You Live and Learn

Oven ready Hubbard 'roo'. Apologies for
the imperfect plucking and torn skin. 

First up today, the weights on that Hubbard rooster, as promised. He was at 97 days old and had a live weight of 3.645 kg ( 8 lb and half an ounce ). In oven-ready form he weighed 2.470 kg ( 5 lb 7 oz ) so a fine big lad and one we would not normally roast intact for just the two of us, so Liz has jointed him up and we will get 4 meals out of him easily. We started that evening with a roast thigh and a 'fore-arm' a-piece which Liz deliberately cooked with just oil so that we could assess the full unadulterated Hubbard flavour. Meaty and delicious served with potato wedges, home made coleslaw and home made mayo, all washed down with a very nice Italian red wine, Montepulciano which we are getting currently from Lidl at just under €30 for 6 bottles. These Hubbards are declared a success and if we get a chance we may do them again. This is an 'if' just because we only ever got these through a bizarre sequence of events (you may recall) - our 'clocker' (broody hen) was rearing some very young ducklings having incubated the eggs for 28 days and we wanted something to slip under her when we took the ducklings back to their owner, Mentor Anne. Anne happened to be driving right up to the hatchery on the Northern Ireland border to collect some day old Hubbards for herself and a friend and offered to collect 8 for us on the run.

I said that when we decided to buy a pair of Guinea fowl we knew next to nothing about them - only what we'd read in books, been told by the seller and found out by a quick internet search. We have since had some fun picking the brains of Anne and Simon and the many many poultry experts and keepers on a couple of internet discussion forums, one of which I am one of the Moderators on. Well, now we know all sorts of facts, myths, legends and 'what I reckon' comments, probably more than you need and definitely in some cases a little 'embellished'.

They can be a devil to persuade to stay around and difficult to teach that new home is a their new home. They love to roost up high in trees and one lad suggested that they can predict the weather better than Met Éireann, choosing to roost out on nights where it will definitely not rain, but roosting in their coop when there is risk of rain. They free range like crazy - another member of the group said he'd often seen his out half a mile from home during the day but that they were always home by supper time. It is said that they might attack your chicken-roosters. They are allegedly as thick as a plank - more stupid than any other bird. Anne, who keeps quail and does not have a very high opinion of quail brain-power, says that Guinea Fowl "make quail look intellectual". Another lad says they are "far from stupid". The eggs are apparently nice but a very pointy shape, almost triangular (says Simon) and Anne commented that the shells are so tough that if you are trying to do the eggs and toast soldiers thing, you almost need a hacksaw to do the neat decapitation. Pick the bones, as they say, out of that little lot!

We have had to part company with our friend, miniature Falabella cross stallion Cody. He'd been in our sheep field since a month or two back because his alpha-male hormones had been driving him to escape the 'home field' and go in search of mares. This had led to an interesting hour one day for Carolyn when she'd had to go 'rescue' him from a field of three full sized mares who were playing 'hard to get' teasing him as he chased them in his randy way while they tried to kick his head in, playing rough. Carolyn, who is not much bigger than Liz, had to dive into this mêlée and pull Cody out for his own safety and get him to the gate without any of the mare kicks connecting, while Cody wanted to stay in there and work on his seduction technique.

Cody ended up in our field where he'd be OK with the sheep because he was such a chilled out lad that he was OK with anything and, indeed, that was the case. He became a boss-sheep and used to give the 5 sheep the run around occasionally but was only playing and never seemed to be trying to do them any damage. Happy days. He was going to be gelded by Aoife (Rhymes with Deefer) the Vet but the warm autumn had meant that the risk of fly/maggot infection in the gelding scar was too great and this has not yet happened. Then yesterday it seemed to turn nasty and a bit serious. I went out at 4-ish to find Cody beating up one of the ram lambs, Cody had the ram pinned down between his front 'knees' and seemed to be trying to bite chunks out of the ram's woolly flanks. I raced into the field and, yelling at Cody and smacking him on the nose, managed to separate the 'protagonists'. I got Cody into a head collar and tethered him to the fence. The sheep seemed to be OK, just a small reddish wound near one eye and chunks of wool hanging off, but they all piled into their supper and certainly looked OK by this morning.

We phoned Carolyn for advice and she decided that the lad had better be brought home, so Charlotte was dropped off to walk him home. He is now back home in the sand-school but where he can get to a lot of grass growing round the edges. His gelding operation is now timed for some point in the next 2 weeks and fairly soon after that our sheep will have gone for their last journey anyway, so he can safely come back into our field while his hormones calm down. Then he can be reunited with his two amigos, Bob and Romeo. Complicated this horse management, isn't it? Maybe we should stick to our highly intelligent Guinea Fowl?

Guinea Fowl

Guinea Fowl

We have treated ourselves to a pair of Guinea Fowl as an Anniversary present to ourselves. We have never done these rather bizarre looking things before (though we have eaten the meat) so this is a new species for us. We saw this pair at the Balla-D livestock fair. I asked the price but didn't discuss it further at the time with Liz and only on talking in the car we discovered that we both thought they'd be a good idea. We managed to track down the guy's phone number via our friend Charlotte and nipped out to inspect them today, found them to be clean, free from parasites and sound looking birds and brought them home in the cat basket. They are now exploring the kitchen garden, separated from the rest of the stock by the fence and checking out their new quarters, a mini coop I created this morning from bits of caravan-bed and cut down shelf laths from the Utility Room.

What a handsome dude!

Guinea Fowl are an African bird originally from the family (or sub-family if you are American) 'Numinidae' (Order Galliformes) with the one species, the Helmeted Guinea Fowl (Numida Meleagris) having been domesticated many years ago and spread throughout Europe (and elsewhere). They are used for meat, though you can eat the eggs. We have eaten roast guinea fowl several times in a Creek-side restaurant in Faversham which used to be owned by a locally famous chef from the Dordogne. They tend to be a bit smaller than a full grown chicken, so we like that you can manage a whole half-bird on your plate.

What we know about these guys has mainly come from the internet over the last few days and by talking to the seller and his good lady. We are assured that these are a breed-able pair (i.e. not brother and sister) and actually they mate for life and the girl is a good layer who produced many eggs last year. They do sometimes go broody but I think we may end up using Broody Betty again. The chicks, called 'keets' are tiny and delicate and, being African natives, do not like damp or wet grass till they are quite feathered up, so we may also be needing a broody box. Apparently they are almost impossible to sex except for by their calls, so we don't know which one is which yet!

Bodge of the week!

So, there you are. Where they came from had all its runs completely bare of grass, so they were running on a mix of mud and stones. They seem to be delighted with the green-ness of the quarters here which is currently the kitchen garden with its grass paths, cleared raised beds, the 'Jam and Jerusalem' Hedge. some herbs and roses and the gravestones of the late Haggis and Coco in out Pet Cemetery. We have had them wing-clipped by the seller so that they stay put till they get used to us, the new house and these surroundings, but the plan is to have them completely free ranging along with the rest of the gang.

Tarka Dahl under construction

What to call them, then? We are currently enjoying the TV series "The Sopranos" as a boxed set having let it pass us completely by when it was first aired. Well, we find that Guinea is a derogatory term in America for Italian Americans, so we considered naming them Tony and Carmela for a while, after the two main characters in Sopranos. Or maybe Numi and Mel from the Latin name (above) but we'll probably leave it open for now and see what happens.

In other food news we have been exploring the Guardian newspaper's "Best 10 Curry Recipes". We had the one called 'Luxury Chick Peas' first and then yesterday a lentil based one called Tarka Dahl which we had with flat breads and home made mango chutney. Like the Madhur Jaffrey recipes, neither have so far turned out to be madly hot or challenging, just beautiful complex mixes of spices. I have also culled out my first Hubbard chicken (actually a rooster). More on that including weights, in the next post.

Anniversary Tourists

By the beach at Louisburgh, Croagh Patrick behind us.

The 3rd of November saw us hitting a major milestone and a happy event, our 20th Wedding Anniversary. We had decided a while back to celebrate this with a nice breakfast, a scenic drive, a picnic and a candle lit steak supper. We knew we were taking a chance with the weather but we just amused ourselves with the possibility of having to that British thing, a picnic in the car by the side of the road with the wipers going occasionally to clear the rain off the windscreen. When the 2nd of November presented us with a vicious Westerly, a gale of wind and driving rain squalls we wondered whether the joke was about to become reality but no, the 3rd dawned bright, blue skies, warm sunshine and not a breath of wind. We were on!

The beach at Old Head

Breakfast was that family favourite, boiled eggs and toast soldiers, always improved by having your own, deep yellow yolked free range eggs. Then we were showering and preparing the picnic, again, family favourite "Hang Sangwidges" and various salads plus some chocolate cake for 'pud'. With the car loaded, dogs an' all, we headed off west to find some scenery. Castlebar we have been to dozens of times, especially while building the house, but we'd never been past Castlebar and on towards Westport and all the lovely mountains and coast of North Mayo.

The shore of Doo Lough. 

As you approach Westport you can soon see the famous, cone-shaped 'Holy Mountain', Croagh Patrick, scene of many a pilgrim hike in the Summer, with an option to do it in bare feet if you are feeling particularly martyr-like. We are determined to do the climb soon, but not in bare feet. It is reckoned to take about 2 and a half hours to the summit, none of these Irish peaks are 'that tall' and "The Reek" is only 764 m. It is a tourist magnet, though, so we will try to avoid the known pilgrimage days.

From Westport we headed on West into ever smaller lanes, determined to reach 'Roonagh', the small port from which you catch the ferry out to Clare Island, famed in one of our favourite 'Sawdoctors' songs. We needed to let the dogs out for a comfort stop, so Liz found Old Head on the map, a small headland with a beach just east of Louisburgh. After Roonagh, we headed back to Louisburgh and then southwards into the mountains aiming for the gorgeous Doo Lough Pass and Doo Lough itself for our picnic.

Not everybody faced with a Lough in November in North County Mayo gets the urge to paddle, but I did and Liz grabbed the camera and took these pictures. The bed of the lough here is a lovely smooth scree of rounded, flat stones, perfect for skimming across the surface of the mirror-smooth water, so I could have gone barefoot, but I had my 'crocks' with me, so I kept those on. The dogs seemed to like the belly-deep (for them) wading, It wasn't that cold.

We swapped drivers at this point and I took over the maps to guide Liz down past the lough and on down to Killary Harbour (a 15 km inlet of the Atlantic), round the head of that to Leenaun and then south some more climbing over the minor road between the 'Devil's Mother' (mountain) and Ben Beg, grinding up the incline and dropping down a beautiful hairpin bend road and over a lovely bridge to Lough Nafooey. On to Lough Mask by which time we were a bit touristed out, so we were happy when Liz got onto some bigger roads, for the drive back eastwards through Ballinrobe, Claremorris picking up the N17 to near Knock airport and the lanes home. It had been a beautiful drive and a lovely, enjoyable day.

With all the livestock sorted we were able to crack the wine open and get our steak supper organised, whereupon the power died on us, so we would have had to eat by candle light even if we'd not planned to. Luckily we have a gas hob, so cooking was not a problem. We had a lovely evening chatting and reminiscing in the romantic ambience and, in fact, when the power was restored at 8 pm we chose to turn all the lights off anyway and carried on with just the candles. Cheers and here's to the next 20 years.

Our First Livestock Sale

We needn't have bothered with Hallowe'en, the pumpkin carving and the bowl of sweeties in the end. Not a single child came and tried to 'Trick or Treat' us. The small group from 2 families down the lane, the McG children who made it last year, although I'd seen them gathering in the afternoon, obviously went elsewhere come evening. You will recall that Liz was out at the Dublin Knitting and Stitching Show, getting back to Balla-D by just gone 8 pm, so I was all set with the 5 pumpkins burning up the driveway from half five, but to no avail. Come 8 and I was expecting Liz's call, knowing I had to nip to Balla and I might miss the children, I put the bowl of sweets out front and decided to leave them a note. Feeling still a bit enthusiastic at that stage, I composed this silly ode.

Come ghosts, come ghouls, come witches all
You're welcome to our house and hall
I kid you not - don't hear me say
I got too scared and ran away
I had to nip to Balla-D
To c'llect my wife from Dublin, see?
But don't you worry, hungry friends
We have a way to make amends
There's sweets and smarties on that table (arrowed)
Grab big handfuls while you're able
We'll be back soon, before you know
But we'll be driving safe and slow
More scary kids I've never seen
Good Luck and Happy Hallowe'en!

It made me smile, anyway, so I thought I'd post it here. There! Art! Culture! Poetry, even! Are you impressed? No, OK. Nor were the local children who still stayed away in droves. The only youthful activity I saw was some herberts letting off fireworks from the lane down towards the nearby village of Lisacul but I guess that is the way of the world. I came back with Liz by which time it was raining, rescued the sweets and the poster from the wet and we retreated inside and finally had supper. I was amazed that the little pumpkins, which had been so hard to get alight with their little tea-light candles in the wind and drizzle, were still going strong at 10 pm when we went to 'lock up'. 

The next morning, the 1st November, is the regular and traditional date for a bit of a livestock fair in local town Balla-D. We are told that ten years ago this was a huge event, the streets crammed with folk, dozens of stalls selling stuff, huge rows of people with poultry in crates, geese sitting on the pavement restrained by being pushed into onion sacks with a hole cut in the bottom for the neck, trailers full of piglets and every kind of horse and donkey tethered to every handy bit of fence, lamp-posts and bollards, 4-wheel-drives and scruffy vans everywhere parked as only the locals seem to know how, double parked, abandoned at jaunty angles to the kerb, all across zebra crossings and double yellow lines. 

'Dublin Girl', one ear up, one ear down.

Now it is a much smaller event confined to a couple of streets and 'the corner' near the SuperValu supermarket, with maybe a dozen stacks of poultry crates, 15 horses and half a dozen donkeys. We have seen it before and pretty much avoided it, pigeon-holing it as a 'Travelling Community' thing, convinced that any stock you bought there would be in poor condition, dirty or diseased and over-priced. 

Our friend Charlotte from down the road, however, is made of tougher stuff than we are and uses it as a way of clearing some excess stock, in this case rabbits and ducks. She pitches up, snatches herself a chunk of pavement, sets up shop between the horses and stock trailers and is quickly surrounded by a hoard of children all trying to brow-beat Daddy into letting them have a bunny rabbit. On this occasion, having no female bunnies to sell, she said that if I'd drive her down and collect her again at 3 pm, she'd be happy to include some of my remaining females in the 'shop'. So there I was at 10 am, the little Fiat loaded to the gunwales with cat baskets of rabbits, cage crates 'flat-packed', drinkers, hay and feed sacks tied at the top with baler twine, quacking and writhing with their living ducky contents. 

We pulled up like regulars at a likely vacant chunk of kerb, unloaded, I helped Charlotte set up, wished her luck and left her to it. We dropped by during the day as we shopped in Balla, and she seemed to be busy with prospective customers. She had a good day, selling 6 of her 10 ducks and a good few rabbits including we were delighted to find, two of our females including our prettiest one, 'Dublin Girl', she of the multi coloured coat and one ear up, one ear down. This, we realised, is our first ever sale of livestock. Charlotte has also advised us that there may be more sales between now and Christmas at which she would be happy to work the same arrangement plus she may get customers she would pass my way (who wanted female rabbits) going into Christmas. The 'stock' will not be 'offed' for casserole  for at least the next couple of months. 

Hallowe'en in a Small Way, Knitting in a Big Way!

I've never been that bothered with Hallowe'en. Growing up in England through the 60's and 70's we didn't really do it. There was nothing in the shops like there is now. You all did Guy Fawkes Night and then had the gap till Christmas and we were all amazed when the film ET came out and we saw all those American children out 'en masse' Trick-or-Treating. It started to creep in to Kent while we lived there (mainly the 90's and the 'Naughties') so we bought the obligatory tin of Roses chocs and carved a pumpkin for the front window to give notice that we were up for it, but we only ever got a couple of groups of very well behaved and shy, restrained kids on our street. You had to brow beat them into taking 'a decent handful' of the chocs, or you'd be left eating them for weeks. I remember one year where Liz and Mrs S (possibly before she was Mrs S?) tipping our tin out onto a coffee table so they could sort out sweets between ones we liked and ones we didn't. The good ones were then buried at the bottom of the tin so that the kids would mainly take the yucky strawberry creme centres.

The Silverwoods, on their 'young' estate with its million children go the maddest for Hallowe'en. The streets pretty much become no-go areas with great troops of little witches and ghouls in elabourate costumes being shepherded from house to house. Everyone gets involved, so the whole street(s) have all bought a truck load of sweets  and gazillions of Euro worth of decorations - big black billowing Death-mask figures which rise up on strings attached to the door when you open it, sound effects, lit up grave stones for the front lawn, dry ice smoke and so on. Real artistry is applied to the pumpkin carving (unlike mine, pictured, which took 5 minutes!) using stencils from the internet to do cats, witches, mummies and the like. Mr S's ones are brilliant. He must take hours over them. Special ghostly food is cooked and spooky parties are held for all the kids, who by now have returned to their own house several times with full carrier bags of sweets, their arms too tired to carry all the booty. Liz and I were there for one year and it was all brilliant fun.

Back here though, we live in a lane where there are only 2 families (2 brothers) with any children. so we don't go too mad. I grew a few pumpkins this year which we will put along the drive and on the gate piers when it gets dark. If last year is anything to go by we will get one visit (both the families, and one of another brother from outside the village) but they do a good job of dressing up and they get shepherded around by the Mums in hi-viz jackets. We are happy to join in as part of our getting known and accepted in the village. I'll let you know how we got on. When I say 'we', unless the kids are very late it is more likely to be me and the dogs because Liz is away.

She has gone to Dublin with her 'Knit and Natter' group in a 29 seater coach, to the annual "Knit and Stitch" Show which is held at the RDS, Ireland's big national exhibition space, equivalent to the NEC or Earl's Court in the UK. Knitting, cross-stitch and the likes are MASSIVE in Ireland and this show is a huge Trades Exhibition for the wool producers, knitting needle makers and anyone with new ideas or techniques or equipment to show off. We were up early (05:45) to get Liz and Carolyn to the coach pick-up point in Balla-D by 07:00. They have been at the Show all day and are just now on the way home, shopped out and loaded down with wool and goodies, returning via a stop for a burger in Enfield Services. Liz will text me when they get to French Park, so I should be able to  get to Balla just as they are disembarking the coach. That's the plan anyway but, you know, Witches are ABROAD!

The Times they are a-Changing

Shallots become pickled onions

We were commenting only the other day on how much more the weather affects us in this life compared to our time working in Kent. Be it rain, hail, wind or stultifying heat out there, I 'saw' it only briefly on the run to work, sprinting from house door to car door, or multi-story car park space to the pedestrian 'bridge' into the depot. There after I was in an air conditioned office or one of the massive cold stores set to 1.5 degrees C. Just occasionally I'd feel the weather again when I had to visit network equipment outside this (roof voids, porta cabins or what have you) but really our only experience was to look up through an office window and comment "Would you look at that rain?" Clocks changing were even more so, largely an irrelevance.

Cassis under construction. Tastes good already!

Not so here. Here the weather  and the day length have a huge influence on what we are able to do and achieve. With the shortening day length I had got to the point where wake up time (which was around 08:15) had me doing my feed and release rounds before bringing Liz up her cup of tea. The sheep (and Cody) were getting a bit of supper at 5 pm after which I could chop wood and light a fire in a leisurely manner with a whole hour to spare before I needed to shepherd the geese home, give the dogs their half hour romp in the orchard. I'd then have a bit of a sit down till supper and either just before that or afterwards, start locking up chickens.

Now that we are on GMT, I wake at 07:15 so I have a chance to sneak back under the covers after releasing the birds and doing sheep breakfasts for a quick doze before proper getting up time, just like in summer. In the evening everything is now squashed together in a flurry of activity; feed sheep, light fire, shepherd geese, exercise dogs and lock up poultry all in one rush, after which there is now a gap till suppertime which is generally between 7 pm and 7:30.

Towsers back feet and legs get a trim.

It is also at about this time of year, I would clip the dogs for the last time, leaving them then to go shaggy through the cold winter months. This year we have an enthusiastic helper in this task our friend Charlotte from down the road, she of the miniature horses. Charlotte is now at college studying to be a Vet's Assistant and a part of this course is about grooming dogs, partly to give the students this useful skill should they choose to go that route, but also as a really good way of getting them used to handing other people's dogs.

Showing Charlotte how we are going to do ears.

We are, of course happy to oblige and our three Westies have taken to Charlotte anyway, so it seemed like a good solution to getting her lots of practise. Charlotte grew up with horses and loved the clipping and grooming side of showing them, so she is already familiar with the clippers and scissors; it was only the shape of a Westie which would be new to her. She got Towser as her first dog and I demo'd what I do on Deefer, so that Charlotte could reproduce this on Towser. I sketched out any detailed cuts and shaping on paper, so that she'd know what I was trying to achieve. I am in no way a professional quality groomer or highly skilled, but what I do works for me and, as I said to her, if she gets the practise in on my three, she can always fine tune it in her classes at college where the tutor is a regular dog-show breeder.

Poppy gets it in the neck!

In the event we had a great time, enjoying our clipping in parallel and passing the clippers back and forth as we swapped for scissors. She did a really good, impressive job on Towser, easily as accurate and tidy as I do and kept him calm and unfussed throughout. He seemed to love the gentle attention and looked quite soppily happy for the whole time. After we'd done Towser and Deefer in parallel, we stopped for tea and cake before Charlotte then clipped Poppy while I just sat back and watched, no need to intervene or supervise at all. All three dogs now look very neat and tidy and we are all 3 happy with the results.

Towser gets used to the idea.

In other news we have been getting on with our preserving and storing type tasks. The pea pod wine (made in early August) has fallen quite bright under its airlock, so I have racked that off into another demi-john and put it under a standard cork. We'll probably give that the full 6 months before we try it. We decided to make pickled onions with the shallots. They had been sitting in a paper bag because we were sure we'd find a Madhur Jaffrey recipe which might need them, but they are small and fiddly, so it is always easier to grab a 'proper' onion. Yesterday Rolo the cat, exploring the kitchen managed to get his head stuck through the (paper strap) handle of the bag and tipped the whole lot onto the floor, reminding us that we had not, in fact, used any yet! Pickled onions seemed like a good solution.

The cassis has also come ready for having its fruit strained out of it and the sugar added. Finally we managed to find a bargain bag (€1) of rather time expired chilli peppers and Liz decided to dry them for storage. They prove to be an extremely lively and hot version of pepper. I used the knife after Liz had finished preparing them, to cut my cheese for a lunchtime sandwich. I had given it a cursory wipe, but still got enough peppery 'zing' off the blade to pep up the cheese out of all proportion to its normal flavour. The chopping board had been washed, cleaned and put away by the time I went to make breakfast toast the next day, but managed to give a similar zing to the undersides of slices of buttered toast. That jar might need a 'Use with Extreme Care' warning label.

A calf called 'Dave'

Dave

We are obviously only amateurs at this 'farming' lark, with our rabbits grazing the front lawn. A lady just down the lane has a calf grazing hers. Well, grazing a bit, maybe - this one is so young he is still on the hand-feeding bottled milk. He is a Limousin born last week but one of twins, rejected by the Mum who seems to have decided that one is enough. He seems to be doing OK but must be a bit lonely judging by the way he bounces up to the fence even when I have three dogs on leads. I had a good idea that this lady might be as 'silly' as us with giving the little mite a name. Well, she told me rather apologetically, the grand children have called him 'Dave'!

Rain, wind and a blizzard of autumn leaves coming down. Round here that is mainly the ash and the sycamore now. The hawthorn is already bare to the heavy crop of haws. We are a bit short on pretty colours this year, no flaming reds or oranges. The sycamore gets that tar-spotting fungus before the leaves turn a muddy brown. The ash just goes pale yellow and pathetic looking before it falls, the leaflets coming away from the central leaf-stalk leaving you with a twiggy mess. The beech and horse chestnut have tried a bit of orange but really, the only colour is coming from the more exotic garden trees - Acers and so on - up and down the lane. Not a vintage year for indulging in that bizarrely named American activity, "Leaf Peeping".

We love the Met Éireann weather maps on line, showing us the predicted rainfall (of which there seems to be plenty over this Irish Bank Holiday weekend (Hallowe'en). Rainfall is quoted in mm per hour, so 'heavy' would be any green areas, more than 1 mm per hour, 25 mm or an inch per day. The massive storms (yellow, orange and red) seem to be saving themselves for the south and east coast this time. You click on, and slide the time slider at the bottom of the map in 6-hour chunks and you can see it all passing through like a slow-motion movie.

Big thanks for this gift of wine from a generous benefactor. No names no pack drill - we are not at all sure the friend would want to be 'named and shamed' but you know who you are and we have, of course, made contact to pass on our thanks separately. Thank you very much. We love the name of this firm, "Wine on Line" based near Dublin and using one of the many excellent courier firms which seem to exist in these rural areas. These guys always seem to phone first before they arrive to check you are in and to confirm directions, which gives me a chance to get down to the gate to meet them. We had no idea this was coming so our first reaction was "What parcel? What have we ordered?"

John Deere Bob's new cattle on some silage aftermath.

The 2CV saga rumbles on and I probably know more about 2CV carburettors and the emissions tests now than it is healthy for one person to know. Ignore this paragraph if you have not interest in this! I will not bore you with a wealth of detail but the car is now back in the garage and being attended to by the senior guy (owner?) Keiran who is a whizz on these detailed tweaks and the gas analyzer. It seems that both my existing carb AND the spare I got from 2CV Llew have worn 'holes' where the hard metal of the butterfly spindles slot in. They do a smoke test apparently and can watch the smoke leaking out of what should be an airtight bearing. This means that they can set the mixture up but as soon as you tread the accelerator the butterfly opens but then can fall back into a different closed position. The air leaks around it and the jet has to be set rich to compensate for the air leaks, which can push your HC (hydrocarbons) out of kilter. Keiran thinks he can fix it but I am not confident.

Gladioli enjoying the mild autumn in the yard

In 2CV-Land there is an expert 'go-to' man we all talk to on line, named Ken Hanna. Ken thinks that the limits I am being asked to stay inside are set up for modern cars and engines with catalytic converters and clean exhausts. In the UK, he tells me, old cars are given exemptions and concessions. Even the new spec for a 2CV ex factory, he says would over-top the limits here (and fail) so I may be on a hiding to nothing. If this is the case then it is definitely not worth investing the (gasp) €240+ in a reconditioned carb. Ah well, we will find out on Thursday 14th Nov which is last chance saloon for this car.