A Cider Press

My sign looking nice and settled already
with ivy growing up it.

A very subdued and wet, rain soaked post. We are pinned down for most of the recent daylight hours by the rain, or going about wearing big coats, waterproof hats and wellies. Gardening has ceased. Laundry is done indoors with everything getting dried on our heated airer. The pigs have a broad swathe of their pen (up by the fence) churned into a morass with their trotters sinking in as far as the hocks.

Liz takes the crochet back up. 

One poor friend on Twitter was pleading for help and advice - her pigs have churned up the entire field and the only  dry bit left was their ark (house). It is still 2 weeks till they go to the butcher, she says, but if she moves the pigs into the lamb-paddock, will they destroy that too and stop her from having lambs next year? We are relieved that our pig-bit only cuts up in small places, being up on a mound and surrounded on 2 sides by free draining 4 foot outward-facing cliff-banks. ...and populated by 60 foot spruce trees with an impressive thirst, I guess.

Cat (top left) trying to look innocent. It's not working, Kato.

When there has been some dry time, I have got back involved in the builder-ing over in Sligo. That was fun. K-Dub has created on his front boundary, a small-ish building which is split longways. The 'front' (south facing) is a turf shed and the 'back' (north - facing onto the grass) is a chicken house but this is no ordinary, simple coop.

My bow-string is too frayed and gets condemned on the
safety checks. Are you a 'proper' archer when you have worn
out your first string?

The whole building is done to match the house, being made with an inner wall of concrete blocks, the outer wall done in his skillful Sligo stone-work and the roof done in the same hand-cut Brazilian slates that are on the house, with the beautifully scrolled lead ridge-piece. It even has a fake, stone chimney with a red-oxide painted metal cylinder to look like a chimney pot. The chicken house side is getting fake windows. The whole looks like a mini-cottage sitting out there and is attracting a lot of (favourable) comment from passers-by.

The neighbouring herd of cattle are always very interested in
our comings and goings and especially their food potential. We
worry that the flimsy old strand of barbed wire would not hold
all 35 of them back if they decided to lean on it!

When we stopped for a coffee break, I had an idea which I was not sure would work, but was worth a try. I have, on my trees, a good few cider apples and dessert apples and we have fermenting buckets and barrels, but we have no way of pulping the apples or pressing the juice out of the pulp. I knew it would be a nice challenge for K-Dub to design and build me something; I have visions of some kind of square frame into which I might slot the 10-tonne bottle-jack I use for the car and trailer.

The dogs on station to defend us against
encroaching beef.

K-Dub immediately accepted the challenge but his thoughts quickly dropped my wood-frame idea in favour of a cunning and creative plan. He is the sort of guy who just sees these things in his head and knows how to translate them into physical reality.

Spindle bush in the making in our woods.

This cider press would be based on a Guinness keg with the top cut out (using his fancy new plasma-cutter / welder). He would create a frame which hooked through the keg's hand-holes and a screw-thread winding handle would drive a plate down onto the apple pulp with some method of allowing the juice to drain out of the bottom, down a gulley and into our bucket.

We went all Medieval and carnivorous for
these chunks of pig cleared out of the freezer.
They were bits of pelvis and spine left when
I butchered up some hams. Peanut sauce.

No photo's yet as the thing is still only half-made but we are both very excited to see and try out this proto-type. I have some parts with me now that need wire-brushing and painting so that the whole thing can at least look 'food-grade' even if the scrumpy we make has the appropriate amount of dead dogs and rats floating in it. Watch this space.

Newest ewe lamb, 'Oveja' is thriving despite the wet.

That's about it for this dripping, soggy post. I hope the weather is better where you are.

Season of Mists

Autumn fruiting raspberries. 'Autumn Bliss' variety here

Well into Autumn in these parts now, with plenty of wet, gusty days, mellowing fruit on trees and bushes and the lighting of ranges in the evening. As I sit typing this in my 'under the stairs' cozy nook, I can feel the warmth of the fire on my back. All the livestock is sorted (except for final lock-up, obviously), supper is in the oven and the day has been very much in the harvesting, safely gathered in, winter stores and gathering winter fu-u-el mode. Even the supper has this tint as we are now doing a close audit on the freezer(s) to use up long-term stores to make room for the imminent arrival of pork.

This morning I was over to Sue and Rob's where Friends of the Blog will be pleased to know the lady has recovered well (physically anyway) from the mauling by that billy-goat. She may take a while before she is comfortable mentally near billies but that'd be quite understandable and also manage-able. The mission was to cut down and cut up a dead old tree that had been worrying them with the possibility of it demolishing the poly-tunnel.

Buff Orpington hen 'Bobtail' ignores that the month is September
and goes broody, due 15th. 

Connoisseurs of all things 'chain saw' might be interested to know that this was a bit of a tricky one. The tree, dead at least 2 years had dried out and seasoned to hard-as-iron where it stood and the trunk had split in half with the grain roughly in the same plane as I needed to cut my wedge-cut. Rob's chain saw was failing to make much impression on this tree so he'd asked me to see would my saw do better.

In box 4, Stumpy goes for a 2nd bite at the motherhood cherry.
She is due to hatch the 5 eggs I slid under her on 29th. She has
already successfully reared 5 babies to independence. 

Long story short, we got on OK. It was hard going but my saw managed the cuts needed - I cut my wedge out of the downhill half of the split trunk and then my back cut into the uphill side hoping that 'my' half would work like the normal "hinge". We were both quite relieved when the tree started to fall in the intended direction with no sign of the split opening up and un-springing dangerously. With the tree down it was normal every-day stuff logging up the smaller stuff and Rob decided we did not need to slice up that hard gnarly trunk today; I just cut it into 5 foot lengths for stacking and use later.

Caught red handed. Well yellow tongued, anyway. Kato
is 'washing up' the egg wash from some Lizzie baking.

Next, well, this is Sue and Rob's, so tea and CAKE. Better even than normal, this logging job had been postponed a day because the pair were busy cooking cakes to enter in Strokestown Show on Sunday. I had been promised tasters of the spare baking - Sue's 'normal' fruit cake, Rob's "boiled" fruit cake and some nice chocolate cake too. How we suffer.

Red wine kit bubbling away.

We have finally got around to making the wine from a kit we were given as a gift months ago, just when we stopped drinking wine regularly and evolved into gin and craft beer drinkers. So long ago, in fact, that the box of the kit featured as a prop in the Village Play at Easter, which required the lead actor to delve in his bag of purchases and pull out "wine making equipment". To make the wine we simply had to get motivated and then re-unite the box with its former contents, including all those little sachets (A through E) and the instruction sheet which were, obviously, "just on the surface somewhere". (Family in-joke)

A disc of soon-to-be-rinded goat's cheese curds

In the cheese making Liz has branched out from the quick and easy recipes in the Strawbridge book (Feta style, 'fresh' or 'soft goat's), to a harder, pressed and rinded type described in the 'Gubbeen' book (maybe I need to start doing a proper bibliography for these posts?) .

Those yellow fungi I posted a pic of recently have now opened
fully and split in the rain to make almost daisy-like shapes

This one we made in the muslin-lined-colander technique but we have now ordered on line some proper plastic cheese moulds (with 'followers' - the slightly smaller cylinders that push down into the moulds under pressure). We are promised another 8 litres of milk from the goat-milkers (Thanks, Sue and Rob again!) when these moulds arrive, to try them out. Meanwhile the first one is being salt-sprinkled and then saline-washed and is developing a very convincing rind. It takes 10 days at least, apparently to develop the acidity and savoury salty tastes to taste like a real cheese. We are all excited.

Poppea (left) and Deefer (nearly 11 now) sound off at the
neighbour's cattle from a handy tree stump. 

Not much else to tell but I will add a few more pics just because I have them. Till next time, then. Good Luck now

Towser. 

Home made suet - clearing the freezer. 

Mathematicians need to decide whether the Fibonacci series
is followed by the birds REMOVING seeds from a sunflower.
There's a project!

The 'Ros Go Rummage' easy stroll.

If Ros Go Run is not for you

Then we have something else to do

A gentle walk with clues to find

An easy test for eyes and mind

Give it a lash, you’re on a roll

The Ros Go Rummage easy stroll.

With the hugely clever and artistic ode above (cough), we introduced our newest project to the world. Well, our latest little bit of it, anyway. Friends of the Blog will know that we get involved each year, in the village's annual Half Marathon and 10 km runs, under the banner "Ros go Run". We join the roadside support, cheering the lonely runners on, man a watering-station and have painted a big bed-sheet sized encouraging sign which says "Downhill from here". Liz gets heavily involved in the admin, planning, publicity, links to sponsors and organising on the day. All good so far.

Buggy-rider Archie Naughten and his support team snatch a
quick "selfie" outside our gate. 

This year the committee liked the idea of doing something for the kids and non-running family who, having delivered their runners to the start at the local sports ground are left with little to do for the 2 hours+ it takes most of them to get round the half Marathon. They came up with an easy, child-friendly Treasure hunt or "rummage race" where they "runners" would have to progress round an easy loop of roads armed with a sheet of 10 clues in rhyming couplets, spotting signs or toys and things we had tied to the hedge or gateposts. 

Cousin Cathy gets cookery tips. 

The purple 'angry monster' pictured, for example, we tied to a tree which the farmer (presumably as part of his 'GLAS' (subsidies for greening / ecological stuff) efforts) had mounted three bat-boxes. Our clue was...

"An ash tree here has boxes three,

for bats to roost (and have some tea),

A scary monster guards the nest,

How would you describe him best?"

Not that hard then.... all the kids had versions of "angry purple monster" on their answer sheets. They all got lollipops as a prize. We were amused to find that some competitive parents entered with their kids and took over, wanting to run round and dragging the kids, who could barely keep up, round in their wake. 

Cathy experiments with flavourings in soft
goat's cheese, mustard, garlic and chives,
honey etc

Another good feature of this day was an entry by a team who are fund raising for a local family all of whose three boys have a genetic disorder, 'Duchenne's Muscular Dystrophy'. DMD is incurable and, tragically, leaves the sufferer pretty much unable to walk by age 8 and not looking forward to a long life. The oldest boy, Archie Naughten is currently being 'prepared' for an attempt on the Dublin Marathon which he will do riding in a special buggy, pulled/pushed by a team of three athletic, fit support runners (Four in the full-length Dublin event. They are a lovely crew and the Ros go Run Team have very much taken them to heart. They got a massive welcome. They had the Archie team runners set off half an hour before the un-assisted runs started and there were gangs of supporters from, for example, the Under 11 GAA clubs with signs and cheering children etc. They were very grateful and posted numerous pics on the Facebook page. They all, and especially Archie, enjoyed their day.

Roast pork rack-of-chops and a nifty savoury flan

I just missed them here, coming out of the front door just in time to see them finish taking a 'selfie' with my sign as backdrop but then running on before I could get down the drive to hail them. Never mind. I spotted the selfie pic on Facebook and commented upon it, which got me into a nice conversation with one of the ladies who was still bubbling over at the welcome and the support they had received. She also gave me permission to use that pic on the blog. Good luck with the Dublin Marathon you guys. Ours was just a warm-up, I know.

Latest book by my
grew-up-living-on-a-sailing-barge friend
Nick Ardley. 

Because Cousin Cathy was around and visiting, she was inevitably press-ganged in to help and enjoyed going round setting out the clues and helping down at the GAA sports centre on the day. She came round again with me later to tidy up the rummage course. That was her final day with us (this time round!). Liz had to drop her to the airport on the Monday for a bit of a tearful 'goodbye', apparently. She had thoroughly enjoyed her little stay, which was a Birthday present from the family and promises to return soon. You're most welcome, Cathy.

Happy 6 month Birthday, Empress and
Pride! Enjoy your Guinness. 

On Tuesday, the piggies hit a landmark birthday, 6 months. Because we do not go with these pigs much past 7-8 months (and never the full year), we make a big fuss of them today and they get a can of Guinness poured over their meal.

No, I didn't steal any of their Guinness! 

These two have been brilliant. No trouble at all. They are, you may recall, variety "Oxford Sandy'n'Blacks" (OSBs) and were named Empress of Blandings and Pride of Matchingham after the PG Wodehouse fictional 'Heaviest Pig' Show entrants.

Pigs at 6 months. Empress on left, Pride on right.

Readers who are uncomfortable with the idea of eating named (or indeed any) animals, may like to skip this paragraph. We have estimated their weights by the standard "Length x Bust squared" method and think they are live weights of around 70 kg today, so they are nearly 'finished' A couple more weeks and we will be booking them in for their final car-ride to Webb's in town and training them to run up into the trailer to get fed in there. That way, on their final morning, they are no trouble to load. I will miss them, but I am sure we will enjoy the pork, bacon, sausage meat, brawn, Christmas ham and 'Parma' style dry-cured legs and the dogs will enjoy the ear-flavoured dog treats.

Breaking up the curds from the latest batch of goat cheese.

I think that is about it for this one. Just a couple more pictures because I have them, so I might as well post them.

Confused Muscari. Why are these grape hyacinths leppin' into
action in September?

The two male turkeys explore the spud-patch in the tunnel.

Interesting yellow fungi growing in a dead hawthorn.

One Out, One In

The 'Wimmin'. Left to right, Cousin Cathy, Steak Lady and Lizzie

It is a bit like hand-over day at a guest house here today with one guest vacating the spare bedroom and, following a quick blitz by the 'Housekeeping' dept, a 2nd installed. On the way out was Mum in Law (Friend of the Blog, known as 'Steak Lady' here) who'd been up for a couple of nights and was now off home.

Cathy and Liz (snr.)

Creature comforts - Deefer lying in a patch of sunlight while
leaning her head on the warm lit range. 

Fuller's London Pride.

Collected from her Knock Flight at lunchtime today was Liz's cousin Cathy, a first time guest. Cathy was Liz's closest cousin when they were all young children together and 2 families briefly lived in the one house in Portmarnock. They are still the best of friends but Cathy is a busy lady (all that taxi-ing teenagers about that all Mothers are familiar with) and had not, till now, been persuaded to make the trip to Ireland to visit us in our new abode.

Regular visitor Danielle (as in Dan and Dan, recently wed on a cruise ship) is Cathy's eldest and Jacob, who visited recently (April 15th) is her 2nd child and oldest son. Cathy recently had a Birthday and Danielle plus Jake conspired to arrange her flights over here and time off the home duties to spring us on her as a nice surprise present. Cathy only found out yesterday that the true destination was here and the rest is history.

Bee hive.

We love that when asked by her children what she'd do here she said, quite simply "I am going to Stop!" Not stop as in stay here (though I think that is even a possibility!) , stop as in take your foot off the accelerator, stop fussing, stop worrying about anybody else, stop with the child-taxi service and all the demands of busy parenthood. All that stuff is catered for by the kids' Dad or the older 2 'children'. We love that we can provide the sort of accommodation where guests can really relax, no demands on them, lie in if they want, sleep during the day and so on. Cathy is surely a deserving case. It will be interesting to see whether she really does slow down. Liz is currently showing her how to make Mayonnaise. I guess that's a form of relaxation.

Part of Liz's Birthday 'haul', this metal and glass owl (and a
frog) for the outside walls. 

Less relaxing and rather more alarming a story comes to us from a friend and nearby smallholder (no names, no pack drill and some 'detail' redacted to protect the innocent and guilty. No pictures, obviously). This lady went out to milk her goats a couple of days ago and was attacked, badly and without warning by her Billy-goat. She was badly hurt - rammed, knocked down several times, stomped on and bitten.

Mum on the phone.

The boy intended to do her some serious damage. He managed to bruise her all round the arms and chest and gave her some bad scratches by slamming her into sharp edges. It started when she unbolted the door to go in for the first milking-Nanny and he slammed the door back past her so that he and all 3 Nannies got out into the yard. It was during her attempts to round up the Nannies that he kept coming at her. It seemed to go on for an hour, she says, though she has no idea really how long.

An interesting birthday present - a DNA testing kit.

She talked me through what she could remember - they'd gone all round and about and between a car, trailer, 2 wheel barrows, pallet sized water butts, stacks of tyres and a fruit cage frame. The Billy had moved the trailer in his efforts to get at her and banged it into the car. Eventually, scrabbling back up from lying on her back between two water butts on the gravel with the goat towering over her with "mad eyes", she was able to grab a pitchfork and manouvre him back into the shed door. There he went all quiet.

While we're looking out, these guys are
often looking in. 

To cut a long story short, Billy goat is no longer living at that address and our friend swears she will never own another male goat. On the plus side, dozens of people have raced around to her with sympathy, help and offers of cover while her partner is currently out of the country for a few days. Liz and Liz went round yesterday and me today. She is now recovering from the shock and is able to tell the story without the tears welling up.

Soldier. The shiny redness is a reflection off Mum's car bonnet,
 on which he was sitting

It is one of those things that all we live-stock folk have at the back of our minds - even if it is only roosters, stag-turkeys or buck-rabbits rather than the bigger, heavier, more powerful rams, boars, bullocks or protective females of these species with calves/lambs/piglets to protect. They can and do turn vicious and have enough teeth, jaws, hooves, horns and claws to do a soft-skinned human plenty of damage. Stay safe people. It's a jungle out there.

Pedro the Ram is in Love

The sloppy plum jam goes in for a re-try.

I knew even as I was posting those pics in the last blog story, of sloppy plum jam and typing. rather apologetically. that it would 'do', that it wouldn't. "Ah well", I said. "It'll get used up". I was just being lazy. A few days later a friend on Twitter's @smallholderIRL account was tut-tutting that it would spoil and I should boil it again, reduce it considerably and get it to set. True of course, so on Sunday morning, back it all went into the pan. I got a good 20% of the water/volume out of it, it went darker in colour and is now potted up properly. You can tilt the jars to 45 degrees and nothing moves.

Chinese pancakes. 

That turned out to be quite a busy 24 hours for me in the kitchen because, Friends of the Blog will remember, Lizzie's Birthday came round and in this house the Birthday Girl (or boy) gets to choose the stay in/go out, the menu and the chef-du-jour. We'll eat in, she decided, you are cooking and the menu is Chinese Crispy Duck and the pancakes, spring onion, cucumber and the rest.

Chinese pancakes.

That was an enjoyable challenge. I had never cooked duck this way before and certainly never made the little, thin pancakes which are not really pancakes at all. Well, not in the sense of pouring batter into a frying pan. They are, though, not available locally. You can get all manner of wraps and tortillas, pitta breads and poppadoms but not these (unless one of my readers knows different) so we were onto the Internet for one of those American accent 'how-to' videos.

Crispy duck should not need carving under that honey-glazed,
crisped skin. It should shred easily with a couple of forks.

They are great fun but a lot of faff and fiddling. You basically make a sticky-ish dough using flour, sugar and boiling water. You knead that gently like bread-dough, rest it and then roll it out like pastry to half a cm thick. You cut that into 3" discs with a biscuit cutter. Every other 'biscuit' is then brushed with sesame oil and they are stacked in pairs like little dough/oil sandwiches. The pairs are then rolled out "paper thin" (says the recipe - I got them pretty thin and about 6 inches diameter but I'm not so sure about the 'paper' aspect). Each thinned pair is then 'fried' with no oil in a hot frying pan, one and quarter minutes each side, so that they blister up like pitta bread.

Liz took this pic of the main event. 

My only way of timing 75 seconds was using the stop watch function on my olde phone and there were 20-odd pairs to fry, so I was there a good 45 minutes slapping them in and flipping them over. When you lift them off heat, you can open them a bit like a pitta bread and peel the two halves away from each other. You end up with a goodly stack of very thin, single-layer pancakes to either use straight away, or fridge over night or freeze for later.

Choc fudge brownie from local artisan baker, O'Hehir's of Sligo

The rest of the meal went very well too and was much appreciated by the 'audience'. The duck meat was tender enough (as it should be) to tease apart with a fork under that honey-glazed, crisped skin. I had shredded spring onions, cucumber and salad-peppers and Liz had already made, a few days ago, that lovely plum sauce. We had bought a special bottle of white wine. I did a starter of simply-cooked jumbo prawns with wedges of lemon and lime. 'Pud' was a choc fudge brownie from nearby artisan baker, O'Hehir's of Sligo. We'll call it a success. I was delighted to battle through the mountain of washing up and clearing away and to hand the space back to the Chief-Chef.

Where Lily goes (left) you will always find Pedro.

Meanwhile, new ram-lamb 'Pedro' is showing every sign of growing up and finding out what he is here for. We noticed him on Friday almost inseparable from our old ewe, Lily. He was close by her, sniffing her with his top lip extended (the way sheep do when the sniffing is 'amorous'), rubbing his nose and shoulders along her flanks and around her rump. All the other girls were abandoned as his focus increased so she was almost certainly coming on heat.

Then last thing at night, as I took the dogs for their last "comfort stop" patrol of the grounds, I am 99% sure I saw him mount her three times. It was dark and all I was looking at on the front lawn were silhouettes. I couldn't even swear it was Pedro and Lily I was seeing and the 'mount' was just a barely visible rising of the head and shoulders of one silhouette over the back of another but the next day Pedro had lost interest again. We are hopeful that he 'tupped' her and she is now pregnant and therefore back off heat. That would mean a possibility of lambs from Lily on 25th January, 5 months away. Watch this space.

We are enjoying the colours on some of this year's crop of hens.

If Pedro is, indeed, doing the business and things go as they did for Sue's ram 'Rambo' in 2015. Each ewe will come on heat in succession (in their own good time, of course) stimulated by the scent of a ram among them. He will fall madly in love with each in turn (nothing if not fickle!) and we might get lambs out of all four including first time Mum, last year's baby bred here, 'Rosie'. If Pedro can do all that without turning aggressive to me (or any other humans) he's a 'keeper'. Patience is the thing.

Finally, we are quite enjoying the colours of some of this year's batch of young hens. We think they may be the variety 'Marans' (as were Bubble and Squawk of yore) as the rooster, Gandalf, and our one layer-of-dark-brown-eggs, Miss Black, are. They are greys and silvers and are either 'barred' (dark bands running round the body across many feathers) or 'laced' (a dark margin on each individual feather). They are a delight to watch and to see scratching about or perching up on fences and gates. As long as they stay female and don't go off down the big-tail, tall neck, big 'cape' cock-a-doodle-doo, rooster route, they too are keepers.

Donaldina of the Trump-esque wig. 

One has caught our attention by growing the most ridiculous looking top-knot, which would make her at least part the Araucana breed. Reminiscent of the Leader of the Free World, she has been named "Donaldina".

Start harvesting spuds and clearing away the foliage here and
you are likely to find the odd stash of secretly laid eggs.

And that about wraps it up for this one. Good Luck now.