Hop Swags and Pig Clubs

Enjoying a gorgeous blue sky today. It's a bit crisp out and post-frost but I have the fire lit in the range here and all my jobs done, so a chance to put my feet up and enjoy a break chatting on here. I've gone all Kent and had a bit of fun paying homage to the Hop Festival we used to enjoy each September in Faversham.

Tops of beeches in our pig paddock starting to turn colour. 

The town would fill up with happy 'hoppers', Morris Dancers, musicians, booze outlets (mainly local brewer Shepherd Neame) and dozens of hopefuls selling swags of spent hop bines from carts and vans to people who wanted to wear them round their head like a crown, tie them round prams, cars, bikes or the dog or carry them off to loop as swags indoors. Well, this year, we have our own hops - the big plant at the top of the veg patch is now 5 years old and throws up huge long bines which scramble up through our growing willow 'tunnel'.

Fixed to the front of our wood store I still have that magnificent fallow-buck skull and antlers. This was a white-phase 7-8 year old "Master Buck" (King of the Rut) revealed to us by the Wildlife Ranger in our local Challock Forest. A spent force (thought the Ranger) after his 2 week spell in charge of the rutting stand with no access to food or water (lest some young pretender take advantage) he would have eventually been ousted, exhausted, to go and have a lie down and often, with fallows, that would have been his lot. I made a mental note of where he was (well hidden down in his ditch-grave) and left him 2 months or so to clean up a bit, then went back to nab the skull. That was 2005, before I started blogging so I'm afraid no link to a post. It seemed only fair to garland the lad with our hops.

These have suddenly started flowering in the 'woods'. I don't
recall planting them but we must have. Cyclamens, of course.

I vowed long ago to give you our story "warts and all", the things that worked well and the things that did not work so well. A little minor rant-een then on the subject of pigs and deciding to buy 3 this year which nearly resulted in a freezer-space problem and has sullied our relationship(s) with some contacts. For that latter reason, the story comes as a "no names, no pack drill" one in which I go nowhere near identifying anyone.

From little IRISH acorns gathered on Tara Hill, ancient seat of
Irish kings, do mighty Irish oaks (eventually) grow.

Readers may have heard of the concept of "Pig Clubs". This is where pig keepers like me have enough space for more pigs and may be surrounded by folk who would love the idea of pigs and would love to try them out but do not have the ground, money, herd number or perhaps the need for a whole pig at the end.

Back in the egg business after the Summer egg-drought.

The Pig Club is a small group of people who club together to buy the pig in the first place, arrange for the farmer to house it, then pay for feed and vet calls if needed, visit it and bond with it, bring their kids round to tickle its belly if they like, then share the costs of final haulage, slaughter and butchery. They then divvy up the meat how they like and everyone's a winner. Some pig club owners choose to make a little money for them selves out of this but some do it just for the love of the thing.

Friends of the Blog may know that up to this year we'd always 'done' just 2 pigs. Our freezer(s) could cope with that. We'd eat 1 and a half pigs through the year, and the other half would be off loaded on family. Remember we can not sell on the open market - we have none of the necessary licences or certificates (Food Hygiene, premises, facilities).

The Amelanchier is struggling this year to do flame-red autumn
leaves.

This year, back in February, when deciding how many piglets to order, I put out there on the Internet groups, that I'd be happy to do a Pig Club this year if anyone wanted to 'play'. I got plenty of good feedback and just one person sounding warning bells (make it all legal, contracts and what not, or you'll be left holding the baby, get sued for not delivering the promised meat, get into arguments about vet bills, blah blah. I should have taken more heed!). Enough positive noise anyway, to encourage me to order the 3rd piglet and start organising for clubbers to be able to be there at the breeder and choose their piglet, see him/her brought home, cuddle their new baby.

On line shopping. Our copy of the German dice-game Qwixx

Long story short, as soon as they needed to actually BE anywhere and cough up any money (or pig food etc) , my enthusiastic 'clubbers' faded like Scotch Mist  - too busy this weekend or abroad, breakdown on the lorry etc. Not a one of them actually showed up here or ever came to see their pig and I spent the best part of our pig-season nursing a nagging doubt that they never would, and we'd be left just "doing 3 pigs" and then trying to cope with 3 carcasses (about 210 kg of meat!). One clubber eventually volunteered that they "only really wanted sausages" and asked me to select them a part carcass and get the butcher to do the necessary after which extra cost they would show up (honest) with some money. Ummmm.... nope.

Nice looking shoulder joint.

Thank Heavens for family, then and our reputation for delicious pork. Several were happy to take a bit extra this year. Suffice to say that by NOT killing all the lambs this year (We have saved Babóg and Ebony for killing as 'hogget' next year) and by 'Parma'-ing 2 whole legs, we found enough freezer space and were not embarrassed by volume. A lesson learned, though.

No mousing opportunities left now the tunnel is clear.

We will definitely not be doing three pigs next year and any pig-clubbing we decide  to do had better be on a non-returnable deposit basis. It was worth a try and it was great fun to have the three, Bo, Luke and Daisy, but two's enough.

This, too, is enough for this post.Good Luck now.

It's an Ill Wind....

#TheBeastFromTheEast That is the new name given by the trendy Twitter 'meteorologists' for this blast of cold air coming clockwise round a high pressure system sitting over Scandinavia. Yes, we've enjoyed "weather bombs" and even "Sting Jets" and all manner of hell-and-high-water that hadn't been invented when I was studying Meteorology, but now we have a 'beast'.

The bog land to the North of us looks a bit bleak on a
frosty morning

We know this eastern flavour of wind well, of course, especially its NE variant, having spent 20-odd years living on the NE Kent coast in Faversham, where it'd come charging across Nagden Marshes. Elizabeth used to call it her "favourite" wind and we were pleased that our house faced into it so that the terrace out back was relatively protected by the bulk of the place. Before that, I lived in the Lincolnshire Fens which are also NE facing and with way fewer houses to hide behind.

There it came howling across the North Sea picking up a bit of instability and moisture in preparation for snow and drifts. The locals joked that it was a "lazy" wind looking at you all expectantly, waiting for you to ask them to explain the 'lazy'. "Too lazy to go round you - it goes straight through ye!" How we laughed.

Polly is looking most promising for my next lamber. Is she
waiting, like her Sister, for the worst possible weather? 

It's an ill wind, though, that blows nobody any good. It may be cold and send you running back to coats, gloves, hats and scarves for the livestock jobs, but in my reckoning it is beautifully drying. The weather maps are cloud-free lately and we've had no rain for days. All my puddles are gone and the small patches of bare mud that remain are sticky rather than wellies-sloppy. Crocs are once again the footwear of choice. I am not sure how dry we will stay. The wind is currently SE and not yet backed through pure East to NE but the forecast has weather warning of snow in the East and South East of the island. We may get some.

Two late-hatch poults came of age and decided to be roosters.
Bad move lads. They are now rather scrawny frozen
oven-ready carcasses. 

Meanwhile, the ewe 'Polly' seems to be lining up to be my next lambing event. She is working her way through the signs - #1 "I want to be alone" and now #2, starting to bag up. She is not ready for sign #3, declining breakfast, though and not really due till more like March 5th (though you never can tell). So she gave me a fright this morning when she was not in the queue for crunch.

I could not see her at all and worried that I'd have to go seek her out in the curves and dips of the field in case she had a problem. But no. By the time I'd gone to get the bucket of grub, she had rocked up and was baa-ing hungrily. No lambs yet then, Poll-Woll. The other two ewes (Rosie and Myfanwy - all these ladies are named after female characters from 'Under Milk Wood') are keeping me waiting. They look broad enough in the beam to be pregnant and Rosie is maybe, just maybe, starting to bag up but if they are, they are playing their cards close to their woolly chests.

Book of the Month!

Finally, I have discovered a new author of those year-round, starting to small-holder type books I love. This by an American lady, Jenna Woginrich who has jacked in the 9-5 office job and bought a small farm in the 'sticks' (Hudson River valley, Washington County). I love this book. Jenna has a lovely 'voice' and a very pleasing way of explaining what she's at (not laboured at all, she assumes a good level of knowledge already). Also a lovely way of expressing the joy, freedom and excitement of the lifestyle and her delight at actually being able to have the livestock and do the tasks. "I milked a goat! Me!" The book is also superbly illustrated (by one Emma Dibben). It is pure joy to own and to read. If I had a 'Book of the Month' thing going, this one would be a definite winner.

It's a Wood Lemon.

Wedge cut from a tree being felled. "It's
a wood lemon!" says H (5)

We don't have a huge number of friends round here with any children of baby-sitting age, so we don't get to do a lot of it. In the week, through circumstances and a clashing appointment or two for Carolyn (she of the Mini-Horses) led to me minding young H(5) for a couple of hours during the day. He's a great lad and dead easy to keep entertained and happy, particularly with the option of "exploring" the local fields, hedges and abandoned buildings. He made me smile, though, when he discovered a wedge of tree trunk of the type you cut out to make the tree fall in the right direction and said "It's a wood lemon!" You knew immediately what he meant.

Our ever more magnificent Marans rooster, Gandalf

He is a carpenter's son, though, and a curious, enthusiastic helper of Dad in the workshop when ever he gets a chance, so I tried to steer him down the correct route (wedge, tree, felling etc). He just took all my 'man-splaining' in, nodded sagely and said "Yes, but it's still a wood lemon and that's what I will call it". No arguing with that, then, H.

Both these pieces now evicted, the leather
 sofa and the single-chair.

But now I must change to sombre funereal tones for a couple of paragraphs (cue dirge-y violin music) while I relate the sad passing of a much loved item in this house and family, the prized leather, 3-seat sofa. This huge item was a lovely thing. It was tan colour leather and had a seat long enough for me to lie down in full stretch (and to use as a guest bed) at over 6 feet. Indeed, I have enjoyed many an afternoon nap on it.

In with the 'new'. Our replacement
furniture starts to arrive. Liz is still
playing book-shelf games..

I have long forgotten but Liz tells me it came from John Lewis 10-15 years ago and cost over £1000 even then in a sale. I do remember that we had to get the double glazed bay-window unit taken out of the Faversham house to get it into the room and again when we were moving here. We also had some fun getting it in here with Liz giving 'Sparks' and I a hard time, convinced that it wouldn't fit if Sparks assembled the stairs banister BEFORE we tried to wrangle it in.

New peas in the poly tunnel.

We have had the thing for all those years and,obviously, it is no longer pristine - normal human wear and tear, dogs and so on but that was all OK until last Summer. At that stage, we obtained the new kittens and they were given that room as a safe haven from dogs while they grew up a bit. That was our mistake. We'd given the kittens a litter tray, of course, and they were doing possibly as much as 95% of their pee and poo in it but we knew we were getting the odd accident, where we had to  clear up cat-mess. Obviously the room smelled a bit 'niffy' sometimes but we thought we were on top of it and were sure that once the kittens had grown up and evicted from the room, we could clean and air it all away.

The peach tree survived and is now putting out new leaves.

No such luck. Despite all our cleaning, the sofa continued to reek and we started to dismantle it, stripping covers off cushions and even putting leather covers through the washing machine but to no avail. On one occasion Liz found my 'washed' covers drying and thought from the continuing smell that I'd forgotten to wash them, so they went through again. Liz even started to research professional cleaning companies and preparations but cat pee is some kind of special chemical brew - its scent chemicals 'glue' to fabrics in an enzyme reaction, so you need chemicals to undo that. Probably not cheap, or even possible out here in the sticks.

A familiar sight from buildering days - a
stack of plaster and foam "slabs" taking
up most of the floor space where they will
eventually end up on walls and ceiling

There we were, then, making the tough decision like you would for an elderly pet, and deciding to put the belovéd sofa out of it's misery. It is now out by the sheep field waiting to become the base of this year's bonfire and we have been handing cash to the proprietor of a furniture shop in Balla-D. This morning the replacement suite turned up. Because it was a suite - sofa and 2 chairs, we also needed to evict Liz's lovely single-seat chair which came to us originally from Diane, but that is not for the bonfire. We donated that to the suite delivery guys who said they would be able to sell it 2nd hand.

New kitchen access for cats. 

Friends of the Blog who know the Lady of this House will not be surprised to know that all this furniture moving was all too much temptation to not blitz and clean the entire room. That has been Liz today including unloading book shelves (we have many)  to move those so that floors could be cleaned under, moving every other piece of furniture, pictures on walls, standard and desk lamps and even hoovering top corners for cobwebs, polishing windows and on and on.

Curried hake, leek and butter bean stew. 

As of now that is still happening, so pictures of the finished room will be saved for the next post. Meanwhile the room is now NO LONGER AVAILABLE to unsupervised cats and dogs so it is being kept for 'best' like an old Irish 'Parlour' or 'Best Room'. We have a series of guests through April. They will be relieved to not have to recline in puddles of cat pee or go home with their clothes "smelling a bit funny".

The Heat was Hot.

We don't get many weather maps here with this much yellow
and brown on them!

Scorchio! Out of nowhere we have been delighted to receive 2 blisteringly hot days. No wind and very very close with the promise of thunderstorms to come on the Tuesday evening. As I write this we are clouding over and we can believe the storms, but we are waiting, as you do, for the weather to 'break'. We read that in yesterday's bit of the heat wave, our local mountain (Mt. Dillon, Co. Roscommon) was the hottest place in Ireland at 27.3ºC. Pah! (I hear you cry) Not that impressive by the standards of the British Isles as a whole, but fairly unusual for us out on the Atlantic margins. [Newsflash from Weds a.m. Mt Dillon repeated the 'hottest place' feat on the Tuesday with an even hotter record; 30.4ºC !]

It's official. Hottest place in Ireland!

We are amused anyway by being the record holders. We moved here from Faversham in Kent which had also been, since 30th Sept 2003, the hottest place in the UK. The weather station at Brogdale, the fruit research station, recorded a 38.5º on that date putting Faversham firmly on the map. I have just searched Google etc because in my head somewhere is a glimmer of memory that Brogdale was recently out-done and knocked off the top spot, but I can find nothing on t'Internet to confirm this. Ah well, we must enjoy this burst of heat while we can. We were wondering whether summer had come and gone with the lovely 3 weeks in May/June so we are relieved that there may be more where that came from.

Mumma-Buff with her two "black babies". We believe they
Araucana x English Game crosses.

The warmth has given us a chance to do a lot of livestock jobs out of doors. The little Marans chicks, still no more than a week old, have been allowed some 'out' in one of the rabbit runs. Typically for tiny chicks, they do not really do much with this time, making only occasional short forays out onto the grass from the safety of their dark, 'bedroom' section but they are thriving and I am very happy with them. That is, all be it that EVERYthing seems to grow very slowly compared to the Hubbard poults who, at 60 days or so are great big rollicking, fully feathered young chickens who are already starting to look edible.

The roses are doing a cracking job in the garden.
This is "The Lovers". Beautifully scented.

The one Buff Orp hen who managed to do the broody job correctly is now doing an equally good job rearing her two little sparrow-like offspring. The eggs were blue, so we thought they might be of the 'fancy fowl' variety, Araucana but Sue and Rob (who know these varieties and supplied the eggs) say that the flecked brown chests on them make them more likely to have been fathered by their English Game cock.

Apples coming along nicely.

Also outdoors for some first exploring are the two Marmalade kittens, Chivers and Chip. They, too, are thriving and Liz is trying to keep their lives full of stimulus and interest despite them being too tiny to risk any close interaction yet with the dogs. They are locked in the Sitting Room while the dogs are about and let out while I have the dogs out for a walk or in the bedroom for a nap. Today, in the heat and with the dogs tired from a long morning walk in the local bog, we sneaked the kittens out into the front garden for a chase about. They met the Guinea Fowl and our elderly Sussex Ponte hen (Enda) and survived.

As pants the Westie for cooling streams,
when heated in the chase?

One sad bit of news. A few posts back, I reported that one of the geese was struggling to get back on her feet after her session doing 'broody'. Well, she was showing no signs of improvement and I was concerned at the anguished cries of pain and upset she made every time the rest of the geese left her behind and she flopped about trying to struggle upright. Today I culled her out and as I type this, Liz is even now plucking her. We have no idea how she will cook and eat - she will be in very poor condition after the nesting and the subsequent inability to move about much to graze. She might also be quite old.

The pigs come up to 6 months.

If she is one of our original ladies from Jan 2013, then she'd be a 2012 bird and 4 years old. A challenge for Liz's slow-cooker skills, perhaps, or maybe a 'render down' for stock and goose fat (with the liver probably rescued!). She will decide when she sees the girl 'naked'. Even a fat healthy goose can look very scrawny and meatless along side a turkey for example.

Curly tail equals happy pig.

Also a teeny bit less "meaty" than previous efforts are our happy pair of piggies, Somerville and Ross. Regular readers will know that we estimate pig weights using a standard method out of our pig 'Bible', called the "Bust squared times length" method. [Search this blog for the link]. Well, these ladies are approaching 6 months and are around 48 kg. This, as I said, is lighter than our Tamworths (2014) or the Berkshires (2015) but we are very happy with this and it is deliberate. I am a bit of a 'feeder' (says Charlotte) and tend to overfeed my animals unless you beat me with a stick. Our pork up to now has been quite fatty. This year we are sticking more rigidly to the Bible's "maintenance diet" and these pigs are growing measurably slower than previous years, which we like.

Finally a couple of nice bits of nostalgia which came my way, deriving from my long interest in olde wooden sail-powered work boats. First we heard from a Kent friend (thanks Joanna) that there was to be a programme on Irish TV about the 'Galway Hookers' or, more specifically, about the last owners and sailors of the 'species', the 'Bádóirí' (boatmen). I managed to scramble up writing this on the calendar and tried to turn it on a month after it had aired, so I had a frantic search and rescue job trying to obtain a DVD or find a link to somewhere it might be archived. To the rescue the gents from the film company and a magazine which had set it up who managed to find me the DVD and posted it to me. Thank you very much Joe St Leger and the team. The film was superb but might be a bit 'specialist' if old boats are not your thing.

Nick Ardley's latest book.

2nd in the boats dept, a copy of the latest book by my friend from the Cambria era (he used to read my reconstruction blog and comment upon it), Nick Ardley. Nick is nearly the same age as I am but his family home was a converted Thames Sailing Barge (the May Flower) so there is not much he does not know about them. He is now a mad keen sailor who spends his leisure time exploring the creeks and inlets of his home county (Essex) looking at old barge ports, old boats and hulks, old military installations and industrial heritage. He has written a number of books starting with one about his childhood growing up on the barge. When I find out he has a new book out I always try to get hold of a copy and this latest one he generously agreed to post to me here and has written a nice inscription and signed it. If he ever becomes rich and famous....... If you are at all interested in the history of barging and of the Essex coast and Thames Estuary, I recommend it.

Injuns in them thar hills? OK, just a silly garden feature made
with broken arrows and holes drilled in the wood with my drill.

And that is pretty much it for this one. 21:40 now and it has started raining.

Every Which 'Whey'.

365 Pic of the local church and the rose
garden Liz is now helping in and advising on

One of the 'rules' you find in every cheese making book is "DON'T throw away the whey!" It is nutritious, tasty and valuable stuff, we are told. Feed it to livestock or use it in the kitchen where ever a recipe says to use stock and in lots of places where recipes say water. To taste, you might have guessed, it resembles very watered down milk without all the chalkiness and with most of the protein and fat removed; "very skimmed milk" if you like. It is a savoury, rather than a sweet taste.

The taste of nostalgia - currently on promo in
the local Lidl supermarket.

Use it in soups, sauces and stews, the books advise, for extra richness. Use it in bread making instead of water or milk. We have done both of these - Liz turned out a beautiful brace of white loaves and followed through with an epic chowder.

I give some of it each day to the pigs. As part of their ration they get rolled (flaked) barley which I had been wetting with water to make it a bit more palatable; everybody knows pigs like a good schlurrrrpy mash to snuffle about in, not dry dusty barley. Now I glug in whey. I have in schoolboy memory (I used to LOVE Geography) that the famed 'Danish Bacon' industry ballooned up out of the industrial/commercial scale dairy industry, with most cheese factories tacking on a pig unit to the end of their buildings. Win win.

One of our 3D foam 'field' targets. Despite its new 'porcupine'
look this rat would actually still be alive under competition
rules, only "wounded". You can see the 'heart' circle straddled
by arrows but not actually hit. 

In the Archery Dept we had an interesting diversion mid-week this week when our club was asked by the local equivalent of the Sports Council to hold a taster session for local teenagers (etc). This happened at our indoor venue, Castlerea's "The Hub" Badminton courts/gym. Instructor Con had to do the serious training (he's the only one insured) - we 'foot soldiers' went along to set up the hall and the targets and to be on hand to help if there were floods of hopefuls. In the event there was no flood, so we got an hour or so of free practise at some targets down the far side of the hall and occasionally got used as models in the training. "Look at that guy, notice how his upper body is in exactly the same position for every shot?" etc. We dismantled it all once the session was over. Interesting. The club do it every year, I am told.

A rather embarrassing scatter of holes around this hare and very
few hits but in my defence, that is my blue stripey arrow scoring
a bulls eye into the 'kill' zone. Blood-thirsty lot!

Other than that, not a great deal to report. I was back into the 'buildering' on Thursday with a vengeance - we had the cement mixer out just like old times. Part of that day's effort was to lay the limestone slabs into Carolyn's walk-in pantry / scullery, to match the rest of that (Utility room / extension) area.

Red currant jelly, anyone?

We enjoyed a goodly harvest of red currants (for jelly) and also a smaller haul of goosegogs from the 'red' gooseberry bushes. We are leaving the green ones for now as they are as hard as bullets and bitingly sharp to eat. All these bushes have been grazed a bit by chickens and Guinea Fowl who jump up and snatch the low hanging fruits.

Every time we see gooseberries we are reminded of an old neighbour from the Faversham days. Eric, a fisherman, always amused us with the same gooseberry comment when he gave us some first, new season mackerel so fresh the eyes were still bright and the skin iridescent. He was a mad keen mackerel fisherman but didn't actually like them to eat himself. "There," he always said, "is proof that God exists if you ever needed it. He makes the gooseberries come ripe just as the mackerel season starts!" No arguing with that, I guess.

Nearly 60, You Know!

Liz is currently enjoying knitting with some pure wool. 

Regular readers will remember fondly with us, the late Diane Walsh (formerly Riches), a very good friend from our Faversham days. Diane used to regularly amuse us with stories of her friends and relatives from 'up North' - Stockton on Tees - from where she hailed. One of these was an elderly friend of her Mother. This lady, 'Ellie' was forever proudly telling all and sundry how old she was and how she managed with it.

2 Brown (Irish) Hares check us out from a safe distance after
we'd met them in a narrow lane. 

Her regular was "I'm nearly 84, you know!" which lasted from just after her 83rd Birthday and as quick as you like became "I'm nearly 85, you know!" within days of her year clicking over to the next year. Then she'd assure you that she "doesn't get out any more..... oh, except for Bingo...oh and when (Diane's Mum) takes her shopping.... and the Post Office to collect her pension... oh and the occasional car outing... etc etc" Bless her. She is still with us as far as we know, and must be way over 90 by now (Nearly 91, you know?).

All the logs in the front garden split and the machine lowered
into travelling position. I towed it round to the yard with the car.

I am cruising in towards my 59th Birthday in a few days and wondering if the day afterwards, I might get away with an "I'm nearly 60, you know....and I don't get out any more". I suspect that those who know me will tell me that this is because I love this place so much you have to pry me free with a crow-bar and, anyway, neither of us feel at all like we are either "nearly 60" or much much younger (depends on which of us you are talking about, he said carefully). Liz can't quite believe she is married to a bloke who is nearly 60, and I certainly don't feel that old, or see someone that old in the mirror. I find I have no reference point. I don't know anyone who was particularly 60 while I was watching.

Squawk, our 9-10 year old Cuckoo Marans, still laying those
dark brown spotted eggs.

Ah well. These things happen anyway and need celebrating, so as I write this I am a bit stuffed up with food and rather awash with the good Guinness. Not to a dangerous degree, I hasten to add. It was also very recently K-Dub's Birthday, so we adjourned to his local pub close to the Sligo house for a few (Liz drove us there and collected us later, nipping off to spend an evening knitting at Carolyn and putting the world to rights in the meantime). Then today a nice family tradition - the Birthday boy/girl gets to choose the menu and/or the restaurant and here I am happy to be a "cheap date".

Gorgeous George, the Gander

I do not need fancy restaurants or expensively 'foodie' fare - my idea of Heaven just now is the "bacon and cabbage" option at The Golden Eagle (Hester's) in Castlerea and 2 pints of Guinness. We had a nice salad starter and Liz had a pot of tea afterwards, but that was it. Nothing finer. I am stuffed with the food and a tiny bit squiffy from the beer. I will need no proper supper, but there is a lovely rhubarb cake sitting on the sideboard there and I have ice cream in the freezer. There is also some good cheese knocking about somewhere, so while Liz is off at knitting club I will not be starving.

The dog micro-chip certs are quite posh, serious affairs
on heavy paper. Impressed.

What else is a-foot? Our dog micro-chip certs came back from the database people at Fido.IE (Yes, I know!) and were impressive heavy-weight paper. I was expecting some aul' print out slip torn off at the perforations. I am not sure why you'd need such a posh certificate - I can't imagine anyone framing it for the office wall, for example. Impressive, none the less.

Baba and Marta (Myfanwy's lambs) enjoy the climbing pile

I have finally ploughed my way through the stack of tree slices  using the borrowed log splitter. I rescued a few rounds and built a mini pyramid in the East Field for the lambs and kid to play on, having seen how much they enjoy the grassy knoll further down the field. The youngsters have quickly adopted this and we can see them enjoying leaping on and off, playing 'King of the Castle' from the Kitchen window. I have seen mum-goat Nanny Óg up on it too with her baby. The baby goat tends to sprong up there on all four feet, boinging about like Tigger.

Guinea cock 'Apollo'. What a handsome fella!

The weather has taken a turn for the worse, reverting to freezing rain and bitter raw winds just when we were getting used to March's (false) spring. This has stalled the bumble bee surveying for the moment, killed all thoughts of opening our honey-bee hive to check for brood and stopped all outdoor gardening. Everything around field entrances is, once more, a soggy mess into which I am firing quantities of the shredded wood to try to mop up the sloppy wet. Back indoors, then, to light a fire and think about writing this blog. Have to look after myself and keep myself warm and dry. I'm nearly 59 you know!