Up All Night (to get 'Lected)

JD Bob and Liz pore over the laptop, checking out election results

...with a few apologies to 'Daft Punk' I guess. I am not a huge fan of politics; I tend to assume that politicians are all self-seeking rogues and who you get does not make much difference to you. As Roger Daltrey of 'The Who' sang, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss". However, I do always vote, given the chance. It is a different matter for Liz who passionately loves all of this intrigue and manouvring. the manifestos, the press analysis and the opinion polls.

Post Election analysis

Election Day(s), be they in the USA, UK or Ireland are a high point in each year and Liz will generally stay up all night with the TV running the BBC coverage, the laptop checking out websites and the smart-phone jangling away with the chat, feed and comment. She is glued to every seat gained, lost or swinging. On the big Labour Landslide (1997) , she had got bored and gone to bed just before Portillo lost his seat, so she missed it and has regretted it ever since. She is even more determined to go the distance than before that. Last night was a classic - glued to the screens from about ten pm right round to 07:30 when I was up an about again doing livestock and first cups of coffees.

In this pursuit, Liz has found a firm friend and staunch ally in John Deere Bob who we quickly came to realise was equally passionate about politics; he's a bit of an activist for his local branch of the party and will always bring the new candidates round the village to meet everybody. Bob is delighted to have found, in Liz, a like-minded colleague and even more delighted that Liz has a laptop and the internet savvy to go hunting for the latest info and opinions, which Bob has presumably not had up till now. Bob comes round regularly to discuss this with Liz and has her nipping around in websites and newsfeeds asking all his detailed questions about voting results by party, by area, by breakdowns and, today, going over what actually happened compared to what the two of them 'predicted'.

Cuckoo flower or 'Lady's Smock'
(Cardamine pratense) self seeded into
the margin of our pond. I've not seen it
growing round here, so we know not from
where.

It's lovely to see it happen, to watch them in action and to know that the democratic process is in good hands and well analysed and watched over. Bob does not do the over-night thing with Liz and I'm with him on the line he takes on that - "An hour's sleep before twelve is worth two after". Yes. I need my beauty sleep, so I set the 'onesie'-clad Liz up with a good hot fire in the range, coffees and a goodnight kiss and catch up with all the results in the morning, at which point she takes herself off to bed leaving me with the main headlines written down in case Bob should call and instructions not to disturb her till 2 pm. Mid morning, Bob does phone and I give him the headlines but he asks lots of questions around that and I get the distinct impression he is not all that taken with my 'patchy report' and we know he will be back this evening when the proper expert is awake!

Meanwhile, a quick update on the poor Marans hen who was bitten by the mink. The mink has made no reappearance and the dogs 'tell' me he has not been around; not a sniff of scent and certainly no interest in the baited trap. We assume he is long gone, not fancying the odds round here. The hen is back with the gang and looking a whole lot less swollen. She is able to wander about, scratch and peck with the rest of them, gets plenty of food and water and is still laying eggs and receiving the attentions of the rooster(s). Hopefully she will make a full recovery, all be it, possibly minus one eye.

Chicken for dinner, Mr SL? That's me top left. 

We had a lovely visit yesterday from the Parents-in-Law, Steak Lady and Mr SL who fancied coming up to look around the place and the livestock and take a bite of lunch with us. Liz laid on a superb meal of that family favourite "Black Spring's Nan's Pork Hock" (our own pork, of course). Mr SL was very impressed by the size of the pigs which he saw recently but who have grown fast in the mean time. He's not so hot on his legs these days, though, so for him to meet the 'baby' Hubbard chicks, I brought a couple down from their brooder-box, for a wander around on the dining table (after lunch, of course!). He was intrigued, petting them and calming them down. Liz snatched a few pics with the phone-camera.

When it was time for them to go we assembled a goodly box of produce and garden cuttings - eggs, purple sprouting broccoli, lovage, cheese and chilli biscuits, honey, beeswax polish, seedlings of foxglove, Creeping Jenny, violets and Tiarella. We then drove in convoy to our nearest and improved-out-of-all-recognition garden centre where she filled the car-boot even more with purchases as well as buying us a couple of bits as a Thank You. I think we'll call that a successful visit!.

New Year Trivia

...in which I sweep out the last corners of the 2014 story cupboard, the last anecdotal dust-bunnies and cigarette end memories to give myself a nice clean, clear run at it in 2015. First though, anxious readers may like an update on our fox attack story and sheep debuts of yesterday's post. You'll be relieved to know that everyone survived the night. I still have ten of the young Buff-Orp poults and all the grown up hens, 5 geese, 4 rabbits, Min the (Guinea Fowl) Hin and, of course, Lieutenant Colonel Sir Buffton Tuffton (Sah!) , our splendid Alpha-chicken and rooster. I also have two sheep, which is handy, and they are delightful creatures, hand-tame and sorted on the human=good=feed bucket=grub thing. My 'babies' from Kenny in the past have taken 2 weeks at least before they'd even approach us and 4 weeks to be baa-ing for their food, these more mature (and definitely more frequently handled) ladies are in there from the get go.

While I'm on 'death and destruction' I'll do the slaughter-based stories sooner rather than later (Don't worry, not too traumatic). Sometimes when we are labeling stuff for the freezer, we don't stick rigidly to the rules, so we end up with packs labeled "The best curry sauce EVEH!" or some such lunacy. In 2014, when we went through the process of slaughtering the big Hubbard chickens, I was stretching their necks at 1, 2 or 3 a day depending on the pace at which the plucking and dressing department (Liz) could process them. From the start I'd had my eye on one particularly big, tall, broad, white rooster who I thought might make a good weight, so I'd go out each day to do the deed, intending to grab him, but each day one of the others would wander into reach (they never really sussed that I'd turned from the harmless man who fed them, to a much less benign force!) and I'd despatch that one, leaving my big boy for the next day. It became like Captain Ahab hunting the white whale, an epic saga of many failed 'hunts'. Unbeknownst to me, when I did finally catch up with him, Liz labeled all 'his' freezer bags "Moby". We'd long since forgotten this but it all came back to us yesterday when we went to thaw out one of the bags to eat the chicken pieces there-in.

The house's alpha-cat playing with the mouse.
Liz joins the 'onesie' Sisterhood

While we've been feeling the pain of a fox attack and chicken loss, we have been very aware of how fortunate we are compared to poor Charlotte of the Mini Horses who on the same morning as our bushy-tail visit, woke up to all her 10 ducks killed, badly injured or traumatised by a mink attack. Touch wood, we do not seem to get mink this far from the river; they are vicious and bloodthirsty killers. The fox will snatch a chicken in the open and run off with it leaving you just a few feathers (Yes, I know they will do feeding frenzy if they get into the chicken house or an enclosed space) but the mink will kill all your birds one by one by biting through the neck to get at the blood, sometimes taking the head off altogether and leaving you the bloodied, sickening corpses. The other birds just have to watch helplessly.

Charlotte's visitor killed 5, injured three more and left the other two so traumatised that they could only stand in a corner shivering, especially one poor little call-duck who had seen her life-long buddy executed. Charlotte was understandably upset and didn't relish the task of putting the injured birds out of their misery, so I volunteered. Nobody likes the job but I had no bond to these ducks, so I could do it quickly and cleanly, out of sight of Charlotte. Not nice. She is now, for the moment at least, out of ducks.

On a happier note, the last two days have seen some heavy frosts, with Sunday night getting down to -3ºC and Tuesday night -6ºC. Monday froze our big pond over and Tuesday thickened up the ice impressively. Step forward our big fluffy cat, Blue, who decided that some ice skating would be fun. On my feed and release round that morning I found him strolling around in the middle of the pond and on that first morning the ice was creaking under him; I had visions of him going through it and me having to wade out in the freezing cold water to rescue him. I have no idea where a cat gets the instinct to know that a pond might be a safe place for a stroll.

Torville and Dean, it aint!

On the 2nd morning the ice did not creak and he got quite confident, skittering about and looking like he enjoyed falling down, writhing round to bat the ice, or maybe his reflection, which had just 'got' him. He would not come off the ice to my call, but he must have known what he was at - when I walked off to go in to animal breakfasts, he was at my heel 'asking' to be let in. This morning we have a thaw and while the ice sheet is still there, it is now wet and melting on top, so I expect Blue's ice dancing days are done for now.

JD Bob gets comfy with the dogs, yarning by the fire.

We had a nice visit from our good friend and near-neighbour, John Deere Bob last night. We had the fire going in the Living room and he got sat down on the sofa with the dogs, a nice cup of 'tay' in his hand and settled down for a good aul' yarn. We thought he was going to doze off at one stage. He normally only stays 10-20 minutes but seemed to decide that warm and cosy was a good thing. We love it. He tells us that back in the day 'that' room would have been kept for best and only opened for special high days and holidays, visits from the Priest and so on, so that although he'd been in the house a few times, he'd never been allowed in the Living Room.

Amongst the gifts this Christmas came a very nice cheese knife set. I had not heard of the maker, though by coincidence, it was mentioned in the knife-making section of the Gubbeen book I described in an earlier post. Laguiole is, like Sabatier, a well respected and 'quality' knife maker and rather sweetly, their logo is a honey bee. See picture for details. Thank you, Santa.

Tasting as good as it looked, but nearly all gone now.

That just about does me for 2014 so I will wish all my readers a Happy New Year. We are having the home made haggis and home grown 'neeps' plus, if it is thawed enough for me to get at them, the home grown 'bashit tatties'. The Christmas whiskey seems to have all vanished (thirsty mice!) so we may be out today to do a bit of re-stocking just in the interest of First Footing, you understand.

Happy New Year 

Bust Squared x Length x 69.3

Taking the 'bust' measurement of a 99 day old Tamworth

Bust Squared x Length x 69.3. It's not every day we do 'sums', but this formula is a good standard used around the pig world for estimating the weight of your pigs. 'Bust' is a measure of the pig's chest just behind the front legs. 'Length' is  the length of her back from between the ears to the base of her tail, both these being quoted in metres. The formula in my title line then gives you weight in kg. Doing these today, Mapp, who we knew was slightly smaller, comes out at 31.8 kg and Lucia is 36.3 kg.

According to 'The Good Book' (Liz Shankland's (Haynes) Pig Manual), "traditional breeds reach pork weight at between 5 and 6 months old", pork weight being 55 kg or there abouts. Baconners are normally much heavier ( more like 80 kg ) and there is an in-between standard called 'cutters' which is kept for 9 months to produce bigger joints than you'd get from a 'porker'. We think we are therefore doing OK, with ours having reached 30 kg in 3 months.

Apparently you do have to watch it with Tamworths lest you just build up 2 inches of back-fat all along the spine which weighs a load but is not really cook-able unless you like very fatty bacon. It will be interesting to see how ours do compared to Anne and Simon's cross bred trad which are a good 2 months in front of us and are being fed on a little (organic) pig-nut but mainly fruit and veg obtained from shop back doors, a way more cost-effective solution than our 'mainly pig-nut' diet. Ours get some fruit in every meal but it tends to be a cut up apple, nectarine and tomato between them per bowl of nuts. We get the fruit from the Supermarket 'reduced' bins, a bag of apples for a Euro style. Anne thinks hers will be ready in about 6 weeks.

Hole ripped by a fox.

Meanwhile a tragic end to our Guinea Fowl keets saga, 3 rips in the chicken wire of their new run, one where the wire had been pulled out of the staples and a place where the wire had been torn up from buried under soil and rocks, a few sad feathers and some blood, but all 5 keets gone. We thought at first this might have been a mink but Anne has looked at the run, the big holes and the complete absence of bodies, and thinks more than one fox was the culprit, possibly parent animals out with learning cubs. The big rip was an entrance hole and the smaller ones may have been foxes snatching keets through the wire as they panicked trying to escape.

Goldie is in clover

We are kicking ourselves again - it is always the human's fault. We are meant to keep the birds out of danger. I know in theory that chicken wire is no protection against a fox and the run contained a perfectly fox-proof house, but the keets were devils for not using it and preferred to sleep in a huddle among the rocks on the ground. You cannot easily persuade guinea fowl to go where they do not want to go, so we had stopped trying to lock them in the house at night and instead trusted our belief that we did not really have a fox problem. Famous last words. Poor things. It can't have been a very nice end.

Pirate tucks in to home made fishy cat food.

Better news in the Pirate department. The lad is doing very well on his week of incarceration in the caravan being fed lots of lovely food, antibiotic tablets wrapped in salami, and having his good eye smeared with ointment. He is also warm, dry and not having to fight rival cats, dodge dogs, scramble through barbed wire fences and bramble thickets so he does not get new cuts, scratches, tufts of fur missing and a bloody nose every day.

Bulging tummy on a skinny cat!

He is looking cleaner and whiter every day and must be enjoying not always having to nurse sore cuts and bruises (all be it he may still be feeling a bit sore around the surgically closed eye-lid and the... um....manly bits). He is still quite thin and you can feel all his vertebrae so we are always quite amused by the view down on him from above when he had eaten a great wodged belly-full; his stomach sticks out either side like a cartoon snake after it has eaten a big animal. Liz got a couple of enormous fish-heads from our fish-van lady yesterday, poached them down to make stock but then peeled off any edible bits ('neck' muscle, brain, gills etc) and created a delicious (to cats) cat food to which she added back the oil rendered in the stock. Pirate thinks this is WONDERFUL stuff and cannot get enough of it.

He is also getting very affectionate towards us and who ever is feeding and medicating him sits down in the caravan for a nice long cuddle and fuss which he cannot get enough of even though his full-to-groaning belly must be telling him to go for a lie down. He is on this regime for one more day, after which he has completed his course of antibiotics; we will probably keep giving him the eye ointment till we run out of that too. But he's not house trained (why would he be?) so he is making a bit of a mess of the caravan despite our giving him a litter tray, so we are now in two minds whether to confine him for a week or more longer till he 'really gets to know this is home', or whether to throw open the caravan windows and let him come and go at will.

Elder-flower 'fizz'

Time enough for that decision on Sunday. Tonight we are relaxing with some of this year's very successful elder flower 'champagne'. It's always a bit of a judgement call - stop this wine too soon and you end up with bottles going off like soda syphons, too late and you have flat wine. We are pleased to have got it just about right this year. It comes chilled from the fridge and we open it at a lean, then smoothly (no glugging, no allowing it to pour back into the bottle) decant into a chilled jug. It stays crystal clear that way for your 2nd glasses and the dog end! Cheers.

Oh, and that pig-weight formula applied to me? That'll be 'bust' 1.25 m, 'length' 0.82 m, so weight 90.1 kg. Now that'd be nice! I will be claiming that my legs are 'extra' and not really piggy shaped.

George and the Ladies' Christmas

Red Kuri Squash - nice fudgy texture when roasted.

Hot on the heels of my 'Wren Boys' post comes another tradition from these parts which was new to me, that of Ladies' Christmas. Mrs Silverwood's post in Facebook has it thus. “Nollaig na mBan” or “Little Women’s Christmas” is an old custom that’s still celebrated by women all over Ireland. It goes back to the days when large families were the norm. Men never lifted a finger in the house to help, and were never expected to. If a man washed the dishes, he would be called an “auld woman” by other men. No full blooded Irish man was prepared to risk that!

Ominous sky precedes our latest "Category Orange" storm, Christine

But each year, after the Christmas holiday, tired women finally got a break – for one day, at least. On January 6th (the same day as the Epiphany), men would take over of the housework, offering women a chance to go out to relax with each other." Nollaig na mBan would be pronounced 'Nollag na Morn' or there abouts. Now call me a cynic but I think this tradition might be more 'fondly dreamed about' than actually happening. I cannot see those kind of blokes, Irish or otherwise, who'd let their women do all the work and never lift a finger, suddenly bringing their women folk tea and toast in bed on Day 12 and happily volunteering to knock up a delicious curry for when they get back from the pub.

George and the author. Note rainbow.

Readers who have been with me for the past 12 months, will know of our goose in-breeding problem. Our first three geese, Goosey, Goocey and Gander joined us last January advertised as a breed-able trio and we didn't know enough then to spot that Gander had serious wry-tail (or to realise that this might be a problem). We also suspect that they may have been a sibling group possibly even from the same clutch, brother and sisters. They settled in and got nice and clean and healthy; it was when they started breeding that we got some problems - infertile and dead-in-shell goslings, deformed babies with necks twisted round, goslings who went lame after a month or two, completely losing the motor control of their legs or just fading and dying. Out of 17 eggs incubated, we ended up with just 2 full grown young ones.

We decided to cease breeding with these three birds and to either just collect eggs (which one of the geese is still producing every other day all through Christmas and the New Year) or to swap out the gander so that we could out-cross rather than in-breed. Step forward then, our friends Carolyn and Charlotte of the miniature horses who had come out of geese after all sorts of fun and games with mink attacks but had been left with one lonely successful gosling.

This bird, named George even before anyone could sex him was hand reared by Charlotte and is as dotty and tame as anything, loving to have his neck tickled and to be cuddled and handled. As he was on his own, he grew up with Charlotte's motley mixture of call ducks and 'Swedish' ducks and most recently was running with a couple of drakes whom he used to marshall and follow around. We THINK he is a gander. A friend of Charlotte's who keeps a lot of geese thinks he is, from the stance and behaviour but admittedly did not pick him up to check his equipment.

George meets his women (He is closest to camera)

To cut a long story short, we have swapped out 'Gander' with 'George' today and George, after an hour in a holding pen to make sure they'd not fight and to let him see his new surroundings in peace, is now released into the orchard with the girls. They were a bit shouty when their previous fella suddenly disappeared, perhaps anxious to attract him back, but seem to have settled down now with George. I am hoping they have bonded enough to be able to shepherd all three 'home' tonight and shut them up in the relatively confined space of their sleeping quarters. I may have to quarter them apart for this first night. So.... welcome aboard George.

Nearly finished. Raglan sweater.

In other news we are currently surviving the recent wind storms (latest was named Christine; I don't know when Atlantic anti-cyclones started to get names) with, thankfully, no more damage. We experimented with a red kuri squash, a gift from the Silverwoods, and found that roasted it has a lovely delicate flavour and a fudgy texture. We will keep some seeds and try to get it to grow in our calf muck heap. Liz has almost finished my raglan knit sweater, the biggest thing she has attempted in this recent burst of the craft. Meanwhile we are sploshing about in wellies with mud everywhere after the recent, seemingly relentless rain, and wishing spring would come and it would all dry out a bit.