Blink and You'd Miss It

My pathetic best silaging picture so far. 

I am, as you'd know, always on the look out for new subjects for the 365 photographic project. A year in the life of our village and its townlands (sub-parishes). Silage making time was upon us; surely a crucial, can't miss, event in the year of a farming community. The weather forecast predicted a violent end to our lovely run of hot days so you'd KNOW the silage contractors would be biting on the bit, raring to go. On Wednesday evening I heard my first mowing machine roaring away a few fields out so I expected to be able to photograph the cutting stages followed by the baling and wrapping.

Last of the blue skies for now. Our next
door field with the suckler herd. We call it
(Vendor) Anna's 5-Acres. It probably has a
(better) real name.

Not on your life! So fast were these crews working that I saw a couple of fields mown and in their drying/wilting rows (I'd missed the mowing) but by the time I could get out again with the camera the grass was baled, carted and wrapped. I was left looking at a tightly shorn, rather surprised looking field. These boys do not hang about. The nearest I could get to a picture for '365' was a long-lens shot across the valley, of some baled silage awaiting the carting stage. All we had here was the to-ing and fro-ing of the contractor's bale-trailers gathering the harvest in to the local farm yards rumbling up and down the lane setting the dogs off barking.

A lovely stand of Aconites still going strong in the garden
 of a long-abandoned dilapidated cottage.  

In theory the hot spell has currently ended and we are returning to "normal" weather for June in the 'Wesht' of Ireland. I have to say that I had not noticed it getting much cooler. The clouds have returned and, mercifully, the little grey midges have departed so that I was able to clear a ditch and hedge for a neighbour without being driven to distraction. I don't have a problem with the 'bitey' ones - the real mozzies and midges - they don't seem to find me tasty. My beef is with the tiny grey ones who land in your sweat and then just walk about on your face. I hate them.

Dublin Bay rose always does well for us.

It seems we may have the daftest bunch of ducks in the land. These are our six 'Khaki Campbell' youngsters hatched at the beginning of March and now fully feathered and, you'd guess, as waterproof and buoyant as any duck could hope to be. For some reason they are frightened of going into the big pond. They love a splash about in their paddling pool and even though it is quite a big one, the 6 of them in there together leave very little room for any of them to move about.

Liz's pic of the ducks as close as they ever get to the water.
Feet on dry land and tips of bills in the water.

These guys are fully free-range and can walk pretty much anywhere on the 'farm' in their amusing waddling 'crocodile' of single file ducks. They have been all around the pond and seen it from all (dry land) angles but the nearest they ever get to getting in is when they all line up on the bank, feet on Terra Firma, to dip their beaks in and dabble at the marginal plants.

Interior of our local (RC) church for the
365 project.

I should quickly say that I am more than happy. Regular readers will know that I was always against having ducks because I think/thought that they destroy ponds leaving you with a stagnant, shitty mess with no pond life in it. Your standard village duck-pond in effect, an ecological desert, ringed by bare, brown, eroded bank mud. So to be able to have ducks and not get your pond wrecked seems too good to be true and I am leaving these ducks well alone. If they want to wash and brush up in the paddling pool and touch my lovely pond only with their bill-tips, then I am not going to argue with them. Neither of us can actually see this lasting and we are both quietly hoping to be the one out there with a camera when our little file of 6 ducks set off serenely across the pond leaving just a V of wake and their little feet under the water going like a train, out of sight.

A Sustained and Determined Attack

The only good fox...?

Mostly these posts are happy, up-beat affairs describing pleasant days, entertaining distractions and good outcomes. Our time here has mostly been enjoyable and the days we remember with a smile. Yesterday was NOT one of those days. We came under a sustained and determined attack by our local big dog fox who kept it up for a good hour and a half and even then did not really go away till we brought the episode to a close. I will not, however, do the tension-building write up, cliff-hanger thing on you. We did not enjoy it being done to us by Brer Fox, so I will let you off the hook straight away by telling you the fox wound up shot at 8 pm, quick and clean, a shot-gun round between the eyes and he only actually killed one young Buff-Orp rooster (today) and only got away with the head of that bird, leaving us the carcass.

A possible first Buff-Orp egg from one of the young ones.

The 'fun' started at around 9 am when I was up and dressed except for shoes and on the phone to Vendor Anna, gazing out the front window. I was shocked to see a chicken race past the front of the house, 5 feet from the front door, chased by a galloping fox. I dropped the phone and dashed out in my socks, tore round in time to make the fox drop the hen and then, zig-zagging about a bit, clear the sheep fence (3-4 feet high) in one leap. 'Safe' in the east field he stopped running and seemed to suss that I had no gun, so he could lope around looking back at me curiously as I rather pathetically roared, shouted and lobbed some stones at him. He was a brave one for sure, convinced I could do him no harm.

John Deere Bob's cattle

We (Liz was up too, in an instant!) then endured a good hour of Brer Fox seeming to retreat but then looping round and sneaking back in from north, south, east or west, while Liz and I circled the house trying to keep the hens in the yard and not giving the fox a 'blind side' to come at us from. Oh for a gun (but more on that later); I was amazed at how upset this makes you feel - I felt so helpless, angry, under attack, besieged and useless. Sick even. The fox's 'Modus Operandi' was just to burst from cover and sprint at a group of birds who would then scatter at near ground level but inevitably one would not get out of the ambush in time. It was presumably this he was doing last week, across 50 yards of our east field, when he took those 2 birds. These birds are young and silly and do not know to split up or get up on a wall.

More cattle - explanations on these pics later!

The garden was getting covered with tufts of feathers from near misses. Luckily only one of these puffs contained a dead bird, a young rooster decapitated by the fox on one of his charges. For some reason he only got away with the head. This guy was leaping the sheep fences, so able to easily move from east field to goose-orchard to pig paddock, but luckily was only chicken focused, he ran straight by the geese and the new lamb without trying to grab them. Only when I came out with the dogs (on leads, but then free in the pig area) at 10:30 did he start to look a bit wary and scarpered off the site. We got a chance to draw breath and phone for help - we have 2 local 'hired guns' available but no names, no pack drill, these guys like to keep it a bit quiet and discreet.

Ginny and Padfoot stripping bark from
some cut ash.

I then saw the fox again at lunchtime when I went out to walk the dogs, but by now he was out in the lane. I shut up the sheep and geese and did my usual dog exercise at 4 pm and then hung around in the yard at 5, supervising all the birds to bed (I didn't want to lose another bird after keeping them safe all afternoon) by 5:15 pm. At 6 pm I went out with the head torch to get some sprouts and what do you know, the lad was in by the rabbit run, his green eyes reflecting the LED light, and then did his slow, brave lope-away in short 'legs' as I followed him out to the 5 acre field at walking pace. Meanwhile my 'gun' had been around to look for fox track-ways though the local area to see could we find a likely ambush spot of our own.

To cut a long story short the boy used one of these routes at 8 pm and got our lamp and a shotgun 'round' between the eyes for his pains. I can't quite believe that I, lifelong animal lover and wildlife nut, was out there with the lamp determined that this animal would die and the flood of relief at his end. It was quick and clean. This morning I was able to check out the carcass and 'he' was indeed a well grown dog-fox, 42 inches from nose to brush-tip (that's about as big as they get, full size is 48 inches or so), in very good, well fed condition and weighing as much as one of our westies, so 8-9 kg maybe. He had good teeth and beautifully clean fur, disease free that I could see. I was very sad that it had to end like this, but I could not have left him to come back each day taking a bird a day till he'd cleaned us out. I couldn't have coped with the tension waiting for his ambushes. So, sorry. Brer Fox. RIP.

New ash logs completely cleaned of bark by rabbits

Obviously, this might not be the end of this story. I was out again giving the dogs their last walk at 10 pm and what would be the last thing you'd want to see having just killed "your fox"? Yes, another pair of green eyes reflected in the LED torch light! This one, though seemed way smaller, lower to the ground and more nervous - he was up and gone at our first appearance, sprinting 50 yards up the 5 acres before he turned and showed me his eyes again. I am sure that 'our fox' was the one 'we' shot. The hired gun is going to keep interested, though as he says there are often more than one. Watch this space.

A bit white on Tuesday morning.

Meanwhile, what of all these unrelated pics I have posted here? Poor aul' John Deere Bob has been laid low with flu, so I have turned cattle-man temporarily, making sure they do not go for want of food (silage), water and straw bedding. One of our young Buff Orps may have started egg laying - we got a tiny egg laid in the garden which I had poached this morning with 2 normal eggs and it had the tiniest, pea sized yolk in it! Very sweet. I had been de-limbing an ash tree to make some space ready for potential extra bee hives in 2015, and had left the trimmings lying on the grass, where I was surprised to find that the aged rabbits, Ginny and Padfoot had some great times gnawing off the bark. I guess they are getting good winter nutrition off them or some good wear on the teeth. I grabbed up some bigger bits and dropped these in to the 'giant' rabbits, Goldie and Nugget, and they were the same, stripping my logs cleaner than you could do with a spoke-shave. Happy bunnies.

Well, we woke up this morning to falling snow and a feeling that our fox problems are sorted for now. All the embarrassing puffs of feathers and the small blood smear from the killed bird are shrouded in forgiving white. My little 10 pm fox has not made an appearance and (touch wood) everybody is still alive. The carcass was a mess so, though Liz had a go at plucking it, she got fed up with the many puncture wounds, torn skin and bruises from our bushy-tailed chum's teeth and skinned it. Only some of the meat will be kept and that marked down or a very slow cook. I have been enjoying walking about in the snow with the dogs (on leads again) NOT seeing fox tracks.

Brush Up Your Shakespeare

Guzzling Mum's colostrum.

Our little "miracle baby" is thriving so far and this morning he was amusing himself with some first of those springing jumps off all 4 feet, that they do. He is alone so far and, unless his 'Aunt' Polly was also 'got at' by the youngsters with whom these ladies were running up till Aug/Sept, then he'll presumably have to wait till March 25th to get any playmates - he'll be looking a bit less lamb-like by then, all being well. We will just have to see he gets extra fuss and TLC so that he doesn't miss that side of life. He has already had his first admirer come visit, a friend from down the lane brought her 8 year old daughter for a look and a cuddle.

A 12th-Night clown?

But what to name him? We had put out on the usual internet discussion group circuit that we needed a name which might evoke any of the following: Surprise, very early, unexpected, wind-blown wet acres or even first-born. They'd only come up with 'Heathcliffe' (from the windy-wet thing) but then I spotted that the little guy had actually been born on Twelfth Night at which Liz's ears pricked up!

Liz is this family's literature expert and learnéd well-read Shakespeare scholar so she was straight into the Bard's play 'Twelfth Night'  and found the name of the clown/jester character, which is 'Feste' (I am told you pronounce this 'Festay'). I have to confess to not knowing this play well but we do have a DVD of the Trevor Nunn film version starring Helena Bonham Carter. Richard E Grant, Nigel Hawthorne, Mel Smith, Imogen Stubbs and, as Feste himself, Sir Ben Kingsley, no less. I love this film  and I can remember that the clown has a regular, repeated singing part which goes...

"Hey, ho, the wind and the rain, and the rain it raineth every day"

That seemed particularly appropriate for our little lamb just now; it seems to have rained every day since I managed to scrabble in the last of the spud harvest. As I was harvesting I was looking about me mentally listing all the other garden jobs that need doing (mainly tidying, cutting down raspberries and so on). I have been able to do none of these! Feste he is then. He is indoors today but, weather permitting, the family will get some outdoor exercise tomorrow, (Maternity Unit Matron) Mayo Liz has advised "Saturday or Sunday".

We have also been having some fun in a related area suggesting I might need to "Brush up (my) Shakespeare" which you may know is a very good song from the musical Kiss me Kate and given to some devilish rhyming as the song builds on the theme that the way to successfully charm your gal is to quote at her from the Bard

Just declaim a few lines from Othella
And they'll think you're a hell of a fella
If your blonde won't respond when you flatter 'er
Tell her what Tony told Cleopatterer

and

With the wife of the British ambessida
Try a crack out of Troilus and Cressida
If she says she won't buy it or tike it
Make her tike it, what's more As You Like It

(Ah well, maybe you had to be there! - if you fancy a listen to a good 'original' try

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-CSb3Xe06s

or similar)

It stains well, this lamb-medicine. Apparently it is how proper
shepherds recognise one another in shop queues and pubs; either
brown of iodine or the purple of foot rot spray!

Meanwhile, even though pinned down indoors by the rain, work goes on. Our chum JD Bob is a bit under the weather lately with flu so I was down there yesterday on cattle feeding duties, shoveling wads of silage to his indoor-housed twenty bullocks (always amused by the fact that locally "cows/cattle" means just the females, so if you ask a farmer does he have cattle, you are likely to get the trip-up answer, 'I don't; I only have weanlings and bullocks') I have also started culling out the young Buff Orpington roosters who have started to cause trouble with their battling with each other and aggression towards the smaller of our existing adult hens. Liz is plucking and dressing the first one even as I type this. Being a big breed, these guys are not fully grown even though they are at 22/23 weeks, so they make rather small carcasses (certainly compared to the meaty Hubbards we were doing most recently!). The first went 'oven ready' at 1.984 kg. Not bad.

Stop Turning!

Silage making breaks out in Lisacul after our recent surprise (and very pleasant) succession of hot sunny days. Any animals or birds on the lane had better watch out, because these guys do not hang about and the machines are the big, heavy selection from what's available - big heavy tractors, mowing machines, balers and wrappers, bale trailers and then the slurry tankers to spread the stuff on the aftermath trying to ensure a good second cut in ten weeks or so. They are keen to get on and snatch the 'harvest' before the next rain front comes through so you hear engines roaring, balers grinding and clanging and the spreaders churning away up and down our ridge. This is the time when we were sure our cock-bird Guinea Fowl would 'get it' if he hadn't before now, sitting as he did, out in the lane watching over his egg-laying 'wife'. Sadly, you'll know, he was hit a while back and she has since kept clear of the lane, so we hope none of our lot are hit. We have only seen two road-kill casualties so far, a big hedgehog and then, yesterday, somebody's white cat which Liz stopped to pick up and move to the roadside ditch. Good harvest you silagers!

Candling Guinea Fowl eggs at Day 24

Today is day 24 for the 16 Guinea Fowl eggs in the incubator, so tomorrow, according to our book of words, we have to stop turning them and top up the humidifiers, then sit back and wait. They've been turned 4 or 5 times a day for these 24 days, you have to do this to ensure good development. I can remember learning in biology at school from some teacher who obviously knew how to catch his students' attention why you do this.

Hubbard chick at day 33. Enormous legs!

Apparently, in nature the mother bird is for ever rolling and shifting them and this means that not only do they all get a turn at the warmest centre of the clutch, but also that the embryo on the yolk, suspended on the spiral strands (chalazae) gets rolled around in the 'middle', not touching the outer membranes. If it is not rolled the embryo sags against the membranes and can grow welded to the membrane or in among it, leading to deformed and not properly grown chicks. Yoiks. Or maybe the teacher was just having us on. Strange things get lodged in your brain when you are a ghoulish school-boy! Anyway, I decided to candle a few of them again at this stage and held them to my ear. I am no expert at this but I think we are still OK. I swear I even saw twitching movement in one, not just the flopping about of dark debris, and also that I heard a tiny 'cheep' in one, but I'm not putting any money on the latter.

Geranium 'Orion'

This is also P-minus-3 day; we collect our pigs on Thursday. That will be quite an adventure. The farm, near Ballymount, Colbinstown, County Kildare, is two and a half hours away on Google Maps and our friend and rabbit-mentor, Charlotte wants to come along for the ride. We had to 'practise' getting the three of us into the little car with the pig (actually dog) crate to make sure we'd all fit. Charlotte will be a bit cosy in the back there along with Mapp and Lucia, but at least the little weaners will not be lonely. Liz is also promising to construct a picnic for the way down.

Sweet rocket. 

I have been reading up my 'National Pig Identification and Tracing System' documents to make sure I know what I am doing with the journey/movement paperwork, though I expect the seller will help me out if I get 'lost'. I have to contact a 'central agency' by (lo-call) phone to tell them about my new arrivals within 24 hours, quoting herd number and a secret 'PIN' code. Wish us luck. I hope to be able to post on Thursday that we have successfully completed this mission.

Lupins from Vendor Anna's seed

One other small drama and sad tale to report. We now have, as you know, one successful gosling back with his Dad, George and either Mum or Aunt, now out in the orchard each day, feeding well and growing like a Hubbard chick. The other goose stayed home to sit on the later eggs which we left her, for which we have no accurate dates so we are by no means certain when to expect hatches. Well, we had a hatch three days ago and woke up to a little, apparently happy, cheeping form in the nest along with the two female geese and George (Junior). But the broody seems to have a focus problem - she's mad keen on anything egg shaped but doesn't give a tinker's cuss about anything yellow and fluffy that might come out of the eggs, so the new chick was allowed to wander off and never an attempt to guide it back to the nest.

Beekeeping Federation magazine. Very professional.

There was no beak-to-beak nuzzling or any kind of recognition. I let George, Black Feather and the bigger gosling back 'home' from the orchard early thinking that BF might adopt it, or GJ might go and talk to it. It was a warm night, so we decided to not rescue it till morning if it still looked lost and abandoned. Sadly, the little mite never made it that far and it was a dead, cold, stiff gosling I had to gather up.

Deefer.

We will never know if this was bad parenting or something wrong with the chick causing them to instinctively ignore it, or a result of its rather on/off incubation period, or our bad husbandry. Possibly geese need a 'mass hatch' of the majority of eggs in one go, to trigger the change from 'incubate eggs' to 'rear chicks'. If there are any more and they look like being left, we will rescue sooner and give the baby a few days in the brooder under the lamp and then try a re-introduction. It's never boring.

Yellow flag iris in the pond.

Oh and then tomorrow, of course, is Happy Birthday to 4 of our animals - Towser and Poppy, Blue and Rolo all make it to 2 years old tomorrow, though if they shout me awake at ten to 6 again it might be a very short celebration.

All Change

It's all go locally as the farmers try to rattle in a first cut of silage in this hot spell, with some rain forecast for tomorrow. They try to mow one day, leave the cut grass to wilt overnight and then bale and wrap the next day. These are big heavy round bales, so the old boys like our own John Deere Bob and their lightweight tractors take a back seat on this one and the young lads with their big contractor kit do the honours. Bob's contractor used a big 4WD, 6 tonne, 110 HP Case IH tractor with a serious baler hitched on and we could hear the roar of the diesel and the bass thump and clang for each completed bale from here. Bob has around 80 bales now but will need to take a 2nd cut in 8 weeks to get his 130 or so together that he needs to see him though this winter.

I am sorry to only have poor pictures so far but today is day 18 for the baby rabbits born to Ginny and Padfoot. They are active enough now to have started to emerge from the 'bedroom' by hopping over the low 'wall' I installed, so it's time to remove the wall and let them start to explore the grass of the run. We think these Mums each have about 5 kittens but until they start to explore properly you cannot really count them - the nest is a ball of hay and belly-fluff with random bunny bottoms, heads, ears and legs protruding, too tangled up to count.

All change in the poultry section. We have been a bit anxious about doing this, but we have wanted to swap the geese from the calf house, with the chickens from the milking shed. This would involve a certain amount of carpentry and fixing up of chicken wire, a lot of 'mucking out' and, we thought, some hassle at bed time where nobody (we predicted) would want to go to their new sleeping accommodation and confusion would reign. The woodwork was mainly about making a pop-hole in the new door of the calf house and constructing a perch-ladder in there. The chooks have been used to flapping up to a perch 7 feet up via a couple of staging posts. Now they would have a 'ladder' at 45 degrees with perches at 21 inch intervals so nice and easy. The nest boxes would also be moved along with the feeder and drinker. The geese are basically getting the floor area of the former chicken house, now cleared of perches and cleaned up. The young chickens will also be persuaded to use the new chicken house and to merge in with the old chickens (including their 'mother'!) but we will do that as a separate change later, planned for tomorrow.

[Horse Chestnut grown from seed]

It all proved to be a whole lot easier than we'd expected. During the 'woodworking' one of the hens had shown up obviously looking for the nest boxes in order to lay an egg. She recognised the boxes but these were currently sitting outside in the cattle race while we cleaned up. I put them in the new quarters, grabbed her and put her in one of them where she settled happily to her egg laying, unperturbed by the fact she was in 'the goose house'. We bribed the 'Young Ones' into their old familiar run and closed them in. We bribed the horses into their field and turned off the electric fence which currently runs close to the new goose house. We were on.

['Million Trees' Mountain ash]

The geese proved to be a doddle to steer into their new quarters. It seemed that it was a familiar looking door into a familiar building so they just went with it once they'd spotted Liz lurking in their normal path. They paddled in onto the clean wood shavings and accepted a supper of wheat and rolled barley. Seemingly quite unconcerned that this was not their normal end.

The chickens, we were sure we'd have some fun with - chooks are far less steerable and tend to panic and scatter as soon as they sense they  are being cornered. But at around half six they happened to have gathered near the new space. We opened the calf house door so that they could see the hen sitting on the nest box and the rooster and 2 hens just wandered in out of curiosity. I went to close the door behind them but 'Baldy' spotted my intention and bolted back out. This might have been a problem, but we sensed that she was still very interested in getting into the building where her 4 chums now were. Liz hovered near the pop hole to stop the captured birds from coming back out but Baldy was then heading for the ramp to the pop hole, so we both stepped back, holding our breaths to see would she use the ramp and go in, the first bird so to do? Bless Her - she did, with barely a hesitation. We now had all the birds where they needed to be for the night, so we shut the pop-hole and retreated to let them settle.

My other two pictures are examples of our tree-planting successes. The horse chestnuts (conkers) were collected from below a tree in Gravesend (Kent) last Autumn while I was staying on the Sailing Barge Cambria moored there. I have three successful seedlings from 4 conkers. The mountain ash is a 'Million Trees' sapling, most of which are doing very well and putting out lots of new leaves. We are pleased to be having tree successes and will look to carry this on, planting more each year.