Tigger is Almost Done.

'Shtumpy' brings her 4 chicks out into the sunshine.

As we all sat down to supper tonight at about 7 pm the much-forecast end to the lovely heatwave was sounding very 'imminent'. Distant thunder rumbled ominously from the direction of Moyne (East, then), setting the dogs off barking and grumbling. Dark clouds had been gathering all evening and soon the distinct pitter-pat of rain drops hitting the big tarpaulin roof of the chicken house could be heard.

'Cool' haircut for a heatwave. #2 all over, please.

As we took our places this turned to the roar and hiss of proper rain and we could see the big drops bouncing back up off the sheep-fence. The sheep had taken cover under the trees - this would be the first thunderstorm the lambs had ever seen and the first heavy rain to hit the ewes since their shearing. I knew how they felt - I too had been down for my spring-time "shearing" (No. 2 all over please, guv) and I could feel the rain on scalp, rather than via the hair.

Promising looking new asparagus spears from the new babies.

We've all been loving the heat after the long cold, bitter winter and we were never going to be the first to complain, but some of our friends had started to comment that they "needed" rain for their plants or for the grazing grass growth. Many neighbours have raced a first cut of silage in from some fields, so they would be feeling happy but Elizabeth did see one farmer turning hay this morning despite the Orange-status weather warnings. Once you've cut it you are committed, really, so you might as well keep turning and hoping. The rain we got, did not actually amount to much. As I type this at 9 pm it is all over and we are back to a lovely sunset. It is cooler though.

A mesh 'porch' to keep those hens out of Donaldina's
broody house. 20 eggs is enough for anybody.

The hot weather has also meant that we could get on with garden stuff, assisted by our current, wonderful Help-X volunteer, Laura. She goes at every job I have given her with 100% commitment, focus and work-ethic. The place has never looked so tidy and well kept even when the heat has made some of the jobs quite unpleasant with sweat, dust with no breeze to clear it, still, hot air in buildings with corrugated roofs and the need to re-hydrate at breaks with copious quantities of  the house home-made cordials.

Laura in muck-out mode. 

While I have managed to get 'away' to build mesh covered frames to keep chickens off raised beds and unwanted egg-laying out of poor Donaldina(hen - see previous post)'s broody house, Laura has mowed the whole site a second time, gone round all the edges and young trees with shears, mucked out the long overdue chicken house including scraping/sweeping all the yard paths. Today, with me, she has then gone on to do the goose house and the feed store and brush-cut all the billowing cow-parsley in the lane verges.

Those 20 eggs which Donaldina is currently sitting on. 

Indoors, she has slotted in as very helpful around the kitchen, (un)loading the dishwasher, washing up, laying/clearing tables and even cooking more desserts. We have had a very creditable chocolate marbled cake and, tonight, partnered with The Woman of the House, chocolate brownies. Mid week, she came and tentatively asked whether, if she could not find a place for next week, she might stay a 3rd week here and we both agreed without hesitation. She has been a real 'find' and a joy.

Meanwhile, in the livestock department, everything has been chugging along equally nicely. Mr Fox has been mercifully absent. Cat Basket Lady (hen) has kept her 6 chicks alive and well and 'Shtumpy' (another hen) has now brought her four out into the sunshine. She looks like mothering them as well as she did the 2 broods she reared for us last year. Donaldina is sitting tight on her 20 (see last Tuesday's story) and now protected from any more 'cuckoo' hens by a mesh covered porch. A 4th hen has now gone broody in the corner of the Tígín under the work bench. 

It gets like 'Bake-Off' sometimes in the kitchen with three
of us all rattling off favourite recipes.

In the incubator, having briefly been sharing with the Cat Basket eggs, are the 14 duck eggs due to hatch today or tomorrow. I hope you have more patience than me - I am anxiously checking them several times a day looking for any signs of movement and listening for any cheeping. I cannot wait for them to get a move on.

Still in full fleece (you don't shear the lambs), Tigger looks
nearly as big as his Mum. 4 and a half months old, he's nearly
'ready'

The pigs continue to thrive, but even closer to a visit to the butcher is our January-born ram lamb, Tigger. At nearly 5 months old and still in his full fleece (you don't shear the lambs in their first year) he looks as big as his Mum. He is still sneaking the occasional suckle but it will not be long now. We daren't leave him past 6 months - he is already 'playing' with his sisters/cousins and we cannot risk him getting Mum or an Auntie pregnant.

New shoots at last on the evergreen oak.

Ah well. That is surely enough for this one. I am off out to breathe a bit of that refreshed, cooler, evening air. Good Luck, now.

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.

Yes Sir, Yes Sir, Three Bags Full

Three bags of fleece ready for Sue. 

When I last went to 'press', I was 2 days into a dry spell and praying for a third so that we could get into the sheep shearing. I need not have worried. The pressure climbed and presented us with another mini heat wave. It stayed dry through Wednesday for us to shear our lot and then Thursday and Friday (today) too, so that I could snatch Sue and Rob's sheep too.

Visitor John claims the "holder" job this year with Liz happy
to step across to photographer and caterer.

Shearing is probably my most looked-forward-to tasks about the livestock. It is hard physically and difficult technically, so a proper challenge. One that you can be very happy about and proud of when you are doing it OK. Now I'm no pro and definitely nowhere near as fast as the champions/demonstrators who can strip a ewe naked in 45 seconds without chopping any vital bits off, but we chug away and they come out reasonably clean, undamaged and stress-free. Rob and I took 90 minutes to do his four, so about 22 minutes per sheep and some of these first time "shearlings" who tend to hop about a bit.

Peeling it off from spine down to sides and legs, finishing with a
bit of nip and tuck swooping under belly, round legs and face.

Friends of the blog will know that I do mine standing upright. I tried that upside down wrestling thing you see the pro's doing but I could not get the timing down much below an hour and the poor sheep were definitely not enjoying being inverted for that long. They would be panting, start foaming at the mouth and sometimes just collapse on their sides as if they had given up the fight; good for the big long body-length "blows" with the shears but not ideal from a welfare point of view.

Not bad for a learner. Certainly cooler.

I guess if you wanted to get good at that style, you'd just go on a course and practise, practise, practise on someone else's gazillion sheep, supervised by an expert. However I decided to try mine upright last year and it worked well, so we swapped over to upright shearing as you'd do a dog (and indeed. so do I).

Very pleased with this one of Sue's girls. My cleanest yet.

We slip a big dog-collar over the sheep's neck and catch a turn of dog-lead round the gate of the cattle race. This solves most of the problems (mobility, escape etc) but does generate a couple more. Wool under the collar can get missed and the belly and armpits are trickily out of sight! Not the 'vulva' though - that's looking right at you under the tail, not down at the "far end" when you'd have the sheep's head between your thighs.

Not normal for Ireland. A hot forecast from Met Éireann

It is all those final nips and tucks which cause me the problems and the bulk of the time. The 'comb' bit of a dog clipper is made of tiny teeth less than a mm apart, so there is no chance of any bits of sheep (folds of skin, wrinkles, teats, ears, etc) sliding down betwixt and getting nicked by the reciprocating cutter above. Not so the sheep shears, which are a much more industrial weapon. Here the comb teeth are a couple of mm apart, so plenty of opportunity to nick your victim as well as your own fingers if you are not careful.

I go in fear, then of cutting the poor sheep in these sensitive places and ease off the throttle too soon around legs and neck and face (ears, Achilles tendon etc). I tend to miss bits under the collar and on fronts and backs of legs (I am OK on the big, broad, flat 'sides' of the limb) so my sheep have trademark "frilly knickers" (as Sue says) and sometimes a "goat-beard" under their throat.

In Sue's barn

Never mind. They have had 3 inches thick of "duvet" removed from back, sides, rump and neck and a good bit pared away from the belly so they seem to straight away feel more comfortable, especially in this heat. They sprint back to their fields and dance around like new lambs. They seem very tiny, goat-like and thin compared to the almost spherical full-fleece versions they left behind in the shed. Not for them any worries about frills and dewlaps.

While I'm on shearing, a couple of amusing asides. We did Sue and Rob's in their barn with the sheep held to a solid work-bench which would only move a tiny bit even with a sheep bucking around it. When the shed is not a shearing-pen, it is used by all manner of other livestock including poultry and is currently home to at least 3 broodies one of which is on top of the workbench and no doubt cursing us for invading their quiet confinement with our noisy sheep, clattering shears and our own chat and banter.

Rosa rugosa

At one stage we paused the shears to let the latest victim have a breather and could hear, instead of annoyed broody-hen scolding clucks, the thin cheeping of a baby turkey! This hen had turkey eggs under her and one had hatched - whether it was us rocking and rolling her 'Mum' about, we will never know.

The ever reliable Dublin Bay comes into flower.

Then mid sheep on about the third, I flicked out a small wad of wool near my open mouth and promptly breathed it in. It hit the back of my throat and set off such a spasm of choking and gasping that I had to stop, drop the shears and try to make a very concerned Rob understand that I need water fast.

The first of our huge poppies opens with
plenty more buds on the clump.

I was in some trouble for a while there but got it back together leaning over a pile of tyres trying not to be sick, then glugging and gargling Rob's water. We were joking about how we'd explain to the ladies that the sheep were now all sheared but....um....... there is a bit of a problem with Matt. You might want to come and collect him. It was one of those like where you swallow a fly - you just see it flash by your face but with no chance to shut your mouth before it is in there. Farm Safety.

So that is it for this year unless some of these friends who pop up on Facebook asking if anyone can shear a couple rams needs me. They generally get sorted/claimed by someone else before I get a chance to contact them but you never know. The last few days also saw the end of the John visit. He left for Rosslare yesterday morning, headed for an 8pm sailing and texted me this afternoon to say he was back safe in Kent and off to collect his own dog, Ragworth.

Next in the news? Our expectant Mums. 

Next into the spotlight for this blog, may well be our geese, who have been sitting on eggs for 32 days now and may well have a happy event or two over the next few days. Watch this space.

Sheep Shearing

Definitely not of marketable quality, a pile of white fleece from
our ewes Lily and Myfanwy. Polly's slatey grey fleece is out of shot.

Nothing if not a bit of variety in this post - shearing sheep, snatching a beehive under cover of darkness and a bit of a barney in the roosters dept. Read on.

Not bad - our 3 ewes all looking tidier and a lot cooler

The sheep shearing is the 'biggest' story from my point of view. It is an important job and one I am trying to learn to do myself but I am finding it hard and difficult work. Last year I tried to do my ewes the 'proper' (professional) way - all that upside down wrestling and sheep on its rump between your legs that you may have seen at Agricultural Shows. It is wearing on the back and, while you are not very good yet, tends to take too long - up to an hour per sheep - for all of which time the poor ewe is under a lot of stress. I finished last year helping friends Sue and Rob by shearing their ewe, 'Pink', who is trained to a head collar and stands upright, on her own feet, reasonably calmly and lets you shear her without any fuss and wrestling. Blow trying to do it the pro way, I decided. I was determined in 2016 to do all ours upright. But head collars for sheep?

The ewes sheared with a bunch of this year's lambs. Goat and
kid in the background.

Anybody that knows sheep will know that you should really collar-train them from lamb-hood. They are big, strong, heavy animals and do not take kindly to suddenly having a collar round the neck or a halter about the face. They will buck and jump and fight and thrash about, especially if they can see a way out. We were not at all sure that our plan to corral everyone into a tight space while we collared the ewe and then have Liz whispering sweet nothings in the front end while we got a collar on and tied the sheep to some solid cattle-race ironwork, would keep the ewe calm enough when I fired up the noisy, rattling shearer and plunged it into the wool at the back end.

We followed up our own sheep success
by shearing Sue and Rob's ewe, Pink
(here) and Pink's 2015 lamb, the shearling
 'Rosie' today. 

Well, in a triumph of calmness, it all went OK. Liz undoubtedly had the harder physical job, hanging onto the rope after she'd "put a turn around" the bars (as we narrow-boaters say!) and steering the sheep's body with a spare knee or hand. I started with a long 'blow' up the spine to open up the fleece and then zizzed out and down in long stripes like mowing a lawn, with the fleece falling away like a cardigan put on backwards. I finished by nipping around legs, under the belly and up the brisket and neck, and finally by shifting the collar down and doing the face.

A Guinea Fowl hurls abuse at everyone
and anyone from our "Howth Head" rock.

We took around 45 minutes for the first ewe (already much faster than 2015), and then sped up with 35 for the 2nd and 25 for the 3rd. We were covered in lanolin and sweat (plus a bit of poo!) but happy and delighted that the job was over here. I just needed to get over to Sue and Rob's today to tackle Pink again and their shearling ewe (2015 lamb from Pink), Rosie. Now I can clean the machine and put it away for another year. I am quite proud of myself and feel like I am doing OK at this shearing lark.

A second hive collected at night - still needs the straps tidying
away and the roof settling properly. 

I spoke in the last post of our friend and near-neighbour T McC coming out of bees after a sting reaction and dispersing his numerous hives. We had agreed to take one of these so we were back into the joys of trying to safely move a hive containing 20,000+ stinging beasties. Readers who were with me on 13th April 2015 (http://deefer-dawg.blogspot.ie/2015/04/reinforcements.html) will know that you have to do this at night because otherwise all the workers are out foraging and they get left behind. You need to wait till around 22:30 and they have all gone to bed.

We got 1.764 kg of lovely lean 'parma' ham off our leg. 

The hive is made up of a stack of square boxes which sit on top of each other with no lugs or fixings, so to secure the stack we use gaffer tape all around the joints (to stop the boxes hopping out of line as the car goes over bumps), then ratchet straps over the stack in both directions. The final move is to block the entrance hole with foam and secure with tape, then heft the stack gently onto a wheelbarrow and slowly trundle it to the car. It gets the softest seat in the car (passenger seat) and is lashed to the seat back. You align the hive's internal frames north-south to minimise the slapping if the car brakes - you take all the corners veeeeery gently. You arrive at your destination apiary in pitch darkness and set the hive down on its stand. You gently peel back the foam and tape from the entrance and leg it back indoors. The hive then sits for a few days to settle before you worry about tidying up the remaining tape and straps. In our case it all went well and the ladies were all out doing orientation flights next morning and then normal missions and returns by afternoon. Good luck Hive 2; we hope you will be very happy and content here. Thank you very much T McC.

The Colonel has been in the wars. His face, here, is
spattered with dried blood.

A while back we had a lovely visit from cousins Dan and Danielle during which Danielle happened to comment on the amusingly creaky 'crow' noise of one of the roosters. We wonder now whether this next story had really started way back then. We have recently kept 2 Buff Orpington roosters. One, The Colonel, we have had for three years; he is our 'alpha'. As back up we allowed one of his children to stay but explained to this lad (The Captain) that as long as he was happy to stay at 2nd-in-Command and did not fight our main man (well, at least as long as he didn't win!) he was a keeper.

The 365 Project is focusing on bio-diversity this week. Our
local crows are all of the 'hooded' variety. 

Well, possibly as a result of the Colonel's loss of manly voice, or maybe the shortage of available hens (several gone broody), the #2 rooster has broken that agreement this week and started attacking The Colonel. This culminated in Liz having to race to his rescue yesterday when The Captain had him down on the ground and was beating the bangers out of him, pecking and kicking. Bad move, Captain.

You cannot leave this kind of thing to run - these are big powerful birds and can do each other serious damage - so we took the not very nice but necessary decision to cull out the young pretender. He is now variously in the freezer as meat, in the bin as feathers and gribbly bits, in the cats as scraps from the stock pot and in a big bottle of stock. RIP Captain. The Colonel is recovering his dignity and pride and looked decidely disconbobulated for the next 24 hours, presumably wondering why his adversary was no longer pouncing on him.