The Wild Bunch

The turkeys seem to have melded into an all-age gang. Here
one of the first hatch is far left, then Tom and Barbara, with the
surviving 2nd hatch ('Solo') far right and the other plus the young
Guineas at the back.

First in this post. a quick note to close out the story of our sparrowhawk and, more specifically, whether I could have done any more for her. Anne told us of "Eagles Flying", a falconry centre half an hour's drive away. I e-mailed their office describing our situation to see what they could offer in the way of A&E vets and recuperative care.

One 'Lothar' replied with

"Having an absolutely fresh fracture, it is not a major challenge to reset the bones, as long as the joints are not affected. Ideally the bird will be anaesthetized before the procedure. Of course 9 pm is not the best time to find a working Vet,  but the wound could have been dressed up, the bone ends disinfected and kept moist (saline solution) and the bird kept dark in a box until the next day. A Vet being very good with these things is Dr. Niall Curran, Animal Hospital, Moneen, Castlebar"

Steak Lady (left) and Mr SL (r) bring the sun with them for
a quick visit to look round and catch up. 

Fair play to them for a good, helpful and professional reply. In answer to a follow up question they replied that they would of course be happy to accept the 'fixed' bird to do the recuperation and possible rehabilitation and release back to the wild. If you are ever in our situation then, as they say. "now you know" but for me, reading between the lines from my slightly guilty viewpoint, having destroyed the bird, I could see a couple of issues which still lead me back to having done the right thing. One was that Niall Curran, though no doubt an excellent vet, probably does not work for free and Eagles Flying looked a bit like they were swerving the vet costs in my direction. The second was that I was not 100% sure the hawk could ever be released back to the wild so that I might have just created one more captive 'zoo' bird. So, there it is. Make of it all what you will.

Ear tag number 274. I love this bullock. 

My other continuing saga is of JD Bob and the cattle which you will be delighted to know are now pretty much sorted, all be it with 2 new twists in the plot. Bob himself has now been diagnosed with a possible broken bone in his foot and hence his failure to 'get better' as quickly as he'd like and we therefore have a run to Roscommon's embattled hospital next week for X-rays etc. Then last night quite late we took an anxious call from Bob who had spotted a break out. One of the groups of 7 bullocks had managed to break a fence post and escape into the neighbouring farmer's land, hungry for some female company. We had a bit of running around today, then (another example of Bob failing to rest his injured foot!) to extract the 7 from the girls' territory and repair the broken fence.

The original 'Wild Bunch' (those who were jumping the fences "like hunters") were finally corraled and collected by the meat factory. Everyone was pleased to be finished with them.

Theo, who is a tiny little man, is almost eye to eye
with our enormous turkey, Tom as they warily
check each other out. 

On Tuesday we play host to Liz's Mum and Dad, Steak Lady and Mr SL who come up to give Liz a bit of an early birthday treat and presents, to have a look round and to take a light lunch. With impeccable timing the sun bursts through the cloud and we can all enjoy a beautiful warm sit out front like normal people do in warm sunny August in places other than Roscommon (!).

Those biro-thick feather shafts emerging from Tom's tail.

Tom the turkey comes over to check out the 'strangers' but quickly decides they are harmless and welcome and joins our matey little group at the terrace table. As he grows back his new feathers after his moult which had him very threadbare and woe-begone, he is now starting to look magnificent again. The 'shield' feathers on the lower wing are a beautiful burnished bronze colour and the tail fan is starting to look a bit peacock shaped. We are impressed by the size of the feather shafts for these big feathers, which are as thick as a biro.

This lovely set of books were part of Liz's birthday present.

Finally a bit of sad news to relate as we lost a good friend, Sean R suddenly. He was a lovely, popular man and always so full of life, the father of one of the students Liz teaches and husband to Dawn, who has appeared in these posts. They were the family involved in recent goat-move posts and the people who gave us the cat, 'Soldier' because they were planning to move back home to the UK. Our thoughts are with the family at this sad and difficult time. Rest in Peace, Sean; way too young and taken too soon. We will miss you.

Smallholder Buys Shop Eggs! Shock!

The shame of it! Shop bought eggs. 

Yes, all the girls seem to be in moult or sulking through the short length days and misty mornings and we are currently down to one or zero eggs from the 9 hens (plus guinea fowl) each day. We are just about supplying John Deere Bob with his half dozen but today, when Liz needed 5 for an extra gloopy chocolate fudge cake for some visitors we had to submit to the inevitable and buy half a dozen like 'normal' people do, in an actual shop. We have not bought eggs since our first batch of Sussex Ponte hens came into lay yonks ago.

The solid clean chap formerly known as skanky emaciated
stray with bits missing, Pirate the cat.  

We are not alone it seems. Anne, I know is also a bit quiet at the moment and friend Dawn was telling me this week that she had also had to buy half a dozen for the first time in years. Ah well. Don't get too excited, though, Lidl. You do not have a new income stream. Your free range eggs were OK but not a patch on our own for freshness or for the rich full yellow colour of the yolks. We will be going back to ours as soon as the girls decide that spring is round the corner.

Sorting the lamb meat out. Roughly 104 kg from the 4 lambs

Monday 17th saw us down at lamb butcher, Ignatius G (Victualler) of Castlerea Main Street, to collect our lambs and watch them being butchered up. They have been hanging in his cold store 'relaxing' for 7 days. We love Ig-G; he is an absolute joy to do business with. A well padded (but huge and strong) traditional looking butcher with a happy, smiley face, he is definitely a 'front of house' type bloke, bantering with the customers in his butcher's apron. His No.2, Joe, is maybe a bit quieter and seems to have his days for the banter but sometimes seems to prefer the quiet of the back room and his vicious-looking band saw.

Bagged for the freezer

That day was an out-front day and we had a great laugh with the two of them as they prepared our order to Liz's specification; we needed one of the lambs split between Mrs Silverwood and Steak Lady but also some parts of the order done as a million chops, while others needed to be in racks of ribs, some big joints but some half-leg or half shoulder. The guys don't mind, you can have it as simple or as complicated as you like. They have even bagged each individual portion for us before now, as they went along, printing labels on the 'till/weigher' for us describing the cuts (lamb chops, gigot chops, half shoulder etc). We get the distinct impression that they appreciate anyone who knows about meat and respects their work and their business.

Local grown!

While we are on meat, we have been delighted to find that sometimes now we can do a Sunday roast or a main meal and see that everything on the plate has come from this holding. On Sunday we had the first leg joint from the pigs and spotted that the meat, potatoes, sprouts, turnip and even the apple sauce was from here. Our apple harvest was a bit of a flop but the few we got we guarded jealously. Liz made the (single) Bramley and one of the James Grieves into apple sauce back in September, freezing it to be kept for the occasion of our first pork Sunday roast. Our only 'oops' of that meal was that Liz, without thinking, 'nicked' one of the rabbits' cheap carrots; we have carrots in the ground but I'd not brought any in that day. All delicious and succulent, laced with that added pride of having grown it ourselves.

Leg roast. Excellent.

We are very pleased, in particular, with the flavour of the Tamworth pigs and this leg cut was even a bit less fatty than the shoulder. Liz was able to make very good crackling with the skin still on the joint; for the shoulder she had stripped the skin off and blasted that separately.

We have sneaked through our little hiatus of freezer space. Sparks was down today to collect his lamb, he took away a bit of pork too and tomorrow Liz is off down to the Silverwoods' with theirs and Steak Lady's plus the pork for those 'customers'. By that time we should be able to freeze the 'overflow' which we have put into the 'fridge' parts of those fridge-freezers for safe keeping and we will not have needed to buy either the 5th freezer or to borrow the generously offered freezer space at Dawn's. A narrow squeak but we got away with it. Next year, as I said, we will be sure to de-synchronise the lamb and pork harvests a bit better.

Pirate.

Finally just a quick update on the stray cat, Pirate. You can see from my top picture that he is now quite a solid (OK fat!) chap but his body is now beautifully cleaned up and cleared of all the scar tissue, scabby stuff between the fur and places where he had been gnawing on itchy skin. Also nicks and cuts inflicted by, we presume, barbed wire, brambles or dogs and cats chasing him off. Only his face is still a bit 'mashed', his nose always seems to be a bit red and scuffed, or dried up and scabby and his eye(s) are generally a bit weepy looking. He is a very affectionate young boy and loves to be picked up and fussed (though not carried about, curiously, he gets very fidgety if he thinks you are "taking him somewhere"). He has pretty much taken over the Utility Room and owns it to the exclusion of our other cat Blue. He has the freezers in there pushing out heat and a radiator. He has an old cat bed lined with one of my old fleecy jackets and he is brought regular food - at least a tin a day plus the odd sliver of ice cream when I go out there to help myself. We see him come out to pee or poo somewhere in the yard before nipping back 'indoors'. He seems as happy as Larry and is definitely improved in health out of all recognition from the poor emaciated, cut about, battered and bruised little mite who first showed up driven to steal our cats' food by hunger, bravely coming in through the open kitchen window braving the wrath of our dogs, cats and, for all he knew, us. Fallen on his feet, has Pirate.

Green Tomato Chutney

We are a bit tied down this morning having to stay in earshot or sight of the front gate waiting on delivery of the new freezer from Euronics in Castlerea. The guy had said he'd phone, but they never do, they just turn up. Luckily, the dogs will generally have at least one of their number on look out through the front upstairs windows or from half way up the stairs and when they kick off barking you just know there will be someone at the gate. And so it went and the freezer is now doing its mandatory 24 hour stand upright before you turn it on, so that any airlocks and bubbles can clear.

Cherry toms and mango and kiwi chutney

So, rather than fire up the noisy chainsaw out round the back again, I opted for the quiet pottering job of stripping all the tomato plants in the poly tunnel of their fruit, either ripe or unripe so that Liz could get cracking on the green (and yellow) tomato chutney and some red tomato "jam" (more like a spiced up relish - delicious!). These plants were all cherry tomato varieties this year, either yellow or red and we have had some decent crop off them but now it is October and they are still producing flowers and looking like they will go on till Christmas. Enough is enough.

Liz had already had a go at one of our house favourites, kiwi and mango chutney and made that superb stock yesterday, which wound up also delivering a big yogurt pot of separated fat which will go very well in the roasting of spuds. Our local supermarket, SuperValue is very canny in this respect, producing 'kits' for prospective chutney makers (this being how we came to 'invent' kiwi and mango); you get a pack containing a mango, some kiwis, ginger, garlic and a lemon clearly labelled "Mango and Kiwi Chutney Pack". No recipe, so we guessed you are just meant to wing it but we were OK with that.

On the left green/yellow tom chutney, on the right red tomato jam

They also do a rather superb Guacamole pack - 2 deep purple Hass avocadoes, tomatoes, an onion and a chilli. In that one they may have stitched themselves up a bit, as the Hass 'avo's were quite expensive that day on their own, and it was cheaper to buy the two in the pack and get the rest of the stuff free. We guess they know what they are doing. Made lovely guacamole, anyway!

Having stripped the toms, I then got all carried away and completely cleared the poly tunnel of its jungle of rampant tom plants, pumpkins and squashes (Yes, we did find a custard squash, all of 2 inches diameter!) chickweed, strawberry runners, nettles, nasturtiums and flat leaved parsley. The strawberries I need to keep have been sheared of old leaves and runners, as has the parsley but everything else has been hauled up by the roots. It all got a bit embarrassingly out of hand this year as I did way too little weeding and pruning. Next year I will not grow anything even remotely rambling, spreading or climbing in there. I have compost heaps a mile high.

While I was in there, Liz converted my tomato haul into a green and yellow tomato chutney and rendered the red ones down as a 'tomato jam'; a 'slop' of toms, chillies, garlic and ginger which is like an extremely zingy salsa or relish. These will both be neatly bottled up in what is now our standard size and shape jar, the 454 g Lidl peanut butter or mayonnaise jar. We had a massive run to the glass bottle bank this week and got rid of mountains of weird and wonderful huge, tiny and odd-shape jars that we seem to have accumulated.

In other news the Marans hens have finally come off lay because they have come into moult. They look very woe-begone with their feathers all sticking out in tufts at strange angles. Bless them, they are 5-6 years old now and probably shouldn't be laying at all, but they both crank one out every 24 hours when they are in lay and kept us afloat this summer while our own Sussex Pontes had a bit of a holiday. One of the sheep (16A) has now got tame enough that he (it's a ram) likes to come up and have his head, ears and neck tickled if I go and stand quietly in the field. If I stop he nudges my hand gently with his forehead as if asking me to continue. Another comes close but dances away if I try to tickle her and the others stand at a respectful distance. I then get very questioning looks from the dogs who smell sheep lanolin on my hands. Love 'em.