Mum turns Poet.

First this time, I am afraid, a bit of sad news. Our gorgeous male Turkey, Tom, who you may recall had gone all moopy and down-in-the-dumps, has now checked out. After my last post he had a couple of reasonable days but then took a turn for the worst and on Sunday he didn't even want to come out of his 'bedroom'. I lifted him out for him to have some sun but he mooped some more and then seemed to go into a trance, lying on his stomach but with his beak and tail pointed skyward. I put him back into the shade but neither of us were very hopeful. No surprise on Monday morning to find him lying there stiff and cold. It's a shame - he was a lovely character and a fascinating bird to own and we will miss him.

Impressed by this bouquet from Shimizu
Flowers of Hastings Old Town's High St
delivered to Birthday Girl - Mum (89)

We have, of course, no idea what got him in the end but we have heard and read that birds which pair off with a strong bond can simply pine away if separated. Barbara (our hen bird) has been AWOL 3 weeks (we hope sitting on eggs). We are hoping that she does not return and get upset to find him dead like some kind of Shakespearean tragedy and "swallow the poison" herself. Flippin' birds!

The Roscommon Archers at Con's place. That's me centre
right in a red top, shooting.

On a far far lighter note, huge Happy Birthday to Mum (Pud Lady) who has gone all dizzy on this Birthday and filled her letter to us with Limericks. I include 2, for which many thanks, Mum. You had us smiling!

A smallholding lady named Liz
Saw that life should go on with a whizz
So she knitted and nattered, and pastried and plattered
and opened a bottle of fizz!

A sixty-ish smallholder, Matt
Opined he was quite certain that
Whether archery, drinking or just sitting thinking
He'd always know where he was at!

The club members let fly. You will have to believe that the tiny
red patch in the centre is my polo shirt. 

In my archery, big progress. With summer here at last the club moves its operation from the indoor badminton courts hall in Castlerea, out to the farm owned by Instructor, Con. Here is a piece of field well set up for it with a high bank all round to catch (most) stray arrows and Con has a shed full of 3D and 2D foam rubber models of animals (deer, boar, crows, rats etc) which we scatter about to give 3 firing positions and a good variety of targets (size, range and uphill/downhill angle).

Log stack 1

We get 2 good hours of varied , unfamiliar and challenging archery culminating in everyone standing in a line shooting across the diagonal at a model Ibex (big horny antelopey yoke) at a range of 115 feet (almost twice as far as the longest I had ever shot before (indoors)) synchronised like a Military attack. Nock! Draw! Loose! It was, to use that horrible word, AWESOME. Obviously, when you are shooting at that range you need to allow for the dip in the arrow's trajectory, so you aim high. How high? Which field do you want it to land in? came the response. Not as high I as I tried anyway as I watched my first arrow zoom over the bank and into the impenetrable shrub of brambles. Bye bye arrow. I lost 2 arrows that day but learned so much and thoroughly enjoyed myself. The plan was to prepare us all for a first outdoor "Field Archery" competition. Superb day all round.

The ducklings nervously approach this NEW water body.
They were quickly all in there and splashing about like they
were meant to do.

The ducklings have long since outgrown their cat litter-tray 'bath' and Carolyn has generously leant us one of her human-child sized paddling pools. We installed this in the yard, filled it and surrounded it with a ramp of my split logs. Liz scattered some cooked rice (current favourite food!) over the ramps and the lip and the gang were quickly exploring it and within an hour all six were in there splashing about, preening, swimming and drinking it like they were 'designed' to do. The cat litter trays sit abandoned and unloved, waiting for us to gather them up.

Still plenty of honey on this frame

Happily surviving the winter, too, seem to be our bees. Regular readers will know that we were not so fortunate last spring and lost our first (and only, then) colony to the damp and cold. One of the Longford BKA ladies generously gifted us a replacement colony on the one condition that we do likewise to the next beginner we find in need as soon as we have a spare colony to gift.

Log stack 2

That colony is still with us now and, when we cracked open the hive for a first look today it was buzzing with happy activity and still (or again) contained plenty of honey stores. We took off the insulated roof 'eke' so that the girls do not overheat and I cleaned the varroa count sheet so that I could get a good count (tomorrow) but there did not seem to be many mites on it even though it had been there all winter.

Finally a nice Birthday Card from Mum-in-Law (Steak Lady) who took it to Malta with her on hols by mistake and posted it from there.

TK Maxx. Always a favourite shop in Kent for household stuff
has now opened a branch near us. Happy Days. 

Enda Vaneera

Way, way back I posted that we in Ireland had had a General Election. I *think* it was actually 70 days ago. Nobody won (which is no surprise here in this land of coalition governments) and the various factions have been negotiating (or failing to talk) ever since so that even the political journo's have started to sound weary and impatient. Would the 2 main parties (Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil) actually get together after 100 years of the main differences being what they thought about Partition (Ireland split into the Republic and 'The North')? Would we need some kind of Rainbow coalition of Fine Gael plus assorted minor parties and some Independent Members (TDs)? Well, they finally came up with a solution today and re-elected the previous "Taoiseach" (=Prime Minister, say it 'Tea-shuck'), Enda Kenny, though for how long this fragile peace can stick is anybody's guess. It got me to thinking about our various milestones and anniversaries here.

Looking decidedly nervous in this 4 year old pic, releasing
our first Irish chickens

Facebook has to take a lot of the 'blame' for my train of thought. They have got into a 'thing' now where they ping you pictures which you posted exactly 2, 3, 4 or 5 years ago and ask you if you want to share them back onto FB and comment on them. They dug up this 4 year old one of me releasing our first ever Irish chooks from their carry-box. I look very nervous. Nowadays I'd just tip the box on its side and let them walk out. They were our "Lovely Girls"; 6 (quickly reduced to 5) Sussex Ponte Hybrids. We were so green I'd even bought the "wrong" chooks - I'd intended to buy proper pure bred While/Light Sussex (Hadn't heard of Sussex Ponte). 4 years on we are evolving over to Buff Orpingtons and Cuckoo Marans and we have only one of these original birds left - we call her Enda (as in Enda Vaneera....geddit?.... and, yes, I do know Enda is a boy's name).

Meanwhile the piglets come up towards their 14th week and the ducklings and poults are going on 6 weeks. We are charmed by the ducklings now starting to change from the 'peep peep' noise of new hatched ducklings to some proper throaty quacking. Their voices are breaking, Bless 'Em! Both these clutches are now let out all day as long as it is sunny and one of us will be around. They tend to stay in the main yard, though the chickens have wandered as far as the front lawn before 'zooming' back to safety in that amusing wings-flapping sprint young poults have.

Buff Orp poults at 6 weeks

Today we decided to try to herd the ducklings as far as the big pond. They were not that keen and very perturbed at being hooshed out of the familiar yard. I wondered whether the sight of that big body of water might kick some instinct in and they'd happily dive in and play. Not a bit of it. We let them go at the water's edge and all 6 sprinted back towards the cattle-race and the familiar safety of their tiny cat litter tray 'pond'. That can fit only one or two at once now and then only paddling up to their ankles. We may need an interim "kiddies' paddly pool" solution in the yard so that they can experience water where their feets do not touch bottom.

Brooding in stereo. 

Our long-term brooders (the geese and Barbara the turkey) are still playing the waiting game. The geese, we know, are sitting on at least 12 eggs but we can not know how long these eggs have been in there. 3 have been in from the start. We may have the usual goosey chaos as the two Mums (Aunts?) hop on and off the nest and steal each others eggs for safe-keeping while the other female is out grazing. We hope that they will also do the 'aunt' thing once hatching starts. I'll take these 2 day old out to the orchard if you could just sit on those other eggs in case we get any stragglers hatching. Madness.

Not a happy bunny. Tom the turkey misses his woman.

Tom, is feeling very woe-begone with his 'wife' away in the fields (we hope). He mopes around all day and does not display even to us when we are seated by the pond. Hang in there, Tom. The 16th or so might see herself re-appear with babies. We'll give it a fortnight more and then possibly, try to find you a new love.

Damsel fly pupal case

I am still plugging on with the '365' project and trying to ring the changes to give the village website a good variety from which to choose. It is going well. Liz has upwards of half a dozen contributors now (and is trying to encourage more) so we have pics of children, ride on mowers, vegetable seedlings, the hand-ball courts, sunsets, pictures done by the pre-school (and flags by the National School). I am still here as 'back stop' to make sure we have no blank days. The end of April had us all a quarter of the way through the project. Fair way to go yet.

New log stack in the making.

I have managed to blag a couple of old pallets locally, so  the project for the end of this week has been to create yet another log stack against the barn wall up in the "Rose Walk". K-Dub would be proud of me. I am trying to build this with near vertical faces and even binding in the corners with log versions of "coin stones" like a bit of stone work. The plan is to roof this stack with my curved corrugated iron sheeting from the hay barn (you can see this in the photo, centre left).

Hornwort in the big pond.

This stack will be a good 4 cubic metres so should represent years 3-4 (maybe 5) of my store. It is a good feeling to be in May 2016 and to know that we probably have wood stored now round to Winter 2021/2. It will certainly have a chance to season (dry out) well and would also be a good hidey-hole for plenty of mice and voles safe from our cats.

Big boys' toys? Wide-track turf-cutting machinery

Ah well. That's probably enough for this one.

Topp Hosting

Liz rests between courses with (l to r) Dan, Danielle and Keith

I may have mentioned in here that three of the gang who were at the funeral which took Liz to the UK last weekend, were due to follow her back hot on her heels to stay with us this most recent weekend. 2 of them (Dan and Danielle) have been before, last year when they famously drove from here, through Connemara to Galway pausing by a lake for Dan to propose to Danielle. Ahhhhh. Keith is a Dublin cousin, actually son of my Best Man. We 'knew' him properly back then but as a 7 year old (!) and we had lost contact when we were back doing 'married' in the UK. He is one of those who Facebook has brought back into our circle. FB is good for that. It would be his first visit.

Roast duck with Guinness and honey

We love these chances to do hosting and Liz, in particular gets focused and creates lists and menus of special foods and other stuff not normally stocked here. These people will get fed and will get fed WELL and memorably. As I sit here after the event the list, which was fixed to the kitchen dry-wipe board by a magnetic strip has been tidied away, but if memory serves it had on it such goodies as, for Saturday lunch, Asparagus and Gruyere Tart, a pie of sausage meat, black pudding and caramelised apple and a salad of tomatoes, goats cheese and finely sliced onions.

Asparagus and Gruyere Tart

Supper was a genteel soup of bacon and leek (no bread - pace yourself, guys!) followed by mains of Roast Duck in Guinness and Honey (with just noodles and steamed spinach) and a dessert of either/or rhubarb and cream meringue or banana bread. The "cheese course" was Liz's speciality chilli, cheese and bacon biscuits. Breakfast was the expected 'dippy' goose eggs, a keen request from Danielle remembered from last time.

The guests were here, as well as the food, very much for the livestock - we are like a petting-zoo for them all and they love the chance to meet, feed, pet and cuddle as many species as they can get to co-operate (pretty much everybody except the geese!). The pigs were a real hit here, being now 13 weeks old, so small enough to have bouncing around on your lap like a pup and trying to mouth everything. Somerville particularly likes to be rubbed and fussed all over - between her ears, her back, flanks and tummy and under her chin. Ross is not quite so keen but Danielle just saw that as a challenge and was determined to 'tame' her by Sunday dinnertime!

Danielle meets the piggies

The lambs are a bit heavier now (Rosie is ten weeks) but are well used to being handled. Both Danielle and Keith managed to get the guest-goat Nanny-Óg to eat some crunch out of their hands and then went off round the field doing a little happy dance. Then there are the ducklings and the little chicken poults and Tom the Turkey who is currently missing his good lady (out in the fields somewhere (we hope) sitting on eggs) and seems more approachable, let them stroke his knobbly head. A great time was had by all on the food rounds and interim communing.

Thank you so much for the lovely
flowers (also wines, beers and
Hendricks gin). You shouldn't have!

In short, it was a lovely successful visit and much enjoyed by everyone. Our FB 'lot' will have seen a blizzard of pics on FB; I have used just a few of them on here (Thanks D+D). You are welcome back any time, guys.

The ducklings meet Tom and some other residents

The gang headed back to Dublin and their flight home via a visit with 'Sparks'. Liz headed off for a well earned lie-down and I headed for Castlerea and what was planned to be a session out of doors with the archery club setting up the outdoor shoot (targets, marquee etc) followed by a bit of out door shooting. I, for one, was pleased that this was rained off and we adjourned back to the badminton courts of Castlerea's "The Hub". This meant that I could get my new bow set up indoors by instructor 'Con' and learn to use it in the familiar indoor environment. Long story short, that went well and I love the new gear. More on that in a future post.

Poults feathering up well

The Bank Holiday weather proved better than expected and gave us a chance, at last, to release the ducklings and poults for a quick explore of the 'free range' potential of this place. In practise these youngsters are always a bit nervous on their first sessions and never go far. We watch over them mainly in case of inappropriate interest by either cat (they are too big now to be of any use to crows, magpies and the sparrowhawk) and soon they get tired and return home, where upon we shut them back in till tomorrow. It works well. We then increase the time and reduce the supervision each day till they are out all day with everybody else. I can't wait for the ducklings to find the big pond, but I am not going to hurry them and they have not yet tried to get beyond the main yard. The only water they know is the cat litter trays, ridiculously shallow now for these long legged, tall "babies".

I just passed Danielle the lamb, Rosie. Bit of a lump! Keith
seems to be in deep conversation with #3 ewe, Myfanwy.

Ah well, I will leave you with Liz away in Silverwood-land with a bitter sweet task ahead of her. With Mum, bro (Sparks) and sis (Mrs S) the family must choose a head stone for their late Father's grave and decide what should be engraved there-upon. Mum wanted everybody to be there so that the decisions could be family ones. There was also to be a lunch. Liz is not back yet so I have no idea how that went for the moment but I cannot imagine it was a barrel of laughs.

A rather unkind pic of Danielle deciding whether yet another
portion of rhubarb Pavlova would be a good idea! 

...and that is enough for this one.

Quattro Stagioni

Impressive snow flurries on Thursday

Ah, the 'Four Seasons' - but not those well known four concerti by Vivaldi. I was actually remembering my favourite choice of pizza topping from my youth when (I can't remember why or with whom) we'd head off en-masse to a chain pizza restaurant in Maidstone. The internet now tells me that a Quattro Stagioni pizza "traditionally" featured ham, artichoke, mushrooms and olives to represent the four seasons though I swear I can remember pine-apple for summer. Ah well. That was Kent and decades ago, so maybe they are not the right kind of 'traditional'.

That is just the ancient memory. The up to date use is a comment on the wry Irish take on the weird weather that we have had this week - that you get all four seasons in the same day - rain, hail and snow, drizzle and then bright sunshine with blue skies and puffy cumulus cloud. The coat, hat and gloves you put on to counter the 'winter' are suddenly way too warm as the sun comes out and the wind dies away, until the next squall. I managed to capture a couple of pics of snow, but snow is notoriously tricky to do justice to falling. You have to try to force the flash to go off to illuminate the nearby flakes, but it was so bright, my various auto settings refused to do that. I had to crop in on bits of dark - an open barn doorway or a grey concrete block wall.

Nugget, Goldie's daughter, is still free range and we are letting
her be so. She does not seem to be doing any damage. 

We are mindful, of course, that somewhere out there in all this wintriness is poor Barbara, our turkey hen. At least, we hope so. We hope she is hidden up well in a hedge somewhere and that her instincts have made her choose a place under cover and out of the wind. Maybe there will also be the fast-growing cow parsley (Queen Anne's Lace) around her so that she will be more and more protected as time goes by and Brer Fox will not happen upon her (or his mink and pine-marten cousins). We will never know if she is taken by a fox, of course; we will only know she hasn't if she wanders back in here with or without some chicks. Fingers crossed. Barbara!

Two lovely things happened to me this week - Liz came home and my archery stuff arrived on the courier (EXPD) from the UK. Liz had thoroughly enjoyed catching up with all the cousins on that side of the family - they are all Irish and at one stage all came to squeeze into Liz's family home when she was 8-ish prior to emigrating (back) to Swindon.

Pointy end and nock ends of my new arrows. €10 a pop. 

'Little-Liz' loved having all these wonderful new play-mates descend upon her, sharing bedrooms and toys etc like one huge family. She gravitated particularly to Cathy as she was closest in age and stayed in Ireland longest and they have been great friends ever since. Returning from the funeral it seemed to be a decent sized cup of tea that she missed most about home. No problem. Get the kettle on,

My archery stuff arrived while she was still away, coming from Quick's Archery of Portsmouth (UK) and delivered by the courier EXPD. I was sure I'd not heard of the latter but the guy, when he rocked up, told me he had not needed to ask directions because he "knew us". Anyway, I can heartily recommend both these firms if you are ever in the bow and arrow buying business. It was all nice and safely packaged and arrived intact, safe and sound and complete and within days of being ordered.

A handy kit bag for the gear. Not sure If the dozen
29 inch arrows will fit in it, mind.

Of course, like a kid at Christmas, I had to unpack it all and see what I had there. I had to assemble the bow, don the glove and wanted to lash off a trial arrow just to make sure it all worked. But what to use as a target? Anything solid and wooden, the arrow would surely sink in an inch or so and be a pain to extract. The arrows are €10 each, and have thin-ish wooden shafts, so you'd not want to break one trying to wiggle it out. Stones and rocks in any mud-banks would just shatter the arrow on impact. Maybe that big pile of shredded (felled) tree would stop it. What could POSSIBLY go wrong?

Apple blossom nearly open.

Well, I nearly lost the arrow. The shredded wood pile was so fluffy and loose that the arrow almost disappeared. All 29 inches bar about an eighth of an inch of 'nock' (back end) zoomed in and it was only that I saw the puff of the dry surface shavings jump, leaving a small darker patch of the inside bits in the middle of which was my yellow, plastic nock, or I would have been dismantling the pile to find my arrow. That was enough of an explore. I will try again when I have dreamt up a denser target; maybe more of those wood shavings rammed hard down into a big feed- or coal-sack.

Pear blossom.

I am in a strange kind of limbo on archery now - midway between my beginner training course and my onward practise, between using the club 28 lb pull bow and my beefier 35-40 lb pull own bow and between the indoor, badminton court training sessions and the club's summer outdoor archery. Rather than have me loosing off arrows out of doors as a first introduction to my new bow, the instructor has allowed me to come and 'play' outside with my familiar club bow.

Our local bridge with the river running very low. 

But that is all to come. Sunday's job is for a gang of us to head round to his farm and help set up the outdoor course including the marquee we will use for coffee breaks. I am told the guy tries to set up quite an interesting course as near as possible to the kind of 'field archery' course you would meet in a competition; varied targets including the 3D animal models marked with heart/lungs they use as well as normal targets, all at a variety of ranges and some uphill and downhill by means of the 'tee' position or the target being up on pallets or mounds. Sounds like fun. I will be able to tell you more after Sunday (weather permitting)

The North Wind Shall Blow....

An abrupt end for us, to our lovely foretaste of spring. The wind swings round to the North and strengthens (I have borrowed 2 weather maps from AA Weatherwatch and, for those who don't do meteorology, I have added two bloomin' great red arrows to show you how the wind is working.) Our lovely blue skies and sitting out by the pond in tee-shirts with a pleasantly cool wine, are replaced by dog walks clad back in the winter coats, gloves and warm hats. Today I was out helping a neighbour with a job out in one of his fields, and an impressive snow and hail storm came blasting through, sending both of us trying to hide in his one-man tractor cab (stationary of course). Liz is currently over in the UK for a funeral, so I am not sure what weather she is getting (Swindon) or how she is faring. Keep warm, Lizzie.

Here at home, we are chugging along steadily with no great drama or excitement. The local idiom would be "Nothing strange?" (meaning 'I guess you have no new gossip for me?') The reply is "No, nothing strange". There is a whole conversation in there.

On Sunday we have a National census to complete. We love this sort of thing so we are happy to oblige. Liz loves to look back at old census results which are mainly available free on line now to see how the various aspects change, rural depopulation and the like. An interesting aspect of this one has been a ground-swell of anti-church sentiment which follows the recent conflicts between the old Catholic establishment and the more non-religious younger people. The latter, of course, 'rule' the Social Media and have been spreading the word that it is OK to say in the census that you have "No Religion" if you are not a regular church-goer. The church, it is known, use the official census data to argue for a big share of any resources (teaching etc) because they can demonstrate that, ooh look, 80%+ of the population say they are Catholic even though perhaps only 20% of the population go to Mass. The anti-camp feel that if the people declared more truthfully their support for the RC church, then the latter would get a smaller (and fairer) slice of the Government finance cake.

Lambs looking quite chunky now at 2 months+

Meanwhile I have had a couple of queries about how those lambs and the kid are doing and a request for some update pictures, so here goes. The (5) lambs are over 2 months old now so we have been ear-tagging them. I was amusing myself with the thought that you know you are not a sheep beginner any more when you have to order your next batch of ear-tags. I have just one left from my 1-10 series so I have ordered #11 to #30. They look nice and chunky and are full of beans.

Goat kid at 3 weeks. 

They have adopted the new goat-kid (Henry Óg) and can all be seen playing chasing and King-of-the-Castle games with him. He bounces around like Tigger on all 4 feet or tries to engage them in gentle forehead to forehead pushing matches. He is still suckling and pays only scant attention to the mealtime feeds of ewe and lamb 'crunch' or to the browse which his Mum finds. Lily's lamb Rosie, our likely keeper, is all done suckling now. We still see Polly's boys at this occasionally and Myfanwy's girl twins. These lambs are all so strong now that when a pair of twins dive in to suckle both at once, and 'bunt' the ewe's udder with their noses, the ewe gets lifted off the ground at the back end. It is comical to see but I can't think it is that comfortable for the ewe and I assume she will be keen to stop all this 'nonsense' and let the babies fly the nest.

Just before the weather turned, I got a first grass-mow in.

My two on/off/on broody birds have now settled on the 'broody' option. The goose has settled now in the coop and sits glued to the nest in a kind of trance all day and all night (as far as we know). Barbara the turkey hen went AWOL again and has not been seen around here for 3 days. Poor Tom, the ''husband" looks very miserable and forlorn, abandoned by his wife and does not spend his whole day in display mode. As

We don't normally light this open fire
in April. This one was more about putting
off some jackdaws I had seen nest building
than keeping the house warm. 

I have said in previous posts, we can only guess where she is (out there in the fields somewhere) and how she is getting on. We are unlikely to see her for at least 25 more days in which time she could easily fall prey to a fox, pine marten or mink. Then she may or may not hatch any youngsters and may or may now be able to bring them back here. Domestic turkeys are notoriously bad mothers; big clumsy stupid things who tread on their own chicks and then do not realise that the screams of agony under their feet mean they should shift their feet or get off the nest. We can just wait and hope and pray till around the 16th May. You never know. Maybe it will go OK.

The blackthorn has started flowering in
all the local hedges

In an unrelated nest-building story, I had spotted a couple of jackdaws bring twigs to the chimney on the west end of the house and some of these were even falling down the flue when dropped by the clumsy birds. I do not have a jackdaw 'pot' (wire cage) on that flue yet so I lit a couple of good smokey turf fires in the grate to send them an unwelcome signal. They seem to have abandoned us for now.

Ah well, Lizzie comes home tomorrow; she is actually back into Ireland tonight, flying from Bristol, but will stop another night at the brother in law's in Dublin and catch a sensible train tomorrow. I will collect her from Castlerea station. She then has a couple of days of work-holiday before we are descended upon by three guests for the weekend. Two of these are 'returning customers' but one is a first timer.

Of COURSE there's room for 2 guests in this room.
Why would you doubt it?

This is going to be fun - the spare room is fairly well stuffed up with the boxes, bags, crates, sewing machines, a spinning wheel and even a dress-makers dummy we are minding for our not-quite-finished-building-the-new-house friends. Never mind, with a bit of judicious stacking, moving and hiding of 'stuff' behind the sofa downstairs, I have manage to uncover 2 beds upstairs and one downstairs. What could possibly go wrong?

False Alarm!.... (or not).

Good book choices among the Birthday present 'haul'

In my previous post, I recorded that both a turkey hen and a goose had gone broody; the former in an inconvenient place lost in a neighbouring field, the latter nice and tidy in her proper coop. Well, as soon as I had gone to print, of course, both ladies changed their minds. In the morning, the goose was off her eggs and asking to be let out with the gang into the orchard, where she happily stayed all day and the cold eggs, I picked up for normal kitchen use.

Calf-eens a-plenty in many neighbouring farmyards.

In the middle of the afternoon, while I was away buildering, Liz texted to say that Barbara had turned up, butter wouldn't melt, looking for food in our yard. False alarm? Well, you never know with poultry. The goose, having taken her day off, decided to go back onto (some more) eggs and has now spent the last 2 days sitting tight. I assume the eggs can stand this on/off start to the incubation when they are still only a 'germ' of embryo. Barbara spent a day or so very much here, mooching about with the husband (Tom) but today went AWOL again from about 9 a.m. till just before lock-up (8 p.m.). These eggs are either taking a long long time to lay, or she is doing like the goose and building up to broodiness.

Rounding up the mini-horses. 

Meanwhile in the Sligo dept, the mini horses which had been happily grazing the last few millimetres off the rented field down by our local river-bridge, suddenly needed moving. The person who is taking over the rented field next was asking if he could spray slurry all over it prior to the agreed date and Carolyn was not at all sure he would take no for an answer.

Primroses are everywhere this month.

K-Dub and I had to take a day off from the buildering to rapidly create a horse proof paddock about 40m by 50m at the new place (not an easy one but we made it) and then I was asked to help with the rounding up and loading of Cody, Romeo and Bob at this end into a borrowed stock-trailer. That bit, at least, was a doddle because these boys are suckers for a carrot-bribe. I offered them some nice fresh crunchy veg through the gate while C snuck up behind and slipped head-collars onto them. They are well used to trailers, being former show-horses, so all three were led up the ramp with a minimum of fuss and off they went to Sligo.

The warm weather has given us some gorgeous sunsets

Out of nowhere we have been enjoying a week of gorgeous sunny, warm weather. That's 'warm' by Roscommon standards, you understand, so daytime highs of 17ºC, nothing too tropical (or even Mediterranean) but after a long, cold, wet, miserable winter it is a lovely relief. Liz and I have been able to enjoy a post-work coffee 'al-fresco' and on one evening sat out by our pond in the 'Darby and Joan' chairs till gone 8 p.m. rather than spoil it by coming indoors to cook. We didn't even light the range. The dogs had been let loose in the orchard at 6:15 p.m. expecting to only get the usual half hour and they were still out there, running free, at 8 p.m.

A '365' pic of a nearby swallow hole. The yellow arrow
shows flow direction before the water disappears under-ground.
Obviously I have not put the arrow on the 365 version. 

I heard my first cuckoo out in Sligo (on the 19th) while we were putting up the horse-fence; he sang away all day. I then heard my first home-bird the next morning here at 7 a.m. on my first dog-'patrol'. We saw our first swallow near here on the 16th and then saw a load of them flying over a nearby lough (Lough Glynn). We have since seen "our" swallows dipping over our pond to catch insects and to drink. Summer is definitely coming, even though the forecast has some nasty cold nights (down to 2ºC) coming up over the weekend.

Keep warm, people.