Original Features

Newly cleaned out roadside ditch. The white
in the bottom of there is snow.

Yes, we currently have a light dusting of snow on the ground and yes, we still have light snow falling but overall we are definitely drying out. All the puddles are gone or nearly so, and the mud under foot is now sticky, rather than wellies-sloppy. The tarmac lanes are dry and the ditches either side of the road are mainly empty. Long may this process continue.

Original feature? A lot of the road-side culverts are still these
tunnels with stones for the 'walls' and a big flat stone across
the top. 

We have had a couple of contractor lads with a lorry and a mini digger, working along the road digging out the ditches and re-instating the drains and culverts where they pass under people's drive-ways, if necessary. They have even cut across the lane if they need water to flow from north side to south side and laid big new plastic pipes under the road.

Spot the heron.

A lot of the culverts along these lanes are still what an optimistic estate agent would call "original features". They were made by building in the bottom of your ditch a series of arches like mini-Stonehenge arches (dolmens?) with tall stones as the walls and big flat ones across the top. We have a similar structure buried down just outside our yard wall where would have run the right of way for all the locals using the main lane, to access their turf-cutting bog.

I wish the cats wouldn't kill the 'cute' and unusual ones. This
female bullfinch got it in the neck this morning. 

We are told that back then, anyone who had a chimney in their house would have 'Turbary' rights - the rights to cut turf for home fuel. They would have brought their donkey and cart down what is now our land to get to their 'stake'. When we bought the house, the Estate Agent told us that as no-one had used this right of way in 27 years, the route was now redundant and we did not need to allow any donkey carts down there!

Nobody's favourite livestock task - getting a wormer
tablet down the throat of each of your 4 cats. Liz's hands
are shredded!

Be that as it may, the contractor lads were obviously not re-instating these ancient structures as they went along, just burying modern concertina style water pipes and back filling with the stone and clay in what ever order it came available. They were also building up the immediate verges with the dirt and stone from the ditches. They have made quite a neat job of it and the new water-flows are obviously working. The ditches are empty.

The ewe (Lily) and lamb are still brought indoors each night
as the weather is still too cold for a baby to be outdoors. 

Meanwhile, after much deliberation I decided to cull out our bought-in ram, Pedro. It was not an easy decision. I never want to get into killing animals just because they are no longer convenient - if I ever do this then it will be a sign that we should not have bought in, or bred the animal in the first place. This lad was bought in, as regular readers may recall, last Summer, because we had produced no lambs of our own in 2017 and the freezers were almost empty of lamb-meat. He came as one of a pair, his sister being 'Oveja'.

When the time came to send Oveja on her final trailer ride, I decided to keep the brother (Pedro) as our 'stud' ram to save me having to borrow in a ram. I knew that we could always send him to the butchers later if the new set-up did not work out or if he became human-aggressive. This "sort of" worked and we think that all four ewes may well be pregnant, though I only saw him mounting Lily and Polly. Time will tell on that one.

Pedro offal. Oh, and a couple of nice
steaks! Well, I was in a butcher's shop.

As to the aggressive thing, I did take a couple of 'pucks' from him but I think these may have just been argy-bargy trying to be first to any food I was taking to the food trough. I'd get a thump from behind at thigh-height but not really know if he'd squared up on my derriere and done an adolescent head-down charge, or had just run clumsily into the group following me and my feed-bucket. Whenever he squared up facing me, I was always able to deter him by swishing a stick back and forth in front of his nose. It's the lack of trust that decided me. I could no longer enjoy communing with the gentle ewes if I had to keep one eye on Pedro.

The peach tree, housed indoors for the Winter
needed a tree-guard when the cats started
using its main trunk as a scratching post.

I did, though, see him banging the ewe 'Myfanwy' about. Whether she is pregnant or not, nobody likes to see our gentle ladies getting T-boned in the midriff. He was also a bit feisty with Lily and the new lamb when they first met but we put that down to him reminding them who was boss in case they'd forgotten while they were in 'confinement'.

So, the decision was made and Pedro was taken on his final trailer journey on Monday (yesterday). That gave me another interesting reversing task - the butcher's back way was part blocked by a big trailer one side and a shiny 4 x 4 on the other. I could not get to the 'lairage' pens (holding pens)  so the slaughterman (Joe) had me back in the shorter distance to the slaughterhouse door. Elizabeth tells me that the lad was 'offed' almost before his feet hit the concrete - she'd heard the 'pock' of the humane-killer and had seen the main butcher nip in there straight after with the big knife, while I was closing up the trailer and pulling out. He (Pedro) certainly spent no time in the unfamiliar lairage pens wondering what was going on or stressing about this new turn of events.

That was that. I collected the offal (liver, kidneys, heart and tongue, this time) today and picked up a couple of lovely (beef) steaks as I was in a butcher's shop. He hangs the carcass for a week before cutting to allow the meat to "set" so we go down on Monday morning to collect the main meat. I feel as though I have been given my sheep back. I can go into their field and speak to them, tickle their noses and under their chins, pull bits of twig and bramble out of their wool and generally enjoy contact with them. There is no ram there bashing them away from the breakfast food trough or trying to get between me and the girls. A whole new relaxed, calm, stress-free atmosphere has returned. It was the correct decision. This year we will borrow a ram just for the 'tupping' season AND nothing like as early as August - more like December or January. Lambing in January is just daft.

We've Not Seen Snow Like This in 20 Years

Front lawn Sunday morning

In the previous post you saw pictures of a light dusting of snow which fell on the 8th. In previous years here, we would have had every reason to expect that a dusting was our lot. Winter was now over and we could begin the long climb back up to Spring, Solstice nearly upon us, and all that. One snowy day and that only light was our quota.

The grassy 'boreen' down to Flynn's fields

Everyone will tell you that the West of Ireland has a lovely, moderate "maritime" style climate with the huge Atlantic Ocean keeping us warm in winter and cooling us in Summer. Not for us over this side, the extremes of cold or of heat felt by the "continental" climate areas. 

Front lawn from top window as the sun was going down.

Well, the moderate maritime thing may be true but the "never get decent snow" thing creaked over the weekend and gave us a lovely, picturesque Sunday 10th. I was able to race round as you do first thing, overloading the camera with poorly lit, blue-toned pics (you always think you're going to have to work fast and early, because it won't "stick"), and still able to go round again in the afternoon when my pics might have better light.

Pit props installed to hold up the carport
roof against the possible weight of snow.
A bale of hay for the sheep. 

Of course, these days, we enjoy excellent weather forecasting, at least short-range, from Met Éireann and other websites which use their data, so we had plenty of warning from about the Thursday. I had never seen "Orange Warning for Snow" come up before and this one had the usual very precise county by county risk plus very accurate timings - 23:00 Saturday round to midnight Sun/Mon.

Drifts on the new kitchen roof.

I was able to take 3 sensible precautions. K-Dub long ago advised me that the joists I had put into the carport roof were a bit slender (at 6" deep) to go the 14 foot span and would need to be propped centrally if there was any risk of more than a few inches of snow.

The young Buff Orp' rooster shouts the
dawn.

I bought extra coal in case I couldn't get the car out by Monday and a bale of hay for the sheep for if all their grazing grass was buried. I was quietly confident that we'd be OK even with Liz away the weekend. I went to bed happy well before that 23:00 deadline and slept like a log.

The sheep get extra 'crunch' and some hay.

It was like being a kid again (even better - no chance of Mum saying we had to go to school!) to wake up and see that blue-white light flooding the windows and the gentle movement of big flakes of snow still falling and to know that I didn't have to go anywhere, no struggling to work up the M2, I could just sit back, take my photo's and trudge about in the 'deep and crisp and even'.

Towser at speed. The snow is deeper than his legs are long!

Turned out we were luckier still. We got more than most. Facebook friends were posting pics of dustings , an inch, or none. Liz, down in Silverwood-land got about 2 inches. Here we got 4-6". deeper in the drifts. Unusual snow for Roscommon. When I asked the locals whether this happened often, one old boy said "We've not seen snow like this in 20 years". That was also the view in the Post Office.

Deefer (left) and Poppea play in the snow.

I guess I must guard against boring you guys with too many snow scenes, but I couldn't resist these few. I hope you enjoy them. Of course it is now Tuesday, 2 days later and that maritime climate has come back as days warming to 4ºC and all this picturesque whiteness melting away. This morning saw great gobs of snow dripping from the trees, the paths and roads turning to slush and the exposed soil and grass a sloppy wet mess again. It's always a relief mid winter to get a freeze making the mud stiff or hard, however inconvenient are the frozen drinkers and hose pipe for the livestock.

This is one of the most iconic pics of our recent past - pulling
into the driveway for the first time on Dec 12th 2011 after our
overnight 500 mile convoy in the Fiat and 2CV

My only other 'story' for this post is one 'invented' by Facebook. Both of us had missed this one and there was a risk of the significance of today sailing by unmarked. FB though, have a little algorithm running which digs up pics you posted exactly x number of years ago and asks you if you want to re-post them. This morning they hit me with the picture shown here of the red Fiat and the 2CV and trailer in front of the house from exactly 6 years ago.

Obviously, I did. This is one of the most iconic pics we have from here - it shows the cars pulled into the driveway for the first time at the end of our overnight, 500 mile, emigration journey (well, emi- for me, re-immigration, I suppose, for Liz!). This pic appeared first on this blog at

http://deefer-dawg.blogspot.ie/2011/12/they-made-it.html

Snowy Sycamore

My diary from that day tells us that we called in briefly to mooch around but then to stash the 2CV in the cattle race (invisible from the road - we were less trusting then) before heading to Castlerea to drop some champagne to the Estate Agent's place (we must have been richer, too) and then head to Silverwood's for our first proper overnight together as Irish residents.

Global warming? 2 big new icebergs 'calve' off the well
known Roscommon Glacier.

The next day we apparently drove all the way back intent on starting work, at least achieving that the chimneys were swept clear of jackdaw nests and fires lit in both ends of the house. We both felt the need to make the house aware of us and to welcome us - we needed to bring warmth. I like to think we've done a lot more of exactly that in the intervening 6 years.

Just because there was no-one here to tell
me I shouldn't be building snowmen at
my age. The dogs liked it.

If you are interested in that rebuild phase, from about Dec 2011 to May 2012, then there are plenty more posts on this blog. Enjoy the read.

Two New Girls for our Lads

A dusting on the ground and light snow still falling this morning.

A minor dusting of snow was our lot in the shirt-tails of Storm Caroline; very merciful compared to the dumps of snow experienced by 'The North'  and then down through Wales and the UK midlands. We are definitely not complaining. Neither are we complacent, as some Met Éireann Yellow Warning snow is forecast for Saturday into Sunday.

Snow on the new kitchen roof, as seen from
the back bedroom window.

I am here on my Jack at the moment as Liz is off 'minding' Mum (Liz Senior) down in Silverwood-land (County Laois). Mum has just had a hip replacement operation up in Swords (Dublin), so Liz (jnr) was off down to Laois on the train last night, where she will take temporary ownership of Mum's car, driving it off up to Swords to gather up Mum in the snow and bring her home. Liz will then stay there round to next Tuesday on this "tour of duty", when The Village Play (and other stuff) will call her home, at least for a couple days.

Not nice in the local village. 

I had my own little "necessary journey" in the snow this morning as I was off to Sue and Rob's to collect a couple of new Guinea Hens as possible mates to our lonely cock-birds, Apollo and Belvedere.

Might not want to park that one there mate - the Guards will
be at you..... Hope the driver was not badly hurt.

I also got a quick peek at the not-yet-hatched duck eggs in the incubator over there where, using Sue's candling lamp, I could see little feet kicking about. In my head, these eggs were due on Wednesday (Day 28) but Sue tells me ducks can easily go 28-35 days, so she was not expecting any hatches till after this weekend. Patience is the thing.

Easiest way to move Guinea Fowl is the kitten-box. 

The Guinea ladies were landed safely into one of our rabbit runs with the 'bedroom' compartment at one end. I gave them food and water and left them to settle in, as I always do. That way, they are able to see our sights and sounds but are safe from being beaten up by other poultry seeing them as intruders.

These are quite young birds - probably not yet sexually mature.
Their 'horns' (top of head) are not fully developed and the little
"chilli-pepper" wattles are pale pink, not yet bright red. 

I suspected that Apollo and Belvedere would find them fairly quickly. I wasn't wrong. I barely had time to take the 'landed' photo and the boys rocked up and were all over them from that moment on. They were walking all over the top of the pen looking down at the girls or running round the outside trying to make beak-contact through the wire, as the girls, in their turn, raced around the inside of the pen trying to get out and at the boys. The poor turkeys, up to now the Guinea cocks' bestest, inseparable chums, were just abandoned like last week's fashion. Fickle things, Guineas, obviously.

I was tempted to fore-go the usual 24 hours "probationary" period and let the 4 at each other but there are two things I know about introducing new birds to the flock, and Guineas in particular. First, if the new birds do come under attack it can be vicious, fast and deadly. Second, once a Guinea Fowl is out, you will probably never catch it again - they are fast and nimble as well as flighty and nervous. They explode into flight like a pheasant. Yes, if they go off to roost in your barn like good birds, and you have a ladder, you can probably nab them at night but these ladies had only just arrived and had never seen the barn, never mind the inside of it. They'd as likely find a tall tree for the night. Patience, again, is the thing. (It quite often is.)

The boys are all over the new arrivals. 

I let them be but put an inverted wheel barrow over the cage to keep the light snow and wet off. Come evening and everyone takes them-self off to roost in the barn, the new girls got left at the barn end of the temporary pen, calling hopefully after their new friends. It was quite a job to persuade them that the pen had its own warm, dry, bedroom and if they would only go in there they'd have a comfy night round till I could let them all out free-ranging on Saturday. They could be dry, preened and spruced up ready for their blokes. I hope they stayed in there for the night, otherwise they'll be stiff as boards from hypothermia by morning.

Blue looks comfortable.

With the return of winter, my long break away from the buildering came to an end. K-Dub has been too busy up in the City to be doing very much to his own place, and my last task was to help pouring that huge shed base in July, 30' by 40' and taking 3 big 8-wheeler mixer lorries. ( http://deefer-dawg.blogspot.ie/2017/07/three-8-wheelers-of-concrete-for-k-dub.html )

Deefer.

Well, last weekend he was going to build the block-walls for the shed in company with a gang of 4 of us. 3 were professional block-layers, 2 from the 'Smoke' one a near-neighbour of his. K-Dub's and my job were to support these guys with a constant flow of barrows of cement 'thrown' up onto their mortar boards with a shovel, and of the heavy concrete "cavity" blocks. Ideally, your block layer needs to be standing at his task and able to lay a block, then turn round and scoop more cement from the board behind him, or grab a block the right way up, stacked at waist height(+) also just behind him. Him, obviously whizzing along the length of the wall doing his course of blocks, so needing to pass a stack or a mortar board about every 6 feet along the base or planks-on-trestles.

Ah well. Only bought it to 'feed' the cake. It was never going to
see Christmas. Sláinte.

It is busy, heavy, unremitting work seasoned by happy banter among the blokes but, d'you know what, I love it! We got on well and in 4 hours, got loads done. I had to come away at that point, but we'd the wall up right round the building to around 6' in places and 8' at corners. The 4 other lads carried on into the p.m. (they all a good 25 years younger than me and they've been doing it all their lives!) but I've not been back to see how much got completed.

The Irish Government decided to not proceed with getting the
population to pay water-rates after all, and gave us back all
the money we had paid since the troubled start last year. 

My other 'builder-ish' job was at a friend's (no names, no pack drill) over beyond Castlerea where a 'new' generator was arriving to replace the old dead one. The 'new' one is an ex Military (British Army, I think) which needed a serious trailer to get it back from the seller's and a big 4WD Tractor with a front-loader to lift it and wiggle it into position. The tractor was being 'lent' by a young farmer's son, who was also going to be driving it - we had to wait for him to get out of school and then have his tea (God forbid an Irish Mammy would allow the lad to go out in the dark and rain without a belly full of grub!). He rocked up at about 5 pm, by which time it was dark and lashing down with rain. The dead generator also meant the house/yard was without power, so we were splodging around with torches, but at least the lights on modern tractors are like football ground floodlights. My job was to clear a pile of rocks and rubble to allow the tractor to swing about, then help the 'genny' to land, connect it up and test-fire it. This to give the batteries a quick blip which would allow the friend to re-start the tripped out wind turbine and (ha ha) solar array. It's all very well being 'off grid' and all green and low impact as long as your genny doesn't fry its crank on a near-windless fortnight such as we have just had, prior to Storm Caroline.

By the end of this post, then, we have 4 walls round a shed, 2 new Guinea Fowl sleeping in the comfort of their bedroom (I hope), my friends have a house with working electricity and the Ma-in-Law is being well looked after at home by her oldest daughter. By the next post we all might be under a foot of snow, but we'll worry about that when it comes. Hope you are also all warm, safe and dry... and lit.

"Book Learning"

Book Learning. Grand as far as it goes. We are madly trying to absorb as much information as we can on the 2014 projects - bees and pigs - and have read our little socks off on books, magazines, websites and leaflets. We have talked to as many people as we could persuade to give us advice and we have, as you know, joined a 'club' and been to one bee-based meeting. We probably 'know' way more than it is healthy to know for 2 people neither of whom has ever opened a beehive and lifted out a bee frame to examine the contents, or been closer to bees than idly spotting them on the garden flowers ("Oooh! I think THAT one is a honey bee!") or had anything to do with pigs other than helping to run 2 porkers down the ramp from trailer to slaughterhouse (about 5 seconds!).

You can't beat a turf fire for visual effect.

No. We are now hungry for hands-on, practical experience and 'monkey-do' learning. We want the bee training sessions to start, and especially the apiary based practical ones. I want to try myself out in the middle of a wary, loud-humming, cloud of potential stinging insects to know that I can be as cool, calm, relaxed, gentle and slow moving as I am with rabbits, sheep, geese and chickens. I want to know that I can be sufficiently careful that I do not risk 'rolling' bees between the close spaced bee frames (which annoys them) or squashing any between hive sections when reassembling the boxes. I want to know that I can move among pigs and bond with them, come to understand them without being nervous of them - they are big, strong and heavy, potentially dangerous animals when full grown, which need treating with respect. I expect I will be OK on both counts; I generally am. We are currently looking out for a pig rearing/keeping course aimed at small holders. Tipperary in April looks favourite so far.

Meanwhile, one of our favourite annual celebrations came around, Burns Night, our chance to eat haggis with a clear conscience and, this time, to have some guests to supper, Carolyn and Charlotte of the mini-horses, plus K-Dub and little Henry (2 in February). Being lamb-rearers, of course, this is not some kind of commercial, mass produced haggis boiled in a plastic (or gut if you're lucky) sleeve. It is the home made version constructed by Liz from our own lamb products; this year some breast meat, heart, liver and 'lights', plus, of course, oatmeal, onion and spices. 'Lights' for the uninitiated, is lung tissue; we managed to persuade butcher Ignatius G that we really did want a lung (just one) to try out just this recipe. Liz bakes the whole in a casserole dish.

Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face..... haggis.

For a starter we diverged a bit away from Scottish fare with a favourite salad - leaves, pomegranate bits, goats cheese, pickled sweet red peppers and toasted pinenuts. The haggis came, of course, with neeps and tatties and an onion gravy. Dessert was a bit 'fusion food'. Liz crossed cranachan with pavlova (why not?) and came up with a pavlova with a meringue base, a good layer of cream, then blackberry coulis and berries, topped with toasted rolled oats.

Cranachan x Pavlova

We have, inevitably, a mountain of this food left over even though everybody bar Henry piled in with gusto and did it justice. H was a little excited at his first evening visit to 'Matt and Dizzy's' house and was not in the mood for settling down to eat this unfamiliar food but he was still a pleasure to entertain and he enjoyed himself. "Dizzy" (sorry, I mean Liz) has since been on the internet talking to chums who also have left over haggis and mashed spuds, and someone has come up with the very promising idea of haggis and potato 'pasties' which have GOT to be worth a try. We have very little 'neep' left so some of our lovely fresh sprouts may get thinly sliced and added to the pastie filling.

We had lit the fires at both ends of the house, so we had a lovely turf fire going in the living room as well as the range in the dining room. We do not usually have real turf in the house as we'd only use it on the open fire, which we don't light very often; it does not go very well in the range. However, I had taken some eggs round to neighbour Una and she was trying to pay me money for them. I asked instead if I might have some of the lovely long dry turfs she has in her shed; they look very picturesque in the log basket and would burn nicely on our fire for our guests when we adjourned through to the comfortable chairs. We didn't go very late. The visitors were mindful of the need to get little Henry to bed by 9:30-ish but, more importantly, K-Dub was due a very early (04:30) start as he's off to the Bavaria mountains on a motor bike, to be part of the annual "Elephant Rally", camping.

http://www.bvdm.de/index.php?id=47&lang=3

Rooster 'Mr Buff' shelters in the goose house. 

We take our hats off to you, buddy, rather you than me. The weather is not looking particularly promising, it is snowy and windy in Bavaria at present, but he has a good ex-military tent and a sleeping bag which is good to minus 30 degrees C and, anyway, hey! He's a ruffty tuffty biker. I used to enjoy my 2CV camps but they were generally in the summer and I had the car around me when I was driving to and from. K-Dub is on a bike in just his leathers and helmet through the night to Dublin, then all across Wales and England to the Channel Tunnel, then all across mainland Europe to his snowy forest 'home' and all his biker mates. Safe journey, K-Dub. Look after yourself.

Our Turn for a Modest Dusting

We had listened slightly enviously to the reports from UK and from the east coast of Ireland last week as the snow came down and the population slithered about, schools were closed and kids had a chance to go tabogganing. This bit of Ireland does not tend to get much snow. We miss out when the forecast says "on NW coastal areas" as we are not very coastal. Galway is the coastal county; we are next inland. We miss out too when you hear "falling as snow or sleet on high ground". Although we are up a ridge at 75m, 'high ground' in these parts means the towering Cliffs of Moher, the mountains of Connemara and the 700m Maumturks. By the time the air has flowed across those and been pushed uphill, there's no snow left for us 'down' here.

We are, though, very careful what we wish for - 2 years ago the locals tell us, there was a memorable exception to this rule, when Feigh was covered with 15 inches and they were effectively snowed in for 2 weeks, only able to get about because most people have tractors. We naturally keep in good supplies of dry goods like rice and pasta, tins and jars and bags of coal.

Liz first spotted our snow yesterday evening when giving the dogs a 'last out' but neither of us really thought it would 'stick'. I have had too many dashed hopes as a lad when you'd be sent off to bed watching the snow come down but by morning it would be all gone and you'd wake up to green grass and wet, black roads. Mind you, I cannot recall any of these school closures affecting us in the 60's and 70's like they do now, but Pud Lady may remember this differently. I am sure we just had to plod to school through the snow and if the heating was off, sit there with our coats on clock-watching till each 'play time' or the finish-bell.

So it was the child in me who woke up, saw the whiteness outside and sprang into action, racing out with the dogs for an explore and to take a few pictures at 07:45. The early hour and the dawn-break light explains the dark blue colouring on the first pictures in this post - I wanted to 'get' those, consolidated if you like, before the snow melted away. I also brought Liz her tea at that early hour so that she wouldn't miss it. We needn't have worried - the snow stayed around for most of the morning and gave us a chance to enjoy it.

Other than Deefer (6) Ginny and Padfoot (3?) all our animals are too young to have seen winter before, never mind snow. The chickens were amusingly un-impressed and stayed in their coop till way past 10:00 eventually emerging to tread carefully only those bits where the snow had melted, up against buildings and under the car port. The geese were happier and took to charging about in it. They pad-pad around but then seem to get bursts of enthusiasm. open their wings, lift their heads and CHARGE across the snow and grass for 30-40 yards flapping and honking. They don't particularly go anywhere or end up anywhere. It just seems to be for the sheer joy or 'dashing through the snow' like in the song. They are pure white, of course, certainly compared to the Westies, so they can be fairly invisible.

The dogs are generally on leads these days due to the incidents with the rooster and going AWOL and because even Deefer has not yet been 'trained on' the new geese. We decided it would be nice for them to have a proper, off lead chase about in the snow, so we hooshed the geese out of their orchard field, took the dogs in and unleashed them. They had a whale of a time charging about romping and battling with each other and running in big circles round the trees. They rapidly accumulated big 'klingons' of frozen snow in the fur on their feet and bellies and would then sit down in the snow and try to bite these off.

The geese, we noticed, evicted from their field during the dogs' games, went for an explore on their own, disappearing for a while and then reappearing on the front lawn, a place they had not visited till that point. We want them to get used to the front lawn for their mowing and burglar-alarm abilities, so it was nice to see them there. Their tracks in the snow told us they'd taken the long way round, through the yard and up the 'primrose path' drive. All good exploring for them.

While we're on 'tracks in the snow' it was good to see first thing this morning that there were no fox tracks anywhere so it may be that we do not have that particular problem just now.

The cats also enjoyed them selves and stayed out a long time, never seeming to accumulate the 'klingons'. Perhaps they tread more delicately and stick to the frozen, dry stuff or they might be more insulated and they do not melt the snow which comes into contact with their fur.

That was that, really. We enjoyed what there was for a few hours but by mid morning the rain started and the temperature came up through 4 degrees towards 8 and we were quickly washed back to green grass, dark paths, brown mud and a few slushy patches. Whether that's it for the winter remains to be seen, but I hope you enjoy my pictures from your (I hope) nice warm computer desks or armchairs.

We fed extra rations to the rabbits, whose grass was buried under snow for the morning and the chooks and geese have had extra sprouted grain today. The dogs were brought back in, cleaned of their 'klingons' and toweled dry. We have all been enjoying the warmth of the range and listening to the wind outside, well hunkered down indoors.