Like a Duck to Water.

Shearing the first ewe, helped by Charlotte

The main story today (certainly the freshest) was the shearing of the sheep. We were coming round to that time of year and the forecast spoke of a heatwave held back only by a Northerly air-stream which had been keeping our temperatures down in the 14ºC area. Sheep-folk begin to worry about heat and the dreaded fly-strike but we need 3 rainless days to make sure the sheep are dry.

Charlotte tackles Polly, our grey Jacob cross ewe.

Waterlogged fleeces and electric hand held clippers are not a good mixture even for we smallholders; the commercial boys worry more about the wet fleeces not being sale-able to the buyers as they are 'dishonestly' heavy. Our wool all ends up on the compost heap so that side of things does not worry us. This year I have ace sheep-wrangler and stock-person, Charlotte (of the mini-horses) back down from Dublin, working locally and keen to help with any shearing I do on her days off. Elizabeth is happy to step aside and we all benefit from the "shearer's chocolate cakes" which get baked while we shear.

Self conscious 'naked' sheep?

So, there we were, all organised from Tuesday and delighted at the lack of rain come this morning, so I raced out to Sligo to collect Charlotte and then we were all go. I love working with Charlotte and even now, 6 years in, I still learn from her. My shearing technique is to zoom up the sheep from dock to neck in long "blows" which can be fast but can leave the sheep striped like larch-lap fencing. Charlotte tends to scoop little blows out, rolling the cutting edge away from the sheep almost as soon as she has 'delved' into the fleece. It's a bit slower but very neat. The whole sheep has maybe a few mm more 'pile' left but there are none of my 'almost pink' patches or any stripes.

All done here. Charlotte is just practising her 'upside down'
technique on one of the lambs. 

We are both impressed by how much heat 'comes out' when we open up that fleece with the first 'blow' up the spine. On a sunny, windless day, the girls are living inside a 3" to 4" pile woolly overcoat and I am sure their skin temperature must be up there at blood heat. When you first glide the shears up the spine and 'unzip' the fleece, the sheep's skin is way, way hotter than your hand - probably 10-15ºC hotter.

Nobody wants the old fleeces so they
go on the compost. 

Healthy sheep have temperatures of around 38.5ºC. By the time you finish shearing, 30 minutes later, the whole animal has cooled down and the skin is more like human skin temperature. They get a whole new lease of life and go scampering round the field with relieved expressions.

The gang spent some time in the orchard prior to shearing.

The other thing we all love is the sudden change from spherical, broad-in-the-beam shaped sheep to tiny, thin, angular, goat-bony light-weights who look not that much bigger than their lambs. They were possibly rounder than normal this year because we'd been struggling to get some good grass into them to get some condition on after them lambing in the hard Winter, and we'd moved them into the orchard for a couple of days. My hope was that when we called them into the cattle race to be 'done' they'd not be so starving that the small amount of 'crunch' they'd get wouldn't leave them bleating piteously. That went OK.

The oak (left) before the ash? You decide. 

Friends of the Blog may also recall that the biggest ewe, Myfanwy, had not (yet) lambed, and I do not actually know whether she is pregnant. Back in February when we 'offed' the ram, Pedro, one of the reasons was that he had started attacking Myfanwy and I did not know whether this was just sex fore-play or annoyance at her rejecting him. In theory, as he was with us till Feb 5th, she might still lamb till 5th July. I was keen to get Charlotte's assessment once the ewe was sheared and we could all get a look at her shape and her udder. The consensus is that she's just big, having not needed to feed a lamb (or two). Ah well.

Hen with ridiculous hair (Donaldina (Trump)) goes broody
in the duck box.

Meanwhile, I am amused to note that our drakes, newly bereft of their last lady-duck have suddenly taken to going on the pond. For 2 years they have showed no interest and I have been delighted that they've left the pond alone with it's gin-clear water and healthy plants (and fauna). Back on Wednesday I may have been witness to the tiny, short, insignificant-looking event which changed all this. I had gone out to sit by the pond with the dogs all milling around harmlessly at my feet. A Guinea Fowl was calling from the 5 acre field behind me and then came zooming over to land on the grass nearby.

A new sight here - ducks on the pond. 

The dogs, excited by this flurry of movement took off at a run towards the Guinea which set one of the drakes off also flying about 2 feet from the grass. Quite by accident, I am sure, it touched down right near a dog and opted for a bounce and sidestep which pitched it into the pond for possible the first time in it's life. I watched with amusement at it's change of body language and facial expression as it went from "Oh crap! Now I'm in the pond!" via "Coo... I seem to be floating....perhaps this is not so bad after all" to finally "Mmmm... I LIKE this... look... I can paddle my feet and swim!".

Our 3 young lime trees are suddenly
covered in leaves.

There has been no holding that drake back since and he has now taken his brother on to the water to share the joy. The pair go every morning for a dabble, a swim and a water-borne preen and splash about. It remains to be seen how much damage they do and how long their welcome lasts.

Another wishbone for the car. €170 supplied and fitted
(incl. wheel alignment)

There have been just 3 other stories brewing. The car has had to go back to the garage (ker-ching €€€€€) to have to 'other' side wishbone changed and the steering re-aligned once more, for uneven tyre wear. "State of the roads round here," said the man, "I'd recommend to anyone to get alignments checked every 6 months" Never heard of that before in the UK, but there are many potholes here, plus savage 'sleeping policemen' and just general yumpy-bumpy bog roads.

In with the new, out with the old. Lidl's at Castlerea.

Our local and much loved Lidl supermarket is temporarily erased from the face of the earth. The new shop has been under construction 'next door' for a while but for 3 weeks the old has been shut while they make final changes and move all the trading across. I was impressed by how fast 'they' cleared the site. I had shopped in there on Tuesday 8th May. By the time I tried to shop again (Tuesday 15th) it was shut, demolished and cleared away as if it had never been. Impressive feat.

The pigs look great under the now fully in-leaf beech.

Finally, we are now expecting the arrival of our next Help-X volunteer, Laura D, our first try at having a helper of the female persuasion. She was booked in for Monday but has since asked if she might arrive on Saturday (tomorrow). We have no problem with that except that Elizabeth has the car down at Steak Lady's place (There's a Royal Wedding on, apparently and the Ladies are going to do it justice in their own Living room, sat around the TV with the fancy hats, party food and drinkies). I would not be able to nip and collect her from the railway/bus stations. So Laura, not to be put off, is going to try her 'travelling' skills out against the trains, buses, taxis and possibly hitch-hiker picker uppers and try to get here anyway. Good luck, Laura. Safe journey. See you soon. Just don't know HOW soon.

The Heat is On

Summer is definitely here, and we spend most of the day trying to find shade in the garden, only going for a walk once the intense midday scorchio has died down and it comes up humid and all thundery-expectant. 2 nice pics of the front garden here, which currently features the hot orange of Californian poppy (eschscholzia ... as far as we know the only word with schsch in it!) and the towering bursts of Nectaroscordum. They are called "Rapunzel castles" around here because as the flowers get pollinated and set seed the individual heads sheath up and stand up like magical fairy tale castle turrets. It says 'ere.

The walk was out around the back way to the allotments and back through same. It's very very dry up there and could definitely use the thunder-rain. Embarrassingly, when it's so dry, the only thing that performs really well is the very very deep rooted marestail weed that grows in from the nearby railway bank like some kind of dinosaur-forest plant. A true survivor, it stays green and crisp when everything else parches and dies back.

Dad is on weekend cover so he's been in to work today and has picked up the series of texts and conference calls that go with it. A little bit more of same tomorrow and then a final call at 07:30 Monday, after which he can hand the "operation" back to its rightful owners. Interestingly he has also been contacted by a local film maker who wants to pick his brains on the subject of Thames Sailing Barges. taht won't take long then, will it Dad? Oy!

Deefski

Scarlet Woman

It's finally happened - at almost 21 months old I have come "on" for the third time. There are dark mutterings among the humans that because there are no plans for me to have any pups of my own, this might be my "last one". Small matter of a laundry issue in the bed linen dept (not to mention spotting on floors) plus the effect I am having on poor Haggis

The H is, of course, "safe" at this point (sorry - I'm trying to keep this suitably vague for our younger readers) but having tasted honey as a young man (with Megan), he is currently toying with the idea of forsaking his life-long love (Megs) in favour of the younger model, and has been ...um... testing the temperature of the water.

Too many metaphors, too many analogies.....

Dad, meanwhile comes home filled with unaccustomed carbs and e-numbers, the usual healthy diet shot to bits. First-Dad is about to celebrate his 50th, and their workplace has been a sea of chocolate biscuits, cream cakes, Dorito's and Crispy-Creme doughnuts. Dad and Mum are also starting out on the assessing of "Garden for Wildlife", so the evening is a bit of a flurry. We get walked early, via the allotment - Dad admiring the wilting collection of de-capitated marestail and bindweed left by yesterday's hoeing. Then we get abandonned while the assessing happens, and finally we get a treat of the bones out of a poussin, and a sit down to watch Springwatch.

Busy life
Deefer

Possession is Nine Tenths....

A dog needs a good bone to chew on every now and then, and one's nice clean bed is as good a place as any. If that stupid cat comes too near, he's gonna hear me growl at him (even though Dad says he'd be lucky to be able to lift the thing, never mind steal it.)

Actually this one is (was) Haggis's but he'd had all the good bits off it and couldn't be bothered with it any more and walked away. I had my own bit but... heh... you know the grass is always greener. And now it's in my Haggis-proof shelter. That's Meg out on the terrace with hers - she NEVER gets bored with them. A pup could grow old waiting for her to leave it alone.

They are, by the way, chunks of cow leg - you're looking at the shiny cartilege surfaces of the knee joints.


Another gorgeous hot day. We got our walk nice and early, before the sun got up. We met old John and his elderly collie-cross Maxie. "We" have known John since Dad has had dogs - it was John, in fact who was the first human outside family to make a fuss of Megs as a pup, on their first Rec walk at the age of 12 weeks or whatever. John is one of those blokes who always has a dog-treat in his pocket, so he became a firm favourite with Meggie


The Mum and Dad were off to the forest to help lead a guided Reptile Ramble, properly led by kent reptile expert Dr Lee Brady of Kent Reptile and Amphibian Group ( http://kentarg.org/ . We were left behind. Dad has this theory (can't think why) that inquisitive pups and warmed-up adders are probably not a good mixture. Dad says they saw adders (incuding some nice bright big males - bright because they had recently sloughed skin), lizards and slow worms


They came back via the Goods Shed Farmer's Market in Canterbury http://www.squaremeal.co.uk/restaurants/uk/view/82620/The_Goods_Shed
for supplies of meat (and bones for us). Since then, Dad has been mowing at the allotment and picking raspberries, and we are all now chillin' on the terrace.


It's a good weekend
Deefer

Summer's Here!

Out of nowhere, Summer's here at last. I am told that things usually happen the other way round - weeks of sunshine while the humans are stuck in work, end in a downpour as soon as the words "Bank Holiday" appear in the calendar. Not this time. It is stupifyingly hot out on the terrace, and at some stage we all retreat into the cooler parts of the house to recover.

But it IS gorgeous weather, so our dog walk takes us on a nice circuit of fast-drying places that have been impassable quagmire for so long, and "we" get out in the garden to start attacking that pruning. Mum also picks the last of the greengages as the weekend papers have a nice recipe in them for plum crumble, and then picks the last of the damsons, with a more alchoholic intent. She is down there even now, as I type this converting them, plus a bottle of "Absolut" and some sugar, into damson vodka. Similar to sloe-gin, but a lot easier to make if you don't have sloes or gin.

The humans were off to the "Chefs" (see last Sunday for details) place for a Birthday lunch. Yep, Mum is 21 again, so the pair were off to sample the crab and avocado salad, baby squids, beef Wellington, steak, tarte tatin with calvados, and/or citrus tart. They came back smelling beautifully of all these ingredients, and all we got for supper was Chum. Where's the justice in that?

Enjoy the heat
Deefer

Getting there

Much to the consternation of Mum and Dad, after three months or so of being dry and clean indoors, I have suddenly started to pee indoors - my own dog-bed one day, the family (human) bed the next (Yay! Right through the duvet and into the mattress - how popular was I?), and the rug in the computer room the third day. Put that with eating grass, very soft poos and being sick, and the humans are starting to talk of hormonal changes, discomfort, coming of age... that sort of thing. They are inspecting my "below stairs" quite often now, but apparently not much is happening.

What a weeeknd the humans have, and we'll be involved in some of it. Saturday they are off to Hastings to be at Dad's Dad's 80th, then back here for their own mad Eurovision party, and then on Sunday, the long-awaited bluebell walk (yes, there still are plenty!) and an allotments volunteer work-party day

Have a good 'un youselves!

Deefer
(Girl...You'll be a woman soon)