You Live and Learn

Oven ready Hubbard 'roo'. Apologies for
the imperfect plucking and torn skin. 

First up today, the weights on that Hubbard rooster, as promised. He was at 97 days old and had a live weight of 3.645 kg ( 8 lb and half an ounce ). In oven-ready form he weighed 2.470 kg ( 5 lb 7 oz ) so a fine big lad and one we would not normally roast intact for just the two of us, so Liz has jointed him up and we will get 4 meals out of him easily. We started that evening with a roast thigh and a 'fore-arm' a-piece which Liz deliberately cooked with just oil so that we could assess the full unadulterated Hubbard flavour. Meaty and delicious served with potato wedges, home made coleslaw and home made mayo, all washed down with a very nice Italian red wine, Montepulciano which we are getting currently from Lidl at just under €30 for 6 bottles. These Hubbards are declared a success and if we get a chance we may do them again. This is an 'if' just because we only ever got these through a bizarre sequence of events (you may recall) - our 'clocker' (broody hen) was rearing some very young ducklings having incubated the eggs for 28 days and we wanted something to slip under her when we took the ducklings back to their owner, Mentor Anne. Anne happened to be driving right up to the hatchery on the Northern Ireland border to collect some day old Hubbards for herself and a friend and offered to collect 8 for us on the run.

I said that when we decided to buy a pair of Guinea fowl we knew next to nothing about them - only what we'd read in books, been told by the seller and found out by a quick internet search. We have since had some fun picking the brains of Anne and Simon and the many many poultry experts and keepers on a couple of internet discussion forums, one of which I am one of the Moderators on. Well, now we know all sorts of facts, myths, legends and 'what I reckon' comments, probably more than you need and definitely in some cases a little 'embellished'.

They can be a devil to persuade to stay around and difficult to teach that new home is a their new home. They love to roost up high in trees and one lad suggested that they can predict the weather better than Met Éireann, choosing to roost out on nights where it will definitely not rain, but roosting in their coop when there is risk of rain. They free range like crazy - another member of the group said he'd often seen his out half a mile from home during the day but that they were always home by supper time. It is said that they might attack your chicken-roosters. They are allegedly as thick as a plank - more stupid than any other bird. Anne, who keeps quail and does not have a very high opinion of quail brain-power, says that Guinea Fowl "make quail look intellectual". Another lad says they are "far from stupid". The eggs are apparently nice but a very pointy shape, almost triangular (says Simon) and Anne commented that the shells are so tough that if you are trying to do the eggs and toast soldiers thing, you almost need a hacksaw to do the neat decapitation. Pick the bones, as they say, out of that little lot!

We have had to part company with our friend, miniature Falabella cross stallion Cody. He'd been in our sheep field since a month or two back because his alpha-male hormones had been driving him to escape the 'home field' and go in search of mares. This had led to an interesting hour one day for Carolyn when she'd had to go 'rescue' him from a field of three full sized mares who were playing 'hard to get' teasing him as he chased them in his randy way while they tried to kick his head in, playing rough. Carolyn, who is not much bigger than Liz, had to dive into this mêlée and pull Cody out for his own safety and get him to the gate without any of the mare kicks connecting, while Cody wanted to stay in there and work on his seduction technique.

Cody ended up in our field where he'd be OK with the sheep because he was such a chilled out lad that he was OK with anything and, indeed, that was the case. He became a boss-sheep and used to give the 5 sheep the run around occasionally but was only playing and never seemed to be trying to do them any damage. Happy days. He was going to be gelded by Aoife (Rhymes with Deefer) the Vet but the warm autumn had meant that the risk of fly/maggot infection in the gelding scar was too great and this has not yet happened. Then yesterday it seemed to turn nasty and a bit serious. I went out at 4-ish to find Cody beating up one of the ram lambs, Cody had the ram pinned down between his front 'knees' and seemed to be trying to bite chunks out of the ram's woolly flanks. I raced into the field and, yelling at Cody and smacking him on the nose, managed to separate the 'protagonists'. I got Cody into a head collar and tethered him to the fence. The sheep seemed to be OK, just a small reddish wound near one eye and chunks of wool hanging off, but they all piled into their supper and certainly looked OK by this morning.

We phoned Carolyn for advice and she decided that the lad had better be brought home, so Charlotte was dropped off to walk him home. He is now back home in the sand-school but where he can get to a lot of grass growing round the edges. His gelding operation is now timed for some point in the next 2 weeks and fairly soon after that our sheep will have gone for their last journey anyway, so he can safely come back into our field while his hormones calm down. Then he can be reunited with his two amigos, Bob and Romeo. Complicated this horse management, isn't it? Maybe we should stick to our highly intelligent Guinea Fowl?

Lake View

We are having a bit of a pleasant surprise mini heat-wave to go with our autumn Equinox, blue skies, temperatures up to 25 degrees C (very warm for us here!) and a warm gentle breeze. We sweat real sweat when working and I was even perspiring a bit when just walking the dogs down the lane. Definitely not complaining.

Well, the 'All Ireland' is now come and gone and Liz, Sparks and K-Dub are all happy because Dublin won the famous 'Sam Maguire' trophy by just a point. It wasn't a particularly good game, low scoring but close enough. Of course Tony, in the local Post Office, is not happy but today he was waxing philosophical saying that "for all their crowing, they only bate us by a point!" At the far end of the village (Lough Glynn) is a small group of houses lived in by Dublin-born families and these guys have great fun putting out all the pale/dark blue Dublin flags and bunting like a small blue island in a sea of green and red Mayo flags.

One of the Dads is a really nice, funny bloke and he was straight on the phone to Tony this morning asking if the post office would be open, or closed for mourning. Tony assured him it would, indeed, be open, so the guy nipped along the main street in his normal clothes but with a big bag under his arm. Tony says that when he got to the PO he hid round the corner and changed into a huge array of Dublin gear - silly hats, huge gloves ("He looked like bloomin' Jeronimo!") - so that he could burst in on Tony and tease him for a while. Then he nipped back round the corner, changed back and went home wearing his 'civvies'. Crazy dude!

Goldie the Rabbit has now got a full time job. She is our mower for the path round the pond, so we are thinking of renaming her house 'Lake View'. As she eats each box of grass we pull her round to the next bit. She particularly seems to like the plantains and clovers - these always vanish first. She grazes off the grass when there is nothing else left. Amusingly there is a real house just down the lane called Lake View because, presumably, when it was built it had a good view down to Lough Feigh, our local lake. Like so many other houses here it was built in a corner of one of the fields of the family farm, and Mum moved in. Now the farm has prospered and they have built a huge new cattle shed and feed-silo opposite Mum's house, completely blocking any view of the Lake from her windows or garden. I bet that went down well!

Accidental crop

Picture here is an accidental crop. In 2012 we grew, deliberately, some decorative gourds but then forgot that we had and tried to eat one of the two-colour, light-bulb-shaped "squashes" in a casserole. Luckily for us the chunks of squash in the stew were so bitter that we quickly realised that these were not edible and have since found out that they are actually quite poisonous.

This year I have tried to stick to courgettes, pumpkins and custard squash but I have somehow mixed up some growing plants and planted (or transplanted) another of these lightbulb gourds into one of the kitchen garden beds where it has done very well. We left it be, and have now cut these weird looking gourds, now big enough to have sprouted warty lumps all over, for purely decorative reasons and they are attracting much comment from visitors, drying as they are on the front windowsill.

Liz has bravely gone off and found a very good, new (to us) hair dresser in Balla-D, this one a lady called Noelle in a shop called Halo. Liz had been getting quite shaggy having not had a decent haircut yet in Ireland and was getting fed up with it. She was looking longingly at a photo we have of her from 10-15 years back, framed in the spare room. She took the picture out of its frame and carried it along with her to Halo where they were happy to oblige and Liz is delighted with the restoration of an earlier look. I like it very much. I like it too, especially because there was talk at one stage of me having to have a go with my scissors. I can't think I'd have been able to produce anything as nice as this!

Out in the allotment I am mad into some autumn tidying. I had grown some marigolds and nasturtiums this year intending them as a companion plant to a row of new raspberry canes, to attract in a few insects and help with pollination. In the event they went completely mad burying the poor raspberries under a forest of 2 foot tall marigolds and rampaging nasturtium stems, covering the ridge and flooding sideways and down into the trenches either side. While they were in full flower they were quite a picture, blazing with the hot oranges and yellows or the marigolds and the deeper red of the nasturtium which was a stated variety I have now forgotten.

 Now, though, they are an over blown mess which needs tidying up, so I have been in there yesterday and today clearing the trenches and finally being able to scythe off the shaggy grass of the edge-path and then mow right to the edge. I know it is only mid September and very warm, but I am hoping that the grass will soon start to slow down a bit and this will be nearly the final mow for some of these areas; that they are now tidied and 'put to bed' for autumn. I doubt it somehow. We are pleased with the artichokes pictured. These plants were grown from seed only this spring so we were not really hoping for any crop this year, but these guys have obliged us with a couple of small tennis-ball sized heads which will go nicely with supper tonight.

We took a nice phone call today, from Mentor Anne. She and Simon are, rather excitingly, going to build a straw-bale building as a broody house for their quail. They have done this before using the technology to create a real actual human house in which they lived in one of their previous Irish small holdings. They end up being quite a sophisticated building perfectly habitable for modern families with all the mod cons. For this one, Simon needs a lend of our cement mixer which we bought during our own build. I will  check with Anne whether she is happy for me to provide links to her own blog where the build is described and depicted in pictures, or possibly if I might borrow some images. It will be nice for the mixer to get some use. It did very well for us during our own works but has since sat in the shed gathering dust.

First Christmas Visitors

Christmas "Eve Eve" today if you like and we have started to receive visitors, ready or not, though we're not expecting the Silverwoods till tomorrow. Poor Mr S has to work on Christmas Eve (Ahh, how I remember those days, almost last man out, first man back in and all that) all be it possible working from home, so they will not be able to set out at a sensible hour. Mrs S, too, has her own packed pre-Christmas schedule what with children and Santa visits etc, but we're hoping to get her in the front door and then wait on her hand and foot, give a proper break and rest, feet up, force fed cups of tea and so on.

Our first visitors are our mentors, Anne and Simon who drop in for tea, mince pies and a good long chat. As is now the way of things, they come bearing gifts and go away with something or other in return. They have recently got into quail as a new form of live stock (http://anirishalternative.blogspot.ie/2012/12/chrismas-hype.html) starting with three hens and a cock who have only just arrived but are already settled down to the egg laying. Anne's gift to us was therefore these 10 lovely quail eggs which we will have fun using up. We are also now toying with the idea of doing quail ourselves. From us, they got a jar of our Blackberry and Apple jam and (don't ask) an ostrich feather duster.

We get chatting and with their encouragement, Liz starts to talk very positively about the possibility of us keeping pigs. I have always veered away a bit from pigs because I know nothing about them and worry about fencing and housing, but it occurs that the 'Secret Garden' might be the perfect place to 'do them' as it's under trees so there wouldn't be the sun-burn or weather problems. I need to go off and read around the subject (as ever!) but my mind's eye is toying with those lovely gingery Tamworth, long-snouted dudes strolling in the dappled sunlight under the spruces. Whoa! Let's research where to buy them and how to get them slaughtered first. Our man Ignatius is only licensed for cattle and sheep. (NB Pig pictures here blagged from the internet - we don't have any to photograph yet!)

Today we have Vendor Anna and Partner Paul drop by on their way to the Knock Airport - they are off to Kent to visit the Bexleyheath-based Sister (the three Sisters live in Carrick on Shannon, Dublin and Kent) so they call by us with a card (plus one for John Deere Bob) and gift and take tea and cake. In the course of this chat we find a lovely coincidence, in that one of Paul's cousins is also a friend of mine in the Thames Sailing Barge world but also Anna gets talking about geese and how we should keep them, fattening them up for Christmas. Pigs, Quails and now Geese all over the course of two days.

In terms of existing animals, all three dogs get a shampoo after their walk this morning, much to their disgust, mainly so that they do not 'ming' quite as badly for the guests over the break. This was not the pups' first ever bath but it was close. I've done them before in the Utility Room sink but we now find it easier to wrangle them in the big shower cubicle and use the power-shower on them. The three little clean faces here are, in order, Poppy with her pricked up ears, Towser with his floppy ears and Deefer still not quite dry.

The other picture, the view down into the bucket of oranges, onions etc is, of course, the turkey brining mixture prior to the turkey being dropped in and the brine being made up to cover the bird with water. The whole is now back out in the Tígín marinading gently in the coolth. We have turned our attention to blitzing the fridge, cleaning the leather sofa and so on.

Christmas Eve? Bring it on! We are nearly ready!