Blesséd are the Cheese Makers?

Cheese Making Kit

...because everyone needs a Monty Python quote in their blog now and again. Making cheese is something into which we had never delved. Years back we went on a goat-keeping course which included dealing with the dairy products of milking goats. The course was excellent but I have to admit we were rather put off the dairying side by all the talk of food grade plastics, spotless cleanliness and perfect maintenance of temperatures. In theory you could make goaty cheese in a 'normal' kitchen but what we were seeing looked more complicated, precise and careful than any kind of kitchen we felt able to reproduce in our tiny 8 feet by 6 feet space.

Pouring the curds and whey through the muslin and colander

Ah well, that was then. Recently we had the Mum-in-Law up to stay and, as a thank you, she bought us a cheese making kit in a box as an enjoyable taster. This kit, the "Big Cheese Making Kit" is by a company called "The Big Cheese" of Tranent, East Lothian, EH33 1AZ (UK) but we got it via Mr Middleton's Garden Shop which is, we believe, the Irish version of Thompson and Morgan. Google any of those names and you are sure to find it. Our kit makes up to 10 batches each of Mozzarella and Ricotta, each batch being based on 4.5 litres of full cream milk and yielding 1-2 lbs of cheese. The kit contains instruction sheets plus all the things you might not have in a standard kitchen needed for the job - thermometer, butter muslin sheets, veggie rennet, citric acid powder and fine organic sea-salt. What could POSSIBLY go wrong?

Ricotta cheese - small granular crumby curds

So, I was dispatched to the local shops to buy 9 litres of milk while Liz set up the necessary pots and pans and colander. I won't bore you with all the details of method but suffice to say it went really well and worked like a dream. We did the ricotta first as that looked simplest (add citric acid to milk and heat to 85ºC - you will have curds like magic). The mozzarella was a little more complex as there was rennet to add and the curds formed at only 35ºC but more slowly. There is then a repeat microwaving and kneading stage like bread dough but which you do with the Marigolds on as the curd mass is too hot to handle with bare hands.

Portioning up the finished mozzarella

You squish and knead and fold and stretch like someone trying to get life back into old, dried up Blu-Tack. You end up with a much denser (than ricotta) shiny, stretchy lump which you can then portion up into rounds or flat lumps for storage (freeze and/or submerge in brine or whey). The whey can be a bit of a problem, as you get nearly as much whey back as you started with milk but there are recipes on line for using it in stock and soups. I would not recommend chucking it down the drain as it must have an Oxygen Demand (BOD) similar to milk and you may kill all the local fish! You are also not technically allowed to feed it to pigs (as in Danish Bacon) as it is from a human kitchen. For want of knowing what to do with it for the moment we have frozen it in the milk bottles.

How blue do you like your sky?

With rather delightful timing, we had no sooner made these lovely light, Summer salad cheeses than the sun finally came out and has given us 2 days of beautiful blue skies and warm sunshine. All our puddles are gone daffs are coming out all over the gaff and even the primroses have started along our 'Primrose Path'. My quince tree, previously the last fruit type to break bud and not moving till May, is racing out into leaf in a solid first place. All around the local ditches and ponds, frogs are 'at it' and the ditches are alive with masses of frog spawn. Not in our pond though, for some reason. The froggy 'house hunters' seem to have passed us by this year. Perhaps last year's were scouts and when the tadpoles were all eaten by our newts or water beetles, the word went round. Stay away.

Those trees again. Enjoy them while you can.

In the tree felling dept, we have now been visited by the man from the 'tree care' company in a mighty 4 wheel drive. He was calm, professional and completely unfazed by my "mighty" trees, quoted us a very favourable price and promised that, weather permitting, he might be back next week to drop them, slice up the trunks and shred up all the debris. I just have to take down the fence around the bases but as this is a post and rail with no high-tensile wire involved, I can do that with my fencing pliers and a screwdriver. It all sounds very promising.

Coffee in the garden but if you bring cake out, don't
tell the chickens!

All parties are now convinced that our guest-goat, Nanny Óg is, in fact, pregnant. This from the size of her, which everyone thinks is much bigger than when they last looked, 3 weeks ago. Maybe only with the single kid, though, says Carolyn (the owner). Also from the fact that she is definitely bagging up in the udder dept. Everyone is quite calm about this as she is an experienced Mum. Carolyn thinks that it is not yet imminent, anyway. We can all relax. The deal I did with Nanny Óg to hold off till Charlotte came home from college might still work although I told the goat St Patrick's Day (17th) and she is not now coming home till Monday. Hang in there Nanny!

Gimme that cake!

Looking at her today, I wondered whether we might all get a rapid surprise. She was only half interested in lunch (she's normally first in the queue even before our ewe Lily). She did a big solid poo (normally it is all as little pellets like over-size rabbit droppings) and seemed to be quite pink round the vulva. She was holding her tail quite high up and, yesterday, she was doing a weird dance on top of the grassy knoll, swinging her head back and forth from all the way round to her left shoulder blade, to round to the right one and back.

However, when we went back to check on her a few minutes later she was back down in her favourite corner of the field lying on a slew of old hay looking as relaxed and not-in-labour as any goat could look. Chilled in the sunshine enjoying the sun's warmth on her ample belly. Maybe she will hold off to Monday after all. Meanwhile Liz spotted a good website/blog about goat breeding which suggested that if a goat only has one kid then it can start to favour only one side of the udder leading to a situation where the owner needs to milk out the other side so that the poor Mum does not swell up and get painful. Now if only we had a use for all that spare goat milk!

Three Flavours of Fame

21 Today!
Charlotte

First up (how could we do anything else?) a HUGE Happy Birthday to our good friend and favourite 'Mother Goose', Pig grappler, Sheep wrangler and duck chaser, Charlotte, who is 21 today! Charlotte is away at college at the mo so cannot get home to spend the day with the gang here, but is being looked after by the Dublin arm of the family while she battles with assignments and essays. She gets a good length 'Easter' holiday this year as it runs from St Patrick's (17th March) round through Easter and we have promised to talk possibly pregnant Nanny Goat, Nanny Óg, into holding off kidding till she is home. You have a great day, Charlotte and we will see you very soon. Now I don't want to get anyone into trouble but young Henry (4) was arguing the toss with me today that you are actually 36. What do I know? Incidentally, we moved the billy goat over to your new abode today where he is showing every sign of enjoying the sudden wealth of old brambles, young Christmas trees and other hedgerow rubbish. He had eaten our pig run clean of anything browse-able.

Healthy lambs, Ebony, Ivory and Rosie.

On the not-so-good news dept, I am sad to report the loss of that lamb we were bottle feeding, Lucy. We bottle fed her through Monday and Tuesday but always felt that we were persuading her and almost forcing it on her. I am advised since that this is not how it goes - a hungry lamb will be almost ripping the teat off the bottle in her eagerness to get at the milk. When Charlotte was feeding 5 they were climbing over each other (and her shoulders!) to get at the bucket before she had a chance to pour it into the 5-way feeder.

Outdoor rhubarb starting to move.

On Wednesday morning, early, I went out with my nice warm bottle of milk and tub of 'crunch' and my heart sank when I saw Lucy stretched out flat on the straw, barely moving, occasionally gasping what looked like her last breaths; so shallow that they were mouth-gasps and did not seem to be filling her lungs. I gathered her up and brought her indoors, then sat with her on my lap trying to massage some hope back into her. Liz joined me but both of us could see there was little hope. Liz put her on the sofa wrapped in a blanket, safe from the madly curious terriers and went back to check on her ten minutes later but she was gone. We are sad, obviously but we take comfort from our friends advice that she was probably a 'wrong-un' doomed to fail and there was nothing we could have done. We have learned many lessons from this, mind - how to spot a hungry lamb, how to bottle feed and maybe to bring it indoors to the 'nursery' sooner rather than later. And then there were five.

Facebook post about the lost wedding ring

But what of my title about 'fame'? Three (sets of) friends seem to be courting the spotlight this week. First up our friends from the local Post Office have hit the headlines by losing and then being re-united with, the lady's wedding ring. She (Anne) lost it in town when it fell from her finger because she had been wearing it on the 'wrong' finger after injuring the right one. In Ireland, though, it is common to get the wedding ring engraved on the inside with the date of the wedding, so that even as she was hunting it down by re-tracing her steps, it had been found and the finder was tracking her down from the date. Happy reunion and for the (1968) happy couple, over 27,000 hits on facebook and the phone in the Post Office jumping off the hook with well wishers ringing from all around the world, their son in the UK and so on. They were tickled pink.

2nd up, a good friend and neighbour has got himself into the local papers by contributing to a lovely project organised by local writer/journo, Gerry Boland. He tapped into the local Rural Mens' Groups and rounded up "38 Men" to tell stories and relate memories from their history in Ireland. The Book, called "From Ballaghaderreen to Drumboylan: 38 Men Talking" is now for sale in lots of shops locally. We are going to buy one tomorrow and casually lay it in front of our friend (2nd from left in my pic, if you can recognise him!) and get him to autograph it.

Maureen O'Sullivan - Liz's English Teacher and possible
candidate for "Speaker of the House"

Thirdly, regular readers will know that Lizzie is fascinated by politics and elections almost to the point of obsession. One facet she follows particularly closely is the carreer of her former English teacher, Maureen O'Sullivan who, having narrowly squeaked her seat in the house (Dáil) at the recent General Election was tipped for higher things. She was, for a while, front running favourite for the postion "Ceann Comhairle" (pronounced, roughly, 'Key-ann Corl-yer'), the Speaker of the House.

Is this goat pregnant or just fat? She is keeping us guessing

Thousands of her former pupils were texting and 'tweet'-ing support and Liz thought that there could be no better authority controlling the unruly debating chamber. Liz remembers that when 'Mo' was fed up with the class room full of Liz's contemporaries she would admonish them with a catch phrase, "YOU PEOPLE need to ***********" Liz tweeted this and many many pupils picked up on it. Sadly, this dream gig was not to be. The 2 main parties (Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil) were so evenly matched that they spotted a chance to take out one vote of the 'enemy' - all the FF guys voted for the FG man and vice versa. Maureen (an Independent) came a lowly 3rd in the race.

When this tiny part on your Zanussi dishwasher clogs up
with food particles, expect a €110 bill from the engineer!

Ah well, enough for this one. We are enjoying a quiet evening for a change with nothing organised - we are not out and nobody is dropping in. I was chef; we had baked cod with new potatoes and Mediterranean roast veg. I am tired from the 'buildering' - we have been 'slabbing' the Sligo house - fitting plasterboard and insulated slabs up into the "open to the rafters", 45º ceilings. Liz has been working hard on the village website. Do go visit it - you will be in good company. It seems to be taking off as the news spreads by word of 'mouth'

Of Mighty Trees and Hungry Lambs

Three mighty Black Spruce trees loom over the
 house but perhaps not for long. 

In our front lawn stand 3 mighty trees, black spruces more than 60 years old (maybe even 100) which are, we estimate at least 60 feet high and a good six feet round the trunks at chest-height. Regular readers will know that we have many such trees but these three are 'special' because they are due SSW from the house (right in the line of the most common named-storm winds) and are only about 35 feet from the house. Also because we could "easily" get them down without needing to miss overhead wires, fences, buildings, the drive and so on, They would fall right across the blank lawn. My picture is taken so that there is no tricky perspective - the trees and the house are equi-distant from the camera. If these trees blew down they really would smack the house with BIG pieces of trunk and big side branches.

Ebony and Ivory at a week old.

Most of the time, we are happy that the trees are well glued to the ground and would probably go another hundred years with no problem. We have even been advised of this by our friend Aerial-Keith, who came and de-limbed a tree for us a while back. But those named storms come rocking through and the tops  of these guys are whipping about, you can see that massive thickness of trunk arching and you can feel the shudders through the trunk at ground level and you know it has been raining solidly for months. Then you get to remembering the 'hurricane' which hit SE England in 1987 and the scene of devastation which greeted us that morning, the roads blocked with trees and villages like Three Oaks and towns like Sevenoaks wondering if they'd need a new name and you don't feel quite so safe and serene.

You can imagine that felling them would need to be done by a pro with big machinery and insurance - it is hardly a DIY job for me with my weeny 16 inch cut chain saw - and not cheap. We have been avoiding doing anything about the trees so far but step forward a generous benefactor with an offer of possible help. Thank you GB, you know who you are. Also step forward a likely 'pro' who we spotted doing just such a task for a near neighbour and who I asked same for contact details of. I have now got this fella coming round to look at the job and quote me a price. The job will include slicing up those trunks into 16" thick rounds which I can split for 'logs', and the shredding of all the trash (sneddings). We can use the shredded stuff on the garden. I can cut up the small stuff (branches and tops of trunks) myself. Watch this space and listen out for shouts of 'Timberrrrrr!!!!!!'

Whose is that zippy looking red buzz bomb of a hot hatch-back
parked out front.? That'll be the Mum in Law come to stay!

While thinking about these entertainments, we have been playing host to Mum-in-Law, 'Steak Lady' currently gadding about in a very pretty red buzz-bomb, a tweaked up shiny Skoda hatch-back. She came for 5 days (4 nights) and enjoyed a good old show around of this place and some 'farming', plus some trips to local attractions, a bit of shopping and, of course our own home-grown food and a few drinks. We all thoroughly enjoyed it and we were quite sorry to fill the lady with an excellent breakfast (goose-egg omelettes with ham and cheese), set up her sat-nav and bid her adieu.

The trailer gets some more abuse. It just takes 15 bales with the
'top down'. Here, straw for a neighbour. 

Among the 'farming' we laid on for her were chances to join me on my feed rounds, to round up the various stock at 'bedtime' and a visit to the Roscommon Poultry Sale on Sunday morning where we were looking for Muscovy ducks. No ducks, unfortunately (only a few rather sad looking Khaki Campbell drakes) so Liz got tempted by a dozen Khaki-Campbell 'hatching eggs' which are now in Sue and Rob's incubator. We may yet be in the duck game in 28 days or so. More on this when things happen. She also got involved with bottle feeding our lamb.

Lucy gets a first dose in the dark of Sunday night.

"Bottle feeding?" I hear you exclaim, "Why so?" Long story, but if you have the patience, read on. We had been worried for a few days that our problem-child, 'Lily' to whom we have had the vet a couple of times now seemed to be only milking out of one teat and we had only seen the bigger of her twins, Rosie, doing any suckling. The weaker of the two (Lucy) seemed to be struggling and we had seen her standing with back arched; which we thought (from last year) might be another unformed anus problem, her straining unsuccessfully to poo.

Liz and Lucy getting a bit more professional by Monday morning

However she had the required orifice and was pooing OK so we looked further (Google is your friend!) and found that she was actually standing the the classic "hungry lamb" position, back arched, knees almost touching elbows and all 4 legs and feet almost together (see pic). We sought advice from our experts (Charlotte and Carolyn!) and realised that we needed to rapidly become competent in supplementary feeding - bottle feeding!. This, though, was Sunday evening so we had to find a DIY solution. Liz found a reasonable sounding mix of cow milk and beaten egg on the internet and (oh so luckily!) Charlotte remembered that among her 'stuff' being stored in our spare room while they move house, would be a box labelled "Charlotte's bits and bobs". This might contain the one lamb-sized bottle-teat which she had kept as a souvenir from her own teenager sheep/lamb rearing days.

Lucy in what we now know is classic 'hungry lamb' stance,
elbows and knees almost touching, back arched and tail
pulled in tight between the legs. 

A bit of 'bucket chemistry', the teat successfully located and a washed out beer bottle and we were away. Out in the dark by head-torch we managed to find the lamb and then get the teat into her mouth, all be it, getting her face and front and Liz's gloves and coat liberally sprayed with milk in the process. We really felt like beginners and were worried that we'd not be able to help the girl because of our incompetence. Lucy was trying her hardest to co-operate though and we soon had her suckling away and got a half inch or so of bottle-depth into her.

Lucy's breakfast, dinner and tea for a few weeks. 

We have got a lot more proficient since then and on Monday morning we were able to get hold of some proper lamb-milk (Lamlac) formula and some better sized teats. We are now getting decent quantities of the warm goodness into her , though nowhere near the 1 litre a day you'd do if that was her ONLY food. We suspect that it is not - she is also starting to wean now (3 weeks old) so we see her grazing and stealing some of the adults' 'crunch' mix, plus she may be getting some milk from Mum and also from 'Aunt' Myfanwy. The Lamlac milk, though, has quickly started to put some weight on her and we both think she is plumper, warmer to hold, more lively and a lot less 'hunched up' looking. It is 8 pm as I write this, so I have actually just been out to do the last feed (today) and she was going well even when interupted by her sister (Rosie) who was curious at all these shlurrrping noises and wanted to try out this new thing. We have the vet called to Lily, obviously, as she may have mastitis or some other problem which is causing the milk not to flow from her left side. More on all this as things develop.

In through the side of the mouth seems to do the trick!

On the archery story, I have been down now to my first beginner-training session and I am bubbling over to anyone who will listen at how enjoyable and good it was. The coach, 'Con', is by way of being a former army weapons trainer (among other things) so I guess I should have expected my Silverwood's taster-session technique to be completely trashed so that I could start again with better foundation but I thoroughly enjoyed the process. There are 3 of us beginners but, by chance, my 2 colleagues were unable to come that day, so I enjoyed some one-to-one tuition.

The Mum in Law gives the bottle feeding a try.
I ask "Is this the first time you have fed a lamb?"
She says "It's the first time I've been near
enough to one to touch it!"

Con started by barring my Crocs (shoes) from future sessions and went on from there, changing my 'sidedness' ( I now shoot holding the bow in my  left hand and drawing the string with my right even though I am left-eye dominant), and then ripping into my stance (hips, belly, head, you name it) but in a good way. This was not a 'boot camp' and he kept saying "hope you don't mind a good slagging!" so that we both had a good laugh about it. He was impressed by my consistency, however, so that my groupings of arrows were good and tight throughout. When I do it wrong, at least I do it wrong the same every time, which, apparently, makes me a lot easier to work on.

Not one of ours - I just love Herefords!

That's about enough for this rather long and rambling post but I will just close with the fact that as well as the duck eggs sitting in Sue's big incubator over at her place, I have set 13 chicken eggs (mainly pure bred Buff Orpington) in the little incubator we borrow each year from the currently away-at-college Charlotte (Thanks, C!). This was going to happen anyway but we did it today so that Mum in Law could see the start of the thing. She may come back in 21 days hopeful to see some hatching. That City Girl is definitely starting to get 'infected' with all the goats, lambs, geese and other birdies.

Dances with Sheep

Unusually a post with few or no pictures for the simple reason that the camera is currently in the car and the car is currently not here; Liz is off gallivanting again. I may add some pics at a later date so that the post does not look so bare. Bear with me.

Rosie and Lucy shelter behind the bulk of mum from the wind

We are relieved to be able to report that Lily seems cured again of her infection but her route out of the Doldrums is almost an exact copy of the last edition - a day of 'doubtful', then picking up so much that were we silly we would be tempted to think we didn't need the 2nd dose of antibiotics, due tomorrow. This copy-cat cure is good in that she has recovered quickly, but a bit un-nerving in that we thought she was sorted last time and 2 weeks later, down she came again. Charlotte has re-assured me that this does happen in sheep and Lily could well take a few weeks to sort out. We will, of course, do the 2nd jab tomorrow and keep a watchful eye on her, and her 'sisters' in case of any repeat.

The sheep are all currently enjoying nights indoors, 2 because they have very little lambs who would not get on so well out in all this frost, wind, rain and (today) snow flurries; the 3rd (Lily) because she is sick. We are not over-run with sheep sized housing here, so this has us under a bit of pressure and some of the birds are now sharing a bedroom with some woolly companions. We have the Tígín and the former 'milking shed' both of which open onto the main hard yard. In the Tíg I was able to shift feed dustbins around a bit and create a patch of floor about 8 feet square (-ish) which, covered in straw, houses 2 ewes and 4 lambs but the place is a bit of a 'man-shed' so there is a risk of animals leaning on dodgy shelving or on the ends of tools hung up on the walls and waking up under an avalanche of bits and pieces.

The 'milking shed' is already sectioned off three ways with chicken wire 'walls' to create separate sections for geese, chickens and (later) the man-shed tool-ery bit of this was taken over by turkeys and Guinea fowl and a freezer we are babysitting for our house-move/build friends. This middle section left me just enough space to erect my 4 foot by 6 foot sheep-hurdle pen and now houses the third ewe and her lambs at night with the rafters above blocked in to stop the poultry roosting up there and poo-ing on the 'sheeps'.

All these bedrooms open, as I said, onto the hard yard but are also, thereby, quite a distance from the field gate. Liz and I temporarily have a little dance session we have to do to get sheep out and lambs out of the field in a controlled way and across the space to their bedroom doors, with the correct lambs staying with their mothers  and only 2 families going to the Tíg, and one to the Turkey house. The goat has also to be controlled to stop her nipping out of the field and going walk-about chewing the tops off tulips etc. We end up usually with Liz controlling the gate, sometimes while holding onto one lamb while I romp through the sloppy mud at the gateway trying to catch the other lamb or steer the Mum in the right direction. It usually works but has been known to take a while as ewes start to mill about confused, or make decisive darts towards the wrong doorway (e.g. the Turkey house which has already got an occupant at that stage).

In the morning it is easier and I can generally get everyone out of bed and into the field on my own mainly because if you feed the goat first, she is so focused on eating all the meal before any sheep get it, that she is not going anywhere. You could take all the fences down and she would still not go straying. You can certainly leave the gate a-jar while you steer a few sheep across the gap - the sheep are quite keen to get to that grass and the field anyway. I don't need to train the Westies as sheep dogs just yet. Come by!

A load of sheep and a goat.

Meanwhile, talking of bedrooms and housing, excellent progress is being made on the Sligo house rebuild. The internal walls are getting 'slabbed' (plasterboard or insulated dry-line slabs) so that you can now see what rooms look like (as opposed to looking at a forest of vertical stud-walling timbers). The main range has gone in, had its flue completed and spends some days lit, making the inside of the house beautifully warm and drying out the stone work of the old, original-retained fireplace superbly. Today we cleared the bathroom (which had been a bit of a stacking area for tools and bits) so that we could lay the bath, toilet and sink bits in some trial positions to make sure the shower location would work (and the changed them all and put them back). Once happy with the bathroom layout we were able to start Kango-ing up a bit of floor and drilling holes through walls for waste pipes and so on.

We also hung the posh new front door on the 'end' of the new porch and were then able to cut out the old, shorter one (pre-dating the porch) and its frame. Both K-Dub and I are 6 foot plus and if we had a quid for every time we have banged our heads on that we would be rich men.

Enough for this one, I think. Our next entertainment is to host Liz's Mum, (Steak Lady) here for a few days. She's up on a visit and wants to see the new baby lambs and generally enjoy the place and getting spoiled. Liz has a chance to do the hostess thing which she loves. See you soon, Mum. More on all this in the next post.

Baba Marta Day

Happy Baba Marta Day! This is a 'Martenitsi'

A long time ago in the early years of our togetherness, when we were a bit younger and fitter than now, we were mad keen on ski-ing and went for a few years to Borovets in Bulgaria to get at some real snow in between the dry-slope training sessions in the Medway Towns. Out there we got quite friendly with our instructor (Oggi) and eventually his wife (Zana) and family. We are still in touch with Zana (Hi Zana!) through social media and today we learned of a nice Bulgarian/Balkan tradition, Baba Marta Day, the 1st March. This is another pagan one unrelated to St David, where they celebrate the mythical figure of Baba Marta, or "Grandma March" who comes round bringing the end to a cold Winter and the start of Spring. People exchange and wear cords, wrist bands and little figurines made of red and white twine called 'martenitsi'. More of this later.

The last post brought you the arrival of our own latest signs of Spring, the birth of Polly's twins. These were both ram-lambs, one black and one white, so have been named Ebony and Ivory at the suggestion of one of our internet friends - (Thank you, Ianthe C). These last week's days have been sunny and dry, if a bit chilly, but that gave us a chance to put all 4 lambs onto the front lawn and get some lovely cute pictures. We did not expect the third ewe, Myfanwy to do anything just yet as she was not, from what I could see, 'bagging up' or showing any of our other 'pet' symptoms.

2 more twins, these for Myfanwy. We are now all lambed out.

Well, that just shows how much I know, doesn't it?! We chugged through leap year day half expecting the biggest news to come in human form, with two of our unmarried chums (no names no pack drill) hinting that the lady might do the Leap Year thing of proposing to her man but to no avail this time. Maybe in 2020, you guys? We woke up to a lovely surprise this morning at the end of a very wet, rainy night, the sight of our 3rd ewe, Myfanwy lying down contentedly at one end of the field shelter with a little lamb curled up next to her on either side.

My quick check told me that these were both females, both warm and dry and with nicely full bellies - the contentment was apparently due to an comfortable birth in the dry straw and some quick and efficient suckling of the vital early milk, colostrum. Clever girl(s). Myfanwy had presumably also passed the afterbirth because there was no sign of any hanging around her back end. The lambs are, once again, one dark and one light - we do not seem to be able to do 'proper' white lambs.

Hi-rise nesting for these two chooks, who are
currently laying their eggs 5 feet up my straw
stack. At least they are safe from sheep hooves

I quickly nipped back indoors to wake poor Lizzie with a rather early cup of tea and presented my news. She'd want to know but could then easily drift off back to sleep till a sensible time. How she suffers!

So, we now have 3 ewes and 3 sets of twins - two sets of ewes and one of ram lambs. 9 sheep. It is beginning to look like a flock. We are fortunate that it is not any bigger as we are decidedly short of grass so we are having to supplement feed with the lamb 'crunch' (a mix of grains and molasses) and hay. This has led us to a decision to bring the whole operation round a few months LATER next winter. We will not get the ram in till November, so that we can lamb in April/May rather than Feb/March, by which time, we hope, the grass will have started to move.

Mini-horse Bob

In honour of the day, these two babies have been named Baba and Marta (Baba is the lighter one). My sheep news is, though, not all as happy or good. Remember the small infection which Lily 'caught' after her lambing due, we think, to some small ammount of retained afterbirth? We thought we had cured it with various injections from Vet Aoife and Lily had been as right as rain since, always baa-ing the loudest for food and leading the charge.

Good vigorous ferment still going in the 'hedgerow' wine.

Well this morning she was back in the Doldrums, refusing breakfast and looking downright miserable. She walked OK to the front lawn field with her thriving babies but then spent the day standing, shifting her weight from foot to foot and looking a bit hunched up and not grazing. There was nothing for it but to get back onto the vet who confirmed that Lily still apparently has a bit of that infection and had better receive 2 more doses of the antibiotic, one today and one Friday. Although these are intra-muscular, I now do these myself after Aoife showed me how, so she only has to leave the meds out for me and I collect them.

 (Half) Leg of Dylan

So, this evening, we had a bit of a marathon job shepherding; by our own standards, obviously, not compared to the 'real' shepherds. The weather is forecast to be a bit wild, windy, wet and cold. We had to gather Myfanwy and the new babies up into the hurdle-pen and Polly and her recent twins into the Tígín. All 4 of those babies are still too small to be safe outside. Lily's babies are over 2 weeks old and should, normally, be outside now but with Lily being sick and needing a jab, it was easier to round her up too into the Tígín where Liz could get a firm hold on her shoulders while I stuck a needle into her thigh muscle. I will keep you posted as to how these various dramas play out.

Six inches of good compost goes over the potatoes in the
poly-tunnel raised beds. Feed the soil and the soil will.....

Meanwhile in other news we are suddenly over-run with eggs. We went through early Feb with the girls laying sometimes 1 or two, even no eggs a day. Our poorest week was only 7 eggs. Lots of different chickens, but only one egg each that week. Suddenly everybody came back into lay all at once, often laying in bizarre new places. Some lay on top of a stack of straw bales 5 feet up, one in the pig ark (currently Billy goat house), some in straw down under my tool boxes and workbench and one in the rabbit 'Maternity Unit' (as was).

A batch of 'hedgerow' wine we started was coming up as possibly finished ferment after 3 weeks but must have been chilled because although it is fermenting vigorously now, it is still way too full of sugar to think about 'killing' (stabilizing) it. We will leave that for a few more weeks before we check again. Liz has been asked to help out with another village 'project' but I have been sworn to secrecy as the calling may or may not be the result of someone possibly dropping out. More on this when we know more and when the press 'gag' is lifted.

I have now made contact with the local archery club (Roscommon Archers) and have signed up for a ten week beginner's training course. I am very much looking forward to it, my appetite whetted by pictures in Facebook of the Silverwoods getting on so well down in their club that they have all been out taking part in an outdoor competition and, in some case, have come back with medals for class wins and thirds. More on this, too, when it happens.

Ah well, wish Lily a 'get well soon' and happy thriving growth to all the little kindergarten members. Health too, to the Mums.

Keeping us Waiting

Twin lambs tonight for Polly, both boys.

More good news and relief in the sheep department after the curing of Lily by vet Aoife. This time it is Polly's turn to supply the story and she had us sweating on it a bit. I knew she was 'on' when she refused breakfast and spent the day displaying 3 other good clues of imminent lamb-exit; going off on her own for a lie down away from the 'flock', 'pawing' at the ground with a front hoof and looking very uncomfortable so that she restlessly sat down, stood up, moved around and sat down again.

I had agreed to head out for Sligo to help K-Dub to tip a van load (64 panels) of plaster board sheets and walk them all indoors, plus some bags of bonding, beading and other bits. I judged (correctly, I am pleased to say) that Polly would easily go 2 hours without needing help so I flew over there at 9 and headed back at 11 when the unloading was done. When I got back I found that there had been no progress and Polly was still sitting out in the far corner of the field but had been worryingly joined by the 3rd ewe (Myfanwy) who was sitting in a copy-cat stance and, to my mind, seemed very pink about the vulva. Were to have two lambings today?

A close inspection of Myf's back end told me that this was a false alarm and she was not yet bagged up at all, so maybe she was enjoying the wind-up potential. Polly then, kept me on tenter-hooks all day and only started to 'move' (passing a mucus plug and some amniotic sac) at around 5pm. This was so long after breakfast that Charlotte (who we keep standing-by on these occasions) advised an extra careful watch as she may have been in labour "all day". I contacted the vet, Aoife, to confirm that she would be available if needed and she was a bit more relaxed about the 'all day'; happy to think of "things" starting only at 5 pm.

Wetting the babies' heads. One dark and one light. It seemed
only fair.

Well, I am happy to report that "things" did indeed crack on a-pace from that point and Polly whooshed out both twins while we had nipped in for supper at 18:30. Both were out, up and suckling by 19:00 and I decided to leave them where they were for washing and bonding for half an hour before we gathered the family indoors. It was pitch dark but I could keep an eye using my rather dim head-torch and my presence would stop any sneaky foxes creeping up on Polly to steal the newborns. At one point Soldier the cat wandered over all curious and got himself charged and nearly stomped on for his pains by the ewe, so I suspect even a fox might have thought twice. Ah well, they are safe in the Tígín now, warm and dry on new straw and it has all gone quiet so I hope that signifies bellies nicely full of colostrum (and some 'crunch' and a welcome drink of water for Mum).

Rosie - one of Lily's lambs. These ladies are nearly 2 weeks old
now.

A new experience today for me, that of voting properly in an Irish General Election using the 'single transferable vote' system. My British readers may not know that here we do not use the 'put an X in the box', winner-takes-all, one MP per constituency method. Instead the constituencies can put more than one 'TD' into the parliament (up to 5, I think) so our voting sheets can have dozens of candidates on them and you vote by stating 1st, 2nd, 3rd etc preferences by putting numbers in the boxes; all the boxes if you like.

I will not try to explain the counting system here (though I do sort of understand it) but suffice to say that the winners get enough '1st preference' votes to make a quota, or hope to make quota by having themself as people's 2nd preference, or 3rd or whatever. Yes, I know. It actually works very well and is quite user friendly. I voted as far as my 6th preference. I am wary of trying to pretend to be expert in this and I usually avoid politics in this blog but here goes.

My problem is not the complexity of it all, but trying to work out who stands for what. In the UK you 'knew' that Labour stood for the working classes, the Tories for the management and affluent farmers, and the Libs were somewhere in between. Nothing so clear cut here. The two BIG parties, Fine Gael (FG) and Fianna Fáil (FF) are almost identical and the local wisdom is that you choose between them depending on how you stood in the Irish Civil War in the 20's. Were you 'pro-treaty' (i.e. were you in favour of accepting independence but with the 6 Northern Ireland counties partitioned off and left as British) or were you anti (i.e. you wanted the whole island to be independent).

A 'boreen'. One of this week's Lisacul 365 pics.

This was hugely contentious and split the country, communities, villages and even households, with father 'fighting' son and brother battling brother. A lot of that emnity and tension simmers on so it is a tricky subject to discuss but results in people voting for FF because "my Father did before me and my Grandfather before that" etc. I have asked many people and none of them can tell me, an incomer, why I should favour FG or possibly FF. One tongue-in-cheek view has it that they are all corrupt anyway but we like them that way and we ask them how they can help US specifically before we decide. More recently people seem to vote more on who last messed up the economy or depending upon who was 'on watch' when that hospital got closed.

Ash Bark

Throw into this mix the many and various minor parties and a wealth of independent (non-party) candidates to blur the lines even more and you have a confusing situation for a newcomer. There was one saving grace this time - a new website (MatchCandidate.IE) which asked you 30+ questions about all manner of contentious issues (the new water charges, legalising abortion, healthcare and so on) but then also asked all the candidates the same questions. The site compares your answers with the answers of the potential TDs and finds a best match (and next best etc). You can then drill down to find out WHERE you matched and decide from that whether to assign your 1,2,3 etc.

Anyway, suffice to say, I went armed with a list of 6 likely choices and only adjusted my list a bit at the crucial stage, pen in hand, in the booth. By now (22:12 pm) it is all over bar the counting (and then the negotiations between the parties which 'nearly won' to form a coalition (we rarely get anyone with an overall majority)). The count starts tomorrow at 09:00. History will tell you the rest. I am going back to being a non-political shepherd and off for a last check on Polly and the new babies