Fox News 2. Lizzie Strikes Back!

On Monday (28th) morning we posted the following 2 passages on Facebook. I think, as a story, it speaks for itself. There are no pics for obvious reasons (if we'd have had time to take pics.....) so I have slotted in a few recent. random shots. Have fun. (Apologies for the fruity language - we were a bit 'wired')

Danielle's lovely "grave stone" for our fallen
rooster. 

Liz: Bastard fox came back for seconds. Luckily I was here to frustrate his knavery.

Brekker!

Matt: So proud of my wife just now! She is being very modest here. She had the bastard BY THE TAIL for a few minutes and also got a good solid kick into his ribs. She'd heard the commotion in the yard and raced out to see him trying to grab a Buff. That was the chase and the kick. He ran into a shed and tried to lose himself into a dark corner but Liz knew that her favourite chook was hiding in that same corner. RaAAAARRRRRR!

We look after our guests!

She lunges in and grabs a hand full of tail, hauls him up at arms length and then starts looking for water to drown him in or some other method of despatch. Runs round the front, still holding fox and releases dogs who all clamour round but not too sure what is needed. She runs down the drive to the road and starts swinging fox round like a hammer-thrower and then fecked him at the hedge. A bit disorientated. he staggers to his feet and runs off with all three dogs snapping at his heels for 3 fields.

Chicken Tagine

Meanwhile Liz texts me, so I race home. She goes back round to check birds (all OK) while I hike across fields, attracted by distant barking of 3 westies. Unfortunately they all milling round a field-corner and have unfortunately lost the fox. All very happy and excited though, so lots of praise and treats and 'Good dogs!'

Teaching Danielle foot trimming. Snick snack.

Of course with hindsight we both have a million other things we should have done (slammed fox against wall, dropped him in crate, decapitated him with axe etc) but fair play. He is undoubtedly a bit hurt and scared and may think twice about coming back.

I may have the only 'farmer's wife' in the county who has swung a fox round by the tail. Beaming with pride. Go Elizabeth! Bet Danielle wishes she was still here!

Danielle has fallen in love with Towser, one
our "fox hounds". 

You may have to read the preceding post to know the full story but suffice to say we are under attack and still recovering from Wednesday's raid. We were hoping that the fox(es) had taken so many birds that they had a full 'larder' and would not need to return for a while but we are trying to arrange that one of us is always here in case. On Monday it was Liz in the driving seat. I'd gone down to a neighbour's place to muck out a bullock-barn and was just back indoors drinking his tea when the text went off. Naturally I was off back up the lane like hot snot, but it was all over bar rounding up the dogs.

Liz knitted this 'archery target' hat for the
club's baby, Feliz. 

Naturally we are all a bit 'wired' at this stage, jumping at the slightest chicken-noise and racing round to check. The dogs are so excited that they set off barking at the smallest excuse and the Guinea Fowl are worse - firing off their cacophony of clatter at the least offensive of changes or of 'new things'. The poor chickens are mostly recovered by now but both the injured roosters died a few days after the attack, from their wounds or just shock. There are a couple more still sulking in the Tígín (sadly that includes our old favourite Cuckoo Marans, the elderly 'Squawk' (9)) unwilling to walk about. Some hobble as if they may have received leg-injuries which are invisible under the feathers. Liz has been taking food treats in to these 'hospitalised' wounded.

Billie-No-Mates. We inherit this (originally Suzy's) bird from
a friend down the road who has also suffered 2 fox strikes and
was left with this lonely youngster. They decided to bring her
here for company while they decide whether to re-stock.

The story of Liz's heroics is, of course, doing the rounds. I enjoyed telling it in the local Post Office and I can imagine it will be passed on from there. All our Facebook friends are delighted and have come back with comments like "Don't mess with our Elizabeth... She is NAILS!" and even an ode. BUT, we are not all about foxes here. Between the two fox-events we found time to entertain our very good friends Dan and Dan(ielle). This couple have been before and we sometimes refer to them as the 'Children' because Danielle is daughter to Liz's closest cousin from her childhood, Cathy. Dan and Dan love to come here and relax, get very well fed and, in Danielle's case, get involved in the livestock. Dan is on hand to take a gazillion pics for FB.

View from new kitchen roof.

Regular readers may know that we have channelled Dan(ielle)'s hunger for knowledge into a jokey training course in which she has to complete tasks to move on to the next level of skill. This weekend, this was to be Level 6 and the task was to gather and pen the sheep, inject 2 for clostridium (Rosie and Silas), foot-trim anyone who needed it and dag any ewes whose 'lady-gardens' might be blocked enough with poo-ey wool 'klingons' to deter Silas (the ram) from doing his thing. I trust you to need no more explanation of that last bit. As ever, Dan was a star. She happily got into the overalls and wellies and got stuck in oblivious of the rain-wet and lanolin-soaked wool and the shitty 'dags' and rather muddy feet. She was man-handing the ram and ewes about so that we could get to the work-areas on each one, watching carefully as I showed her the foot trimming and then doing some feet solo despite her anxiety that she might cut too deep, nick the 'quick' and draw blood. After than, she found the dagging a breeze. Go Danielle. Level 6 (with Distinction) well earned.

Jet washing the now exposed and pointed
wall.

Amusingly, Dan and Dan were so keen on our stock that they were as horrified as us at the scene of carnage and strewn feathers which were still all over the frosty ground when they arrived Friday, 2 days after the Wednesday strike. Danielle was feeling very murderous  and hoping the fox might come back while they were here, so was desperate when he came back the day after they had flown home and she missed all the 'fun'.

Looking down on K-Dub's van

Meanwhile we have progressed on the kitchen extension work. Today we needed to be less vigilant re our foxy chum - with K-Dub and I clomping about over the roof, bantering with each other, commenting on the antics of the poultry below and making all manner of 'odd' noises (pressure washer, cement stirring paddle, hammering, clambering up and down ladders), we were sure the lad would know we were about. Even so I came flying down for a check at one stage when the Guineas kicked off, but they just seemed to have suddenly noticed there were MEN ON THE ROOF! (Shock! Drama!). False alarm. Ah well. That's enough for this post. More on Mr Fox when/if we put an end to his "knavery".

Newest neighbour. This baby is only days
 old born to next door's suckler herd.

I need this game to end soon. It is ruining my life.

The Complete Tail

Burning the old broken end of your muck fork out of the
metal socket by sticking it in the range over night.

Our cold winds and haily, showery weather look ready to make this the coldest, most miserable May anyone can remember. I don't think the temperatures have topped 12 or 13ºC all month and the bee keepers at our meeting last night in Longford were saying that their hives are not getting any 'flow'. This is the word they use to descibe the huge in-pouring of nectar which foraging bees can bring to a hive when the suitable flowers are out - you get a "dandelion honey-flow" or a "horse chestnut flow".

New toys! Sheep shears.

This year, though, everyone is waiting for the hawthorn (they call it 'whitethorn' here) flow to start and they are wryly commenting that it is 19th May and not a whitethorn flower open yet! So little nectar and pollen is coming into the hives that the nutrition in it is going straight into the brood comb for the young larvae. There is little left over for the bees to stash away in the honey-comb for stores. On the plus side, the colonies will be slower to swarm, if they have that in the back of their minds.

New toys - sheep shears and a butcher's bone-cutting saw.

There is also better weather forecast. I'll be happy if the chilly wind just eases off - I'm not too worried about the showers. I am well set up with my raised beds as regards drainage and not having to walk on the seedbeds, so as long as it has not actually been torrential overnight I can work. I get down there with my knee pads and hunker down in the 'trenches' between the raised beds, protected a bit by the hawthorn hedge and the tall stuff like purple sprouting broccoli, artichokes and raspberries and I'm warm enough. Only when I stand up to lug a full weed bucket to the compost do I get reminded of how bloomin' cold it is.

The rather alarming business end of those shears. 

They say you are never too old to learn something new, and yesterday, down in the 'allotment' I took on one more grain of gardening know-how; one of those which is obvious when you think about it but had not occurred. Back in April, with frost forecast, we raced to throw some protection over the newly emerging 'baby' asparagus crowns. I used some hay, being the first thing that came to hand. When the frost was done, I left it there thinking it would do no harm. Yesterday I went to see why the thriving shoots, which I had been so anxious to protect, were not now doing anything and noticed one keeled over with obvious slug/snail tongue-rasp marks. Pulling up the old damp hay, I found, to my horror, Slug-Central - dozens of the little critters hiding under all that nice warm damp hay and presumably feasting on my precious asparagus overnight. Moral: if you use hay to protect plants from frost, take it up again when it warms up.

Mary's face showing her intriguing white eyelashes

New toys for 2015; we have invested in a set of sheep shears and a butcher's bone-cutting saw. I plan to learn to shear this year so that I am not beholden to a neighbouring farmer or sheepy colleague remembering to invite my 2 or 3 girls over to be included in their mass-shearing. People here use traveling contractors who drive from farm to farm with portable pens, shearing 'stages' and shears. They expect to be doing dozens or hundreds of sheep and the economics don't work if you only have three, so small holders like me would normally try to sneak in on shearing day with our few.

Isabelle (nearest camera) and Mary.

This works as long as your host-farm remembers you and as long as you get warning to keep your sheep indoors to make sure they are dry - you cannot shear wet sheep. In the case of Mayo-Liz, we have also been promised that if we turn up on shearing day, the "bloke doesn't mind" showing anyone how it's done and giving them a small master-class training session with plenty sheep to practise on. I am wondering whether to go with that this time for training purposes, or whether to shear mine if I get a dry three days and go for the practise anyway.

The bone saw was a bit of a luxury and quite pricey but anyone who has tried to use a standard carpenter's hack-saw on bone will know that it is very necessary if you want to butcher up your half-carcass in a reasonable time. Hack saw blades quickly clog with bone shards and bits of membrane and sinew. A bone saw blade has teeth of a special size and shape designed to shed this debris and allow the blade to keep working.

A first chick hatches under the broody Buff in the Tígín

We are still very much enjoying the pigs. They are complete charmers. I am intrigued by Mary's face, which has the big white stripe up her snout but also a bright 'spray' of white eyelashes on her right eye. The other side, and all Isabelle's eyelashes are black. Pigs also have a bristly row of hairs above the lashes as a thin 'eyebrow'. I also love their curly tails which are always in motion being unwound and wound up again as they move about and which they wag like a dog to show pleasure. Our Tamworths last year had had their tails either bitten off or docked when they were tiny, so that we only got a few inches of curl, but Mary and Isabelle's are intact.

Thereby hangs a tail.

Finally, 'breaking news' just today, as the first baby chick hatches under the broody Buff Orpington in the Tígín. This is something of a relief, as the girl had cruised past due date (Saturday) and then Sunday and Monday too, looking a bit more agitated but never letting those little cheep-cheep noises out from under her skirts. Today she hopped off the nest to go do her toilet just as I went out for a check, and I spotted the new chick. Unfortunately, there is also one in there who didn't make it - you can see the rather mashed looking egg directly behind the new chick in the pic. This was a fully formed, almost hatched, but dead and stiff chick who never quite escaped the egg for whatever reason. Mum is back on the nest now with the baby but without the dead one, so maybe she will tempt some more out overnight.