The Helpers

Since I moved here almost 5 years ago I’ve had ‘helpers’ from both Wwoof and Workaway. Wwoof is an acronym for world wide opportunities on organic farms. Workaway is less specific and is just general help in return for bed and board. With Wwoof you pay to be a member, the applicants don’t. With Workaway it’s the reverse.

I’ve had American, French, German, Austrian, Italian, Spanish and Finnish helpers. By far the best (so far) are the Germans. There are racial stereotypes for a reason. The Germans are superb and I’m not the only host to say this. Another bonus is they all have almost fluent English. The French have the worst English. Both the Spanish and Italians are personable but flaky.

And in case you think I’m being superior here, I know what is said about the Irish and for the most part it’s true. But with every race there are exceptions. However the stereotypes are there for a reason.

But this post is about the funny experiences. For the most part I’ve gained from hosting them and I’d like to think they have as well. As my father in law once said on radio ‘the proof of the pudding is in the looking at it…….’ (not the eating of it). Most of them have kept in touch so they must have enjoyed being here. I will start with the most recent. I regaled my Facebook friends with her escapades. I will only say her. I won’t identify her nationality but suffice to say she was mature and well-educated.

From her initial application I thought to myself this one is going to be trouble. I’m very intuitive but I’ve honed it to a fine art at this stage and am able to deduce what they will be like from their correspondence. But I always am prepared to be wrong!

She wasn’t here long when on a rainy afternoon I heard the vacuum cleaner going like the clappers. When they arrive I show them their ensuite room and tell them they are responsible for keeping their bedroom and bathroom clean and returned to me the way they got it. I wondered had I cleaned it sufficiently. Had I forgotten to dust the skirting board behind the bed….but I was secretly impressed.

I had forgotten about this but a week or so later I was rooting in the freezer one evening for something for dinner. I’d just moved the contents of a huge ‘dead body’ freezer to this smaller one so was pretty familiar with it. I noticed a strange plastic bag. I picked it up and tried to untie the knot. Took me a while but eventually I opened it. Inside there was a wallet in a zip lock bag and a glasses case. I stood there looking at it in shock thinking Jaysus she’s robbed someone and hidden the spoils in my freezer…..

I knocked on her room and asked her were these hers and what were they doing in my freezer. She replied they were, she thought she’d got bed bugs where she’d stayed the previous weekend. Suddenly dawned on me what the obsessive vaccuming was about. I asked where she’d stayed. She replied Travel Lodge. ‘Ah here’ says I, ‘you didn’t get bed bugs there!’

I reversed out of her room thinking to myself this one is barking.

For the two weekends she was here she planned to be away. I love when they go away because let’s face it, we all need our space. The first weekend she headed off but reappeared at the door on Saturday evening on time for dinner. The following weekend she told me she was going away. Then she wasn’t and at the last minute she was. It was a beautiful Friday evening so I opened a bottle of rosé and was stretched out enjoying it, loving having the house to myself. Suddenly got a text. ‘Can you pick me up between 8-9pm, I can’t find anywhere to stay?’

That would be a firm no!

Weekends where she’s from must only be one day long!

But the best of all was she planned on staying another weekend. I said absolutely no way. I offered to drop her up on the Friday to the village for the bus at the crack of dawn. She could have walked but had a huge backpack. I came down the stairs half asleep to run out and feed the pigs and poultry, dogs and cats before we left. She was stood at the bottom holding her pillow. There are 4 on the bed. She was waving it in my face telling me she had found something ‘concerning’ on it.

Needless to say you can imagine my reply…..!!

Then she proceeded to stand watching me run around like a blue arsed fly feeding all before we left. I got back and saw she’d left her coat and scarf on the hall stand. Normally I’d have driven back up with them but this time I thought to myself ‘no way, she had stood looking at me while I ran around before doing her a favour.’

I almost forgot, the day after she arrived I had started dinner. Left it on the hob and went off. Later came back to finish it but it was gone. She was stood at the sink washing up? I said ‘where’s the dinner?’

In the fridge she replied. I opened it (an under counter one so small). Where says I? There says she pointing to a small breakfast bowl. It had been in a large cast iron casserole.

Where’s the rest says I?

I ate it says she.

What.??

It was enough for 4 and the broccoli thrown on top wasn’t cooked. And it’s only 4.30pm.

Is that not dinner time says she.

No, it isn’t says I.

I should’ve given her her P45 there and then.

The only scary incident I’ve had and it wasn’t really scary, more weird. I left this particular chap one evening to go out to a beach party with a neighbour. Before I left I asked him to leave an outside light on so I’d be able to get in.

I arrived back at 2am in the pitch dark to darkness. No light. Plus the door was locked and I had no key. He had locked me out. I walked around the house having hammered on the patio door. Looked in the sitting room window to see him slumped over his phone. The phone light was the only one in the room. I banged on the window for several minutes before he responded.

When he eventually let me in I was less than pleased and a few choice words were exchanged. Next morning he left. I came down to see him all packed up and ready to go. I offered to drive him but he declined. Good riddance I thought.

And then there was this one. My bad goat is named after her. She was barely 18 but liked to go to the pub. The local (which I’ve never even been in) is rough. But that didn’t deter her. One evening there was no sign of her and it was getting dark and starting to lash rain. She’d gone off on my bike. Understandably I was worried so was just getting into the car to go look for her when she appeared. She was very much the worse for wear. She had no light on the bike or reflector and had come down a dark country road.

I left it until morning to talk to her but also decided to contact her previous hosts to ask had she done this with them. They had Wwoofers staying in separate accommodation so didn’t really know what they did in their spare time but the owner of the business had been told ‘she was fond of the men’…..

I decided I better contact her parents just to inform them and cover my arse if anything happened her. I told them no 18 year old daughter of mine would be let drink in this particular pub etc etc. They didn’t seem too worried but I thought it best if she left. She absolutely begged me not to force her to leave so I relented. She then really pulled her finger out and was a great help.

I remember I went off for the afternoon somewhere with a friend after she had faithfully promised me she would never darken the door of that pub again. I came into the village on the main road just on time to see her skulking in the side door of it. At that stage I just laughed and she arrived home intact. She was wetting her dead grandmother’s head apparently. I’ve had a few dead grandmothers. Mostly given as excuses to leave early but they were the few who were useless but unremarkable.

She left but wanted to come back the following year and sent me a Christmas card but the pandemic blew that notion up. She was going on to study to be a nurse. I have to say I was very fond of her in the end but she put the heart crossways in me with her carry on.

For the most part they come here with varying levels of English but communication is almost always possible. I’m impressed at their standard of English and their willingness to learn. But the most recent arrival has almost no understanding. The most frustrating part was her written communication in advance was top notch but it transpired it was her teacher I was corresponding with.

I have to admit at being ever so slightly pissed off. The thing that annoyed me most was the dishonesty. If she had said ‘listen I’ve no English but I want to learn’ it would be one thing. But to pretend she had fluent English and just wanted to improve.

So it’s been very frustrating because I have some French (and lots forgotten) and now I’m surprising myself with what I’ve come out with. But I don’t want to improve my French……

The outcome is a friend said to me why don’t I investigate taking foreign language students and getting paid to have them. It would make more sense because I’m effectively teaching this one English and animal care and cooking for not much more than some odd jobs in return.

Overall it’s been a positive experience and the good have more than outweighed the bad. I’ve also got a huge amount of work done here that would have been virtually impossible to have done in the same time scale waiting for the professionals.

The Why

For quite a number of years now, I’ve been rearing and growing my own food (well trying to). I say trying to, because as any hobby gardener knows, growing your own food is difficult. Every growing year is different and it’s a constant struggle balancing environmental factors such as temperature, humidity, sun or lack of and rain or lack of. Yes, even here we have prolonged and very dry spells.

Lately I’ve seen quite a lot of commentary about how we are living longer now (than we did in the past.) We humans love trying to comfort ourselves that we are doing everything right and everything is all right with the world. Of course, the vast majority of times we are utterly delusional. And this is one such case.

The photo above is of my maternal great grandparents’ grave. As you can see they lived to a great age. Sadly two of their children did not, but one son did. Usually back then children died from something as simple as a lack of antibiotics. My maternal grandmother had 12 children (my mother is the youngest). She lived to the grand old age of 94. Her husband, my grandfather was in his late 80s. My mother is 87 and the only one still living. All her siblings (except one, a surgeon who emigrated to the US) lived well into their 80s and even 90s.

I digress slightly here to tell you a funny story about her last living sister, before she died. She was 97. We all thought she would make the tonne. She was funny, fiesty, witty and very, very well read. They all were. She awoke at 5am the day she was to die and asked her equally elderly husband (a few years younger) was it time for a martini. He said no, it was 5am not pm. She had got a taste for martinis from her brother who had emigrated to the US and who returned regularly for visits.

She later died quietly and we all felt sad he hadn’t given her a martini, her last. After her funeral I saw one of her grandchildren carrying a tray filled with martinis over to the others. I stood quietly with tears in my eyes and said ‘sláinte Ita, you taught them well!’

Obviously genetics play a part in longevity. The genes for longevity are in all 4 branches of my maternal ancestors. But I am fully convinced that nurture (nurture vs nature?) plays an equally important role. And by nurture I mean diet and lifestyle. We now have an horrendous diet in comparison to back then. We eat highly refined processed foods and a huge amount of refined sugar and carbohydrates. In addition, our intensively produced food is sprayed regularly with what I call ‘icides’ (pesticides and herbicides). Cide is Latin for killer or the act of killing. What kills pests is also killing us, albeit more slowly.

These ‘cides’ are killing the soil and all its inhabitants. These inhabitants (earth worms, microbes, beetles, insect species) all beaver away below ground synthesising nutrients essential for plant and crop health and indirectly for us. The simple fact is, our food is not as nutritionally beneficial as it was in the past. How could it be?

It’s not only food grown in the ground that’s less beneficial. Animals reared on this grain and grass produce food for us. If we need a healthy soil to grow our food, so do they. Ruminants (cattle) are herbivore. They never evolved to eat grain. They don’t need it. But we are impatient and want to fatten them up in a shorter time. So we feed them grain. We feed it to dairy cows who have been bred to produce vastly more milk than they ever needed to in nature. And because they produce all this milk they need more intensive feeding.

A huge proportion of the grain (and the protein soya) is produced in far flung countries and shipped here. Of course it’s grown in heavily-depleted soils and sprayed within an inch of its life. It has to be because it is grown as huge monoculture intensive agriculture.

It’s no surprise that beef from grass fed only bovines has healthier fat. Fat that we need for healthy brains and hearts. This fat has more saturated fat than trans fat. Trans fat is produced because the animals are fed an unnatural diet. Likewise eggs and pork from pasture-fed hens and pigs is also healthier. The latter are different to bovines though because they are omnivores. There is no earthly reason treated food waste couldn’t be fed to them and it would make eminently more sense than destroying rain forests in South America and shipping the ‘icide’ laden crops half way around the globe. Obviously this food waste would need to be real food and not the processed crap people pile into their trolleys (that I wouldn’t give to any of my animals here.)

So intensive animals apart from leading a miserable unnatural life produce food that is less beneficial for us. And in doing so are trashing nature, the environment and ecosystems. And we in turn are dying younger and from more disease.

The only winners as far as I can see are big food and big pharma. And don’t kid yourself that they care about the human race. The only thing they care about is their bottom line.

This is why I live the way I do. I appreciate not everyone can. People are time poor now or money poor. People have no space to grow and to buy real food is expensive. But it’s also true to say that many people can afford to but choose not to. Personally I’d prefer to spend my money on food rather than pharma.

Nothing in life is easy. But equally nothing in life is impossible. Humans have survived thus far by being resilient. We are facing a huge wake up call. If we don’t improve the way we produce food we will have nothing left to produce food from.

The Transformation

From eyesore to landmark. Whatever you think about the colour, you can’t disagree with this statement.

Finally, over a month shy of three years, I got the hayshed painted. I loved it from when I bought the place. But I really, really wanted to get it painted and repaired. I asked around, I asked neighbours, but no one could recommend anyone; until I got the name of a good painter to paint my stairwell. He gave me the name of this chap and despite the “damn disease” which held it up by months, it’s finally done.

I drove up on the Campile road which is a good bit higher than my house and laughed my head off. Before I had to slow down and squint to see my place. Now it’s like a big bright beacon nestled into landscape. It’s wonderful.

The weather is changing after a pretty dismal summer. You can feel the chill in the air early in the mornings. The garden is neglected, the tunnel is neglected. There’s so much weatherproofing to be done yet on fencing. But I had no help all summer so it’s all become a bit overwhelming. Spending so much time baking for Cake Dames isn’t helping as it’s eating into my time.

The ducklings are growing rapidly. One is already bigger than his mothers. The last chicks hatched yesterday. They’re a Silkie bantam cross. The bantam had been sitting on them outside when Storm Ellen or Francis was fast approaching (they came on each other’s heels. I tried to put the top of a cat box over her to give her some shelter but she took grave exception and screeched off her nest protesting loudly. I then caught her and moved her and the eggs inside but she abandoned them. Luckily the Silkie was already on a clutch that hadn’t hatched so I gave her these.

The weaner OSBs (Oxford Sandy Black) are finally beginning to grow. Blackbum is catching up with his brother. They’re funny, cheeky and into everything. I love the quacking sound they make when they come into the sleeping big pigs only to get snapped at for their trouble. Pigs have a distinct pecking order and whippersnappers are rapidly put in their place. The quacking is a “hello-how-are-you” sound.

Honky is still here after yet another setback. She celebrated her 5th birthday with a packet of chocolate biscuits but wasn’t in great form that day. For now, we’re taking one day at a time and she’s happy, relaxed and eating really well these last few weeks.

I’m not looking forward to winter but it’s been such a shitty year I don’t think I feel as much dread as I would normally. I just want this year to be over and the world and people to start living again. I absolutely hate the way we’re living now. I hate shopping, I hate going out anywhere I’ve to cover my face. Hopefully we will start to see the light next year.

In the meantime I’m going to preserve as much of the food I grew as possible to enjoy over winter. My tomatoes are the worst ever (neglect and blight got the better of them.) The Mickey Mouse tunnel for all its drawbacks produced stellar crops in comparison.

Here’s hoping to a sensible, balanced and intelligent approach to the next year with plenty of people growing their own food because that might be the only good thing to come out of all the craziness. If nothing else we should realise now that our food security is held by a safety pin and it will take very little to disrupt it.

The Aftermath

Finally, we are slowly beginning to get back to some degree of normality. I refuse to say the “new normal” or use any of these dreadful phrases that have become synonymous with this whole disastrous episode in my lifetime.

Life, apart from human life, carried on and nature bloomed and survived and even bettered. It was noticeable early on that there were more insects, even bees about. Somehow the air seemed cleaner. The weather obliged and we pretty much had sunny days since the end of March with little or no rain and now drought conditions.

The hormones were flying and both my little bantam and the new Silkie hen went broody. One of the ducks followed suit a few days later. Unfortunately the bantam is notoriously secretive about where she lays her eggs. Even leaving one in a nest is not enough to make her keep using it. She had vanished again and I’d assumed she’d gone broody rather than been taken by a fox. But I had quickly forgotten about her when my daughter appeared at my door back (from Australia) as a surprise. I couldn’t say much at the time because of the outrage that would have caused. She flew from Sydney to Hong Kong to London to Dublin and then came down to visit me. No one died and we had a nice time catching up. But unfortunately I had no idea how long the bantam was missing and it took me ages to find her.

Often they are lying in plain sight but you’d be hard-pressed to see them. This was the case with her. One day when she had hopped off the nest to perform her ablutions, I checked the eggs. They hadn’t been fertilised. How did I know? I shook them and I could hear the liquid swishing about inside. I removed them thinking she’d give up but she stayed put so I got a brainwave and put the Silkie’s eggs under her. I didn’t think for a minute she’d stay another three weeks but as luck would have it the duck went broody so I could pop the eggs under her if she gave up. She was sitting on six. Then the Silkie went broody so I put the remaining four under her.

The bantam stayed the course and hatched five out of the six and two days later the Silkie hatched two. I had broken one accidentally lifting out a rogue egg laid by another hen.

I was so thrilled that the little bantam was finally a mother after seven long weeks and what a mother she has turned out to be. In fact they both are. It’s humbling to watch them care for and teach the chicks. Nature really is marvellous.

My poor goat Bad Lola then appeared to develop mastitis and was miserable. I had noticed a couple of days before she wasn’t interested in her feed and seemed hunched and listless. Then I saw her “elder” as they say in these parts. It was engorged and red looking and she had difficulty walking. (Her elder is her udder). I rang the vet and they gave me an antibiotic which had no effect. It was around the time Honky had got sick so I have to say she didn’t get as much attention as she would have done normally. I had assumed it was mastitis. But when the antibiotic didn’t work they gave me another. When I got the second vet out for Honky, I asked him to have a look at her. He told me “to milk all the poison out of her” and showed me how to. It was the first time I’ve ever milked anything but I got the hang of it pretty quickly and it seemed to give her huge relief.

I’m not sure but I said to the vet this looks and smells like milk, not poison but heck I’m not a vet so who am I to argue? The next day I decided it most certainly was milk and the more I milked her the more she’d produce so I stopped. She seemed to get better but to this day still has a huge elder. My son’s girlfriend asked if there were mares and foals nearby. Apparently goats regularly have phantom pregnancies. Not only were there mares and foals beside me but there was a pony in foal in the field with her.

Because I was so wrapped up with Honky I really neglected all my seedlings in the tunnel and they either died from lack of water or damped off. I also planted peas out before a cold snap and they perished. Even the newly emerging potatoes were zapped by frost. The irony being we’d only had a handful of frosts all winter. I also had really really poor germination across a range of seeds. I re-sowed a lot but still nothing. Very frustrating. As a result I’m behind with beans, tomatoes and cucumbers.

The hens have got in a few times and caused major destruction. The wind blew the doors open one morning I was out walking. Another time the door probably wasn’t bolted properly. Earlier on the ducks got in and savaged all my lettuces and got drunk on the beer in the slug trap. You couldn’t actually make that up.

The lettuce I picked up on the beach just before they shut the country down is still providing. A group of gougers as my dad would have called them had a bbq and left all their rubbish behind them. I picked up one of those “grow in the bag” ones they’d chucked and planted it. It survived the drunken duck attack too so it obviously is the lettuce equivalent of a cat!

I got two new piglets. Pedigree Oxford Sandy and Blacks or OSB for short. They’re tiny. But they’re the best electric fence trained piglets I’ve ever bought in. People selling will always tell you they’re used to electric fencing. But they almost never are. Thank goodness they’re not like the pair of curabucs I had last year. I had enough stress to be dealing with so I went and bought some plastic mesh netting and surrounded the electric fencing with it. It worked a treat but I don’t think they were going to dive through the fencing like all the others did. I only increased their area last weekend and it took them most of the day to venture into it.

I decided not to get sheep this year. I still have a freezer full of lamb. I think the Zwartbles breed, although lovely sheep are just too big for me and too lean. The meat hasn’t a scrap of fat on it. I do miss having them though. Maybe next year I’ll go for a smaller rare breed like Jacobs.

And finally after SEVEN, long stressful weeks it looks like Honky is on the mend. I’m almost afraid to type that but I have to have hope that all the effort, time and money I’ve spent won’t have been in vain. I got her portrait sent to me as I saw that the framers was opening after being closed for weeks. It’s absolutely her, The artist, Rachel Dubber captured her essence from a photograph. I left it in last weekend to be framed. I can’t wait to see it.

It’s almost the longest day of the year. Hopefully the second half won’t be as miserable as the first and now we realise what’s important. I can’t wait to start cooking for friends and family again. I can’t wait for people to act normally again and stop looking fearfully at you as you pass. I can’t wait for us to start being human again.

The Lock in

As of last Saturday (March 28th) we’ve been on lock in (or lockdown as they say in America). The Friday before, I walked the beach twice. Little did I know it would be the last time for a while. In the morning it was empty as usual and it was glorious. I took the above photo of teenage girls running in and out, laughing and shrieking at the cold.

Then later that afternoon my Scottish neighbour asked would I go with him for his last walk before returning to locked in Glasgow. It had transformed and was jammed with weekenders. Cars were parked on it. A real bugbear of mine. Really can’t understand why they allow this. Duncannon is (was) one of the most beautiful beaches in the country with the fabulous Fort at one end and unspoilt Ballystraw at the other. Between the cars, atrocious planning and really ugly development it has been ruined.

(Incidentally I discovered ancestors with the same name as my own, had lived and owned a lot of the land around Ballystraw. A complete coincidence I ended up living here. It is an unusual name -Kinchela, and one that doesn’t seem to exist in Ireland anymore. There are a lot in Australia, all distantly related to me.)

However I digress, I said to my neighbour it was like a bank holiday weekend in mid-July and was hard to believe we were in a pandemic and people were supposed to be observing strict social distancing. Even the playground locked and with a big Covid-19 notice on the gate had kids in it; who’d obviously climbed over.

Hardly any wonder then, that they were left with little option but to ban people moving about. Now you are not allowed to go more than 2km from your house for exercise. I’m 4km from the beach so that is the end of beach walks for a while and it has seriously affected my mood. I love the beach and it was the main reason I moved to Wexford. Not being able to go is absolutely killing me.

I finally made the decision to get rid of Cedric the cock. In truth, I’d only kept him as long as I did because I knew he annoyed my neighbours (the ones who made up all the lies about Nelly.) I think the final straw was finding three hens with almost every feather ripped out of their backs and it was freezing. I briefly contemplated buying chicken saddles on line but the only place you can buy them seemed to be from UK or China through eBay or Amazon. I refuse to buy anything else from UK sellers because they have a “snail mail” category that takes as long as it would to walk from there to here. There is Parcel Motel but if I’ve to schlep into New Ross 17km away to collect, what’s the point in that?

I was out feeding and watering one evening when I looked up to see him roughly having his way with the poor hen who’s broken leg I’d fixed last summer and who was actually red and sore from him. I picked up a stone to chuck at him and missed, hitting the new polytunnel. Of course it made a hole in it. I saw red and phoned the poultry guy I deal with and booked him in.

The following day I went back to collect him “oven ready”. The the youngest son carried him out to me half-plucked and not gutted. I looked at him and said no way. I don’t have any decent knives here anymore and I’ve been meaning to go and buy some but as an aunt of mine had on a mug – I never got “aroundtoit”.

They told me wait ten minutes and they’d be back with him. They were and barely an hour later he was in a big pot to slow cook. So far I’ve got loads of glorious stock from him, made a big pie and have two bags of meat in the freezer. The dogs got the rest minus the bones. Alas, poor Cedric, we knew you well.

The same day I rang to book him in, my poultry man said when he heard my voice he was delighted because he had a Silkie hen for me but he’d lost my number. He told me he had bought 10 the previous weekend and he’d only 2 left (at €25 a pop). There’s good money in them! I brought home Mrs Thomas for Silken Thomas (my little Silkie cock) and another hen on point of lay because I don’t like bringing in a single new hen to face the posse here and their pecking order. There’s a reason it’s called “pecking” order! I was hoping he’d have had two Silkie hens but no, he only had a pair left and I definitely didn’t need another male.

I keep new hens in for a week but I’ve devised a series of gates so they have access outside to a confined area. It’s a bit of a pain because when it comes time for the rest to roost you’ve to try get the older ones in without the new ones shooting out in horror. But the new Silkie hen seemed desperate to get out and Silken Thomas was gazing forlornly in through the wire door at her. I opened the gate and she strutted out, with him in abject admiration behind her. He hasn’t let her out of his sight since. It’s very heartwarming because when I first got him, he was the same with his first missus until Nelly killed her. Then he took up with my old broody, Aunty Bessie. The fox got her and he was dejected. I bought a couple of bantams for him next but they didn’t gel at all. Then finally he seemed to pair up with a Bluebell hen but it was very much a one-sided affair and she seemed to play him off against Cedric. The tramp.

My little bantam is “clockin” as they used say up in Meath. That means broody to you and me. I only discovered where yesterday. She’s really secretive where she lays and anytime I’ve found her clutch, she’s moved on, even if I leave a couple of eggs in it. Still, it makes a change from under the eaves of my old stone shed in the middle of November like last year where the fledglings would’ve needed a parachute when they hatched……

I’ve been transferring tomato seedlings out into the tunnel and sowing more out there because I literally have no space in the house for trays and very limited light (small sash windows). But, although it’s been lovely and sunny there’s a bitterly cold north wind that’s not helping the temperature.

I ordered seed potatoes on line and hopefully will get them planted in the next few days. I also ordered saddle soap and neatsfoot oil to finish off the sheepskins. They’re almost dry. They went through a bit of a stinky stage as the instructions I’m following said they would. They’re hanging up in the roof of my patio/deck area. They seem to have shrunk sideways so are long and narrow and I’m a bit concerned some of the wool appears to pull out very easily. They may end up being dog beds yet.

So that’s all the news for now from the locked in Three Paddocks here in South county Wexford. As of yesterday there were 12 confirmed cases in the county but they say you can add another 100 to each of the 12. Seems a very small number for such drastic measures but who am I to argue. Hopefully and it’s a slim hope I think, this will be short-lived.

The Christmas

How did you get over the Christmas? A common question asked here in Ireland at this time of year. The Christmas – as if it’s something you’ve got to climb over.

Well the Christmas is over now and the new year has just begun. The poor turkeys headed off to that great green paddock in the sky. I was heartbroken driving them in and I still miss them. It didn’t help that two of my Jack Russells managed to eat some sort of poison on our round the block cycle and had to be rushed into the vet at the same time. I drove the turkeys in and started to blab about how much I’d miss them to the chap I bought them from. He helpfully asked if I’d like to take them home. I declined but I did carry one to her end.

I was telling my mother how much I’d miss them and I’d decided to get a pair to keep next year and she told me my grandmother had loved her turkeys too. I had never heard that before (only that their stupidity frustrated her) so it was nice to have that connection with her.

I had been worried that they’d get mixed up with other turkeys and I knew the chap killing them (who I’d also bought them from) wouldn’t be that bothered. So I kept telling him it was imperative I got my own back. He insisted he was killing no other bronze turkeys, that the people who bought bronze birds off him were all killing their own. But I wasn’t convinced until I opened a gizzard to clean it out before making stock for gravy. It was full of my gravel. How do I know it was my gravel? Well because it’s a very distinctive ornamental gravel that surrounds the house. All of a sudden I remembered my mother showing me a turkey gizzard as she cleaned it out and explaining how it worked. I was so relieved that I definitely had my own birds. And boy was I impressed at how delicious they were. I have never had a more flavoursome turkey and last year I had paid almost a hundred euro for an organic one. But this one of mine was far nicer.

It was the first year I’d produced my own turkey and ham and all I could think was why I hadn’t done it before. It has become so important to me that the meat I eat is not only high welfare but I know how its been fed. I don’t want to eat meat from an animal that has been fed heavily-sprayed genetically modified grain like soy and maize. In fact this year when I brought home the turkey poults I realised how toxic the stuff is. Virtually all animals are fed GM here (unless organic). Without exception I have to detoxify them because they smell so bad. For a full week the shed they were in was so foul smelling I could’ve put a gas mask on going in. After a week there was no smell.

It’s the same when I buy in piglets but I can actually smell it off their skin. And once they process it through their body and are on a diet of natural grain, the smell vanishes. People often comment here that there is no smell from the pigs.

The sheep frightened the life out of me. I had been leading them down to the third paddock every day which has loads of grass. Last year the neighbouring farmer’s sheep had wandered in at will and he’s not that fussed about animal husbandry to put it mildly. It was no surprise that they picked up a bad dose of worms. I had wormed one during the summer when I heard him coughing but the other one was fine so I left him (I’m not keen on dosing any animal unnecessarily as the wormers kill dung beetles and other insects).

However, I’d asked my neighbours to feed the animals while I was away for the day visiting my family. For some reason they’d decided to lock both the sheep and the goats in overnight. Any time I’d done this was because of a storm and south westerly gales and rain blowing into the sheds or worse reefing the doors and slamming them closed. But I’d always given them both water and haylage. They just locked them in with nothing. I had got back late and hadn’t checked.

A couple of days later I knew something was up. They were both lying down all the time and had no interest in grazing and had bad diarrhoea. I rang the vet and was advised to dose them, which I did. One goat and one of the sheep were back to normal the next day but the worst sheep up to today hasn’t been great. All that was going through my head was how sheep like to find ways to die. After all my hard work to lose them now would be just a disaster. They should have been in the freezer by now not being wormed which means they’ve got another reprieve. The withdrawal period is 21 days but I read somewhere that they always underestimate this so I will leave them even longer. That means it will be February before D Day.

No matter how you plan, when you’ve got animals something almost always happens to bugger it up. I’m learning to go with the flow because often things happen for a reason and who are we to judge.

This was really brought home to me when I got news my first cousin in England was killed by a car driven dangerously as she was walking her dog with her partner. Life is short. Life can be taken at any time. Life is too short to worry about stuff over which you’ve no control. Life life as if there is no tomorrow.

RIP Emer.

The Slimdown

Next week the winter slimdown begins. The “small” pigs will be booked into the abattoir in Camolin. The sheep will have another 6-8 weeks – I should be able to say of peace – but their main tormentors are the goats who aren’t going anywhere.

They will be fed in the trailer in the field for a couple of days in advance so they get used to it. Then they’ll be driven up the afternoon before and settled into straw-filled pens for the “off” first thing the following morning. I’m sure I’ll feel dreadful when the time comes but right now they are incredibly annoying teenagers. They run straight through me for food and even brazenly annoy the big pigs who swing their heads sideways to spear them with a tusk. I happened to be in the firing line one morning. Thank goodness I had jeans on. I still got a hefty red scrape down my thigh.

I collected the turkeys from the place I get all my poultry. I had booked them months ago but he kept telling me to ring him on such and such a date. Then when I collected them I was almost told tuck them up in bed with a hot water bottle. The questions he asked me. Was I sure I had a good warm house for them, could I keep them separate from other poultry, could I keep them in a minimum of 10 days and then watch them when I let them out……. I finally asked had they just come off a heat lamp. He said they were off it a while but I’m not so sure. Anyway on day 7 they flew over the shed/stable half door so that was that.

I tentatively let them out into the field and they appeared to just be happy to potter about in front of the shed. So I kept an eye on them. Then the ducks decided to take flight. They do this regularly and usually just fly over the high wall out onto the road. But this time they were up a serious height and I knew by the sound they had cleared the neighbours trees across the road. I totally forgot about the turkeys who I had left snoozing in the sun in their open doorway.

I ran across the road but couldn’t see the ducks. Then I caught a glimpse of what I thought was one three paddocks over. All the paddocks had horses in them and all had electric fencing around them. Luckily I could hear my neighbour in the stables so shouted up to ask him to turn off the power. He told me the ducks had been in several times in his dunkel and the pond. They had obviously figured out a way to get back. We walked down through the field but couldn’t see them anywhere. Than lo and behold saw the three of them along the hedge being followed by a line of bemused thoroughbreds. We hunted them back and I caught them and clipped their wings.

I suddenly remembered the turkeys. Yep, they’d vanished. I called the woofer and the two of us went searching in two separate fields. I thought I could hear a commotion at the back of the hayshed so went to investigate. They were sauntering around with a lot of curious pig onlookers. The pigs on seeing me started demanding food and there wasn’t a chance in hell I could shepherd them back safely so I had to try to catch them. I managed to grab one and handed her to the woofer. I had to corner the other in the middle of a big pile of nettles and just reach in and grab her.

After this I decided I’d have to move them back into the sheds off the yard. The fields are just too open. The problem is that even though I’ve got four sheds, one is for feed and since the hens decided to lay in it I’ve had to move the dogs out, particularly as Nelly is very partial to an egg and has perfected the art of cracking it and eating the contents. That meant the last shed had to be converted for dog shelter when I’m out or away. There was only one thing for it, move them into the duck shed and hope the ancient grumpy Muscovy drake wouldn’t decide to eat them for breakfast.

I cleaned it out and put their straw bale in. Then set up a sliding door so they’d be at the back and the ducks at the front. Cedric the cock flies up onto a ledge at the back. This morning all were still alive.

Yesterday when it started to rain in glimpsed out to see them trying to get out through the gaps in the green gate instead of turning and going back into shelter. My cousin reminded me that my grandmother always said they were the most stupid of all the birds. She kept goats and poultry. My mother had a school friend, a Jewish refugee called Annie Polesi (during the Second World War Castlebar took in Jewish refugees and they set up a hat factory). Annie was scared of the turkeys so my mother devised a system where she left stones on the pier telling her she’d left for school so she didn’t have to come up the driveway to call for her. She always laughs that Annie was scared of the turkeys. Geese I’d understand.

The last woofer of the year arrived a week ago. I need to get the last of the painting finished. So far it’s taken her a week to give the balustrading on patio one coat and with a bit of a push (from me) the gates. Last year it took the two wonder woofers two days to completely finish two coats. I think I’m done with wwoof.com. I registered with HelpX but there’s a fault in their system so if you don’t constantly update your listing you slide down the heap and get no enquires. So far I’ve only got mostly Americans looking for a convenient B&B.

It’s a shame really because the right people can benefit so much from it. 25 hours work in return for full bed and very good board plus a chance to experience another culture. But I suppose human nature being what it is, the vast majority see it as a cheap holiday.

The Mickey Mouse tunnel has almost done its job now although the tomato crop has been very poor. I think I stuffed in too many plants and they got mildew. Plus they are so late ripening. Some are only starting to ripen now. The wind began to pick up the other day (even more than usual). I have last year’s cover over this year’s, as it’s ripped in different places in an an effort to give 100% cover and some wind resistance. It’s worked so far but it was looking like it would take off last week. I got a brainwave and borrowed rachet straps from my neighbour. If I can just keep it on another few weeks……

I’m getting a proper tunnel for next year but as there’s a 6-8 week lead in time after ordering decided to wait until early next year to order it.

I’m not looking forward to the winter. I think I hate it a little bit more every year. It’s not the cold that gets to me but the dark. I live for light and the sun. The evenings getting darker and darker are soul destroying. The sooner they abolish daylight savings the better. Give me darker mornings any day. It means you get to wake up slower which can’t be a bad thing.

For now the push is on the get everything winter ready and to slim down the animal population and minimise the workload for the shorter days.