A Help-X No Show

A superb cheese souffle cooked by the girls on their last night.
They also did profiteroles. 

Regular readers will know that up till now we have had nothing but success, co-operation, hard work and pleasure from our involvement with the Help-X (Help Exchange) volunteer system. As at the last post, we were about to bid farewell to our latest pair, Emma and Flora and then collect our 'August booking', a 17 year old French lad called Rafael.

Borage

This weekend was a Bank Holiday,so the girls had an issue with their next posting. They requested the extra night (Saturday night) which we were happy to give them and, out of gratitude, they cooked that night's supper for us, a rather superb cheese soufflé followed by profiteroles filled, unusually, with ice cream. Nom nommetty nom! This move also landed them trying to reach Sligo town on a B/H timetable - no trains or buses except for one via Dublin. Elizabeth generously offered to taxi them. After all the hospital runs, she said the car practically knows its own way by now.

The finest cauli we have yet grown in Ireland

So that was that for the girls, but through these closing stages I had been expecting some contact from the next lad, Rafael. His silence and lack of responses to our emails etc had me worried he might have blown us out. Back in May he'd been asking for "the whole summer", had taken a 2 weeker and then enthusiastically added a 3rd week as that became available, but now he was gone all quiet. The girls had suggested that maybe he had no broadband and might show up anyway, but he would have had no full address or phone numbers yet.

This enormous fennel attracts hundreds of bumble bees despite
being in the poly-tunnel. They all seem to get out OK.

Ah well, we waited expectantly through the whole weekend and through today but still no contact, so we now assume that he has just let us down without word. This is a real pain. He was going to be key to our plan to re-roof the chicken house, helping K-Dub with the lifting which is currently outside my range, plus in digging over that big raised flower bed cleared by the girls. He is also needed for jobs like mowing which is now coming due (and will again), and some log-splitting.

We do still have all 4 goslings. One must be hiding in this pic
behind a grown up bird.

There is little we can do to 'get back' at the inconsiderate, unhelpful behaviour except mark him as a no-show in the bit of the Help-X website reserved for volunteer references. If anyone reads that, they will at least know not to book him and get let down as were we. I have also changed our host 'advert' to read "Help Urgently Needed for August". We may just get a replacement volunteer in time but most people seem to only go in in Spring, when they are planning their Summer's work.

Splitting the ram lamb. Sorry poor pic due to
taken on the phone.

Meanwhile the other main job this week was to get those lambs back from the butcher and into the freezer. Forgetting that Monday was the B/Hol, I shot down to Castlerea in the morning, also intending to order my woodwork for the new Chicken House roof (ker-ching €360). Of course. all the roads were lined with no parking cones for the Castlerea Agricultural Show, all the shops (looked) closed, lights off and nobody about. I turned round and came home again. My butcher lads had said "next Monday" but I guessed they'd just forgotten the B/hol. Apparently not. They were in the shop, out back, feeding some horses, fully expecting me to turn up. When I went down today they were asking why I failed to keep "our date". Easy mistake to make, we all agreed. They were happy to 'do' me today.

Half a ram lamb carcass

They were also very impressed by the lamb carcasses which they described as "just right". The big ram lamb made a carcass weight of 24 kg (50 lbs), the ewe-lamb a lighter 19 kg (40 lbs). These guys do the butchering on lambs for us (we do our own pigs as you know). We just have to specify the cuts (individual chops or racks? whole shoulder or gigot chops? legs as half-legs? etc).

Bagged, labelled and ready for the freezer. 2 lamb carcasses

They are a pleasure to watch at work. They even bag the individual joints and label them as if the shop was selling them (with name of cut, date, cost per kg, weight and price). This saves us a lot of messing about, reassembling the animal back home so that we can correctly bag and label it here. They are, as the saying goes "a great bunch of lads".

Lamb labelling

Which about sums it up for this one. I am still clinging to a faint hope that French Help-X-er Rafael is out there somewhere, lost, looking at closed railway stations, bus depots and Internet cafés. trying in his 17-year old inexperienced traveller way, to make contact, but that hope is fading. Maybe by the next post someone will have turned up and I will be able to report progress on some of these jobs.

Good luck now.

A First Lamb

Totally taking us by surprise this morning, welcome to the world a little ram lamb born to Lily overnight out in the windy, rainy open in the East Field. The lambing gods were obviously smiling upon us - it could have gone so wrong. You'll have read that we were not, for a start, expecting anything till March 25th at the earliest, so this guy is 2 and a half months early. Mayo-Liz had had this ewe still running with her own lambs till well into October (29th), when we decided to buy her and her chum, Polly. At that point the lambs were separated so that the ewes would come on heat and be put to the tup. 5 months of gestation would then bring us round to late March or into April, with a closing date of late April/Early May. Those, we'd have been ready for, with our 'maternity unit' set up and me on nervous but high-alert vigilance. This birth date says that Lily was already 'with child' when we were choosing her, possibly by one of her own ram lambs, possibly by the intended father, the purebred Hampshire Down tup.

Last night was a filthy night, windy and raining big splattery drops but the sheep were out loose in the East Field as they are every night. I'd left some washing flapping on the line (oops) and 2 pillow cases had blown down into the wet by the time I did my breakfast round and the dogs' 'comfort stop' at 0830. I could see that the 2 ewes were not together, and could see Lily way out in the field with what appeared to be something white on the grass near her - a blown pillowcase maybe? Better go check and see why she was over there and not at the gate begging for breakfast.

Obviously, a major excitement when I saw that it was in fact a lamb, on its feet and bleating. What happened to 25th March? I picked up the lamb and led Mum, with it, to the rain shelter in the field, so it would at least be out of the rain, then rousted Liz out of bed (no cup of tea? A rude awakening!). Together we swung into action, clearing some space in the goose house, moving feed bins and laying hay down, making a pen with pallets etc. Mum and baby were shepherded in to the warm dry house. 'Aunt Polly' was abandoned for the moment in the field while we phoned Mayo Liz for some advice. She (Polly) was not happy to be split from her chum, but we didn't know if it was OK to have both ewes in the pen.

Mayo-Liz, Bless her (Thanks Liz) was on the phone within seconds of me sending the text, asked loads of questions and gave me loads of advice and reassurance - check Mum is milking OK, check sex of baby, check baby has an anal opening, get some Iodine spray for the umbilical cord end etc but yes, you can let Aunt Polly in there. So we now have Mum, Aunt and the little fella in the pen, happily warm and dry and getting used to their surroundings. Baby is suckling well and dividing his time between feeding, sleeping and exploring the pen. He is Iodined up. Lily seems to us, now, to have gone off the boil and relaxed so, we are fairly sure, this singleton may be our lot for the moment - no twins this time round.

Oh and the rest of the stock, missed in the excitement, did eventually get released and fed - poultry, geese, rabbits and Pirate the Cat. And the washing got picked up from the grass and re-washed. We are all calm again if a little "bounced into spring". Oh and Liz caught one of our Buff Orpington youngsters bullying one of our adult 'mini-buffs' this morning, so they are growing up too.