Ready for the Membrane

Sure sign of Autumn - the porridge!

As I type this it is still quite early (7 a.m.) and I am the only one awake. Don't worry - it is not another of those 'woken-up-by-coughing' nights - I slept like a baby and I am 'sleeped' out and well rested. As the Autumn starts to bite, these mornings are increasingly dark and gloomy, so I need to crank the livestock release/feed round back from 8 o'clock, or the fox will still be about when the birds come bursting from their houses all full of the joys.

Asbjörn and Sonja supervise the incinerator watched by the
ever present turkey, 'Tom' 

Sheer hard work by many people over the last few months has finally brought our big raised flower bed to a state of well dug over-ness and levelled out-ness where Elizabeth has declared it fit to have its weed proof membrane cover fitted. This is her baby, her decision and she very much wants to be there for this job, but today is Day 5 (of 5) of her hard land-scaping course which will go on to at least lunchtime. We therefore decided to give everyone a late start and lie in and we will do the Help-X hours in the afternoon, so that everyone can play.

Pruning and re-weaving the arbour over the 'Darby and Joan'
chairs

It has been a marathon job to get this far. The bed is about 16 m long by 10 m at its widest  and is quite clay-ey, being the spoil from the big pond with subsequent compost mulch layers added over the years. It can be heavy work to dig if it gets wet. We were going to do all this digging in Summer when the soil is more manageable. We used Help-X-ers Emma and Flora to clear it but then I got sick and our August Help-X blew us out, so the dig over was down to Elizabeth helped by 'Sparks'.

More Help-X product. 6 huge bags of
kindling.

As the wet season started we looked on in increasing despair thinking we'd missed the boat and would have to wait till Spring. But then, as Asbjörn and Sonja rocked up and proved very capable, it also stopped raining and the ground started to dry out. I asked them to give it a go at just an hour a day. On this basis, skimming lumps off with a shovel, moving soil with wheel barrows from peaks to troughs, and with much cloddy raking, they have prevailed and we are delighted to be able to get the membrane down THIS year. Even if we do not plant anything through it, that is a huge landmark and consolidation.Well done A and S.

A lovely full moon and a bit of mackerel-sky for the equinox.

The week, though, has not been all about the raised bed (Thank Heavens!). Asbjörn and Sonja have been everywhere and doing every kind of job all with the same keenness, enthusiasm and application. In the last post, they were just off to their weekend trip to Sligo to find their friends and the Celtic arts festival. I collected them back on the Saturday afternoon, we fed them pork chops, and that was the only time they wanted off.

From the UK arrives a new pig-sign, OSB for 'Oxford Sandy
and Black', of course.

A popular job was burning all the prunings from the raised bed shrubs, plus the brambles from the East Field plus some more recent rose bits (The Rambling Rector had been getting a bit up close and personal with the poly tunnel canopy!), in our dustbin style incinerator. I like this job and can get quite 'Zen' tipping away, cutting the prunings into short lengths and dropping them in, trying to keep a good fire going, and Asbjörn is obviously the same. Sonja had done her 4 hours or so of helping, but A went out again after lunch and stuck at it, even through light rain, till 6 pm - 8 hours of lonely Zenning (well, lonely except for the ever-present Turkey-Tom). Between them they cleared the whole pile - very useful.

Cheese and Dillisk Biscuits.

While Asbjörn worked away, the catering department had gone into full swing and the night's feast was to be a Madhur Jaffrey inspired feast of creamy turkey 'curry' with side dishes of potato and cauliflower and of "dry okra" plus a good range of yogurt-with-cucumber and tomato salsa style coolants for those who found the spuds a bit fiery.

Black Spring's Nan's pork hock under construction.

Dessert was a trad sticky toffee pudding (with extra sauce in a jug!), to the delight of Sonja. The following days saw some cheese and dillisk biscuits (dillisk (dulce) is an edible seaweed) and the family favourite recipe "Black Spring's Nan's pork hock", a gorgeous Chinese slow-simmer. The meat from the hock gets served with steamed shredded cabbage (or pak choi if you can get it) and noodles. The left over sauce sets like a jelly and can be eaten that way as a "cold soup".

New neighbours - this suckler herd. Sometimes the calves even
stay on THEIR side of the fence!

Other jobs done by the Help-X-ers have included pruning and re-weaving the living willow 'arbour' over our 'Darby and Joan' chairs on the far side of he pond plus moving some of our kitchen extension rubble down to fill gaps under the fence at the north end of the East Field.

Daily job. Re-salting the 'Parma' ham legs

Here the sheep wire is nice and tight between the posts and stapled to the very bottom of each post, but in places the ground dips between the posts and foxes (and little white dogs) can slip under. We have a pile of rubble that needs a 'home', so 2 fit wheel-barrowers are just the ticket. They have also gathered up the dog-end of a stack of split firewood from the far corner of the yard, and barrowed it all up to the wood store just outside the kitchen door.

In other news, I am taking another turn as curator of the UK version of the small holders' Twitter account (@smallholdersUK). I am the voice of Brit smallholding from last Sunday evening round till this one coming. These accounts work on the basis of the followers hearing from a different smallholder each week, which keeps it nice and varied. Our Irish one is currently parked up for lack of volunteers - it ran out of steam after a couple of years, but the UK has a bigger catchment and is still going strong. It is not restricted to people who do their small holding in the UK.

Towser rolled in goose-poo and attracted some unwelcome
attention from Sonja.

That is about it, I guess. I will post again on Friday which will be the last working day for these Help-X volunteers. They are back off to Dublin on Saturday, ready for their flights home on Tuesday. We will miss them. They have been great.

Luck ran out for the 'lucky' rooster. Ah well.

Palatinate Smokies

Not that smokey when I took the picture.
Carsten at the loppers.

Friends of the Blog who were with me back in the house re-build days, may recall that when we were burning the old wood ripped out of the house, 'Sparks' (Main Builder and Project Manager) used to tease us that we were a couple of Roscommon Smokies. People from outside this county, when wishing to get at us, say that we are all traveller folk (as in Romanies, Gypsies etc, not as in Divine Comedy's 'Billy Bird'), who spend all our evenings sitting round the campfire and, so, always smell of bonfire smoke. Hence "Roscommon Smokies".

Of course, we wear this badge with pride and any visiting Help-X or other person who gets involved with any of our bonfires is quickly signed up. AB, last year, went home as a Paris Smokie. Our latest Help-X-er, Carsten is now a Palatinate Smokie after helping me burn a load of trimmings from a fallen hawthorn brought down by Storm Eleanor.

I need to quickly add that these are not open bonfires like you would have in an English garden rubbish-burn. Open bonfires are illegal in this country except for on St John's Eve (23rd June). The argument for this seems to be mainly environmental and in order to try to stop wild-fires in the forestry and the turf bogs though it also contains a bit of Catholic rulers stamping down on the pagan festival celebrations.

Excelsis could not wait to get into the
kitchen.

It is rather odd that you are forced by this law to save all your prunings up through all the wet months where you'd be very unlikely to start a wild fire, till June when you well might. As we understand it you ARE allowed to put anything like this "up the chimney" which means burning it on the indoor fires or using a dustbin type incinerator. These latter are for sale widely and openly at hardware shops.

Carsten takes a turn at the bottle feeding.
Bábóg is 7 weeks old now.

So, we have carried on our wee visit by Carsten and got plenty done including all that cutting up of hawthorn trees. Mind you, rain stopped play today and we achieved only the shopping and a trip to the archery venue to reassemble all the club's 'stuff' which had been hidden up while the Castlerea musical theatre company took over the whole building to put on the musical show 'Titanic'. Cue all the old jokes about "I wonder how THAT ended" etc.

Elizabeth got a good rise out of this yeast bread. 

Sadly, we only have Carsten for the week. Tomorrow, all too soon, he moves on to the 2nd stage of his 3 month working tour of the Republic, heading for Achill Island (Co. Mayo) where he has a job cleaning bedrooms and making beds in a tourist-y hostel. The hostel requires he stay at least 4 weeks, so that uses up May for him. We wish him luck and have told him if he is ever passing this way again or stuck for a week's work he'd be welcome back any time. It is probably for the best if he carries on to new things and new places and gets a good look at Ireland but we will both miss him. Top bloke all together.

Under construction, Nigella's "Eggs in Purgatory". Eggs
poached in a spiced up mix of tinned tomato. Eggs have only
just gone in here, hence raw and transparent. 

On the Help-X, I now have a gap - at the moment the whole of May and June. The July and August applicants are falling over each other to get here. I am spoiled for choice. In May, though, I look like shearing my sheep single handed, or schmoozing up the Woman of the House again. Come on people. They will be good jobs and you will be excellently fed. Nobody has run off screaming yet, anyway.

Fried turkey eggs. Yes, I broke one yolk.

The Woman of the House has been enjoying the chance to try out old favourite recipes, explore some new ones and make good soup from left overs. We tried Nigella's "Eggs in Purgatory" - eggs poached in a spiced up mix of tinned tomato. Thank you recent visitor 'Toastie' (Sarah) for that tip. There was a neck of lamb stew. We had 'spanikopita' a Greek dish of spinach and Fetta cheese baked in filo pastry. I have a feeling this might normally be done with Ricotta cheese but the Head Chef is not currently around to ask. We have enjoyed roast duck.

The bottle nearly sucked flat.

The soups have included trad nettle soup (with fresh green nettle tops plus leek and potato) and then a leek, potato and bacon soup which was based on duck stock. Both delicious. There have also been, memorably a fruit-cake "tray bake" and gooey chocolate "Flump's Cake". Flump here is another excellent source of recipes who has been a friend of Elizabeth for ever.

Enough for this one, I guess. By the time I write again, Carsten will have departed. Safe journey, Buddy and enjoy the rest of your 'tour'. Perhaps we will see you again.

Carsten

Carsten is quickly adopted by Towser indoors
and our turkey 'tom' Excelsis out of doors.

Welcome aboard, then, latest Help-X student, Carsten. Carsten hails from SW Germany and the town of Dudenhofen which is, by all accounts, quite similar to our local market towns of Castlerea and Ballaghaderreen. It is in the Rhineland "Palatinate"; Mrs C loves that this expression is still in use. Plenty of her most recent history 'pods' have involved the Palatinate but she had thought that this was an old name, no longer in use. She is delighted that "they still have the Palatinate". Dudenhofen is also in the main asparagus growing area of Germany.

Adopted by the male turkey out of doors

Carsten, in his early 20s, is studying teaching of English and Sport and as part of the language chunk of this, he has to go and live in an English speaking area for 3 continuous months. He has chosen Help-X as his method of getting accommodation and Ireland as his destination. We have him for the first week of this 'tour', round till the middle of next week.

He is an excellent guest - all the good things you can say about Help-X volunteers - fit and strong, willing to work hard and try his hand at all manner of jobs, happy, friendly, relaxed, easy to talk to and thoroughly enjoys any food The Woman of the House puts in front of him.

By his own admission he is very new to this travelling thing and this is his first adventure alone, so he gets a bit wary around trying to connect up legs of the journey, changes of train and so on. He managed to mess up the journey here from Frankfurt airport (Ryan Air) and, in Dublin, managed to get on a bus which missed its train connection at Athlone.

Instead of him pitching up at Castlerea at 8pm for me to do a 15 minute taxi run to collect him, we got a series of phone messages ending up with him stranded in Athlone and needing us to drive the 2 hour round trip to rescue him. Never mind. No harm done and Carsten was safely under the roof by 10 pm where Elizabeth could feed him soup and pizza. Poor lad had not eaten since breakfast at the parents' house that morning.

All looking a bit Spring-like. Love those hot orange tulips.

After that late night, we took pity on him and decided we'd not start any work that next morning, taking the day, instead for us to get to know each other, for him to get a look round here and meet the livestock, plus we could go for a little drive around in the car shopping etc if he needed wellies or gloves.

Now, four days later, we are properly in the groove and have done some good, productive work. The weather has been dry and warm, so we have been able to get 'out there' and get long overdue garden tasks done. We have emptied two big compost bins and top-dressed three railway sleeper beds and one of the long beds in the polytunnel with a good 6-8" thick layer of the lovely rich stuff. We have cleared up all the wind-blown branches in the East Field onto a fire-pile for burning.

Food for baby ducklings. Chick-crumb (slightly wetted), finely
mashed hard-boiled egg (incl shell) and finely chopped lettuce
(which they will completely ignore, of course!)

We have chopped up quite a bit of the Storm Eleanor larch and spruce which had been seasoning in its round 'cakes' sliced out of the trunks. Then we crowned all that yesterday by mucking out a bullock barn for a friend. This latter involved me getting a 'fix' of tractor driving - I was hauling the mucked loads down to the dumping pile. Nearly an 'oops' for me there to match Carsten's Athlone mess-up.

It survived the winter!

That's only a 2 wheel drive tractor and with the link box full of muck it's so back heavy that the front is almost rearing up off the ground. In the destination field there was (unbeknownst to me) a very soft patch and I started to sink my left rear tyre in. I was sweating a bit, wallowing around there praying that I didn't need to make the embarrassing rescue phone call to get myself extracted. That would have taken some living down!

Plenty of bee activity in this warm weather.

That was a full day. We were already tired from the compost barrowing and the log splitting, so when we went down to clear "just a couple of boxes" and then fell in with the mission-creep to "the whole barn" (5 boxes), my aul' bones were definitely starting to creak.

A beautifully hearty neck-of-lamb stew. Our own lamb of course.

This morning, I am as stiff as a board and very glad it's the weekend. I was joking with Carsten that I love working with the Help-X lads and I get much more than twice as much done as I would on my own, 2-handed. This mainly because I get lazy and I don't actually do anything in between the Help-X-ers. I need them to motivate me of a morning. May not be 100% true but certainly seems that way sometimes. I find myself 'saving jobs up' for the next Help-X-er, which translates as "avoiding those jobs till I get help" :-) (smiley face)

I started doing these ten-packs with "all the colours" through
the honesty box. They sell very well.

All we have planned for today is a nice breakfast and bit of driving around. I am taking Carsten over to friends Sue and Rob for him to meet them and see their place. Also to look at some new baby kittens from which two may be of interest to 'Sparks' and his lady. We were going to select the two as Sparks was thinking that the lady would find them all equally cute and it did not matter much which they were given. However, I understand that she has now seen the pictures and chosen her kittens, so we are just going to say 'Hello' and admire them, presumably.

Pears coming into blossom.

I am on strict instructions not to slip up and fall in love with the other two. WE HAVE ENOUGH ANIMALS was how it was phrased. No arguing with that.

There's snout to see here. Move along.

I think that is probably enough for this one. More on Carsten and our adventures in Help-X-ing in the next post. Good luck now. Get out and enjoy that sunshine.

Dee and Luke

Dee, Luke and some sheep

Happy Birthday to me! 61 today and starting to wonder just how long you can go on saying "Yes, but that's not REALLY old...." We had planned for a nice quiet weekend, relaxing, eating and drinking maybe a little too much, avoiding doing anything unpleasant or arduous, and we had no idea we were in for quite a treat from an unexpected direction. This would rather snooker the "quiet" bit of the plan but left everything else intact.

Dee takes her turn at the bottle
feeding of Bábóg

Welcome to the happy home, long lost cousin Dee and her son Luke. Dee is the same age as Elizabeth but her whole family emigrated to Australia back in the 60s when the girls would have been only 6. There is famous family story that when Dee (and the rest of the children) were being brought round Dublin to say farewell to the various cousins and relatives, young Liz so didn't want to lose her playmate that the pair conspired to hide Dee in a wardrobe buried under a pile of clothes.

Luke, Elizabeth and Dee

Well, it seems the missing Dee was eventually liberated from her hidey-hole and taken away to the airport. Dee has never been back since and grew up and had her own family out in Gold Coast, just south of Brisbane in Queensland. One of those family is eldest son Luke (30) who has joined Mum on this trip.

The by-now-traditional dippy Lisacul goose-egg breakfast. All
our guests seem to love this.

48 years later, Dee decided on a trip back "home" - a 3 week mission to see a bit of Ireland and to catch up on as many of the rels she had left behind, as she could. She already "knew" us a bit from Facebook and this blog. She and Luke are now 2 weeks into this and have done a lot of the tourist-ing and have met 'Steak Lady' and the 'Silverwoods'. This weekend is our turn before they head on to Mullingar to find 'Sparks' and Kim. Thanks for coming, Dee and Luke, you have been a pure pleasure to host and you are welcome back any time.

Dee is obviously delighted with the toast.

One amusing anecdote from all this is that Dee has only now found out how her old family name "should" be pronounced. She has spent 50+ years saying it with a hard 'T' and a long 'U' vowel, as kott-yule-y. When she arrived in Ireland 2 weeks ago she found they were all calling themselves with the very different pronunciation , 'kotcherly'. It was quite a surprise, she says, like suddenly finding out you are adopted. She has a whole new family.

Fox deterrent - 3 dogs, a male turkey, a human and a
smokey fire

That visit has obviously eclipsed the rest of the news, such as it was. I'd just been quietly bimbling around enjoying the increasingly warm weather, the spring flowers and everything warming up. It was nice to be able to spend some quality time outside.

Making smoke

One of the mornings I decided to burn some of the brushy wood brought down from the larches by Storm Eleanor. This would kill 3 birds with one stone. I would be out there for hours in full view of any foxes peering in. I would burn a pile of brush behind which the fox could keep hidden while getting dangerously close to the chickens. I would also remove that same pile which the turkey had been trying to lay an egg in when she got mauled by our foxy friend last week.

Flowering cherry

So, we are all tidy now and that risk is removed. It is a bit ironic that we spend all day trying to stop our chickens dying at the hands of the fox but then, occasionally, we have to 'off' one ourselves. This was the fate of a surplus rooster recently. This bird was becoming increasingly aggressive and amorous so that a level of stress and intensity had built up in the chicken flock without us really noticing. Once we'd ended his little run, we are both delighted and amazed by how relaxed calm has descended once more.

Flowering currant.

You can go outside and watch the birds for hours - nobody is squabbling, battling or trying to sneakily 'tread' anyone else's harem. That's the way we like it. Millpond smooth and still-quiet. That's if you don't count the bleating baby lamb, the 'buckwheat buckwheat' cries of female Guineas, the gobble gobble and chirruping of turkeys, the occasional cock-a-doodle-doo and dogs barking and the cackle of a successful and proud egg-laying hen. Or 15.

Horse chestnut "sticky bud"

Ah well, That's enough for this one. I must away back to my guests and my Birthday.

Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord...

Stir up Sunday

A blog post with at least some of those words in it is by now almost an annual tradition. A blog of mystery and unpredictability, this is obviously not. We do love this process, though and can think of no finer way of creating the 'pud' and the Christmas cake. Off then on a special shopping mission on the Saturday (25th) and some of the dried fruit doused in Jameson overnight.

Hours of fun, too, on the Sunday adding final ingredients, mixing and doing the obligatory stirs before tipping the mixes into their respective cookware, lined with grease-proof or covered in same and foil, tied down with string like Mamma used to make. Now cooked too - 8 hours gentle blupping for the pud - and left to rest for the required amount of weeks. The icing of the cake is my department - I have a cunning plan but need to source some coloured icing, which could be tricky.

Temporary fences allow the sheep to access all areas. 

Friends of the Blog following our hosting of local gardening journalist, Paul Kirwan may have been expecting our story to appear in the Roscommon Herald today but unfortunately we got 'bumped'. Paul had had a story about his involvement in Golf Course "gardening" sitting on the back burner for weeks and the paper decided to go with that one this week. 'We' are therefore postponed to next week. More on that next week, maybe.

As bad as it got slush-wise.

We had a short burst of winter over the weekend. Nothing impressive or photogenic, just lots of raw, biting wind and wet wintry showers. No real frost either, so we are very sloppy under foot and pinned down to indoor jobs.

The ever reliable duck eggs. 

Rather bizarrely, our white Sussex hen, 'Connie', has decided to go broody. We have no idea why she thinks it is Spring but just maybe she has worked out that by doing the broody thing she can sit in a lovely warm nest in a shed and be given waiter-service on the food and water, protected from piratical 'sisters' trying to drop more eggs in on her by the cage I have built around her little hidey hole.

Not so much 'frozen' as covered in a
layer of part-melted slush. The pond
goes gun-metal grey.

I have, though, stitched her up. Not wanting any more chickens just for the moment, I have slipped 5 duck eggs under her. She will not be able to check on her diary but her instinctive Day-21 will come and go. Duck eggs take 24-28 days at least to incubate. Day 28 will put her right on Christmas Day so, with luck, our guests will get to see cute, new-hatched ducklings. Chickens will generally just sit tight, unaware of any problem and not visibly concerned that the chickens look a bit 'funny'. You do then need to take the babies off the Mum by about Day 10 because the Mums get quite upset that their babies will not learn to scratch and peck and do not try to stay dry. We'll have to see how that goes.

The turkeys are still thriving and impressing us with their size. We reared three because in previous years we have given them to family, one going to Sparks for a special dinner he used to do for a gang of his Dublin builder mates. Sparks is no longer in that world and now lives outside the capital, so tells us he doesn't need one, and neither, apparently, do any of the Silverwood gang so we have three turkeys and only ourselves and our guests to satisfy. Turkey for Easter anyone? St Patrick's Day?

Finally just a couple of pics for the usual reason, that I have them. First up, Lizzie. When you are wiped out by a cold and chilled to the bone, wrap up well in the 'onesie' and under a blanket. If that's not warm enough chuck a couple of cats and a dog on the bed too. Toasty.

Next up the two grown-up boy-cats, Blue and Soldier who have lately been fighting a bit over the best roosts and nests. Here they both grabbed the top of the book-case under the stairs, with their heads against the woodwork in a quiet stand off. Anywhere you can climb, I can climb higher? In the end Soldier blinked first and jumped down, leaving Blue to stretch out luxuriously across the case-top with a rather smug look on his face. The status quo is restored. For now.