Every Hiker And Farmer? Needs A Good Hat.

That's my trusty Sheep's Head Way baseball cap.  I have been advertising the way on my hikes over the last few weeks.  Since we sold the cattle we have been making plans.  

The first one is for me to get fit because I am walking the Dingle Way in August with an old friend.   So I have started pounding the old tarmac, boreens, mountain paths and bog for the last fortnight.  Already I have lost 9 Pounds in weight and feel better physically than I have for many a moon.

The Sheeps Head Way is very peaceful and incredibly beautiful.  Especially when you are on your own on top of the hills looking down at the bay.  It's sounds strange but it's like you become part of the rock, grass, mountains...  Walking on tracks that your ancestors walked probably  thinking the same philosophical thoughts and thanking God that you love in such a beautiful place.  

The other plan was to sell some of the land and buy an house or apartment in Portugal.  Eventually we (me and the missus) will retire there and the two lads will still have an house each and a few acres in Ireland.  

So we contacted a few local dairy farmers and asked them if they wanted to buy a ten acre parcel of land.  They both made us offers which we thanked them for but it wasn't the market price we wanted.  So we paid for two estate agents valuations and one undervalued the land by twenty thousand less than we were offered by a local farmer.    

It looks like we might have to put the land on the market, perhaps even sell the lot.  It's very difficult to remove sentiment from a family farm when you want to move on.  Anybody got any ideas what we should do?  Sol, Rachel or Cumbrian will know what to do?

Hope to catch up with all the other blogs I follow this week.   

A Photo Of Bantry Bay In April?

Been a few weeks since I blogged.  Been busy and life some times gets in the way or gets you down, like the weather.  The potatoes, onions, garlic, lettuce and cabbage plants are in the ground outside and we have lots of trays and plant pots full of Rosemary and pink Fuchsia cuttings in the poly-tunnel.  

These were the scenes across the bay when we woke up yesterday morning.  Talked to an elderly farmer yesterday.  Told me he had never known an April so cold and wet.  It's throwing it down today.  A lot of farmers have to put their cattle back in their sheds.  Some haven't even been in the fields yet.

There's definitely something wrong with the weather.  Climate change an all that.  Me thinks it's time to look at warmer climates.  A place in the sun or even a smallholding in the sun.  I am serious.   I am going to retire to Portugal real soon.  Can you retire when you are 52?

Have you been watching  The Durrells on Itv on Sunday nights?  That house in Corfu is to die for - I love it!  

Where would you like to live other than where you live now?  I will catch up with the blogs I follow over the next few days.  

Another Rock Hero Passes Away.

I received the terrible email news on Saturday morning from a friend in Poland that Keith Emerson had died.  

I fondly blogged recently of the time we (me and the email sender) saw Emerson Lake and Palmer at Manchester Apollo in the early nineties of the last century.  To say they were brilliant would be an understatement.  Keith Emerson is arguably the greatest keyboard player in the world.  Is type will never be seen again.   

I have seen a few famous people in concert who are no more: Phil Lynott, Ronnie James Dio, Gary Moore and Whitney Houston to name a few.  These people left us in their prime and their music lives on.  We recently watched the Amy film/documentary about Amy Winehouse.  It left us floored like Keith Emerson's death left me.  Such incredible talent should be cherished and may they live on when we play their music. 

I read recently that Keith Emerson was born in Todmorden.  It's a town I have passed through many times and uniquely it's in Lancashire and Yorkshire.  I digress. 

Thanks for being one of my rock hero giants Mr Emerson.

Here's one of Emerson Lake and Palmer's greatest tracks for you:

A Run Around For The Smallholding Young and Old Ratters.

The weather is slowly improving and I actuall mowed the lawns the other day.  The new pups also had a run around in one of the fields near the farm houses.  

 Scamp the Jack Russell terrier and Bell the Border Collie.  They are both lady dogs but they seem to get on fine living together.  Notice the cursed rushes appearing in the pasture.  You never seem to eradicate them.  Thinking of paying a man to wipe them with the weed-licker on the back of the quad bike.  Don't like using weedkillers but topping and strimming doesn't work.

 

Time for a lie down and climb over number two son.  Notice the lawns been mowed.  

Did I tell you I managed to mow the lawns? I set the mower on it's top settings and didn't bother boxing off.  This week I will lower the settings another couple of notches.

Fido my old Jack Russell.  She's fourteen years old and one of my best friends.  That's why we got the pups so that we won't be devastated too much when she goes to doggy heaven.  

Domino curled up in my tweed hat.  The natives are taking over the smallholding.

Tractor Axle Stands Made From Scrap Metal Around The Smallholding.

Caractacus Potts the inventor lived on a farm and built Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.  He reminds me of my eldest son.  This week he made some tractor axle stands out of scrap metal that we have lying around the farm.  

 Part of an old lorry lying up on the rock outside the farm yard.  That's an old damaged oil tank some one threw out.  We cut off one end and  made it into a calf hutch.  It would make a good pig house too.

 Steel parts lying on the lorry bench number one son made. 

 The welding and assembly of the axle stands.  

The axle stands just need a lick of paint and they are ready for work.  Notice the bolts for adjusting them to different heights.  Time to take the tractor wheels off.  Not bad for a couple of hours work.  We have seen similar for sale for ninety quid!  To quote Del Boy again:

"This time next year we will be Millionaire's."

A Smallholding Plonker.

Not had much to say recently.  So I had a bit of a blog break.  Of course I still read all the blogs I follow.   Just been on a bit of a downer that's all.  The weather doesn't help when you feel depressed.

Talking of a downer.  I found a buyer for the cattle last week.  He came to see the bovine lad and lasses and we talked for about an hour.  Of course he didn't offer me the price I wanted.  But I couldn't be mithered (people from up north word) going to mart and paying commission, vat and coming home disappointed.  No I always choose to lose it at home than at the mart.  

Anyway.  Without going all around the houses.  We agreed a sale with the farmer and said we would fax off for the permits to move the cattle from farm to farm.  This big envelope came on Wednesday from the department.  We presumed they were the permits, so we didn't open the envelope until the next morning.  When we opened it we found a note and a code telling us the cattle hadn't been tested for TB.  

We had bought them in last June, after our annual test from Dairy farms.  Who can sell them without a test if they are under six weeks old.  This means that dropped calves can be sold to farmers or at the mart without a test?  

How is this so and why didn't I check my cattle cards to see if they had been tested?  Because (never start a sentence with because) I am a plonker and because Dairy farmers don't need to test dropped calves.  Surely if they fed the calf for six weeks and tested them.  You would have far stronger calves, free from TB and their mother's wouldn't be stressed having their young took away from them for the milk?

Walking In To The Wind.

Not much to report on the smallholding front.  We seem to be getting nothing but storm after storm and rain at the moment.  Today it's the turn of Storm Henry.  That's the eighth letter in the storm alphabet this winter.  

Walked the fields the other day and looked at my footprints in the turf behind me.  It's awful squelchy and the rushes are appearing from nowhere.  Think it's only St Brigid who ever made a use for them properly.  Yes we know there are other uses for rushes like rush lights and bedding for the cattle. 

Still no chance of mowing. weeding or preparing ye olde veg plot for spring.  The weather is everything in the countryside.  There's not a lot you can do outside when it's blowing a gale and not drying out.

We decided to go for a two mile walk into the wind today.  It felt like we had walked six miles when we got home.  

 Two windswept donkeys grazing and posing for their photographs.  

 The sea (Bantry Bay) looked very violent and I wouldn't like to have been on a boat today.  

 An old windswept farm stead ruin.  My late father remembered when people lived in the thatched roof cottage.  The farmer was also a fisherman.  One stormy night the man's sister went outside and was swept into the bay and never seen again.  Nature is beautiful but also very cruel.