Cat and Mouse, Wren and Butterfly

Liz and Sparks do 'beekeeper'

Monday afternoon sees us playing host to 'Sparks', Liz's brother, who is down for an overnight visit. He's on his own this time and is looking forward to a chance to have a good look round the place, relax, consume some of Liz's lovely food and have a good long heart-to-heart into the evening as he's staying the night. He is, as the Chinese (allegedly) say, "living in interesting times" at the moment and has some key decisions to make but distracted or not he is always welcome here; he pretty much built the place, after all (see all the posts from the first quarter of 2012).

So he arrives, grabs a quick coffee and then enjoys a tour of the latest livestock, taking in the pigs, geese and goslings, sheep and the baby Buff Orpington chicks. His afternoon coincides with our weekly bee-keeping tasks, and when offered the chance to suit up in the bee keeping garb and go assist Liz, he jumps at the chance, never having done anything like this before. The job today is to open the hive for an inspection and then, if the existing top 'super' is a buzz of activity, to stack a 2nd super on top, with the queen excluder board underneath it. Typical of Sparks, though, he doesn't just want to parrot this job and do what he's told, he is full of questions and interest, and we talk about the bee keeping for ages, finding him books to dip into and the Association magazine. Once Liz and I get going on that subject, it is difficult to stop us.

Well, the task went to plan and the new super is on, so that can now start filling with drawn honeycomb and hopefully some honey, but it is mid August by now and the big honey "flows" (that is how bee keepers refer to the busy periods of bees bringing nectar back to the hive from the peak flowerings of, for example, fruit trees, dandelions, clover, bramble etc) have almost finished. When I am doing my bumble bee surveys, I often add notes in the 'margin' telling which flowers I have seen my sightings foraging on, and lately these have noted that bramble is almost over and the bees are limited to knapweed, thistles and clover in the verges, with lavatera and lavender in gardens. The honey bees must be seeing the same dearth of flowers so that if you have not made a honey harvest by about now, then you are unlikely to get one. With getting our Nuc' (colony) only in late June, we've missed the boat a bit this year and will have to wait till autumn 2015 before we see any amount of honey

1st class travel arrangements for the chicks -
an old washed out paint bucket!

Other than that the place chugs along in its normal routines. We had one tiny hiccup when one of the 'Baker's Dozen' Buff Orpington chickens dies on us overnight. I have a sad little corpse to retrieve in the morning. We have, as ever, no idea why. There are almost never any symptoms These things just happen and they usually happen very fast, one minute the chick is a healthy and active as the rest, the next near-death or dead. We assume it is some kind of 'runt' development, thing, the weakling chick that would never have made it in the 'wild'? Anyway, we are down to a real Dozen now and , of course, all these look healthy and happy... but who knows?

Purple loose-strife in the pond.

One of our lambs is also concerning us in a small way; it is the ewe and she has gone lame, walking with a slight limp at the back end and seemingly a bit stiff when she gets up from the ground. Our sheep-man Kenny, has promised to turn up soon (!) to attach these ear tags to the sheep, so we will get him to invert the lady while he has a grip on her and he can cast his expert eye over her feet. She may have just taken a 'puck' from one of the boys (this is how they describe a 'clout' or a 'whack' here) and is bruised, but we know that sheep famously spend 23 hours of each day trying to commit suicide, so we had best get Kenny to check for foot root or other lameness issues.

Water mint. Sorry about the rubbish
picture. I was leaning out over the
pond, worried I'd drop the camera
in the drink!

I had a nice surprise this morning, a sight that I have never seen before (all be it not very 'nice' for the 'mouse' party) - a fluttering outside the kitchen door caught my eye while I was making coffee and turned out to be a tiny wren playing 'cat and mouse' with a big peacock butterfly. The wren was not much bigger than the butterfly, so the two looked at first like a pair of butterflies mating, but closer inspection showed that the wren had damaged the butterfly but not stopped it flapping. The wren had to peck and tweak at it for several more seconds before she had it subdued enough to grab the insect's head and fly off to some secret place, presumably to consume the prize. As I said, not a lot of fun for the butterfly, but a wren has to eat too and it was a charming sight.

Foodie Memories

Bathchaps - traditional West Country fare

Mentor Anne, we know, is exploring the possibilities of pig ownership as are we. She too has obtained a half carcass to practise the processing and food making part of this project on, the sausages, butchery and so on. But Anne is a West Country girl and her memories hark back to traditional foods she would eat as a youngster growing up so her most recent post on her blog, which I follow, talks of "Bathchaps", brined, rolled and boiled chunks of pig cheek meat (and lower jaw sometimes) which taste reminiscent of ham.

 http://anirishalternative.blogspot.ie/2014/01/the-real-thing.html

I have never met these before and apparently one of the last manufacturers of Bathchaps (working in Bridport) may be about to stop production. We may be able to correct this omission soon as Anne is trying to get some exported to her and will also be trying to make her own when she gets to the 'pig's head' stage. Till then we have been going down the brawn route, as you know.

Traditional Dublin Gur Cakes

Here, in contrast, it is a glut of eggs which is exercising our bakers and the Irish women in our circle have been looking at sweeter fare from their own childhood tradition, namely Gur Cakes. These traditionally Dublin confections involve pastry top and bottom but a filling made with stale bread moistened with 'tay' and treacle and mashed in with all manner of dried fruits. Another one I have not knowingly eaten but which looks like my all time favourite type of cake, the Eccles Cake.

First make your bread go stale!

Gur Cakes would have been a way of using up your stale left over bread. Round here, bread does not hang around long enough to go stale, especially when there is brawn to make into sandwiches, so Liz found herself having to deliberately 'save' some bread to then make it go stale! I look forward to trying out the Gur Cakes and maybe also a sliver of Bathchap to taste.

Meanwhile we chug on gently through our Irish Garden Bird Survey, which runs from December right through to the first week in March. We have not had any unusual surprises but have had regular counts of all the usual suspects - the 15-strong mob of chaffinches which tidy up the left chicken corn in the yard, the grey-bodied hooded crows which are the only type we get here and a single 'drive-through' by our raven ('Quoth'). We have regular goldcrests and tree creepers in our black spruce, normally around 7 blackbirds, 5 robins and a couple of fieldfares.

One poor little mite which will not be featuring in any more weeks of the survey is this wren, one of the 5 or so we see regularly nipping about in the ivy and the log stacks and walls around the yard. Unfortunately Rolo the cat caught this one last night and Liz only saw him bringing back the tiny brown shape by chance. She rescued him and told off the cat (much good will that do!) and we almost wrote him off, but in the warmth of my hand he seemed to come to a bit.

RIP An Dreoilín, caught by the cat, Rolo

His little eyes opened and he seemed to be taking an interest in things, so we left him quietly in a warm, dry box to maybe recover through the night. Sadly, he never made it and his stiff, cold little form was there in the box this morning. Presumably shock or internal injuries caused by Rolo's attentions. Rolo was scolded and made to write out 100 times "I must not kill anything with feathers" on the blackboard before he was allowed to go home from school. Poor little wren.

Flatpack bee hive and protective outfits

On Saturday we drove through the sleety wet snow, back to our 'Two Marys' beyond Drumshanbo to buy some bee equipment, taking advantage of their January sale prices. We'd intended to only buy the hive in the sale which was going to be a flat pack which we would build but, to cut a long story short, we took shelter from the rain in the clothing store and got tempted to start trying on the caps, veils and over-trousers; our bee keeper "space-suits". Liz was sorted easily but this gear is made in India by small people and we struggled a bit to find sizes which worked with my long arms and (cough cough) broad shoulders. You do not want cuffs too tight or arms too short which might pull up while you are working, exposing the flesh of wrists and forearms to the bees' stinging bits.

We got there in the end and came home happy with our car load. Still no bees, yet. Too cold for them till June, but our names are now down in black and white on the waiting list for our Nucleus ('nuke') box. The other thing we are waiting for is any of the wax 'foundation' sheet used in the hive frames. These sheets are pre-moulded with an 'embossed' hexagon pattern to give the bees a clue where to start 'drawing out' the wax tubular brood cells and (later) honey comb. The manufacturers do not like making the foundation or shipping it about when the weather is too cold, as the sheets are very brittle. They wait till the weather warms up and the sheets become more pliable.

Last but not least, another year has come round to Feb 1st and the day we make our St Brigid's crosses from the local rushes. Far fewer rushes about now we are pleased to say, after all our hard work mowing, scything, strimmer-ing, sheep grazing, goose grazing, rabbit grazing and horse grazing but we found enough to do a cross a-piece to keep in with the tradition.