Donaldina in the Duck House

Time for a cuddle with Kato. 

Today's write-up brings us cruising slowly to the end of what has been a very pleasant interlude, our three weeks with French Help-X volunteer, Laura D. She's off on an early morning train from Castlerea tomorrow, headed (eventually) for Kilkenny and the next job. We have loved having her here and she happily admits that she has had a brilliant time, done loads of interesting things, learned lots of English and enjoyed our hosting. Everyone's a winner.

Wrangling new hatch chicks on the
Dining Table

2 other 'threads' are also coming to a close. These are the convoluted saga of first time Mum, hen, Donaldina-in-the-Duck-House (hereafter for this post, DitDH) and the lovely heat wave.

The latter seems to be breaking down now and has a few afternoons of thunderstorms and downpours lined up in our forecasts. Today's was impressively noisy and rattly but produced very little rain, barely laying the dust, and the sky quickly cleared. Roscommon's weather station on Mount Dillon was the 2nd hottest place in Ireland at 24.6ºC (after Shannon Airport (25ºC))

Clearing the gutters.

The forecast of rain had us racing around to complete Laura's last requested job, accompanied by the roar of engines from the local silage crews scrambling in those last (round) bales so that they could be wrapped up safe and dry. Whoa, though! Let me do these three stories in some kind of sensible order. Laura first and then DitDH.

Lemon meringue pie, Ardeche style. The
lemon-curd layer is home made and includes
very finely chopped hazelnuts. Interesting and
delicious.

On these final days we were scouting around rather, both feeling that she had done way and above anything we had expected, so she deserved a few days when she could pick jobs she liked. She had already said that she would love to give everywhere a final mow on the last day, so that she could leave the place looking really tidy.

Fox gloves out front.

We re-assembled the trailer, looking very fine in its new yacht-varnish woodwork. We got the ladder out to clear the gutters ("Evr'ns" here (literally eave-runs)). We clipped the three dogs with Laura taking the same patient, exact care that she brings to the mowing job. She got another crack at the brush-cutter, tackling the tall weeds behind the goose house and the yard-wall. That last mow, at 6 hours solid with just 2, 20-min breaks was typical Laura work-rate, 09:00 to 15:00.

Love this ox-eye daisy growing out of
the wall.

For the last of these few days, we have been on our own, with Elizabeth down in Silverwood-land minding the parental home for 'Steak Lady' who is off on hols. I have been left, of course with plenty of part-assembled meals (and instructions!) so it has been easy enough to be out there working alongside the 'help' but still able to do the catering and hospitality bit. Need a light lunch of filo pastry flan with ham, tomato and goat's cheese? I'm your man. Tomorrow, it all finishes with our run down to Castlerea station for the 08:18 train. We will miss the lass.

Donaldina in the Duck House.

The Donaldina story also ends happily with 7 successful chicks now being mothered very well by new Mum. One more chick hatched but then died in the nest (trampled? smothered?) so she actually managed 8/8. Readers will know that the clutch was added to daily till it numbered 20 eggs, but it would be wrong to link the 12 fails to this hen.

Donaldina is now out and about with all seven.

As it was, we did have the usual fun and games getting to this point, but I will give you only main points, not bore you with all the details. We moved the 'house' in from the goose area with DitDH, nest, eggs and all, to the yard to save the babies from getting attacked by geese. DitDH started hatching right on cue (Wed 6th) but then started coming off the nest to look after the 24-hour olds and left one wet new-hatch behind.

We rescued this bird and one of the first 6 who was a bit 'lazy' into the incubator for some TLC and food for 24 hours. DitDH started roaming around with the 5 but we were sure we would be able to re-unite the helped pair with Mum the next day. This is, indeed, how it went and we were delighted once again that hens cannot count. They just accept 2 more as long as they are the right size and shape and making the correct noises. Now DitDH has 7 to mind. No pressure, Donaldina, just keep them safe and alive for 6 weeks. Job done.

That about covers it for this one. It is 21:42 so I am, as ever, waiting for the dirty stop-out Guinea Fowl to make their weary way to bed. Everybody else is in their 'rooms', perched patiently, waiting for me to lock the doors. I have 'waited' through so many lovely sunsets in this hot spell, that I am a bit bored taking photo's of them!

The rose "Rhapsody in Blue"

Ah well. Good night all. Wish Laura a safe journey, tomorrow, as I am and I will talk to you again on Tuesday.

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.

One Out, One In

The 'Wimmin'. Left to right, Cousin Cathy, Steak Lady and Lizzie

It is a bit like hand-over day at a guest house here today with one guest vacating the spare bedroom and, following a quick blitz by the 'Housekeeping' dept, a 2nd installed. On the way out was Mum in Law (Friend of the Blog, known as 'Steak Lady' here) who'd been up for a couple of nights and was now off home.

Cathy and Liz (snr.)

Creature comforts - Deefer lying in a patch of sunlight while
leaning her head on the warm lit range. 

Fuller's London Pride.

Collected from her Knock Flight at lunchtime today was Liz's cousin Cathy, a first time guest. Cathy was Liz's closest cousin when they were all young children together and 2 families briefly lived in the one house in Portmarnock. They are still the best of friends but Cathy is a busy lady (all that taxi-ing teenagers about that all Mothers are familiar with) and had not, till now, been persuaded to make the trip to Ireland to visit us in our new abode.

Regular visitor Danielle (as in Dan and Dan, recently wed on a cruise ship) is Cathy's eldest and Jacob, who visited recently (April 15th) is her 2nd child and oldest son. Cathy recently had a Birthday and Danielle plus Jake conspired to arrange her flights over here and time off the home duties to spring us on her as a nice surprise present. Cathy only found out yesterday that the true destination was here and the rest is history.

Bee hive.

We love that when asked by her children what she'd do here she said, quite simply "I am going to Stop!" Not stop as in stay here (though I think that is even a possibility!) , stop as in take your foot off the accelerator, stop fussing, stop worrying about anybody else, stop with the child-taxi service and all the demands of busy parenthood. All that stuff is catered for by the kids' Dad or the older 2 'children'. We love that we can provide the sort of accommodation where guests can really relax, no demands on them, lie in if they want, sleep during the day and so on. Cathy is surely a deserving case. It will be interesting to see whether she really does slow down. Liz is currently showing her how to make Mayonnaise. I guess that's a form of relaxation.

Part of Liz's Birthday 'haul', this metal and glass owl (and a
frog) for the outside walls. 

Less relaxing and rather more alarming a story comes to us from a friend and nearby smallholder (no names, no pack drill and some 'detail' redacted to protect the innocent and guilty. No pictures, obviously). This lady went out to milk her goats a couple of days ago and was attacked, badly and without warning by her Billy-goat. She was badly hurt - rammed, knocked down several times, stomped on and bitten.

Mum on the phone.

The boy intended to do her some serious damage. He managed to bruise her all round the arms and chest and gave her some bad scratches by slamming her into sharp edges. It started when she unbolted the door to go in for the first milking-Nanny and he slammed the door back past her so that he and all 3 Nannies got out into the yard. It was during her attempts to round up the Nannies that he kept coming at her. It seemed to go on for an hour, she says, though she has no idea really how long.

An interesting birthday present - a DNA testing kit.

She talked me through what she could remember - they'd gone all round and about and between a car, trailer, 2 wheel barrows, pallet sized water butts, stacks of tyres and a fruit cage frame. The Billy had moved the trailer in his efforts to get at her and banged it into the car. Eventually, scrabbling back up from lying on her back between two water butts on the gravel with the goat towering over her with "mad eyes", she was able to grab a pitchfork and manouvre him back into the shed door. There he went all quiet.

While we're looking out, these guys are
often looking in. 

To cut a long story short, Billy goat is no longer living at that address and our friend swears she will never own another male goat. On the plus side, dozens of people have raced around to her with sympathy, help and offers of cover while her partner is currently out of the country for a few days. Liz and Liz went round yesterday and me today. She is now recovering from the shock and is able to tell the story without the tears welling up.

Soldier. The shiny redness is a reflection off Mum's car bonnet,
 on which he was sitting

It is one of those things that all we live-stock folk have at the back of our minds - even if it is only roosters, stag-turkeys or buck-rabbits rather than the bigger, heavier, more powerful rams, boars, bullocks or protective females of these species with calves/lambs/piglets to protect. They can and do turn vicious and have enough teeth, jaws, hooves, horns and claws to do a soft-skinned human plenty of damage. Stay safe people. It's a jungle out there.

Breakfast in Bed

Baking for the next guests - choc, pear and nut dessert

This post brings a nice sense of tidying up on a couple of issues; of "stuff" being sorted out and squared away. No longer an issue. Move on, as they say. First up, Friends of the Blog may recall that I was anxious about these new pigs - that they did not seem to be eating with appropriate gusto and were also very wary of me and shy of approaching.

Square miles of Ballymoe burned off in the recent fires

Well a few more days in that is all changed. They are now sprinting out to meet me and the breakfast or supper bowls and if I sit quietly they will eventually amble over and start chewing on my boots to find out what I taste like. Sprinting, that is, except for on Saturday when the morning brought lashing rain. That day the pigs were on their feet but standing just inside the ark doorway looking at the rain and at me, approaching, dripping in my big yellow hi-viz coat. They had cleared a small area of floor just inside the door, moving just enough bedding for me to land the food bowl INSIDE the ark, out of the rain. Breakfast in Bed for piggies that day. Spoiled!

The cats have pretty much wiped out the local rats. The very
occasional one we get now seems to be brought in from away
across the fields in a neighbour's turf barns.

The poorly tractor belonging to our friend and neighbour down the lane is also fixed and back home. He phoned me on the morning when I knew we had guests arriving so I thought I might be in trouble - his calls for a 'taxi' (Ah. you might just run me into town...) have a habit of suffering "mission creep" and turning into multi-stop mini-epics.

Liz with visitors Angie (left) and Liz (snr). Chicken Savoyard

When I was working in warehouse distribution, the salaried lorry drivers used to always try to get nice clean one-stop missions - load, drive to the supermarket in town X, unload, drive home arriving with not enough 'tacho-hours' to be given a 2nd run. They hated any mission with lots of stops and drops, rudely referring to them as "milk rounds".

Could be the least desirable cheese you ever saw? Espadán
(I think) is a soft-rind, extra mature goat cheese brought back
from Valencia by Mum-in-Law. It mingeth.

That is exactly how I am with these one-stop taxi runs which, once the 'customer' is in the car, gain extra stops at an alarming rate and grow extra miles and hours faster than I can 'deliver' the legs - can we stop at the bank, or the Mart, or the Railway Station? Can we just "stand" (pause) at this cemetery because I need to see can an extra name be added to a gravestone. Ooh, and we better stop for a bit-een to eat too. It's not worth getting to x-point before 2pm as they'll be closed for lunch. And so it goes on. Somehow we managed to check on the man's cattle and do all this rake of jobs, drop him to his tractor repair and get home still before the guests arrived.

The 'Parma' style ham in its posh new stand

The visitors this time were distant cousin Angie (Great great grandpa in common with Liz (jnr), all very complicated.). This lady is a 'find' from the Internet (Facebook, I think). This family have a very rare and unusual surname which most people conclude is Italian but is actually Corsican. In Corsica way back they were Baron-level land owners but backed the wrong king in some fight (Napoleon?) and found themselves dis-possessed. As Liz puts it, "we were Huguenots, thrown out of more European countries than you can shake a stick at" before some ended up in Ireland and, in Angie's case, Bristol (UK). The rare name means that they can nowadays find unknown pockets of family through Google and the Internet.

Fancy new ham cradle. 

Angie was over in Ireland on a round up meeting all the distant rels she has found during these searches and was here for the 2nd time, taxi'd up in this case by Liz Snr. We had the usual fun doing hospitality. Liz arrived fresh back from a break in Valencia and with a 2nd Parma-ham related gift. Last time she brought the proper purpose-designed ham slicing knife. This time, even more generously (Thanks, Mum!) she had bought one of those special wooden support cradles which hold the leg at a jaunty angle while you carve. It was flat-packed but dead easy to assemble.

'Charlie' Moss rummaging around for suitable plants for all
 four of we customers. 

One of the attractions for this visit, enticing the ladies all the way from Co. Laois was that I have finally made contact with a plant nursery specialising in perennial plants. I have been chatting to the owner of this business (Charlotte Moss) on Twitter for a while as part of the normal banter between small holders on that network but it had only recently dawned that her name on Twitter (@CMossPerennials) could well indicate that 'she' was actually a specialist nursery business.

We finally got round to her beautiful, scenically placed, rambling house/walls/buildings/steps place nestling under the Curlew Mountains overlooking Lough Gara today. We loved them all at first sight and 'Charlie' (she asked to be called) is a brilliant, very knowledge-able plantswoman with a superb collection of potted plants which must surely be the result of endless hours of hard and good work. Over the course of a very enjoyable hour or so we filled the car boot to bursting and made no visible dent in her stocks! We were even invited in for tea and then taken on the tour of the lower fields, the fruit trees and the lovely dry-stone, Sligo style walls. It was all gorgeous and thank you so so much, Charlie, for having us and treating us so well. We now have many hours ahead finding the right homes for all these pollinator-friendly goodies.

Show Some Decent Restraint

Santa did us proud this year.

There it was then. Christmas has come and gone. I am not about to bore you with a blow by blow account of all the food, drink, presents and all that; I will just give you a few details and comments and post up a few nice Seasonal pics. Over all it was a very good one in which we thoroughly enjoyed a very relaxing few days with Mum-in-Law (Steak Lady) here to stay for 4 nights.

She will, I am sure, not mind me saying that we thoroughly enjoy her company and she is one of those ideal kind of guests who seem to get along superbly with our style of hospitality. She needs no entertaining or keeping busy and completely relaxes. She loves all the food we serve to her and has all the drink she needs. She sleeps well and we are like a pampering spa-bath to her sense of well-being. She comes out with expressions like "I feel so much younger" or "I woke up so happy" and "It's like a 5-star hotel" or like Lourdes.

An Eve pint

She arrived on the Friday, so was here for the whole of the Eve, the Day, St Stephen's Day (Boxing Day to you Brits) and part of today. She came with us on an Eve visit to Carolyn and co (where-at the new house has that open-to-the-rafters kitchen and there is room for a 12 foot tree!), went to 'Midnight' Mass (9:30 pm) with Liz and came out to Sue and Rob's with us today when we nipped over to return the fox trap and the ram, Silas. We packed her off this afternoon with a wicker basket full of cold meat and left overs, a sack of ash-logs and a tray of 30 eggs (from Sue). A very successful visit. If we ever need to get into B+B ing we feel we could cope.

Regular readers will know that the main meal on the day was to be roast beef, a change from normal imposed by Brer Fox. That was not the only change away from our "normal" traditions. Normally we have a mad wrap-ripping fest as soon as we awake, up on the bed which leaves very few presents for downstairs. Steak Lady was likely to prefer a bit of a lie-in so we decided that we would just do the whole thing later. We would wait for everyone to wake up naturally, have a nice leisurely scrambled egg and salmon breakfast and only then do presents. In practise that took us round till gone 11 am by which time I needed to walk the dogs, so I sneaked that in too. We finished up at around midday.

In my family, such patience would be known as "showing decent restraint" and although across all the meals we ate enough to be as fat as fools, we also found ourselves (rather to our surprise) being restrained in the drink too. Maybe we are growing up at last. We had bought a rake of booze and more arrived from Santa but we would sit and sip happily at a Gluhwein, a wine, a whiskey, a beer or a G+T according to taste. Nobody got unduly 'squiffy' and there were no hang-overs. All in all a great success.

St Stephen's Day ham. Fans of the supermarket version may
think it not bright pink enough but that would just be because
they do not know that the pink is an artificial effect of using
dubious chemicals like nitrites in the cure.

Food and drink might go off at a tangent over the few days but the smallholding and stock 'show' must go on. Today we needed to head over to Sue and Rob's with the fox trap and the young ram we have been using to service our ewes.

Silas says his goodbyes to the ewes. 

The ram, Silas, is a tiny, 2016 ram lamb who we employed more for the practise than in any expectation of high lambing success. We are not 100% sure he managed to mount anyone but whether he did or no, he needs taking off the ewes now. The gestation period for ewes is 5 months, which brings us now to the end of May and I will need to be shearing the ewes to prevent fly-strike. You should not put pregnant ewes through anything as stressful as shearing, so we dare not risk Silas doing any 11th hour 'jobs'.

Silas walked out for loading into the trailer
behind me. 

On the fox front we are becoming a bit convinced now that we shot THE fox and solved the short-term problem. We have not seen hide nor hair of a fox since very early December despite our 24/7 fox watch and my frequent torch-beam hunts for eye-reflections after dark. I am not being complacent yet and I get the horrors at the thought of having to confess to you guys that we relaxed, left the chickens out unprotected and came back to another blanket of torn feathers all over the grass. However we did think that the fox-trap was no longer useful (for now) and Sue asked for it back, so that got loaded into the trailer alongside Silas.

A memorable trifle - the 'fruit' was a compote
of cranberry, apricot, date and raisins cooked
in orange juice with cinnamon and cloves.
The custard was of duck egg yolks. 

While we were on getting rid of surplus 'males'  it also became apparent that Mr Fox had left us out of balance in the chicken dept. with regard to the rooster/hen ratio. Ideally this should be around 7 hens to one roo'. That way he can cope with getting round them all each day to keep the eggs fertile, but each hen gets only a manageable share of his 'lurve'. We had 4 new Marans roosters coming of age and had lost a good few hens to the fox. We were starting to witness distressing 'gang-rape' scenes and some hens were getting threadbare and very unwilling to come out of the coop of a morning lest they got jumped by the roo's, sometimes 2 or 3 at once.

Hard to beat, bacon and cabbage. The cabbage gets cooked
in the liquor from the ham-boil which, in this recipe includes
ginger beer!

Time to 'off' some roo's. This is the least pleasant part of poultry keeping but you have to be able to do it. It is not fair on the hens to leave that situation to run. In fact it is not too difficult but we had Mum-in-Law up and I did not want to do any of these dark deeds with her present. I decided to crate the roosters for the day and sort them once Mum had been packed off.

The '365' show goes on too.

They roost high in the rafters of the barn (roosters seem to claim the highest, safest perches) and chickens cannot move about in the dark, so the wise poultry-man knows to catch them at night with a small torch. In this case I merely had to reach up and lift them by the legs, lowering them down into the crate without a fuss. Then I could move them easily to sort them once Mum had gone. They are now 'late' and will get plucked and dressed tomorrow. It may be my imagination but an air of calm and serenity seems to have descended on the rest of the birds. They now only have our old #1 Lieutenant Colonel Buff Orp rooster and one Cuckoo Marans boy. I will let you know how we get on.

Finally you might recall that St Stephen's Day here is the day for a rather bizarre but nice old tradition  of 'Wren Boys' when gangs of youths would work their way round the village carrying a caged wren and threatening to kill it unless the householders gave them gifts of money or food treats. They would wear straw 'mummers' costumes to disguise themselves. One old boy locally says he can remember when there were plenty but that they used to visit the "singing pubs" rather than houses. The tradition has almost died out now but we got one group last year and we were hoping for more this year.

Well, we got some. They were rather tiny and young, they were driven round by Mum, they arrived wearing Christmas jumpers and Santa masks and singing 'Jingle Bells'. Ah well. They tried - Mum said it was their first outing but that she remembers doing it as a kid herself. We gave them a good supply of chocolate biscuits and euros to encourage them.