems this time, so with Louise now officially (IE0455809)00002H and Thelma 00003A we are all legal and booked into my paperwork. You don't tag till 6 weeks because the ears would be so tiny and the tag so huge compared to the ear, it would be uncomfortable for the lamb and there is a risk of nicking a blood vessel. Hulking 6-weekers have their blood vessels nicely spaced apart on acres of ear - you can aim more reliably with the pliers.

Turkey eggs in the borrowed incubator
(many thanks, Charlotte!)

The new turkeys did not miss a beat on their egg laying with the move here, so we were able to give the half dozen asked for by a possible new friend of ours requested by Charlotte. This is a lady with a tup (ram) who we may be able to use come August, to service our Polly and Lily (plus one?) so we are looking to schmooze her up a bit, with turkey and Buff Orp eggs as the main bribe currency. Our turkey hen, though, Barbara carried on a-laying, happily joining in with the chickens' current habit of dropping the eggs in the known stash under the elderberry tree in the woods, but also (once) on the nest of the broody Buff in the Tígín. We decided that we might as well incubate a few of these just to see how we get on. We borrowed Charlotte's incubator again (Thanks C) and have set 8 in it. They take 28 days to cook, so are due on 8th June.

(Top to bottom) Chestnut, soapwort,
lemon balm, sweet woodruff and
comfrey in the nursery area

That broody Buff has stuck with the job tucked down between the concrete blocks and the camping toilet and is almost there now, with the 'proper' eggs due in 2 more day's time. 'Proper'? Yes, we were rather horrified to see on Sunday that she had left the nest and there was 'now' a white Hubbard adult hen sitting there, presumably laying an extra egg. Moments later Miss White was off and cackling and the broody Buff had nipped back in, so we could not see if there were extras. The next day we caught them again and discovered that Miss Buff was now sitting on 13 eggs (!), 7 more than we'd set under her and one of these the aforementioned turkey egg. We recovered that one.

Cheese and bacon 'swiss' rolls.

You do not have to be a chicken expert to see that these eggs have turned up at some unknown time between our true start-date (April 24th) and now, so will only be part-incubated by our Day 21 (Thursday). When (if) the 'proper' six chicks hatch and start to get active, Miss Buff will abandon the nest and take them off to play, leaving the unhatched eggs as failures to go cold. We have an option, if we see the move and can rescue the eggs still warm, to nip them into the incubator but that way madness lies. You end up with baby chicks of all ages moving through the rearing processes not necessarily compatible with each other (size differences etc). It is not going to be dull, anyway! We have, meanwhile, closed the Tígín door on the broody. She can do her last few days without interference from her 'sisters' and sitting just on the existing eggs. And yes, we could have marked the original 6 eggs, but hey, that would have been way too sensible.

Dunhills all? The gang on the calf-muck heap. 

That about wraps it up for this one, with most of the livestock covered. The rabbits have not had a mention but they are just mooching along calmly enjoying their big new run. The dogs and cats are just the dogs and cats. No news is good news.

Earth Stood Hard as Iron?

All through the recent snowfalls, pretty though they were, we have not had any really cold weather. Under that snow, as your boot heel squeaked down through it, you could feel the mud still yielding and 'fudge' soft. Where we did get a bit of a crunchy surface crust it was very thin and had softened by midday as the sun turned the grass back to green from white. Well, not this time. Over the last few nights the air has gone down to the -4's and -6's and with the wind chill factor it has been bitter-raw.

This is a bit crunchy, Dad! Can we have some wet stuff?

The sheep are OK with their straw shelter (though I did tie some more sheeting to the fence to stop a 'knife' of WNW wind taking the noses off the poor things as they ate from the trough). The birds are all OK in their solid buildings - a bit draughty maybe but not actually windy. I lashed up some of the big 40 kg coal sacks to the North side of the giant rabbits' run to give them some protection. I am also obviously into carrying out liquid water to the anybody whose drinker is solid, the geese in particular. Blue has been able to try out his pond-skating skills again.

That's more like it. The geese make do with a bucket of fresh
indoor water.

The main pond is a sheet of bobbly ice, where falling snow has landed and floated, combining to form the top-crust. I used to doubt those experts who'd look at the sky and say "too cold for snow" (I'm fairly sure it snows at both poles!) but that does seem to be the way of it here, or perhaps it is truer to say that it only gets really cold along this Atlantic margin, when we have high pressure and no clouds. Me personally, I enjoy the fact that it is frozen and 'dry' rather than the sloppy mud we have had some years. I love that stage where the puddles crust over with ice but then contract back into the earth. leaving the top-crust hanging there, above ground, fixed to a few blades of crisp grass.

Frozen puddle.

Our grass remains intact this year and has not been reduced to square yards of brown slop where humans have walked, geese have paddled and chickens have scraped. The exponents of wildlife gardening and helping the pollinators, of course, advocate planting plenty of very early flowering plants so that the bees have something to get at if they emerge early. These lists generally include snow drops, crocus and the flowering currents (Ribes) and pussy willow and hazel for the catkins. We are getting there. We are struggling to source snowdrops "in the green" as we used to do in Kent but have planted some dry and rather unlikely looking bulbs. We have planted a good few crocus each year into the lawn, though the 2014 batch have come up just as the snow hit and are now the must-have breakfast choice for one of the Buff Orp young roosters. The poor things are looking a bit ravaged. However, the bees have also been hunkered down in the hive since 25th January, so they've not needed the crocus flowers.

A frozen wash-out? Autumn sown broad beans.

In Kent, too, I was always able to grow autumn-sown broad beans. I would get them into the ground in October and they would emerge and grow to be sturdy 3-6 inch tall plants by the time the cold weather came. They would then go alarmingly limp and sorry looking at every frost but would bounce back well as the frost cleared and steam on through spring to produce a lovely early crop in May/June before the black fly had even spotted them. I was advised not to bother here and I know that Mentor Anne has done trials and now stopped trying; she does them in early spring now using root trainers and does not bother with the autumn sown varieties.

The rather ravaged crocus.

The plants do not like the constant wet. I suspect they could cope if it was just cold, but the wet, wet, wet has the biggest leaves turning black and falling away so that the poor lads either die or struggle on as a weak looking stem and tiny leaves which never really get cracking in the spring. I had three good rows going into the winter and great hopes for them, but I am now reduced to half a dozen plants and lots of gaps plus a conviction that the advice was correct. 2 failed winters. Life's too short. We always garden to our strengths anyway and never try to force things to grow which need 'the wrong soil' or shade/full sun or what-ever. Every day's a school day.

Purple sprouting broccoli, ready soon.

We do seem to be able to grow all the kales, cabbages and broccolis. I have a lovely stand of purple sprouting broccoli out there at present which has gone through winter with its sprout-buds tightly closed and tiny and is now starting to move; well, it was till these -6ºC temperatures came along. A warm week or two and we will be able to start cutting that and bringing it into the kitchen. The Brussels sprouts are nearly done, with just a few tiny buds left at the tops of the stems and, again, a warm week might let those expand a bit.

Talking of 'frozen', everyone was a winner yesterday when we dug a pork shoulder joint out of the freezer but decided to make a curry of the lean meat having first boned it out and stripped off the skin and subcutaneaous fat. Raw pork bones are our dogs' absolute favourite (and the best for them, it seems; no upset stomachs, that 'lovely' white chalky poo) and there were three good chunks for the three dogs. I skimmed the skin off the fat and roasted it into 'scratchings' for dog treats and the fat, finely diced, was hoovered up by the frosty chickens. The curry was a Madhur Jaffrey "Goan hot and sour" which we served with white rice and home made Naan bread.

Ear tags and pliers.

Finally, our sheep ear-tag 'pliers' and first batch of ear tags turned up. Under EU rules we have to identity-tag every sheep and lamb we 'produce' on this 'farm'  before it leaves (even to the mart or for slaughter) the premises or before it reaches 9 months of age. There are, of course, standard designs of tags you must use and you have to buy them from proper official suppliers who hold the databases of sheep flocks in their patch, in our case the excellent Mullinahone Co-op (Tipperary) who also supplied our pig 'slap-mark' numbers.

As you sign on with them as a customer, they pull up your details and start a sequence of ear-tag numbers; always here, the letters IE (for Ireland), then 04 (species code for sheep), followed by a 5 digit flock ID - I am 55809 and then 5 digits and a random letter for the animal number. You start at 00001 and off you go. Liz spotted a charming coincidence, that our first lamb (so IE0455809-00001F, to his friends) happens to have the random letter 'F' - his name is Feste. Our first batch of tags was the minimum size, 10 tags. It may take us a while to get through them at this rate even if the girls knock out some pairs of twins. We feel all grown up and official now in our 'farming'.

Tag, Dag and Weigh

It's not meant to hurt 'too much'.
The sharp end of the tag is pushed
through the ear with special pliers.

At long last, sheep man 'Kenny' arrives to ear-tag my lambs. We love him dearly but he is the most disorganised lad and the most unconcerned about time keeping and deadlines we know. Last year we got lambs with no paperwork (which is no longer allowed) and this year he passed us the lambs and the ear-tag fronts separately, promising to swing by in 'a week or so' and fit them for us. That was August 2nd. In both cases, I would also be in trouble of course for having accepted the lambs in this 'condition' but we muddle along and it all sorts itself out in the end. So far we have not been inspected by any Dept officials.

Contained in the cattle race. 

Kenny texted first to say he'd be with me in 40 minutes (and he was!) but did not bring his son Oisín (a useful and expert sheep-wrangler) and I do not currently have Liz on hand, so the job was down to the two of us. I was a bit concerned that we might have problems persuading the lambs across my yard and into the cattle race; they had never been there. They were as good as gold, following my rattled bucket of grub. Once in the race they were easy prey, with only a confined space and no place to run. We just needed to catch each one in turn, tag them and "weigh" them. There was also one I needed to 'dag'.

All legal now - yellow tags on the right ear.

Kenny let me tag one of them with the pliers. The two halves of the tag fit one into each 'mandible' of the pliers, then you crunch them together forcing the sharp point of the one half through the ear and into the socket of the back of the tag. You try to avoid any obvious blood vessels and the punch must sting them a bit (they jump!) but it is supposed to not hurt them much or for long. They certainly seemed OK and unconcerned very quickly after we did the damage.

The messy end, reasonably clean after
having been 'dagged'.

While we had them contained, Kenny gave me a quick master-class in assessing sheep 'condition' (as in fatness or readiness for slaughter). Push 4 fingers into the back of the lamb either side of the spine. If you can feel the spinal 'processes' sticking up like the knuckles of a tight-closed fist, then we are too thin - the spine needs to feel like the knuckles of an almost open hand. Probe with your fingers either side of the tail - you should not be able to feel any bone here. Push a hand into either side of the lamb just behind the ribs as if trying to make your fingers meet inside the lamb's abdomen. If you can't get in at all you are fat, of you can get a little way in you are 'middling' and, Kenny tells me, if the lamb is in very poor condition you can almost meet your fingers 'through' the lamb's body. All our lambs were declared 'mighty fine' and only days or a week or two away from being 'fit' (ready).

The young Buff-Orps out and about. They will hit 21 weeks
('point of lay' for many chickens) on about Christmas Day!

The official hi-tech way of weighing them today, though I will leave this to Kenny who is way younger, fitter and stronger than I am, was to lift them and declare "Ah... he's ready". Kenny grabs them around the chest from above and hefts them off the ground clutched to his own chest as a child might clumsily lift a younger brother or sister. They want to be about 8 stone he says. I'll take his word for it!

Mapp and Lucia at nearly 6 months.

The final job on the lambs was that I needed to 'dag' one. Dags, for the uninitiated, are the messy, poo-ey 'cling-ons' which dangle behind some sheep, where the poo has not cleared the wool and is all stuck in between the fibres, unable to fall to the ground. Dagging is a regular part of sheep husbandry but (I am told) applies much more to some breeds, such as Suffolk Downs, than others (Texel, Mules etc). They are not 'scouring' (having diarrhoea) in any unhealthy way, they just do loose 'stools'. This may only apply to lush Roscommon grazing, I do not wish to impugn the Suffolk Down breed in general, which may cope perfectly well on the Suffolk Downs.

Mapp

I have 3 lambs this year who all produce, all the time, hard pellets of poo about the size of marbles which rain down harmlessly from bum to grass, leaving the lovely clean wool of the lamb's rear end pristine and clean. No 4 lamb however has a 'softer' approach to life and always has had, so his bum is always in a terrible state and while Kenny had him in a firm grip, I was able to get round him with a pair of scissors cutting away as much dag as I could. He must weigh a few kg less now but Kenny didn't re-weigh him, he just commented that it was me that had the shi**y hands because I was the 'rookie' sheep wrangler. Thanks, I think.

Bust 1.07 m. Nice one, Lucia!

Kenny then stayed around for a while chatting. He fancies a couple of our Buff Orpington 'hins' because one of the farm dogs has recently killed 2 of his own girls, so I'll do him a deal when we can sex them with any reliability. We were also talking about our sheep for next year, when we rather fancy getting into year-round sheep, so we might buy a couple of in-lamb mothers. That way we can be there for the lambing and then have the lambs right round to this time of year. The only issue with this is that breeding-age ewes as a going concern are way more expensive than store lambs for fattening, more like €180 than €85. Hmmmm.

Meanwhile, the pigs are fast approaching their 6 month birthday (10th Sept) and are looking a lot like they, too, are "fit". I measured them today and they have now both aligned their weights - they are both 1.22 m from between the ears to the base of the tail, and they have bust 1.07 m, so by the 'bust squared' method of estimating weights, we have reached 90.8 kg live weight. They also, to our rather novice eyes, look big enough; we just try to imagine what that shoulder joint would look like separated from the glossy, ginger-haired lively young porker who currently owns it. I will soon need to be a-visiting that butcher-man.