Every Which 'Whey'.

365 Pic of the local church and the rose
garden Liz is now helping in and advising on

One of the 'rules' you find in every cheese making book is "DON'T throw away the whey!" It is nutritious, tasty and valuable stuff, we are told. Feed it to livestock or use it in the kitchen where ever a recipe says to use stock and in lots of places where recipes say water. To taste, you might have guessed, it resembles very watered down milk without all the chalkiness and with most of the protein and fat removed; "very skimmed milk" if you like. It is a savoury, rather than a sweet taste.

The taste of nostalgia - currently on promo in
the local Lidl supermarket.

Use it in soups, sauces and stews, the books advise, for extra richness. Use it in bread making instead of water or milk. We have done both of these - Liz turned out a beautiful brace of white loaves and followed through with an epic chowder.

I give some of it each day to the pigs. As part of their ration they get rolled (flaked) barley which I had been wetting with water to make it a bit more palatable; everybody knows pigs like a good schlurrrrpy mash to snuffle about in, not dry dusty barley. Now I glug in whey. I have in schoolboy memory (I used to LOVE Geography) that the famed 'Danish Bacon' industry ballooned up out of the industrial/commercial scale dairy industry, with most cheese factories tacking on a pig unit to the end of their buildings. Win win.

One of our 3D foam 'field' targets. Despite its new 'porcupine'
look this rat would actually still be alive under competition
rules, only "wounded". You can see the 'heart' circle straddled
by arrows but not actually hit. 

In the Archery Dept we had an interesting diversion mid-week this week when our club was asked by the local equivalent of the Sports Council to hold a taster session for local teenagers (etc). This happened at our indoor venue, Castlerea's "The Hub" Badminton courts/gym. Instructor Con had to do the serious training (he's the only one insured) - we 'foot soldiers' went along to set up the hall and the targets and to be on hand to help if there were floods of hopefuls. In the event there was no flood, so we got an hour or so of free practise at some targets down the far side of the hall and occasionally got used as models in the training. "Look at that guy, notice how his upper body is in exactly the same position for every shot?" etc. We dismantled it all once the session was over. Interesting. The club do it every year, I am told.

A rather embarrassing scatter of holes around this hare and very
few hits but in my defence, that is my blue stripey arrow scoring
a bulls eye into the 'kill' zone. Blood-thirsty lot!

Other than that, not a great deal to report. I was back into the 'buildering' on Thursday with a vengeance - we had the cement mixer out just like old times. Part of that day's effort was to lay the limestone slabs into Carolyn's walk-in pantry / scullery, to match the rest of that (Utility room / extension) area.

Red currant jelly, anyone?

We enjoyed a goodly harvest of red currants (for jelly) and also a smaller haul of goosegogs from the 'red' gooseberry bushes. We are leaving the green ones for now as they are as hard as bullets and bitingly sharp to eat. All these bushes have been grazed a bit by chickens and Guinea Fowl who jump up and snatch the low hanging fruits.

Every time we see gooseberries we are reminded of an old neighbour from the Faversham days. Eric, a fisherman, always amused us with the same gooseberry comment when he gave us some first, new season mackerel so fresh the eyes were still bright and the skin iridescent. He was a mad keen mackerel fisherman but didn't actually like them to eat himself. "There," he always said, "is proof that God exists if you ever needed it. He makes the gooseberries come ripe just as the mackerel season starts!" No arguing with that, I guess.

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.

Oy! Git Orf Moy Pond!

Here, then, is the post that plenty of our friends and fellow small-holders will have been expecting since February when we revealed that we were "getting ducks". Followers of the blog will recall that I had always been dead against ducks because of the damage they do, particularly to ponds. All manner of other species came and stayed or came and went, even including geese who were easy to keep off the main pond and were supplied with 3 alternative water-bodies in which to bathe and play. Ducks, though were always beyond the pale. Ducks would reduce our lovely pond to a stagnant, shit-loaded, lifeless mess with brown 'muddy-desert' margins.

Pond plants left broken and floating - the
well known downside of having ducks

The duckless pond established and then flourished with a rich mixture of plants and some good pads of waterlilies developing. It was a-buzz with damsel flies, water beetles, dragon flies, water boatmen, pond skaters, whirligig beetles and we had a good number of smooth newts. Some visitors asked why we didn't have a few fish (gold fish, Koi Carp or the local favourite 'roaches') in there but we always fended them off with the insect larvae and tadpoles arguments.

Cattle-race side gate shored up with mesh
and woodwork. 

Regular readers will know that we 'cracked' back in February. We decided that such a well established pond would have enough 'ecology' going on to be able to stay in balance with just a few ducks... perhaps 3, a drake and 2 ducks. That way we could let them breed and enjoy the sight of Mumma duck leading her little crocodile of yellow fluff-balls out onto the water. There was even a little duck house on the bank in the plan somewhere.

A run under construction for the Hubbard poults to keep them
 out of the yard and sheds.

We nipped out to the local poultry sale in March looking for a pair of Muscovies and came away, instead, with half a dozen Khaki Campbell eggs for the incubator. 6 hatched in early April and delighted us through the fluffy stages. They even convinced us for a while that, now fully feathered, they would still avoid the pond and preferred their little paddling pool.

Having another go at the Feta cheese - this time with moulds
(yogurt pot with bottom cut out) lined with cheesecloth "socks".

Well, if that was the honeymoon period, then it must be almost at its end and the true nature of this 'marriage' is taking shape. They are now 3 months old and no longer ducklings, but full size, chunky ducks (all be it not sexually mature yet, so none of the curly tail feathers on the drakes' rumps.) We have watched them with increasing alarm and decreasing conviction that we might get away with the duck thing, that they hadn't eaten ALL the plants, or damaged the edges and we were definitely not stagnant.

Cubing up the Feta 'rounds'. The cubes now get 4 days
of being sprinkled with salt and dry curing. 

They have though, pretty much eaten all the floating plants (water lilies, floating pondweeds, hornwort) plus the tops of all the emergents except bog-bean. They have dabbled up all the oxygenators which were rooted into the light sediment (there is a rubber liner) leaving them shredded and floating in a tangled mess. We also seem to have no more beetles or boatmen, damsels or dragon flies and we have not seen newts lately.

Good firm Feta cubes dry-curing (in the fridge)

We jointly decided that this was not working right and that we would keep the ducks but try to keep them off the big pond. Friends advised that they should be perfectly OK in with the geese - they would quickly learn to steer clear of the gosling, the Mother goose and George the Gander. I have now started to confine them into the orchard and the "old dung heap bit" and am having an interesting time with one particular bird who has a talent for escaping. I think my sheep wire and hurdles are duck-proof (they do seem to be for 5 of the ducks!) and I have shored up a few leaks in gates and fencing found by the Houdini-Duck. They have been satisfyingly NOT ON THE POND today anyway - even Houdini doesn't go onto the pond if he's alone. We will have to watch the pond with interest to see how it recovers.

Larch

On a related subject, I am creating a run this year for the Hubbard poults. These guys have always been fully free range before but their winning growth rates are a result of eating MOUNTAINS of food which, being chickens, they convert into meat but also a fair quantity of... um.... "guano". They are friendly (or mercenary) souls and tend to hang around lazily in the yard waiting for the next feed, and taking shelter from rain in our good sheds. Not for them the extensive grass ranging or a scratch of the woodland floor.

You can probably guess where I am going with this - all that guano tends to end up in the 'human areas' (yard, feed-sheds) and we get fed up with wading through it or slipping on it as we move about, not to mention how much can get walked into the house. The down side of full free-range? So, this year, now that they are approaching Day 50, they are getting moved to the baby-forest (also overgrown dock and thistle patch) behind our Darby and Joan chairs beyond the big pond. We have no problem with them clearing that to a brown desert - it could use it and they will not damage the young trees.

The kittens explore the "foothills" of Mount Matt. Pic by Liz

Finally, we have been enjoying a 'take 2' on the cheese making. We have learnt from the last Feta batch and this time we bodged up some moulds and Liz created cheese-cloth 'socks' with which to line them. I also cut the curds in the saucepan stage much smaller (cm cubes instead of 2 cm). You can see from the pics that these changes have all made the finished cheese 'rounds' much firmer and they taste and feel very genuine. The rounds now cubed up again get sprinkled with salt and gently dry-cured for 4 days before they get packed in brine (where they should last 3 months in the fridge). It is all looking a bit good!

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.

Chivers Marmalade

Love the old beans tin protecting the exhaust on this old
bog-hopper but I can't help thinking that protection is a bit
late in arriving.

One of those days today that seem to be so full of "stuff" that you get to the end and say, "Wow! That was quite a day!" For Liz too, though she managed hers totally out of synch with everybody else by pulling an all-nighter. Brexit of course with its BBC coverage all through the night as the results rolled in and hacked off at least 48% of the nation. The referendum is now done and dusted, of course, and you will know the result unless you have seriously been trying to avoid it. We are not sure what happens now and how it might affect us in Ireland either from the 'Brit living abroad' aspect or from the Northern Ireland border angle - all we really know is that David Cameron is baling out by the October Tory Conference and the replacement (BoJo? Gove?) will be left to lie in the 'bed' they have just made. Good luck with that, lads.

A picture for Liz's boss of one of the
planters currently being built by the
scheme lads, at Lough Glynn church.

Locally it meant that Liz stayed up all night to watch the results coming in and had taken today off work to recover, as is her normal wont at anything election-based (Ireland, UK or USA). This gave myself and Charlotte (of the mini horses) a clear field to put into action a cunning conspiracy which had been a few weeks in the planning. I have not been able to say anything on here yet, obviously, but the plan was to secretly find a new kitten and bring it home to Liz. The conspiracy had involved a number of friends all sworn to secrecy but all putting feelers out to find someone with kittens they were trying to re-home.

Marmalade kitten - "Chivers" of course (pic by Liz)

Our little mission over to Mayo-Liz's place to collect the Marans hatching-eggs bore fruit first as a volunteer-led rescue centre based around a Claremorris vet had suitable youngsters and the timing could not be better with Liz possibly needing cheering up after the Brexit thing. We managed to appear with kitten as she was waking up from her catch-up slumbers

Honeysuckle growing in our hedge - we didn't plant it.

She was as delighted as we were sure she would be so we got all brave and put Phase 2 into action. We had found out in Claremorris that this little marmalade lad was, in fact, one of a pair of 'left over' kittens, all that remained of a litter of 5, and by taking one we were splitting up 2 siblings. We guessed that when we told Liz this she would agree that we should take both, which she did, so a quick (pre-arranged) text to the vet's confirmed us returning to Claremorris tomorrow morning to gather up marmalade #2 and bring him/her back to his/her brother. We suspect these 2 marmalades will get named Chivers and 'Little Chip' (which unbeknownst to me is another brand of the orangey breakfast delight.) More pics in the next post; Chivers is not that keen on us yet or getting his pic taken and we don't want to stress him out.

Guinea Fowl 'Belvedere' shouts from
the top of our road gate.

The cat-wrangling, though, was fitted into a full day. K-Dub is now sporadically back from working in the big smoke, so I am back into the buildering. We are currently filling and sanding (K-Dub) and painting (me) the place. I had also taken my foot-trimming shears over with me so that we could trim the feet of the three goats, Billy, Nanny Óg and 'Henno' the kid (him for the first time). Then after all the cat-based fun I needed to run Charlotte back to Sligo but via nipping into Supervalue for kitten based supplies (kitty litter, food, kitten-milk, bowls) before whizzing home to do long-overdue dog exercising etc

You're a funny colour for a Buff Orpington chick. Are you SURE
you're one of mine?

On the calendar, not only was there written "Brexit Vote" and "Brexit Count" but also "Day 21 for box #4 Broody". This hen had done a marvellously consistent job sitting in her quiet nest box in the proper chicken coop (where they are ALL meant to lay and sit but the word does not seem to have gone round!). All around her hens were trying to sit on fresh air or getting hooshed off nests while other poultry wanted to lay eggs in the nest like a cuckoo, eggs were getting trampled and broken, or thrown out of nests with half-formed embryos in them.

Black babies. Nigel Farage would never approve.

Box #4 broody, once we had dropped in 3 blue eggs from Sue and Rob just to try her out, sat there serene and did the job properly for 21 days and came due on Brexit day. We think she hatched at least 2 of these on the day because those babies were buzzing around, as dry and fluffy as day-olds this afternoon. They look like they will definitely need letting out of the box (it has quite a high lip) tomorrow. They look quite cute in their black (Araucana) fluff next to their huge golden Mum. More pictures of these guys soon along with the kitten pics.

Pork Pies (A Passion for Pig)

Stately procession led by a vintage hearse. 

On Saturday an unusual commission for me from the 365 project; could I snatch a few pictures of the funeral of one Paddy Lavin (103), late of Ballaghaderreen and our local village, Lisacul. Not a proper invitation from the family, you understand (I knew them not), more a "you should come along to that; we're going". Well, I did it and I got some passable photo's but I felt very awkward doing it, and worried that I was intruding on the family's grief in a sensationalist, rather callous, journalistic way, sneaking around with a long-ish lens praying that I'd not get spotted, challenged or (worse still) invited in 'properly'. I would have died of embarrassment but I have been told since that that was silly, nobody would have minded and they would all have been quite proud to have been 'zapped' for the 365 project. Ah well, I guess I am not yet fully integrated into the local ways.

Pork Pie filling - shoulder pork, bacon rashers, apricots, sage,
allspice and nutmeg.

I was 'home alone' again over that weekend as Liz had headed off to Silverwood land to spend a few nights en famille and celebrating niece Em-J's 18th Birthday. They did the girl proud, it is reported and her 'special meal' of choice was "proper fish and chips like we had at Grandma Pollards (Todmorden) when we were narrow boating".

10 ml sheep-meds syringe (clean, obvs) used to inject trotter jelly
through the steam hole of the cooked pies.

That, we all remember, included, local (to Yorkshire) speciality 'dabs' - a thin but complete slice of potato covered in beer batter and deep fried, plus huge sausages for the non fish-eaters. No cooking challenge too great for Mrs S and the sous-chefs; it all looked delicious. There was also a 'grown-up' sherry trifle from Liz (no jelly, posh fruit soaked in orange juice, and custard made properly with eggs. Also a goodly quantity of cream. Bellies were groaning and many diners needed a lie-down. Liz stayed down there to recover and then, when it was time to return to these parts accepted a lift from Steak Lady and Auntie Mary who had both decided they would quite like another 'sleep-over' here.

The finished pie with a dollop of Liz's mango chutney. 

While they were all gone and I had the kitchen to myself I decided to try a recipe I had been looking at for a while, that for 'proper' Melton Mowbray style pork pies. These are made with a special "hot water crust" pastry and are injected after cooking, with that greyish jelly that aficionados of pies love to have, cold and solid in their pies. I went with a recipe from our Johnnie Mountain cookery book, "Cooking with a Passion for Pig". I had trotters in the freezer from 2015 and hauled a shoulder joint out of the freezer to thaw so that I could lop off the required 7 ounces of lean before slow-roasting the rest for that day's supper.

A lazy cop-out day on the home-alone menu - pizza and a beer. 

I was delighted with the results which not only looked great but were delicious. Unfortunately in our big muffin tin, the recipe only made 6 pies and I only got to eat 2 of them - I was so proud of them that I was inflicting them on any passers-by and drop-in visitors ("Here - you have GOT to try these!"). Liz and the sleep-over ladies used up the last of them at lunchtime on Tuesday and I have been instructed in no uncertain terms to make them again, only with 3 times the recipe so you make 18. I will need 2 more muffin tins for this. We only own one. I have also been toying with the idea of making those pies with egg up the middle (Gala pies?) so I suppose I could use one of the bigger loaf tins instead of little muffin trays.

Soft goat's cheese with an interesting
"spongy" effect, like bread but the holes
were, of course, filled with whey, not air.

I also came by another 6 litres of the goats milk from Sue and Rob, so I tried another version of the cheese, called simply "soft goat's cheese" in our (Strawbridge) book. This recipe was a piece of cake to follow - warm the milk to 30ºC, add starter and rennet, leave 12 hours at room temperature to curdle, scoop curds into cheese-cloth/colander, hang up to drain for 12 more hours. It worked well and tastes correct but when I had finished draining it and took it down to cut it open, I was curious to find it had a spongy texture and looked a bit like bread - full of spherical cavities.

I had seen these cavities when scooping my curds across (at which point they were filled with whey, of course) but assumed they would collapse as the curds drained leaving me with a professional looking, rather fudgy textured, solid-ish cheese. The recipe says nothing about cutting up the curds before scooping them, or pressing the cheese, though it does say that you can do the draining in a cheese mould which you would turn over a couple of times during the 12 hours. Both the cutting and the moulding (and certainly the pressing) might help to deflate this cheese for next time but this time I will just mash it into plastic pots or boxes before I refrigerate. We are also getting a bit over-run with cheese so I have put a chunk of this one into the freezer to see if it can realistically be frozen and thawed without damage.

The neighbour's cattle. 

Nothing else to report except that my attempts to get nice significant pictures for 365 of the Solstice sunset (20th at 22:00) and sunrise (21st at 05:00) both failed as ugly grey cloud banks obscured the sun both times and gave us no colours at all except slate grey. Also, more cheerfully, we have now secured our dozen hatching eggs of Marans chickens, which are now in the incubator, due to hatch on around the 12th July. These came from our sheep-supplier, Mayo-Liz's farrier, who is called Roy, via the lady herself. I nipped out to their place with Charlotte who wanted to see Liz again after a long gap.

Roe deer (I think) in the local deer farm.

It turns out that Mayo-Liz may be down-sizing the livestock operation including selling some of the horses and most of the sheep which means that she may be trying to find "nice homes" for a couple of elderly ladies who have been more like pet ewes than any commercial sheep. We already have sheep of 7 and 9 years old and these two may be even older but are still sound and pushing out single lambs each year even though technically retired. I am tempted. I find I love these gentle old girls and we could probably absorb 2 more without too much trouble.

I am thinking about it. Maybe I am going soft in my old age, myself.