Three Flavours of Fame

21 Today!
Charlotte

First up (how could we do anything else?) a HUGE Happy Birthday to our good friend and favourite 'Mother Goose', Pig grappler, Sheep wrangler and duck chaser, Charlotte, who is 21 today! Charlotte is away at college at the mo so cannot get home to spend the day with the gang here, but is being looked after by the Dublin arm of the family while she battles with assignments and essays. She gets a good length 'Easter' holiday this year as it runs from St Patrick's (17th March) round through Easter and we have promised to talk possibly pregnant Nanny Goat, Nanny Óg, into holding off kidding till she is home. You have a great day, Charlotte and we will see you very soon. Now I don't want to get anyone into trouble but young Henry (4) was arguing the toss with me today that you are actually 36. What do I know? Incidentally, we moved the billy goat over to your new abode today where he is showing every sign of enjoying the sudden wealth of old brambles, young Christmas trees and other hedgerow rubbish. He had eaten our pig run clean of anything browse-able.

Healthy lambs, Ebony, Ivory and Rosie.

On the not-so-good news dept, I am sad to report the loss of that lamb we were bottle feeding, Lucy. We bottle fed her through Monday and Tuesday but always felt that we were persuading her and almost forcing it on her. I am advised since that this is not how it goes - a hungry lamb will be almost ripping the teat off the bottle in her eagerness to get at the milk. When Charlotte was feeding 5 they were climbing over each other (and her shoulders!) to get at the bucket before she had a chance to pour it into the 5-way feeder.

Outdoor rhubarb starting to move.

On Wednesday morning, early, I went out with my nice warm bottle of milk and tub of 'crunch' and my heart sank when I saw Lucy stretched out flat on the straw, barely moving, occasionally gasping what looked like her last breaths; so shallow that they were mouth-gasps and did not seem to be filling her lungs. I gathered her up and brought her indoors, then sat with her on my lap trying to massage some hope back into her. Liz joined me but both of us could see there was little hope. Liz put her on the sofa wrapped in a blanket, safe from the madly curious terriers and went back to check on her ten minutes later but she was gone. We are sad, obviously but we take comfort from our friends advice that she was probably a 'wrong-un' doomed to fail and there was nothing we could have done. We have learned many lessons from this, mind - how to spot a hungry lamb, how to bottle feed and maybe to bring it indoors to the 'nursery' sooner rather than later. And then there were five.

Facebook post about the lost wedding ring

But what of my title about 'fame'? Three (sets of) friends seem to be courting the spotlight this week. First up our friends from the local Post Office have hit the headlines by losing and then being re-united with, the lady's wedding ring. She (Anne) lost it in town when it fell from her finger because she had been wearing it on the 'wrong' finger after injuring the right one. In Ireland, though, it is common to get the wedding ring engraved on the inside with the date of the wedding, so that even as she was hunting it down by re-tracing her steps, it had been found and the finder was tracking her down from the date. Happy reunion and for the (1968) happy couple, over 27,000 hits on facebook and the phone in the Post Office jumping off the hook with well wishers ringing from all around the world, their son in the UK and so on. They were tickled pink.

2nd up, a good friend and neighbour has got himself into the local papers by contributing to a lovely project organised by local writer/journo, Gerry Boland. He tapped into the local Rural Mens' Groups and rounded up "38 Men" to tell stories and relate memories from their history in Ireland. The Book, called "From Ballaghaderreen to Drumboylan: 38 Men Talking" is now for sale in lots of shops locally. We are going to buy one tomorrow and casually lay it in front of our friend (2nd from left in my pic, if you can recognise him!) and get him to autograph it.

Maureen O'Sullivan - Liz's English Teacher and possible
candidate for "Speaker of the House"

Thirdly, regular readers will know that Lizzie is fascinated by politics and elections almost to the point of obsession. One facet she follows particularly closely is the carreer of her former English teacher, Maureen O'Sullivan who, having narrowly squeaked her seat in the house (Dáil) at the recent General Election was tipped for higher things. She was, for a while, front running favourite for the postion "Ceann Comhairle" (pronounced, roughly, 'Key-ann Corl-yer'), the Speaker of the House.

Is this goat pregnant or just fat? She is keeping us guessing

Thousands of her former pupils were texting and 'tweet'-ing support and Liz thought that there could be no better authority controlling the unruly debating chamber. Liz remembers that when 'Mo' was fed up with the class room full of Liz's contemporaries she would admonish them with a catch phrase, "YOU PEOPLE need to ***********" Liz tweeted this and many many pupils picked up on it. Sadly, this dream gig was not to be. The 2 main parties (Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil) were so evenly matched that they spotted a chance to take out one vote of the 'enemy' - all the FF guys voted for the FG man and vice versa. Maureen (an Independent) came a lowly 3rd in the race.

When this tiny part on your Zanussi dishwasher clogs up
with food particles, expect a €110 bill from the engineer!

Ah well, enough for this one. We are enjoying a quiet evening for a change with nothing organised - we are not out and nobody is dropping in. I was chef; we had baked cod with new potatoes and Mediterranean roast veg. I am tired from the 'buildering' - we have been 'slabbing' the Sligo house - fitting plasterboard and insulated slabs up into the "open to the rafters", 45º ceilings. Liz has been working hard on the village website. Do go visit it - you will be in good company. It seems to be taking off as the news spreads by word of 'mouth'

Dances with Sheep

Unusually a post with few or no pictures for the simple reason that the camera is currently in the car and the car is currently not here; Liz is off gallivanting again. I may add some pics at a later date so that the post does not look so bare. Bear with me.

Rosie and Lucy shelter behind the bulk of mum from the wind

We are relieved to be able to report that Lily seems cured again of her infection but her route out of the Doldrums is almost an exact copy of the last edition - a day of 'doubtful', then picking up so much that were we silly we would be tempted to think we didn't need the 2nd dose of antibiotics, due tomorrow. This copy-cat cure is good in that she has recovered quickly, but a bit un-nerving in that we thought she was sorted last time and 2 weeks later, down she came again. Charlotte has re-assured me that this does happen in sheep and Lily could well take a few weeks to sort out. We will, of course, do the 2nd jab tomorrow and keep a watchful eye on her, and her 'sisters' in case of any repeat.

The sheep are all currently enjoying nights indoors, 2 because they have very little lambs who would not get on so well out in all this frost, wind, rain and (today) snow flurries; the 3rd (Lily) because she is sick. We are not over-run with sheep sized housing here, so this has us under a bit of pressure and some of the birds are now sharing a bedroom with some woolly companions. We have the Tígín and the former 'milking shed' both of which open onto the main hard yard. In the Tíg I was able to shift feed dustbins around a bit and create a patch of floor about 8 feet square (-ish) which, covered in straw, houses 2 ewes and 4 lambs but the place is a bit of a 'man-shed' so there is a risk of animals leaning on dodgy shelving or on the ends of tools hung up on the walls and waking up under an avalanche of bits and pieces.

The 'milking shed' is already sectioned off three ways with chicken wire 'walls' to create separate sections for geese, chickens and (later) the man-shed tool-ery bit of this was taken over by turkeys and Guinea fowl and a freezer we are babysitting for our house-move/build friends. This middle section left me just enough space to erect my 4 foot by 6 foot sheep-hurdle pen and now houses the third ewe and her lambs at night with the rafters above blocked in to stop the poultry roosting up there and poo-ing on the 'sheeps'.

All these bedrooms open, as I said, onto the hard yard but are also, thereby, quite a distance from the field gate. Liz and I temporarily have a little dance session we have to do to get sheep out and lambs out of the field in a controlled way and across the space to their bedroom doors, with the correct lambs staying with their mothers  and only 2 families going to the Tíg, and one to the Turkey house. The goat has also to be controlled to stop her nipping out of the field and going walk-about chewing the tops off tulips etc. We end up usually with Liz controlling the gate, sometimes while holding onto one lamb while I romp through the sloppy mud at the gateway trying to catch the other lamb or steer the Mum in the right direction. It usually works but has been known to take a while as ewes start to mill about confused, or make decisive darts towards the wrong doorway (e.g. the Turkey house which has already got an occupant at that stage).

In the morning it is easier and I can generally get everyone out of bed and into the field on my own mainly because if you feed the goat first, she is so focused on eating all the meal before any sheep get it, that she is not going anywhere. You could take all the fences down and she would still not go straying. You can certainly leave the gate a-jar while you steer a few sheep across the gap - the sheep are quite keen to get to that grass and the field anyway. I don't need to train the Westies as sheep dogs just yet. Come by!

A load of sheep and a goat.

Meanwhile, talking of bedrooms and housing, excellent progress is being made on the Sligo house rebuild. The internal walls are getting 'slabbed' (plasterboard or insulated dry-line slabs) so that you can now see what rooms look like (as opposed to looking at a forest of vertical stud-walling timbers). The main range has gone in, had its flue completed and spends some days lit, making the inside of the house beautifully warm and drying out the stone work of the old, original-retained fireplace superbly. Today we cleared the bathroom (which had been a bit of a stacking area for tools and bits) so that we could lay the bath, toilet and sink bits in some trial positions to make sure the shower location would work (and the changed them all and put them back). Once happy with the bathroom layout we were able to start Kango-ing up a bit of floor and drilling holes through walls for waste pipes and so on.

We also hung the posh new front door on the 'end' of the new porch and were then able to cut out the old, shorter one (pre-dating the porch) and its frame. Both K-Dub and I are 6 foot plus and if we had a quid for every time we have banged our heads on that we would be rich men.

Enough for this one, I think. Our next entertainment is to host Liz's Mum, (Steak Lady) here for a few days. She's up on a visit and wants to see the new baby lambs and generally enjoy the place and getting spoiled. Liz has a chance to do the hostess thing which she loves. See you soon, Mum. More on all this in the next post.

Wandering Wendy and Lucy Long-drop

Thursday 26^th

Hin3 does it again with the egg from 7 feet up stunt. Please don't let this become a habit. Mum and Dad like these eggs and they taste nothing like as nice when collided with poo-y sawdust and concrete.

A scorcher of a day here so what's more sensible, asks Dad, than to don a sweaty chain-saw hard-hat and thick kevlar glubs and go throw that petrol engine around again at the neighbour Una's? He is rewarded by more beautiful tea, scones and farmhouse kitchen. Lovely! Mum takes advantage of his absence and blitzes the floors. Kitten unspecified has managed to poo one end of the leather sofa and wee the other end. Happy, contented young animals will sleep in kitchen from now on. Living room is returned to 'best parlour' status and animals are barred.

The West Field gets mowed and Dad digs a third raised bed. Mum and Dad do lots of weeding in kitchen garden and thinning of young, but too close-planted carrots. There is lots of communing with happy animals in evening sunshine of yard. Dad even got the hand-held camcorder out to record but we promise not to inflict another cute kittens playing video to the millions on You-Tube. There is a SUPERB oxtail stew from Restaurant Feigh and so to bed.

27^th /28^th

Meanwhile, back in diary territory, we had a bimbly Friday. Dad was aching a bit from chain saw wielding Thursday, so he pottered and did tidy up jobs, thinned carrots, weeded, moved some corrugated iron sheeting and left-over concreting gravel and plastering sand off the "bit to the left of the hay-barn" (we have snappy titles for our bits of garden). 'Lucy Long-drop' did NOT, for once, lay her egg early morning from the 7 foot perch, so we know we got 100% productivity - 4 heggs from 4 hins. Go the Lovely Girls . All be it 'Wandering Wendy' still hops out of the run and nips off to our woods to sneak hers out privately. We have now 'busted' her and found where she's a-laying but we think she might be getting a clutch together to go broody on (5 so far) so we are sneakily date-marking them and returning them to the nest each day, leaving them be till she has, in her view, enough, whereupon she may start to sit, and will be gathered up, eggs and all and put in a broody-box somewhere safe from foxes and out of the rain, probably the calf house.

On the Saturday Dad is off up to Dublin to help Sparks in his attic. The alarm goes at 0530 and we have that usual flurry of feeding pup and kittens and mopping up any badly located poo and wee, then letting out bunnies and letting out and feeding chooks. Lucy Longdrop has, this morning, done another 7-foot up egg, so Dad has to clear that up, chuntering about stretching necks and the stock pot. He gets a good run up to Dublin (2 and a half hours on almost clear roads) and gets stuck in to 'slabbing' (cutting and fitting thermal panels and then plasterboard) in which we they, rather delightfully, joined by Dad’s old friend and Best Man, Billy T. He is a good friend but one of those you sadly let drift, till it's barely a Christmas Card a year and it’s always easier to make the effort some other time (all be it they have been chatting on Facebook for the last couple of months but never actually got together). Well, says Dad, they had a brilliant day working with Billy and chatting to him and it just highlights that you should never let good friends drift away in the first place. 

Sparks reimbursed Dad petrol this time in the form of a couple of chainsaw toys; a new chain/blade and a sharpener/grinder. Hours of fun trying to work out how to use that later. He has a nice run home into the sun always seeming to on a stretch of road just AFTER it had rained, so had all the spray and glare driving west into the setting sun, with his eyes already sore from the dust from the thermal panel 'foam'. He has a “beautiful shower” and lovely chickenny pasta provided by the welcoming Mum (love her!) and a glass of wine or two before we all settle down to watch a recording of that superb and uplifting Olympic Opening Ceremony. And so, via another try-to-open-your-eyes-under-water-in-the-sink eye wash, to bed.