Two Teasers

Archery friend Niamh calls by and has to have
a lamb cuddle. This is one of Polly's twins at
9 days.

Another short post  with very little progressing, especially in the fox and the lambing departments. There is just a quick, tantalising tease in each, but more of that later.

Cousin Cathy takes a 'selfie' with Towser. 

Our guests for the weekend arrive safely and we collect them from Knock Airport. These are Cousin Cathy and her daughter (so, presumably another cousin) Danielle. CC would be Elizabeth's closest cousin from childhood; the 2 families shared a house for 2 years

Danielle cuddles the other twin. Note turkey on
chicken shed roof ridge. 

Friends of the Blog will know that Danielle (Mrs Dan) has been here many times before and loves our live-stock filled farm life and is delighted that our ewe Rosie decided to hang onto her 'payload' till the girls got here. They had booked these dates completely unawares that this might be happening and we had not told them anything because we had no idea Rosie was going to 'pop' over these days. Of course we have no idea whether she will - she might equally keep hanging in there till after the guests have left (Monday), just to be a minx.

Lamb takes selfie of the three of us.

This is Cathy's second visit. She'd be maybe more interested in the indoor, 'domestic' side of this life and doesn't go quite so mad for the animals - she's getting Mrs C to show her various cookery skills, and I am teaching her sourdough bread baking. I will send her home with a sourdough starter 'dose'. My starter (Reginald) was the 'son' of a culture in Bridport originally, so now the 'grandson' (or daughter) is almost coming back home.

A duck egg but the purple thumb is a clue
that I have had a lameness problem in
our last-to-lamb ewe, 'Myfanwy'. I hope
she's on the mend now.

But those teasers. I will tell you first, perhaps that Danielle, being over here and loving our animals, has also come to hate our fox with the same passion, and wants rid of him as much as we do. She was very interested in our current 'fox-watch' campaign and the trap and I knew if Foxy showed up, Danielle would be out there with us gee-ing on the dogs.

Alder catkins. They open Mid-March

Well, we didn't see him today but we were all in the Dining Room at about 3 pm, chatting, when that old familiar Guinea Fowl alarm went up, but out on the front lawn. We all charged out and I let the dogs off. We never saw a fox, but the way the dogs shot off on their usual track down through the veg patch and out across the slope fields suggested that he might have poked his face up above the bank in our 'woods' and been spotted by the Guineas.

I love that the buds of hazel break first with this tiny red tassle.
I will have to look up whether this might be the female flowers.

The 2nd tease was a little 'stunt' pulled by very pregnant ewe, Rosie who we are sure will lamb soon. Today I was introducing her to Danielle and joking that if it started to go wrong I'd be looking to see which of the ladies had the smallest hands, roping them in for a bit of midwifery. Blow me if Rosie didn't suddenly arch her back as if straining to poo.

Turkey hen 'Gloria' tries her hand at
weather vane. 

She produced no poo but I am fairly sure I saw at her vulva a small amount of pink membrane and glistening wetness. Cathy also described seeing the contractions going as a slight wave down her abdomen. I was sure we were on, but, no, she seems to have been having me on a again. The pink may just have been (engorging?) vulva and the wet might just have been wee. I kept checking her through the evening and even blew out my attendance at a pub quiz to which all the girls have gone but she has showed no more signs and her back end is back to dry-ish normality.

There is no sign of any more back-arching straining or the great woosh of baggy membrane and amniotic fluid which precedes a genuine birth. That hangs there like a water filled party-balloon while the lambs slide out and only really falls away when she passes the afterbirth. (Sorry, hope you weren't just having your tea!) . Now at 10 pm Rosie is just lying there on her hay looking like a normal relaxed sheep, falling asleep. She has fooled this amateur shepherd again. Maybe more news by the next post.

Fox Watch

Just for a laugh, our biggest snow-drift of the recent cold snap.
It formed in a eddy in our yard and must have been... oooh...
6 cm deep at least! The turkey-hen stepped in for scale. 

Yes, Fox-Watch. This is the new buzz-word name given to our newest and most time-thirsty 'hobby'. It is, exactly as described, time spent watching out for our persistent and so-far uncatchable furry friend. Brer Fox. I might sound upbeat and light hearted about this but inside, both of us are starting to get very annoyed and increasingly ground down and frustrated.

Our cat, 'Soldier' looking very 'Miss
Haversham' in his cobweb fascinator.
Presumably sticking his head into some
dusty rat-hole. 

Previous foxes have come and done their terrible stuff, but then turned stupidly predictable in their raiding or their routes to and from. We have been able to trap and shoot them within days so that we can then relax and forget about foxes for periods of 15 months+. This guy (or gal) nips in at random times in the afternoon (or 11 a.m. once) to just snatch a single bird from the orchard or the bit of land behind the goose-house. These are the places you cannot see from the house and cannot hear very well.

We have an excellent alarm system involving the 4 Guinea Fowl who scream blue murder at the sight of him, which works when they are out in that bit too and we now know to drop everything and race out there at the first shout. We also have the 3 dogs who are now expert at zooming out there, down through the veg garden and out through the hawthorn hedge in hot pursuit. They know by now to ignore all the 'not-prey' species (poultry, lambing sheds etc) and they know what Brer Fox looks and smells like. We let them go when we dare and they vanish for 20 minutes or so. We don't know whether they even get close to the fox, but the fright seems to make him rethink his tactics for at least a few days.

The 'beastly' winds turned the knitter's thoughts to hat and gloves

The trap is now permanently baited with tinned sardines or kippers but has so far caught only a 'foreign' cat, a manky looking grey and white yoke who was very fed up at being caged all night, lucky he didn't get rained on but presumably happy to have a belly full of my tinned fish. My heart missed a beat when I looked across and saw that the trap had been sprung. When I let the cat out he shot off like the proverbial scalded one and I have not seen him since. I was worried that he'd get trap-happy and come back for more fish, safe in the knowledge that he'd come to no harm, which would have made setting the trap for our fox a bit of an issue. I do not even know that the fox has smelled the fish or found the trap, never mind cunningly decided not to go in it. Patience is, as ever, the thing.

Apologies for this terrible (heavily cropped) shot of our
male reed bunting. 

We are left, then, with the need to stand 'Fox Watch' in person out there for all the at risk hours and indoors for all the less risky hours that the birds are out free ranging - about 8 a.m. till 5 p.m. currently. I do the outdoor stint from about 3 pm to lock-up. I am well bundled up and brought cups of coffee periodically by Elizabeth. I take my binoculars out there too, partly to help me scan the far horizons for russetty red, bushy-tailed varmints, but also so I can indulge in a bit of bird watching. When 'The Beast' is not blowing through this is actually quite a pleasant way to spend the 2nd half of the afternoon. I sometimes relieve the boredom by taking the dogs out with me, the better to keep a visible fox-deterring presence out there and scent-marking the boundaries. I just hope I can soon report the capture and despatch of this red bastard and put an end (for a while) to the need for all this nerve-twanging, tense, vigilance.

What else is new? As suggested above, we finally saw the end of our brutal cold-snap, "The Beast From The East" and in fairness we got away with it very lightly compared to some parts of the island and, of course, the UK and other countries. Over in the East and SE friends were reporting being snowed in by 7 foot drifts and I've seen today, pictures of Chinook (helicopter) supply-drops to cut off farms in Cumbria for solid fuel and food. There have been all the usual footage of hard pressed farmers digging out their sheep, alive if they were luckily but frozen to death if not found in time. Even so, the first thing I noticed when I went outside on Monday (5th) was NO WIND. Bliss. By afternoon the smoke from our chimney was pouring away into the NE, no longer at the beck and call of that horrible NE wind. Today we've had proper wet rain. A few chunks of broken ice float on some of the stock drinkers, but mostly we are 100% thawed.

You'd not fit any more sheep pens in that
 shed. Lady in Waiting, Rosie here is
next door to Polly and her twins. 

The ewe, 'Rosie' continues to keep us waiting and makes me feel like a proper beginner "panicking" and dragging her indoors a week early (OK, it's only 4 days so far). We joke that she is conning us to get some nights in the warm, 'bagging up' a little bit (yeah, yeah, show a man a flash of pink booby and he's putty in your hands!) and then holding out for the arrival of our next house-guests. We have the baby-animal-mad Danielle and Cousin Cathy arriving Friday, so Rosie will be able to do her thing to an audience. Ta daaaa! Look what I did!

Sun 3rd saw me at the end of the 13 week Garden Bird Survey
for Birdwatch Ireland. 

The ewes are in the small concrete/stone building we call the Tígín (wee housey) which is a proper man-shed with man-junk and tools stacked and shelved to roof height and some bits hanging from beams that run across the room from wall to wall. I was joking on Twitter that I couldn't tell whether she was really "star-gazing" or just looking up at the dusty, cobwebby, man-shed mess; the former is a sign of labour and imminent parturition, the latter just a natural female horror-reaction to the man-shed scene. Ah well. She'll make up her mind soon enough. Mother Nature knows best. Patience is the thing. 

Twins for Polly and 'The Beast' Blows Through

Polly and the Twins. Only hours old here. 

Sometimes it all goes perfectly and you are delighted and relieved to have made the decisions you have made. In my previous post we were hustling the ewe 'Polly' indoors safe from the threatened weather and from our fox. I wasn't convinced she'd 'pop' that day, but I'd seen her pawing the ground, which is a good sign of imminent lambing. She wasn't very happy to be penned indoors but she settled down with her bucket of water, one of grub and a wad of hay.

The first born ewe-lamb in the morning.

I checked on her for the last time at 10:30 pm but there were no signs of action, so I took myself off to bed thinking we'd be 'go' the next day. She has always lambed down during daylight in previous years. Well, not this time. Liz was taking her last visit to the bathroom at midnight and could hear, from the Tígín beneath her window, a loud bleating which could only have one meaning. She raced down, checked the pen and took a photo of #1 lamb who was licked clean and on her feet, trying to suckle. She came to find me, woke me and showed me her phone. Woop woop! I sprinted down in my dressing gown (as you do) for a check and, finding all well, left her for 2 hours to see if she'd drop a twin.

At 2 a.m. or so I went back out and found she had now passed the 2nd twin and that, too, was on its feet, so may well have been born within half an hour of the first. That's how Polly usually does these things.  My memory always plays tricks on me in these situations - the newborns look so tiny and thin compared to our hulking great thug of a thriving ram-lamb born to Lily, now 5 weeks old. I was so pleased we had brought Polly in - the thought of those two thin little mites being born into the teeth of that snow and wind. I thought they'd have only lasted minutes or been lifted easily by the fox.

A kiss from the new lamb?

Long story short on these little ladies - we are all thriving and growing plump on Mum's milk. The wind since their birth has meant that they are still indoors and have not even seen the grass yet. It's all going very well.

Fox trap as a flat pack. 

In that same post, I was also chasing our fox trap, which I'd had on order from MacEoin's. We'd had a fox near-miss in which I'd let the dogs loose to chase the lad across the fields and we'd not seen the fox since, but it could only be a matter of time. The chase of MacEoin's got me a reply that they were dispatching their traps on the Tuesday, so we will receive ours on the Wednesday (28th).

Don't scratch my floor! Trap assembled in the Dining Room.

It turns up by the brilliant DPD courier at about 2 pm so the local flat-pack team goes to work and assembles it within half an hour. We bait it with dog food (it's all we had) and put it down in the veg patch where the fox killed the previous hen.

Come on Foxy. You know you want that
dog food. What could possibly go wrong?

While we are assembling it, our much forecast storm finally arrives, with flurries of tiny, very frozen snow. The forecast had Roscommon and our NW corner missing all the bad stuff - the worst of the snow and wind, and that has proved to be the case, so I shouldn't be complaining too loudly. My friends in the badly hit corner of the island have been posting impressive pictures of drifts, tractors struggling to get about, sheep getting rescued from out-fields, snow men and all that malarkey. We've had a good centimetre and drifts up to...oooh..... maybe 5 cm?

It is the wind that has got to me - a week plus of continuously strong, bitterly cold easterlies, frozen mornings including one where the wind froze the pipes inside out bathroom. This was where they run against the concrete block wall of the extension OUTSIDE the insulating panels / dry lining. That morning we had no loo-flush or hand basin cold supply (warm was OK) so I had to import our saved big Jerry-can of water for the flushing and go up into the loft to check that all the tank and pipes up in that restricted space were flowing freely. They were. The outside tap also regularly freezes, so my livestock rounds currently including carrying warm water to all the drinkers and buckets. The winds have been giving our temporary tarpaulin roof for the chook house quite a buffeting coming, as they do, from our least protected direction. The tarp is chafing badly and I will definitely need to do that new roof job this summer. My nerves will not stand another winter waiting for that to rip open in a gust.

A comforting sight for the house owner during 'The Beast' cold
snap. The top half of the roof is thawing, so you know the attic
is safe from freezing. 

This freezing indoors thing reminds me that this house is a bit oddly set out. It is not really actual "two storey" but what they call "one and three quarters" round here. The vertical walls stop at the top of the upstairs windows and the interior 'sides of the room carry on up inside the roof rafters for another 4 feet, so the horizontal ceiling is only a narrow strip up in the apex. The attic is in this tiny triangle, the 3 feet or so from ceiling to ridge and about 6 feet wide at the base. With the big water tank wedged in there, it is very difficult to move about if you are of any decent size. If we needed a plumber we'd have to find one with a child apprentice!

It's a long way up to the tiny loft hatch. 

I pass most winters with the loft hatch pushed open to ensure a regular flow of warm air from the spare bedroom up into the attic space, which is ludicrous from a thermal efficiency point of view but saves me worrying about frozen and burst pipes. If we did this again I think I'd insulate right to the apex and have the tank and pipes inside the warm 'cocoon'. I run outside on frosty mornings and check to see if the top half of my roof is white or black (thawed). Weird, even paranoid, maybe. It works for me.

Bundled up like Barge-skipper for fox watch.
Trapper hat, scarf, 'mighty' coat and gloves.

But back to that fox. 'Fox-Watch' has now become a regular part of our duties. He seems to come at around 4 pm which, in warm weather, is now a good hour and a half before bird lock-up, so not only do I try to do as many outdoor, visible, noisy tasks as possible during the day, but there is a whole fox-watch shift that starts at 4 pm.

The pond well frozen.

I take the dogs out to the front lawn for their off-lead run about at 4-ish and hover near the NW corner which gives me a good view across the 'allotment' and pond (and now the trap). Then I drop dogs back in and feed them before coming back out to supervise the last few minutes of the birds. This has been a mercifully short 'shift' during The Beast, with all the birds happy to get in out of the wind and snow by 4:40 pm or so.

Mrs C decides on a '4-cat' duvet day. 

That worked well up to today, and there had been no more fox attacks since the dogs chased the fella (or girl) away. But today, I spotted that the next ewe on our list is starting to 'bag up'. This is Rosie, our first home-bred 'kept' lady and a first time Mum. So, fun and games this afternoon running into 4 pm, trying to run the flock into the yard where we could separate off Rosie and persuade her into the pen I'd built next door to the Polly family. Part way into this job I'd heard the Guinea Fowl alarm calls and raced out there praying fervent "Ah, not NOW, Mr Fox!" prayers. I could see nothing. This happened twice. I should have known by now to trust these birds.

In the buffeting East wind, the tarpaulin over the chicken house
is starting to chafe badly. 

With no apparent fox we got on with the sheep-wrangling and we are mid sheep-chaos, with loose sheep chasing about and not yet back in their field, when the Guineas shout again. Mr Fox has struck, grabbing a Buff Orpington hen from right up by our compost heaps and fleeing as Elizabeth is struggling to release my sheep-proof barriers. By the time we secure the sheep, it is too late to follow and I'm disappointed that the lad did not go into the fox trap.

Dublin 'Coddle'. A stew of sausages,
bacon, onions and spuds. A real
Winter warmer. 

Ah well. I leave you on another blog post with a bursting ewe we hope about to lamb safely indoors and a fox who has pushed up the score again. The Beast from the East is almost done, with the winds now dying back here and us due to warm up a bit a thaw out over the weekend. I think that'll do for this one.

Two Turkeys More But Down One Duck

The "Gang of Four" (Guinea Fowl) check out the new arrivals

We are offered by good friends Sue and Rob, a couple of spare young turkeys who survived the Christmas 'Matanza' because they were too small and scrawny to be worth the preparation. "Would you like them for growing on for Easter?" Of course we would and arrangements were made for Sue to catch our pair and bring them over on a visit where she could enjoy some tea and cake. Elizabeth and Sue have a bit of a quiet, friendly 'bake off' going on between the 2 kitchens and Rob and I are the happy beneficiaries.

The turkeys go out free range on Day 2

But then the most amazing thing happened. As they were getting ready to leave, their 3 dogs suddenly kicked off alarmingly, barking, growling and racing about, clearly disturbed by something. Rob looked out of the Sitting Room window gazing across to the sheep field over the heads of a huge flock of chickens and Guinea fowl, wondering if there might be a fox lurking among the tufts of tall rushes that grow there, 50 yards from the house.

They are good boots from the local farmers' co-op but they
don't last for ever. 

Only when he re-adjusted his vision, did he spot that among those chickens just outside the window on the lawn, was a big dog fox just standing there. The chickens for some reason had overcome their fear and were gathered round him full of curiosity. One of the Guineas was even taking a few exploratory pecks at his fur. Rob got over the shock and reached for the camera, calling Sue to come see too. The camera battery was flat, though and the fox seemed to spot Rob through the glass at that point and loped off, slinking into the cover of those rushes. I should have taken Rob's fox as an omen..... read on.

Shepherding ewe Lily and lamb Tigger round to the front lawn
each morning. 

Naturally, Sue and Rob are now on a rather nervous "fox-watch" for the next few days in case Brer Fox should return, and unwilling to leave the place unguarded. If I want my turkeys, I will have to go and collect them. Ah well. Sue's cake instead of the home stuff. It's flapjack this time. How we suffer. The turkeys turn out to be bigger than advertised, not "scrawny" at all. The little kitten-basket I show up with looks totally inadequate for the task, even for one bird. We fall back on that old safety net - we stuff them into woven feed sacks with cable ties sealing the top. Not ideal, but they are quiet enough and the journey home is only 20 minutes.

I land the turkeys in the big dog crate in our yard so that they can safely meet the home flock and get used to the sights, sounds and smells of their new home. This also lets my lot get a good look at them with no risk of anyone attacking the newcomers in the first 24 hours. They are let out next morning when it is nice and quiet, supervised, hoping they stay around till evening at least, when I can find them a bed for the night.

The snowdrops are looking good.

That plan works OK but wobbles a bit when the four Guineas decide to gang up together and charge the newcomers, sending them sprinting for cover by the caravan. I worry that they may even drive the new birds off site, into an unfamiliar corner from which they would not know the way home, only having been here 24 hours. The 'Gang of Four' though just seem to want to show the turkeys who is boss and, that done, they mainly leave them alone. By evening I grab a chance to shepherd them into the Tígín with the ewe and lamb, where they perch up on a straw bale and can sleep safe from Guinea harassment. The new pair seem to have no interest in our existing turkey (Gloria) and the feeling is mutual.

Then there were four? The 4 remaining ducks seem very quiet
and stay close to the sheds on Friday, here sleeping in the shade.

That evening (Thursday) I open the gate through to the (fenced) orchard and shepherd the geese home to their shed via the back door, and let the 5 ducks come through to the yard and garden for the last half hour or so before lock-up. It happens every night. It is never a problem. But tonight at lock up (about half past 5) there are suddenly only 4 ducks and the 4 who are left are very upset and anxious, quacking alarmingly for their lost sister and unwilling to go to bed without her.

The other three ewes have not yet lambed.
Are they even pregnant?

We fear the worst - maybe she has been snatched in a grab-and-run raid by the fox. If this is so, the fox most likely came in across the veg patch where I saw that one a couple of weeks back and nipped off the same way. Liz and I conduct an extensive search, sometimes with the other 4 ducks at heel (Find her Daddy, please find her!) as the dark descends. At one point I *think* I heard over the hubbub in the yard and shed, a single, distant, distressed quack, so maybe the last gasp of our duck as she was carried off, half a field away.

A recipe from the Johnnie Mountain 'Pork' book. This is pork
and apricot tagine with pistachio cous-cous. "Lush" was one
comment. 

As dark fell, we had to give up the search. We were left clinging to the hope (against hope) that she'd just hunkered down somewhere to lay an egg and now that it was dark she'd stay there till morning. Maybe she would re-appear in the new day.

Lamb leg joint gets smeared with a mix of garlic, rosemary,
lemon zest and anchovy before being wrapped in foil for a long
slow roast. It does not need carving - a good shake and all the
meat falls off the bones. 

That is how we still are 36 hours later. The four ducks have settled down and I spent an hour and a half out there yesterday at the relevant time of evening keeping an eye; my own "fox watch" till I could shut all the doors and know that the fox had not come back for another bird to invite to dinner. Friends on the Internet have been nicely sympathetic and keep their hopes up, like us, that the missing duck might just be hunkered down on eggs, but hope is fading now. I find myself, when met by variations of the local 'condolences' (Sorry to hear about your duck.... ) etc, using another local expression "Ah well..... that's the way....."

Phil(omena) from the Red Cross leads a session on heart
 attacks, the defibrillator, CPR and strokes. 

Off the farm, I am increasingly involved in the local Mens' Shed charity group, our home-from-home for local menfolk who seek out a bit of company in a safe environment (no booze, no gambling, no smoking, no bullying).

Phil demo's the defribrillator. 

We do not have our actual shed yet (builders are still in there doing roof insulation etc) so we meet in a nearby Health Centre. The sessions are sometimes just chat, chess, cards and so on but sometimes the 'boss' (Pat) arranges experts to come in and do training.

"Nellie the Elephant packed her trunk". That's the rhythm you
need, by all accounts, for good CPR!

We've done a bit of an IT course and this week we had Phil(omena) from the local red cross showing us the defibrillator, CPR, and the symptoms and treatment of heart problems and strokes. I was amused by 2 surprising aspects of this compared to the old First Aid training from work days. By their very nature, some of these old boys have "been there" and done that with the heart attacks and strokes, so when Phil started to describe the symptoms as described to her, a group of our lads piped up with "Yes, when I had my first one, I felt I'd been smacked in the chest with a sledge hammer" and another replied - "It was like someone doing up a ratchet-strap round your chest!"

And then, because some of the lads are a bit tottery on their own legs, walking with sticks etc and unable to get down on their knees to kneel over the prone patient ("or if I did, I'd never get up again!"). One suggestion was that you might sit by the patient on a chair and do CPR with your heel. If you don't do anything, the man is going to die very soon anyway, so try anything rather than do nothing.

Ah well. That's the way.