The Turkeys go Free-Range

The Rector rambles up our old hay-barn wall.
He may only manage one flush of flowers
but he certainly pulls all the stops out to do it.

In the previous post, I apologised for possible poor service and English while borrowing Liz's laptop because my PC was in the doctor's. I can no longer use that excuse. The offending machine is back, delivered today by my new friend Patrick in company of his good lady Lara (no mean techie herself) and ball of energy and fun Tyler (2 and a half)

Red currants doing well despite losing many leaves to the rapacious
gooseberry saw-fly larvae. 

Patrick has done me proud, completely wiping all traces of the old Windows Vista system and installing an official, certificated (and legal, obviously) copy of Windows 7, MS Office etc while saving all our 'documents' (pictures, spreadsheets etc) and moving them across too. We are also right up to date on anti virus/spyware/malware. It all seems to be working; I have been in this afternoon making things happen as normal on email, Twitter, Facebook, spreadsheets and now this blog.

Liz's rose garden with the row of Lady's Mantle doing well.
The roses are just getting there. 

The clean-up has also got rid of numerous programmes which were all set to fire up on a boot-up for equally numerous historic reasons. This box is 10 years old and has seen no end of systems come and go, such as Spotify for music which leave bizarre bits of, for example, Apple software sitting there, firing up at every boot-up and asking for updates.

Our shiny motorway sculpture is now the go-to
poster-boy of dances and other adverts

It also kept telling me that Google Chrome would no longer be updated as Vista is now out of support. We should probably bite the bullet and buy me a new laptop but such moves are so far down the shopping list (Kitchen, chicken house roof etc) that this clean-up and upgrade will have to do for a few years yet.

The turkey poults go free range and, as usual, the Guinea Fowl
lads adopt them and volunteer to mind them. 

Meanwhile, as Summer advances, the young turkeys are released to full free-range having now found their feet in the familiarisation rabbit run. Even while they were so confined, the Guinea Fowl boys were quite attentive and we remember last year how the youngsters were adopted by the Guineas and minded by them.

The Hubbards at 10 days old get to feel the grass under foot
 and the sun on their backs.

I let them out on Wednesday which was a bit showery but that proved to be very beneficial come evening. Turkeys normally get a week or so of being allowed to free range but coming back to their familiar bedroom in the rabbit run. These guys, approaching evening lock up time were relaxing near the coop door when a sudden rain shower drove everyone indoors. No rounding up or shepherding required - I locked them all away and Bingo! Youngsters released AND moved into adult quarters all in the same day.

That proved to be very handy. I needed to put the Hubbard chicks somewhere while I cleaned out their brood-box. Hubbards are huge eaters and fearsome producers of poo, so a week in a small crate can easily have them trampling around in half an inch of the stuff. We started with 13 but one sadly died on the 2nd night (we have no idea why). The remaining 12 are thriving and seem to have doubled in size. White feathers sprout from their wings and tails.

These are not puny weaklings who need constant heat and Infra-Red lamps, they are thugs who can run around arguing about morsels of food and shrug off the breezes of a Roscommon June. As long as you keep them dry and out of the wind, they love being outdoors where there is space to stretch their legs, flap their wings and zoom about like little clockwork toys. So with it now having turned warm and dry, they are out in the rabbit run from morning till evening and then get rounded up back their crate overnight.

It seemed a good choice for a hot, thirsty,
pig-keeping gardener who had been mowing
for a good few hours in the hot sun. 

Only 2 other bits of news occur to me. Mrs C is in the UK for a long weekend meeting the 'girls' for a good session of gossip, gin and eating. The gang refer to it as their AGM. These annual meets which rotate around various European centres have been going for a decade at least and when they started most of those attending had 'serious' jobs in the City and needed a good excuse to not be able to 'just nip in' at weekends. They did not want to get caught slipping up with mentions of anything as frivolous as drinking or restauranting, so they called it the AGM. That way anyone over-hearing the planning talks on phones would assume they were talking business. Clever, huh? The name stuck.

Stumpy's turn to go broody. Probably nice to take the
weight off that poorly foot.

I delivered Liz to Knock Airport this morning for her Ryan Air flight to Bristol. There she'd be scooped up by our good friends Mazy Lou and Airy Fox and taken to Cardiff where this year's host lives and this year's AGM is to be held. Last I heard she had arrived safely and been 'handed on to the next responsible adult'. She's back on about Wednesday.

Good progress by the stone mason on the curved wall about
which more soon. 

Finally, in the warm weather, if it stays dry, I have picked up a bit more sheep shearing. This for a lady who is a friend of a Facebook contact. We are hoping to complete this job, which is only for 3 ewes on either Sunday or Monday, dry weather permitting. More on that when it has happened.

Not too fat this time.

An early breakfast for Mary and Isabelle

Our Berkshire pigs, Mary and Izzy (Isabelle) reach the 20 weeks stage and I get back round them with the tape-measure to estimate their weights. They are 45 and 46 kgs respectively and looking fine and fit. These weights are way, way below what the Tamworths achieved last year (that was more like 70 kg at this stage) but we are happy and this is deliberate. Last year was our first year and I must admit I poured food into them, ignoring the advice from our 'bible' (Liz Shankland's "Haynes Pig Manual") and giving in to their squealing, raucous demands that I continue the three meals a day, and 800g+ of feed every meal. I scooped food using a 1 litre yogurt tub and I'm sure they got a scoop each at each meal.

Tamworth (2014) pork chop with a good
2cm covering of fat. 

The 'bible' says that up to 16 weeks age you increase feeding so that the portion matches roughly 1/10 of age in weeks (i.e. 1.2 kg per day at 12 weeks) but that after 16 weeks you drop down to a maintenance diet of 1.4 kg till slaughter. This for 'pork' animals rather than baconners. We know from our meat from last year that my over-feeding proves this spot-on. The chops have a good 2 cm covering of fat at least which other than what you can feed to the birds or dry-roast (skin) as dog treats, would be waste. A chop which weighs 288 g includes 92 g of fat and skin, so if you trim that off, you are losing 32% of the weight.

A giant scabious? This fella is 4 feet tall and has flowers two
and a half inches broad. 

We can see why, in these days when people do not want to eat all that fat because they are no longer doing manual labour to burn off calories, the commercial boys go for a much more lean, middle-white style of pig.

Went shopping and 'accidentally' bought
this new penstemon for the tubs in the yard

Did we really produce 90 kg animals and get 70 kg of meat back from the butcher? I don't think so with all that "waste". The 32% will not apply all across the carcass of course, but even so, I certainly spent more money on pig nuts than I should have or needed to. So this year, Mary and Isabelle are on a strict, 'Shankland' diet. I never started the three-meals-a-day (nuts) habit. They have only ever had a piece of fruit each at lunchtime, an apple or a peach cut up for example. In the morning and evening they get a strict one-and-a-half tubs (1.4 kg) of meal (plus more fruit) split between them, so that they get their 1.4 kg each per day. Guess what - thay are still perfectly fit and healthy and they do not squeal for food in between meals and annoy me from half way across the garden. They may only be 55-60 kg at 6 months, instead of 90 kg but we hope they will still look a decent sized animal and should have a much thinner covering of fat. "Ripped" like an athlete, maybe, rather than blubbered up like a beached beluga whale? We'll see.

Newly hatched turkey, still damp from the egg.

When I last posted, we were still waiting for the cheep of a pipping turkey egg or two from the incubator, but not very hopeful because of our mid-term power cut. Well we got two babies over Monday night into Tuesday; the remaining three eggs are awfully quiet. That, we have found, seems to be the way of it with incubator hatches of small batches. Charlotte tells us that they all tend to come out together, encouraged to extra efforts by the cheeping and nudging of their neighbours moving eggs about as they wriggle around inside. They end up, if they are able, synchronised and you don't really get any stragglers - you can leave the unhatched eggs for days more but to no avail. We presume this is an adaptation which would work for ground nesting birds, so that the whole new family could be up and finding food, not sitting around unfed while the Tail-End Charlies hatched. We don't hold out much hope for eggs 3,4 and 5.

Non-skid place-mats from an old folks home, now used as
non-skid floor for new-hatch turkeys.

Many thanks, too, to our new chum Sue, who gave us some non-skid rubber mesh pads to try out. These soft pads are really placemats as used in old folks' homes to stop crockery skidding about but turkeys when newly hatched are notoriously wobbly on their legs. They struggle to find enough grip on the plastic floor of an incubator to flip themselves upright and then get their feet under them enough to stand up. We have seen this. They thrash around flat on their stomachs, flailing like a frog and there is a risk of the poultry-keeper culling them out as crippled failures.

The first batch of turkeys are now 5 weeks old and getting huge.

On this rubber mat, as long as they can get up the right way, they are up on their feet and walking about in no time. They do still teeter and wobble like drunks or baby humans and occasionally fall onto their backs but if you rescue them from that a couple of times, they soon get the idea. The mat is also infinitely washable (as you'd expect from old folks' home ware) and, because you do not need to bed the birds on shredded straw or wood shavings (which they kick into the waterers), it is a lot easier to keep their water supply clean and fresh.

Red Valerian nicked from a river-side wall
in town last year as a root "cutting".

The next job is to teach them to peck up food. I'm not entirely sure I need to do this; they may learn it by themselves from folk-memory. I enjoy it though and it gets them used to me. I sit in by them with a chopstick either "pecking" at the food, dipping the end in water and tapping this onto the side of their beak, or trying to convey bits of food to them stuck to the end. They start first to peck at the chopstick but then get impatient with me and peck instead at the bits I am 'pecking' in the bowl and, lo, tukeys eating! That's the theory anyway. These most recent 2 seem to be playing games with me. They profess complete bamboozlement, looking at me, then the chopstick, shaking their heads vigourously to shake off any food they have got on their beak by mistake. They slope off back under their nice warm 'electric hen' as if bored.

"About Bloody Time!" exclaimed Liz when she finally got this
Philadelphus to flower after many years of trying and three
different 'blind' bushes.

I wonder if they will ever learn, but then I come downstairs and I can hear, through the floor boards, the sounds of vigorous activity above, like a plague of rats has taken over the spare bedroom. Surely that is the tap-tap of efficient pecking? Sure enough, when I next visit the bowl seems very empty and the bamboozled birds are looking up at me as if to say "What food? Wasn't us!" No matter. New hatch birds get a 24-48 hour breathing space before they must eat on account of the yolk re-absorbed into their abdomen just prior to hatch, so their failure to eat on Tuesday or Wednesday would not have been a problem. They need to eat (and drink) today, mind, so they can do it sneakily upstairs if that is their thing.

A good sized thyme grows in the side
of our keyhole bed.

All being well, Liz returns to the fold today after her most recent 'Ministering Angel' trip to Silverwoods and I 'd rather have two well fed birds to show off, than 2 starvelings.

Greece and Turkey(s)

Annamaria gets the girls mobile.

The eagle has landed. My travelling wife is returned from her mission to tie up those loose ends for our late friend Diane in the Greek island of Poros. Poros was Diane's favourite (and 'only' by the end) holiday destination and she went two or three times a year every year from when Mum took her, aged 27, around 30 years ago. She was well known and loved there by many locals and, indeed, many café owners there now, she bounced on her knee as babies of the café owners 30 years back. Liz went with her around a half dozen times in recent years and was there for the trip when Diane married John out there (remember the famously miss-spelled 'Happy Webbing" cake?). Latterly, Liz would go out on the Spring trip, and Diane took John in the autumn.

Annamaria, Liz's main guide, with her son
Andreas. Thank you Annamaria - we owe you
so much.

In these recent trips they would always use the same hotel, owned by a local lad but run by the two 'old dears' of the family, always affectionately known as the "Yia-Yiás" (pronounce it Ya-ya's, it is an affectionate term in Greek for Grandma). That was an obvious start point but Liz had a mental list of similar haunts - pavement and indoor cafés, restaurants, even a Taverna across the water up in the mountains surrounded by lemon groves. She wanted also to visit all these local contacts and friends to say a kind of 'Goodbye' on Diane's behalf, explain to them, if she can, how Diane died, sympathise with them and somehow share with them that there will be no more visits from their bubbly, happy, English 'regular'. I must hurriedly apologise if I am making a hash of this 'explanation'.

Liz gets a cuddle from superb old gent, Andreas Lazarou

Liz is fortunately helped in this task by there being some among the Greek (or long-term Poros visitor) mutual friends who speak good English, notable a lovely lady Annamaria who even suggested hiring a moped with pillion seat to help them get about. Liz has no Greek and is further hampered by the fact that Diane had the Greek so she used to guide and organise everything, but also used the local names for things which everyone on Poros would know but would not be in any guide book or on road signage. "The Yia-Yiás" is not the real name of the hotel (!) and a café which they all know as "The Bulgarians" because back in the day when there were a lot of Bulgarian economic migrants on Poros, that was the café where they all gathered at lunchtime or of an evening. One favourite haunt (known locally as Thanasis Café) had actually closed down in the intervening time; just a clear pavement and white-washed windows.

Beekeeping burger man.

So Lizzie was not much looking forward to this trip and wished it would go away, but knew that it wouldn't and that she must steel herself and do this last thing for our much missed friend. She knew she must go alone because to take me or any other 'third party' might make it look like she was really on holiday to the Poros folk, and if she went with widower John, there would be raised eyebrows at him, so recently bereaved, "swanning about" with another woman and former best friend of Diane. They are salt of the earth and genuine Greek Orthodox people with a keen eye for old traditional values. They deserve respect and so does Diane's memory and legacy. No, this had to be a single-handed journey, but she was sure she'd cope. She was only away from here 7 nights; time flew. Now it is done, it is done for good. 'We' may return to Poros, maybe in our later years, when we have a bit less livestock and a bit more time.

Burger bee-man's signs

But how to go about these very difficult 'meet and greets'? How do you address an old old mutual friend who (you hope) knows of Diane's passing and that you have come out to the island just to say a kind of goodbye to these valued loved ones? Liz had mentally put together a quick few sentences telling of Diane's last day, including the happy tea party with her London friend Stefan, husband John off on his dogwalk with Diane's request for 'posh cheese' the last words he heard, her quick, clean, painless end from the pulmonary embolism, that she died at home and on her own bed.

Gifts from Greece - brandy. Actually, to be more accurate,
"Greek alcohol drink of natural aromas and distils"

Many of the Greeks would openly weep there on the street where they met and hug Liz tight. One poor lady actually met Liz as she came out of a washroom, recognised Liz, guessed why she was there, burst into floods of tears and had to be ushered back into the washroom by Liz while she got herself back together. Some of the greetings were a bit less harrowing, one (Angelo) they caught up with as he was out on his boat in the harbour and Liz ended up yelling friendly abuse across the water to him about why he never had his phone turned on or charged up, before heading for a café. Two other favourite old boys in Diane's crowd, she met while they were taking their regular walk along the sea front (Captain George (fisherman) and Eleftherios (fishmonger)). To a man/woman, they were very concerned about Husband John, was he coping? Was he eating OK? Greek men apparently will often go to pieces when first bereaved.

Greek sweets - they are (phonetically)
"ah-mee-gda-lo-ta" - don't ask me to
spell that in the Greek alphabet!

The old boy, Andreas (now quite elderly) who owned the Taverna up in the lemon groves was just awake from his nap, being looked after by his lovely carer, was still a bit befuddled from sleep and has no English, but he was happy to sit by Liz patting her knee and smiling - he seemed to know that he'd seen Liz before and that she was here for a good reason, but the carer explained that he had not taken in Diane's death and that she would explain it to him in due course when he was more with it. There, inevitably also one lady who had not heard of Diane's passing, so Liz had to actually break the news, and there other people who over heard Liz talking to the 'ones on the list' and chipped in with "I knew Diana too...." (They all called her Diana out there).

On the right a hard Greek sheep's milk cheese (nice enough)
but on the left, the freshest, most gorgeous feta I ever had
the pleasure of tasting.

In this way Liz worked her way round the town and completed the task. She was very much ably assisted by our good friend Annamaria who scared Liz half to death by suggesting that rather than walk, they hire a moped and zoom around like proper Greeks, dicing with the traffic. Liz took her first pillion ride with eyes tight shut, head down and both hands gripping Annamaria's waist hard enough to bruise the poor girl. By the end, though, she was apparently sitting back, hand by her sides, big silly grin and "I'm on a BIKE" in her head!

Newly hatched turkey chick, still damp from the egg.

With the job done, Annamaria decided they both needed some rest, relaxation and recouperation. Annamaria had taken time off work (in Athens) to shepherd Liz round Poros (we are so so grateful, Annamaria - thank you so much) but now needed to go home so that she could return to work, but she suggested that Liz come with her, stay in her house in Athens and relax till the time came for the flight home. Just what the doctor ordered. We also need to thank the bro-in-law, Sparks, who did the airport and railway station taxi-runs in Dublin and put Liz up overnight at either end of the Poros mission, cooking a nice line in breakfasts. Thank you Sparks.

In one final amusing aside, Liz managed to meet 2 more beekeepers while she was out there and even enjoy some bilingual conversation about bees, where she'd have only minimal vocabulary and the Greek guy maybe a tiny bit more English. One was just a man with a burger van where Annamaria stopped in the car for some light snacks; Liz spotted a pic on the van of the burger seller in a beekeeper-suit and realised that he was also selling honey. The other, a guy named Costas (Annamaria is his daughter's Godmother) had been minding the Annamaria's son (also called Andreas) while Annamaria was looking after Liz on Poros. Liz and Costas were also found showing each other pictures of their and our animals, and letting Liz photo their geese. In Greece, though, honey quality is judged on darkness of colour, with the real burnt-umber colours being the best, so Liz did not show them pics of our straw-coloured product. They would not have been impressed.

Finally a bit of nice, surprise, good news from home - we woke up the the cheepings of just-hatched turkeys. We have 8 eggs in the incubator and were not expecting any hatches till day 28 (June 8th) so these little ones are 2 days early. We have 2 out so far and a third well on the way to cracking the top off the shell, so watch this space for a final score.