Bull Wire

Bull wire.

We were right to hang onto those worries that the new post and rail fence might not be 100% sheep-proof and a couple of days back I ventured out on some garden errand and spotted that there were only 3 sheep on the lawn. The fourth, one of the rams, was grazing contentedly over by the pond. No damage done; he was quickly rounded up and moved, with his three oppo's, back to the East Field while we investigated the leak. We quickly found hoof prints in some newly dug (daffodil planting) soil - he had shimmied under the bottom rail where a dip in the soil gave him 12 inches or so of space. The solution this time is a single strand of 'bull wire' (it's like smooth trellis wire but thick enough to stop a bull (allegedly)) run along 6 inches from the ground, effectively splitting the bottom gap in half. I had a bit left over from the last job, so I have put that across the bottom two gaps - the taller ones. That seems to have stopped the lamb's gallop and the other three have not tried at all, so possibly I won't need to bull wire the whole 54 metre run.

Beech nuts - 2014 is a good year.

Meanwhile, now that we are through the recent list of inbound visits, we are slotting into a nice routine, especially with those sheep. Each morning they get a small breakfast of lamb 'crunch' (it's like meusli for sheep; all manner of grains, molasses-dipped meal etc) but then some more when I lead them round the corner from East Field to the lawn 'entrance' gate. They spend the day grazing the lawn and Primrose Path, browsing the hedges and pulling young ivy from the huge black-spruce trees. Then around 5 pm I rattle another feed bucket (a small amount more 'crunch') and they come sprinting across to be led back to their East Field for over night.

The very last joint of 2013 lamb - this half leg of Dora.

In previous years we have used the 'crunch' hard - 1 kg per lamb per day, to try to get good weight on but we are going easy this year. We are happy with the weight gain on honest Roscommon grass and last year's lambs were, if anything, too heavy at slaughter. I will use the crunch this year just for the training, leading them around and so that I get a good look at them a couple of times each day. When a sheep comes sprinting up from the bottom of your East Field to your whistle you can be pretty sure there is not a lot wrong with him!

The same, roasted.

By coincidence, we have just used up from the freezer, the last of our lamb joints from 2013, a half leg of the lady we called Dora. The meat has been pure delight. We can't claim organic, or even GM-free because of the crunch, but we can answer for the welfare, love and respect, the complete lack of unnecessary medication once they were here and for the respectful and professionally done 'end' in our local small butchers, Ignatius G in Castlerea. This joint did the original roast on day 1, has done lamb sandwiches for a couple of days for my lunch and my bagel this morning, and has reappeared in a risotto tonight; there is till some left. The dogs enjoyed the bones, too, especially Towser whose turn it was to get the pelvis today.

Two ladies of a certain age? Min and Squawk

The birds are mainly through their moult and have come back into lay. We are amused by the fact that the widow, Min (The Hin) our Guinea fowl has paired off with our elderly one remaining Cuckoo Marans hen, 7-8 years old and still laying regularly. This may be because they were both 'bereft' at similar times and are of similar dark colouring, but we see the two of them patrolling about, chattering to each other. The Marans is a genuine 'lady of a certain age', the Guinea fowl just looks like one with her stooped gait and lowered head position.

Opening the MAQS dose outdoors!

You'll know from previous posts that we have the expected varroa-mite problem in the hive and needed to apply the 'MAQS' formic acid treatment strips to fume the hive for 7 days. We remember from our pre-hive training days, when one of the group asked a visiting speaker whether MAQS 'seemed toxic enough' and he replied "Sure, there's a hell of a bang off it!" We now know exactly what he meant. The formic acid gel-strips come in sealed sachets in a sealed 'bucket' and the instructions say open it outside. They are so lively they stink from several feet away and the formic acid grabs you by the back of the throat.

MAQS strips in place on the queen excluder.

You have to be careful of temperature; you can use the strips when daytime temperatures are between 10 and 29 degrees, but towards the top end you have to create more ventilation or the intense fumes can kill older workers and stop the queen laying. It was about 15 degrees the day we did it, so hopefully we won't have that problem, but the strips are in the hive now slowly doing their stuff, fuming away for 7 days killing mites. The gang will be able to go into the Autumn ivy foraging and Winter, stronger, freed of their parasitic load and will, we hope, survive the winter all the better for that. We take the strips out next Monday when they are spent and we do the mite count thing again in Spring, re-dosing if required.

Rolo RIP (03-06-2012 to 02-09-2014)

Sadly, we have a tragedy to report today as one of our lovely cats, Rolo, was killed by a car last night. Mercifully this was instant. The dogs detected the poor little mite lying in the roadside ditch when we were out for our walk; I would never have seen him but for their noses. He's now buried in one of the flower beds, the site marked by a Geranium donated to us by Steak Lady when we were up at a family gathering over the weekend. RIP, old fella. We will miss you - you were a lovely boy as well as a demon mouser and ratter. Your brother Blue will miss you too, and definitely our pup, Poppy, with whom you were best friends. A short but happy and healthy life.

All Go

Nearly complete - the new post and rail fence.

It seems to have been all go here since the arrival of the Silverwoods (see previous posts). Expecting their arrival we had postponed the task by fencing contractor, Paul (the thought of children mixing it with barbed wire  and Paul's 50 kg pile driver...) but once they had gone, Paul was anxious to get back stuck in. We had 2 nice long days at it, working on till 8 pm or so finishing with all the little titivating and tweaking that Paul, who is a perfectionist likes to do before he signs off. We had been joking about the fact that one of the posts nearest the road had his name written on it in green marker pen, where the batch of wood had been identified for 'shipping', but we both know that people will see the nice new fence (and, we hope, admire it) and then want to know who did it. We will happily tell them Paul's name and he will be happy for the advertisement and word-of-mouth recommendation.

New sheep-wire run along the lane-hedge.

On the final day he was collected from work by his wife and 4 children whom we had happily agreed to show round the place, so we were back in 'petting zoo' mode. They all seem to love the pigs and sheep and the little ones loved a chance to hold a Buff Orpington chick; although the oldest boy went all 'teenager' at that point and decided it was not cool. Paul's wife runs some kind of play group and she left wondering to herself (out loud) whether the play group might enjoy a visit. We are going to have to watch it - we already have Guide Leader Mrs Silverwood measuring up the new sheep field to see how many tents she can squeeze in!

Brawn under construction.

It only remains now to carry on the bucket-training the sheep; teaching them to follow the sound of a rattled feed-bucket, so that we can reliably walk them from the East Field round to the front lawn without anyone making a break for freedom. Longer term readers will recall that our first batch of sheep, which were Jacobs cross ewes in 2012 spent most of their time out on this lawn with me shepherding them around to stop them diving through hedges or down across the 'allotment', but they all have to be bucket trained first - it is a lot easier to attract them back by 'carrot method' than to chase them from behind and use the 'stick'.

Mango chutney - the muslin bag holds
the smaller, woodier spices.

As soon as this job was done, Liz wanted to make brawn from a pig's head donated to us by Anne (Thanks Anne) and also mango chutney, but we have no saucepan big enough to take a whole head from these monsters. We needed to split the head. This is always a rather violent and brutal task and seems a long way from the precision cuts and nifty knife work of proper butchery. My way is to hack-saw through some of the skull from the back, till I have made a crack big enough to take the sharp edge of my one-sided bill hook. I can then use the 7 lb 'lump' hammer to whack the bill hook blade through the rest of the way. It's not pretty. Liz still has to dislocate the long, lower jaw halves before it will fit in the pots.

The chicks at 3 weeks are now outdoor birds. 

We hope that when we take our own pigs to slaughter, if we intend to keep the heads and make brawn, we will be able to persuade the butcher to split the skulls for us; he's doing our butchery. Anne and Simon chose to do the cutting up themselves. I do not have the equipment or the skills, so I am going to hand over the money to the experts; the slaughterman / butcher will be doing ours.

Going through the hive debris looking for varroa mites

Meanwhile, it has come round to the time when all good bee keepers must check their hives for varroa mite. Many people know the name, and associate the words with all that is bad and disastrous about hive failures and 'colony collapse disorder (CCD)'. Varroa mite is now endemic in the British Isles and modern bee keepers pretty much have to accept that their bees will have varroa, the same way their cat or dog will probably get fleas, they just need to monitor the mite population and use one of the modern fume treatments twice a year to knock them down if they get too numerous.

Dead varroa mite. 

The treatment our group prefer is a new Canadian preparation called 'MAQS' (everyone pronounces it 'Max') which consists of strips which you lay in the hive across the frames, which fume formic acid throughout the colony. The treatment is temperature sensitive - it needs to be above 10 degrees to 'fume' properly. The bees hate it at first but soon get used to it - (formic acid is actually one of the components of bee sting), but it seeps into all the air-spaces and down through the wax cappings on the brood cells, killing the mites and mite larvae as they grow on the bee larvae. It presumably also seeps into any honey or pollen stores, but it is said not to taint the honey. You leave the strips in place for 7 days to do their work, then discard them.

A red spider mite (yellow ring) photo-bombs a group of
 much less mobile varroa mites. 

The way you know if you need to treat has been our task over the weekend. In the floor box of the hive there is a permanently fixed mesh floor (mouse and wasp proof but good ventilation) but below that 2 rails which will support a slide-in stiff plastic sheet, on which you can place a large sheet of paper. You leave that in place for several days, and then on a calm day, bring it to somewhere well lit where you can examine the debris which has fallen through the mesh floor onto it - dead tiny insects, bits of wax capping dropped by hatching bees, bee poo etc. In our case we also had some whizzy red spider mites who are presumably eating the other debris and over a hundred of our target species, the varroa mite.

Lovely card from Diamond

These guys are shiny dark or light brown, about 1.6 mm wide, and wider than they are long (like a crab). You then divide the total count by the days and if your 'mite-drop' per day is more than a guide figure for that month (33 for August) then you have a problem and you need to treat. Ours is, so we will be putting our MAQS strips in at the next visit.

Meanwhile, on a lighter note a nice Birthday Card for Liz from Diamond - this one all black with a nice London design laser-cut out of the front. Nice one Roger la Borde designs. Happy Birthday to Lizzie for tomorrow. May you have many many more. Oh, and we had another 'petting zoo' visit from Sparks and his son B(7) who also brought along a school chum named Charlie. Sparks and B loved it - Charlie turned out to be one of those kids who is scared of everything animal like - especially dogs, cats, pigs, chickens and geese. We had a bit of a thin time with the poor dogs locked up in the living room and pouring rain all day, but we survived. All part of life's rich tapestry.

Bee Space

We progress! We received today through the post, our Pig Herd Number and the paperwork we are required to keep all the time we are pig keepers; all the triplicate, multi-colour forms and A4 blank proforma sheets for such as our internal Register. This makes us all official and is required by the responsible breeders before they will allow you to buy and take away their pigs. Still a way to go, of course; we have to do fences, build an ark and actually go and get some pigs, but we are all excited for those days - it will be another new adventure for us. Neither of us has had anything to do with pigs before.

We have also been to Longford again for Lesson 2 of "Bee School", this one a nice lecture by an experienced bee keeper from Co Lietrim, name of Eamonn T which he entitled "The Hive and Its Inhabitants". He brought along a hive similar to the one we are building (a UK National Modified Hive) and talked us through the parts and their functions before then moving on to the bees and how they go on inside, frequently referring to our own local expert, Dieter, to compare experiences. I would not even want to cover all that was included but there were 2 aspects that were new and worth noting. The first was that bee keepers now think that there are no longer any 'wild' (or feral) honey bees about and the second was the subject of 'bee space'.

It is the varroa mite (which you may have heard of) which seems to have done for the feral colonies as it is so successful a parasite that it easily spreads between colonies, especially via the male 'drone' bees and easily between domestic and feral colonies. In domestic (hive) colonies the mite can be controlled using pesticides and its numbers stay low and the colony can thrive, but in the wild situation the bees get no such protection and the mite wipes out the colony which would be in a roof or an old hollow tree. The Department scientists here are now sure that this has been so bad a collapse that the only bees here in Ireland now are in hives or in recent swarms from same. It makes the beekeepers job even more vital to the bee-pollinated crops and wild flowers so it is good to see that our own group and the training classes are so well supported - there is a huge surge of interest in bee keeping going on at present.

Bee hive entrance, 7 mm high give or take.

I was also fascinated to see demonstrated and hear Eamonn's stuff about "bee space". You may be able to see in your mind's eye a typical hive - ours are a 19 inch square set of stacking wooden 'boxes'. But inside they are not just an open void full of random bees. They contain a set of ten or eleven hanging wax frames looking a bit like short files in a filing cabinet. Bees in an empty box would build a similar arrangement of vertical sheets of honey comb hanging from the roof but you'd struggle to get in to examine them, check on them or harvest the honey, so we give them a blank 'brood nest' on which to build and the frames can be slid out vertically.

One of the Bee School hand-outs

The bees move about within this box and between the 'files' like  people in a library, facing the shelf of books but with their backs almost touching the shelf behind. If the space they are moving in feels too 'wide' they build out more comb from the foundation till their backs are again touching the comb 'behind' them. The hive design is set so that bees will build comb from either side of an 'aisle' to the depth required for storing honey or housing the growing baby bee (larva) and to recreate the 7 mm "bee space" between the two sheets of comb. Give them too much space and they will build deeper ('brace') comb which can make it difficult to ease out the frames. Give them too little and they will not be able to go into the 'aisle' and will seal up the gap with resinous 'glue' called propolis to stop the draughts and glue everything very tight together. So hives not only have their frames at the correct distance apart but also have to have all the cross-ways tunnels and pathways of that spacing too - above the frame tops, along the side under the ends of the frames, moving around the floor of the hive, between its layers of frames and across the 'ceiling'. It's all a pretty exact science and they say that if you are going to DIY your own hives then you can do what you like with wall thicknesses and exterior detail as long as you can build to exactly the right internal dimensions. It's called the 'Bee Space' and it is almost sacred.

In one area, though, we are tapping our fingers at lack of progress. We have, as you'll know, our 'magnificent' (our unbiased opinion!) wildlife pond all planted up and filled and bristling with skaters, boatmen and fly nymphs. We have deliberately stocked it with NO fishy predators. We have seen frogs and newts among the long grass in 2013 and some of these we have dropped into the pond just so that they know it is there. We have seen people's pictures of frogs spawning in December 2013 in Cork and now in Kent in February. We have sent out invitations. We have even seen road-kill frogs on the lane here this week, so we know they are starting to move about, seeking out those breeding ponds. We have NOT, however, seen a single frog or newt in our pond. Patience, you wildlife gardeners. If You Build it, They Will Come.......