Countrywide

Ella McSweeney who presents Countrywide on RTE Radio 1 and Ear to The Gound on RTE Television came down to see us this morning to talk to us about Irish Moiled cattle and to record a piece for Countrywide. It should be broadcast tomorrow morning, time permitting, otherwise it will go out the following Saturday, 5th February.

To give you bit of a preview, click on Helen to hear an audioBoo of her naming our cattle!

Raspberries

Well where else would your thoughts stray other than to raspberries at the end of January?

This may look like a particularly weedy patch of ground, but it is actually where our raspberry canes live.

I'm not sure if this is the correct time of year to cut back all the dead canes from last year, but as it was a dry day it seemed like a good idea.

The large wheel barrow is ideal for carrying all the canes away.

Perhaps this year we will have a more orderly raspberry patch. It's certainly not a row of raspberries! They are an autumn fruiting variety, though I don't remember which one, and carry on fruiting until the first frost finishes the season.

Slainte!

Way back before christmas we picked sloes and started to make sloe gin.

Having just remembered that the bottles were in the back of a cupboard and having checked that all the sugar had dissolved it was time to decant and taste....

The sloes are shrivelled and rather unpleasant to look at, but the gin is now a glorious colour.

This should cheer us up, on a damp January evening.

New Avenue Gate and Cattlegrid

Previous guests and friends alike will remember, without affection, the old red five bar gate at the top of the drive that had to be opened and closed, come hail rain or shine, to get down to the house. When there were animals in the front field we had no choice but to keep it closed. We used to tell people they were lucky, because originally two sets of gates had to be opened and that, even for us, was a gate too far.

Such was the effect of our gate on people that John McKenna mentioned it in his review following our first entry into the Bridgestone 100 Best Places to Stay in Ireland back in 2008, saying: "Okay, so you have to open a big red farm gate to get in, but that is the only problem with this delightful new destination."

And so it was that back in March of last year I trundled off to our local farm supplies with the tractor and trailer and returned with numerous lengths of steel with which to make a cattle grid, or to be more precise 83m of 100 X 50 X 3 RHS and 2 boxes of welding rods! Without a cattle grid any replacement gates would still have to be kept closed to keep the animals in.

Two days later after much cutting measuring and welding the grid was ready. At 4.2m wide and 2.6m long it looked absolutely enormous, but I was determined that no animal would get across it! It is of course extremely heavy and I would never have been able to make it without the tractor!

A mighty hole was then dug into which I poured a concrete base and then built up walls to carry the grid.

It was then a matter of putting the grid on top, building up the walls at the sides and then back filling the rest of the hole.

 We took out the 'big red farm gate' and fenced round the cattle grid.

 The new gates came from Ardagh Fencing and Gates and, I'm sure John will agree, are a big improvement. And because there is a cattle grid we can now leave them open when people are coming! Such a joy on a wet day!

Feed the Birds!

When we're feeding the hens a row of birds from crows down to the wagtails and wrens sit along the chain link fence waiting to swoop down and share breakfast. It is almost impossible to get a photo of them since they fly away as soon as we move amongst the hens.

 However the bird table made by a friends son some years ago (thank you Lukas) has come into its own, and it didn't take the birds long to discover the feeders once they were tied on.

 Other birds wait on the ground to pick up any bits that are dropped.

Our native birds are perhaps not as colourful as some from warmer countries but most birds remind me of this poem by Bai JuYi. It's one of my favourites.

The Red Cockatoo

Sent as a present from Annam—

A red cockatoo.

Colored like the peach-tree blossom,

Speaking with the speech of men.

And they did to it what is always done

To the learned and eloquent.

They took a cage with stout bars

And shut it up inside

Seville Orange Marmalade

Strange but true: 'tis the season for Seville oranges. They don't look very nice and they are very very bitter with lots of pips, but when it comes to making marmalade there is simply no substitute! If it's not made with Seville oranges then it's just not marmalade!
And so, as we speak, Helen is busy making marmalade for both ourselves and our Bed and Breakfast.

The oranges are not always readily available and you may find that you have to order them specially from your local fruit and veg merchant. However if we don't continue to buy Seville oranges and make marmalade more and more farmers in Seville will stop growing them until eventually there will be none and then there will be no more marmalade and we will have to have jam for breakfast and that would be a travesty!