Houdini Duck

There's always one. Houdini Duck is out AGAIN. 

There's always one, isn't there? Ours at present is one of the ducks who, unlike his 5 colleagues, is refusing to be contained by my attempts to ban ducks from the big pond. The 5 just went into the 'new' pen (the orchard) on the day we decided to move them, whinged for a while walking up and down the wire fence, but then settled down, uncomplaining, to a life with the geese. They may have tried to nip through the fence and the sheep hurdles a few times but when they couldn't break through at ground level, they relaxed and stayed put.

I was trying to get a good "It's lashing down!" pic for 365.
I was happy with this one.

Duck #6, though, had other ideas. Every time we ran the ducks into the orchard, you'd hear him a few minutes later quacking loudly in the yard or on the front drive. The escapes quickly earned him the name 'Houdini Duck' and we had to keep an eye on him to see how and where he was escaping. He's not that subtle, bless him, and brazenly escaped again while we watched. He had realised that while the bottom 'rungs' of a sheep hurdle were close together (to stop baby lambs), the gaps got bigger further up the hurdle, and if he hopped up to rung #3, he could squeeze through there.

We are getting some striking sunsets with all these storm clouds.

I covered all the hurdles with 1" square 'aviary mesh' to stop his little game, but the lad sussed out that the same size changes also applied to the sheep wire as a whole. He could get out anywhere around the orchard perimeter with a simple hop up to a foot from the ground and a slither down through, but so far only does it nearest to the big pond. My next step is to run 2" chicken wire all along that fence line. This bizarre psychology is one of the good things we have learned about containing poultry. Chickens, for example, will happily fly up and over a 6 foot solid, opaque wall, but do not think they can do the same flight over a transparent, chicken wire fence. They walk up and down the fence looking through it and bumping off it with their beaks but it never seems to occur to them to fly up and over.

They might look pretty in the slanting evening sunshine but
they are still thistles and need clearing

Actually he is not a natural 'free bird' and does not do anything with his freedom. He seems rather upset that his 5 colleagues do not follow him and he hangs around sadly just outside the fence, quacking at them. He does not even go onto the pond much on his own, so the pond is, in fact, recovering slowly. He is, though, a nuisance (as well as an affront to my fencing ability!) so he needs to be contained by this next plan or he is going to find himself 'ate' if he doesn't watch out. I am talking 'He' here, of course. He may not turn out to be a drake but if he is and he is not the only one, then he may be first against the wall come the revolution. [I am hoping here that my readers know me well enough to know that all this may not be 100% serious. We do not, in fact, make 'harvesting' decisions based on how annoying the livestock are!].

Lamb

In other harvesting stories, we were booked to nip down to our butcher in Castlerea on Monday to collect and see cut up, our two ram lambs, Ebony and Ivory. It is fascinating to talk to the lads down there and we wondered how our lambs would fare especially as the slaughterman always has a bit of a light hearted chunter at our lambs being too big or, sometimes being black-wooled and therefore less likely to grow as well. The guys have been at it for a long time, so they should know, but I have to admit to a bit of 'pinch of salt' at the 'black wool bad' thing.

First fruits for 2016. Some nice lamb chops for Monday supper.

This time they were spot on - the white wool boy was definitely fatter and bigger. There is not a lot we can do about this, however. Our #2 ewe, Polly' is half 'Jacob', a bicoloured mountainy breed, which is almost certainly the reason for the black wool and less heavy shape of her lambs. What ever the case, we saved 4 chops from the freezer and had them as our 'first fruits' of 2016 meat. They were a tender and flavour-filled delight.

Thistles for the compost.

The remaining 6 sheep are currently mowing my front lawn for me while I get a chance to nip round and pull the thistles in the East Field. After the rain, it is a good satisfying task as a vertical gentle pull will give you all the stem and leaves plus a good chunk of taproot. The field is not too bad because I do this every year - if you pull the root the sheep can straight way return to graze there. If you mow or cut the shoot and leave the top or any leaves still there, the sheep will avoid the grass and your thistle will just re-grow. I guess there are about 3-4 man hours of work at it and 3 towering wheel barrows of thistles for the compost.

The Hubbard poults spread out across their new paddock.

My only other news is that the Hubbards, at 50 days old are now well settled into and enjoying their new run and have learned to take themselves off to bed in the correct place (in the coop not under it!) as it gets dark. . This was not an immediate thing and I had an abortive day when I'd got 9 of them in, all calm, when Blue the Cat decided to 'help'. That day I had to hire the 'assistant chicken wrangler' to help round up the upset, scattered poults and steer them back towards their (now cat-free) home for the night. It's never boring with livestock.

Of Kittens, Lambs, Streaky Bacon and Bins

When I went "to press" on the last post we had one kitten and just the one picture of same, taken by Liz on the phone-cam. I also noted that we had decided to take pity on the one lonely sibling-kitten left behind and not yet found a home. We figured (and were proved right) that the little mite(s) would settle in much faster if they had each other to play with than if we had to teach the baby to love Soldier or Blue and vice versa.

'Little Chip' 

Back to the vet for us, then, on the Saturday morning as soon as we were allowed, to collect the 2nd kitten, which proved to be a female (the receptionist assured us but we will definitely get Charlotte to double check next time she is here). She is named 'Little Chip' after the 2nd brand of marmalade, this one an Irish one which Liz knows of old. The boy is, of course "Chivers". Unlike Chivers, Chip has both eyes clear of infection and seems to be in the pink of health. Chivers is recovering after his antibiotic eye-drops.

With great timing, we had the perfect place for these kittens to 'land' - our Sitting Room is not due any sleeping  humans for a while and now housed the incubator with its dozen Marans eggs, so the door was locked to stop doggie and feline interference. We put the dog-crate in there with a cushion and blanket, the cat litter tray and feed/water/milk bowls and the kits had 24 hours in the crate while they got used to house sounds and smells, before we opened the crate-door.

They now have access to the whole room and, being cats in a new environment, they have promptly vanished into and under the put-me-up bed. They emerge when they want to play, feed or use the facilities (the cat litter tray is still in the crate). We have declared the crate a safe zone for them - if they go in there then we do not touch them - and we are making frequent visits in there and letting them get used to us and our comings and goings. They come to us and we then are 'allowed' to pick them up and cuddle them. Chivers is 24 hours ahead on this 'taming' and will sit happily on your lap purring madly while you pet him around the head, neck and shoulders. Chip still tends to wriggle and try to escape - Gerrrofff!

Ivory and Ebony loaded in the trailer awaiting their last journey

Meanwhile, our two ram lambs, Ebony and Ivory came up to their 4 months birthday and, though they were still not as big as lambs we have sent to the butcher in the past, they might have started 'bothering' their female cousins or our adult ewes. This is not a part of the job either of us enjoy but it is a necessary evil. These guys had to go on their final journey to our man Ignatius G in Castlerea Main Street.

Half 'cooked', the dozen Marans eggs in the incubator.

The way we do this is by gathering all 8 sheep into the cattle race where we can grab the two we want and steer them into the trailer. Easy? Well, not this time apparently. The boys are young, fit and strong and took some catching. At one point I mis-grabbed Ivory and ended up doing a failed version of a rugby tackle, landing with a real crunch on my right knee. 2 nice abrasions even through the trousers and some good bruising, I shouldn't wonder. I am hobbling about like an aul' wan and unable to do any jobs which involve kneeling. We got the lads into the trailer and away to our butcher/slaughterman, Ignatius G so that today I had to nip down there to collect the offal - kidneys, hearts, livers and a lung (for the haggis). The main carcasses hang for a week in G's cold store, before we nip down next Monday to see them cut up, collect them and possibly pass Steak Lady's one to her.

Streaky bacon - dry cured Berkshire bellies.

The pork bellies I had salted down and then air dried came ready today, so I was able to de-rind the bellies and then slice the bacon up into 250 g packs of good streaky bacon. We have a cousin visiting at present, so we were able to try out the rashers for a nice breakfast which went down well with all customers. The cousin (Keith) commented that it was the "proper smell of Sunday" he could remember from childhood.

For a while, we thought we were being converted to a pay-by-weight system on the wheelie bins. These have up to now been just a standard charge for each 6 months (€175) but a law has been passed which would make the waste companies charge in a more complicated way. You would think the companies would be keen to write to their customers, to warn us and explain this change but no. In a rather shambolic advisory campaign we finally got first notification about a week before the change was due AND it comes in the form of a strange cartoon-ish "The good, the bad and the ugly" sheet of A4 from which you'd be hard pressed to tell how much you will be charged.

Earlies

I think the €175 fixed charge has been replaced by a €102  'service charge' with blue bin recycling free but black bin (land fill) charged at €0.22c per kg of "lift". The good/bad/ugly sheet then tells us that if you keep the landfill to below 16kg per (fortnightly) "lift" you are "good" - I take that to mean my total bill for the 6 months might be less than I am paying now, bad is 25kg (about par) and ugly is 34 kg (pay a lot more than now).

Yellow loosestrife

I would reckon that our landfill bin is always so empty that sometimes I don't even bother taking it down to the gate, so I should be OK but we will not be lobbing any more 8 kg dead turkey cock bodies in there! To add to the confusion, inevitably we were just about to go live when there was such an uproar in the Dáil (Parliament) that the Dept got cold feet and are rumoured to have suspended the go-live for now. Naturally, we have heard nothing from the waste company again on this, so I will put my bins out on Monday completely in the dark as to how I am paying. I have paid their suggested 'pre-emptive' charge, so I am covered for 6 more months plus/minus any weight adjustments.

Goats Milk Cheese

Excellent curds forming.

With the guests safely returned to their homes we had the house back and quickly moved on to new ways of 'messy-ing' it up. We now have 2 sets of friends who are into the milking of goats and producing more milk than they can handle. Charlotte you will already know about, milking just Nanny Óg and her only on a 50/50 share basis with the kid (Henry Óg, but now shortened to 'Henno'). Well Sue and Rob have recently sold off all their many kids at just 6-8 weeks old, so have inherited, as a result, 3 milking nannies who are going at it like mad things - producing good rich milk and lots of it.

Scooping out the curds

As soon as we heard this we put in a bid for "at least 5 litres" (that is a sensible batch size for cheese making) and Sue and Rob duly turned up with 8 creamy litres, fresh and raw. The only cheese making we had done up to that point was the (supermarket) cow's milk Ricotta and then Mozzarella from the kit which I wrote about in a recent post ( http://deefer-dawg.blogspot.ie/2016/03/blessed-are-cheese-makers.html )  and then Liz's small rapid batch the other day. Nothing ventured, though, nothing gained. I chose a recipe from our 'Strawbridge' books for "Feta style" cheese and nabbed the first 5 litres. Liz did an Internet hunt for a soft goat cheese "with rind" with the remaining 3 litres. Both these batches are currently mid process.

We were both amazed by the amount of curd you get from this raw, full cream goat's milk. When the cow's milk curded it separated into the curds, floating on the surface as a 2 inch thick mass with almost clear whey under it. From the 5 litres of  cow's milk we actually got back over 4 litres of whey for the pigs (I soak their flaked barley in it, they love it). Because of this, in my ignorance, when I went to cut the curds for this cheese, I only sliced the knife in about 3 inches. When I went to scoop out the curds with the draining spoon, I found that the curds ran right to the bottom - the whole depth of milk had 'set' and the whey was only going to leak out of the cut surfaces of the curd blocks. We both made way more cheese than we had imagined we would.

The drained mass from the sieve and cheesecloth.

The curds, once cut, scooped and set to drain, do actually leak that whey slowly so they need to sit in cheesecloth on a sieve or colander and will sag slowly down to about half the volume as the cheese starts to become more dense (and would be pressed for hard cheeses). For my 'Feta' (not actually allowed to call it that as Feta is one of these protected geographic names) the cheese mass now gets spread out on plates and sprinkled with salt to continue the 'cure' while being drained every day.

Liz filling the moulds.

Liz's rinded one goes into moulds to drain further and then gets tipped out of the moulds and left to start forming that fungal 'rind' that anyone who likes the French 'chevre' cheeses would be familiar with. That is the stage we are now at for each, the 'Feta' is curing and the rinded one is growing its rind. More on these in future posts. We do not actually possess cheese moulds, of course, so the 'moulds' were a makeshift collection of plastic cups and punnets with lots of holes punched into them using the hot meat-skewer method

Makeshift moulds.

All this cheese making put us into 'food processes' mode. We are starting to come into the season for 'harvesting' (nice euphemism) some of the stock so we need freezer space. We generally go through the four freezers doing a bit of an audit deciding what we really need to use up, consolidating the few remaining bits into one or two of the freezers so that we can defrost and clean the empty ones.

Trying to grow rinds. 

All this efficiency threw up some pig's trotters which I have been meaning to slow-boil into pork jelly for use in some Melton Mowbray style pork pies. It also showed that we have way too many chunks of pork belly left and I could salt some down for streaky bacon rashers (which would admittedly probably end up back in the freezer). Thus spurred on I hauled these goodies out and thawed them for onward processing. The jelly is now made and the pork pies will be made this weekend. The bellies are dry-salted and being drained of brine each day (the salt on the surface draws a huge amount of water out of the meat) for 7 days. There will be room for young Ebony and Ivory, our ram lambs, when they come back from the butcher's on the 4th of July.

I am no expert but i *think* this is a lesser
butterfly orchid found in one of the local
bogs. 

All this food prep has left little time for any other entertainments. I had a nice early start on one of the mornings, woken at some ungodly (but dawn-lit) hour by a loud cacophony of magpie and jackdaw screeches and croaks. A Hell of a din. In my barely awake, befuddled state as I came to hearing this my brain was shouting "Mink in the chicken coop!", "Pine Marten eating the gosling!" and "Fox!", not registering that it was the maggies I was hearing. Leaping out of bed, then, in a hurry, I raced outside in wellies, jocks and my fleecy jacket (I know! Quite a look!) and found Blue the cat had one of our newly-fledged baby magpies on the ground in the cattle race and the rest of the magpie family plus half a dozen jackdaws all "mobbing" him. Soldier, our other cat was moving in too.

Blue was not actually touching the bird but sitting a few inches away, the way cats do, tempting it to try to take off so that he could pounce on it again. The baby just sat there in shock. I reached down and picked up the unprotesting bird and moved it to safety on a compost heap where the cats seemed to lose sight of it and I could hustle them indoors. When I went out later at a more sensible getting up time (07:30), to do the stock, it was gone and later that day I saw the maggies feeding 2 babies which is all we think they have this time, so my youngster may have made it. I am not sure I love magpies - they steal too many chicken eggs - so perhaps I should have dinged this one when I had the chance, but it was too early in the morning and my merciful streak got the better of me. Perhaps they will name the lad 'Lucky'.

They do, do they? 

Ah well. Enough for this one. More on those cheeses, slabs of bacon and pork pies next time. Cheers.

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.