A Make Shift Smallholding Hospital.

I haven't been sleeping very well the last couple of nights.  So I woke up yesterday morning about five thirty and couldn't get back to sleep.  So I decided to take a couple of Paracetamol with a glass of water and the next thing I know, it's 9.30!  That is so unlike me.

So I got dressed and made a quick brew (ground coffee in the cafetiere) and looked at the blogs and emails and made my way to the cowshed.  One of the heifer calves was lying down on the slats and the others were mooing for their barley and calf nuts.  The calf didn't get up and one of them stood on her.  I suspected there was something wrong with her.

I don't know why the cow slats don't have grips on them.  Perhaps it's because it would make it difficult to clean them? A lot of farmers buy rubber mats to go over the slats to stop cattle slipping.  It's 40 Euro for a good rubber mat.  So it would cost me 400 Euros to cover our slats.  Apparently slips and broken legs are very common in slatted houses.  You try to make life easier, not mucking out.  But there is also the animals welfare to think about.

By this time the missus had walked in the cowshed and I told her to get number one son to help me try to stand up.  We deduced she had slipped on the concrete slats and banged her leg.  Her cloven hooves wouldn't allow her to get a grip.  We rang a farmer up the road who told us to drag her outside and she will be able to stick her hooves into the grass paddock.  We also gave her an injection of antibiotics and put the calves out with her for the day.

Every twenty minutes or so we would check her.  Sure enough.  She got up and had the pick of grass.  Then lay down for a few hours and got up again.  We decided to make her a pen in the cowshed with a straw covering over the solid concrete and we tied a farm gate to make the pen.  Then we put in a feeding trough, gave her some hay and a tub of water to drink.

This morning she got up to eat the nuts in the trough and she seems to be limping a bit.  But she's had four plops (experts say they leave twelve cow pats a day) and she's chewing her cud.  You can't afford to call for the vet every day.  I am pleased to say I think she will be OK.  Do you try and cure your animals when they are ill or get hurt?

An Interloper In The Silage Bale.

If my old literary hero Thomas Hardy was still writing tales about his magical and fictional Wessex.  He may of used the title of this blog for one of his compositions.  May be not?

Number one son got a  mobile phone call yesterday from a farmer up the road.  He had collected three round bales from our haggard (where the moo cows  and the tractors and silage live) and we duly loaded them with the Ford 4000 and thought no more about them.

It appears though that he had taken a creature belonging to us with him.  Not one of the lads and lasses with the ear tags.  No it was one of those creatures with the long tail - rattus norvegicus, to be precise.  Apparently it had tunnelled under the silage bales,, chewed through the plastic and tunnelled up into the silage.  Making a 'des res' for it'self for the winter.  The bar steward!

The farmer had noticed the rat jump out when he picked it up to feed his cattle.  The rat disappeared over the hill and the bale was completely rotten.  Lets hope the rat makes a new home somewhere else.  The silage contractor told me in the summer to place old silage plastic and lorry tarps under the bales.  Then when it rains.  There will be smallholding PUDDLES.  Yes we are talking about them again.  Apparently rats don't have wellingtons or "the rubber boots" and they won't make homes in your silage bales.

It's the same old adage isn't it?  "Never throw anything away".  Unless it's a rat of course and you can send it on it's holidays to another farm.  We will replace the bale with a fresh rat free bale - hopefully!

Do you get unwanted rodent visitors?

UB40 had a number 12 (I looked it up!) with "Rat In The Kitchen.."  I wonder if I could get an hit with "Rat In My Silage"?"

The Naming Of A Rural Puddle.

It's about ten feet long and three feet wide
It's not very deep but I may have lied

It's only been there for seven long years
A drinking stop for heifers and steers?

I am talking of our puddle. It's not somewhere to cuddle,  
It will leave you in a muddle.  The county council won't fix our puddle!  

I have not got sunshine on a cloudy day, I have nothing else to say....

Repeat 700 times and sing to the tune of "My Girl": The Temptations..


Do you think it will make it to the number one in the charts?  You didn't know I could write poem/songs did you?  What are your roads like - lots of potholes?  The joys of rural living hey!

Views From Our Smallholding Kitchen Window.

 Hedge man came today with his New Holland tractor and hedge cutting attachment.  He spent a couple of hours knocking the roadside hedges (Blackthorn & Fuchsia) into shape.  The agricultural labourer with his bill hook is no more.  I use to cut the roadside hedges but it's too dangerous on the main road with cars hurtling past at 80 KPH.  Never understood the need for such high speeds in the countryside.  People could be walking on the roads (no pavements or street lights) or cattle could be on the road.

 A picture of a cruiser that came into Bantry Bay in the summer.  They usually dock in Glengarriff and launches take them to the mainland to visit Garnish Island, Glengarriff and coaches take the tourists to Bantry and Killarney.  Glengarriff use to be the holiday destination for literary luminaries including, Thackery, Wordsworth, Shaw and Virginia Woolfe.

 Here's a tall ship that came in recently.  She was like something out of the Onedin Line when she sailed out of the bay with her sails up.  Some times we see oil tankers and other times we look at the fishing boats, yachts and the life boat.  Even the Queen Mary sailed into Bantry bay.  I believe it use to take five days to sail  Ireland or Blighty to America.  Then the jets were invented and the liners are no more. Sad isn't it really?

There you are.  A few pictures of our smallholding and the bay.  Hope you enjoyed them?

Christmas Shopping And The Hibernating Cat.

We went up to Kerry for some turf (peat) and our 'half an hour' Christmas shopping.  Yep half an hour.  There is nothing like going shopping when you know what you are looking for,  is there?  The number of times I have been queuing up with biblical multitudes for a jumper, Catherine Cookson book or a bottle of whisky on Christmas eve?   The presents are bought and number one and number two son's are getting money for the January sales.  Things are always so much cheaper then!

All we need to do now is start our 'Christmas Cupboard'.  We started this years a go when we rented a little house, had little money and kept seeing adverts on the television for Christmas Hampers.  So we decided to make our own.  All you need is an empty cupboard or a big cardboard box.  Then start collecting extra food tins and jam and sauce bottles and Christmas puddings, sugar, bottles of wine, cans of beer... Before you know it you will have your own Christmas Hamper/Cupboard.

There won't be any of that "lets buy everything in the supermarket" on Christmas Eve.  How do people manage with the supermarkets being shut for ONE day?

You can raid it if you get bad weather and can't get to town.  Especially if you live in a rural area and they don't grit the roads.  Like they say:

"How do the salt gritter people get to work?"

Saw this sign yesterday.  I had to buy it for the blog and the kitchen.  None Irish residents if you don't get it, I will try to explain.  Just ask!  

Domino copies the sign.  

"Electricity, Electricity, EEEE..."

Woke up this morning.  I should write country and western Songs.  They call it "Country and Irish" over here.  Any way.  I thought I would check the blogs, emails and see how the "Nasty Nigel" (The tory SDP)  party had done in the by election.  The electricity goes off and I begin to curse.

Everything seems to be dependent on electricity on our farm.  The pump from the well.  The pump from the solid fuel range.  The computer and television.  The electric cooker.  The hair dryer. The microwave...?    I have heard years a go that people told the electricity companies that they didn't want electricity because they didn't want a bill. Dairy farmers hand milked cows or they used diesel Lister engines to run their milking machines.

It must have been wonderful years a go with no electricity.  Just a paraffin or oil Tilley lamp or candles and a "nice cup of tea" to look forward to.  Maybe even a game of "monsters in the dark" with the wife if it was your birthday?  Perhaps she could darn some socks and you could chew tobacco and spit in the fire and get told off.  There must have been lots of cabin fever in the days without electricity and television.  You might have even got somebody calling and hoping you would get the beer and whisky out?

Any road the electricity is back on and I am an happy bunny again.  Thanks to electricity and that clever English invention -T'web and t internet.  We have communication with the outside world.  I wish I had my own wind turbine.  Does anybody make their own electricity.  No not the static kind.  I mean proper electricity.

Remember this song from the Eighties?

Video Of An Allotment Artist.

Thanks for the comments about allotments on my blog yesterday.  I really believe they are exhibitions of working class art.  The tools are the paintbrushes and the soil is the canvas.

I have been interested in Chris Cyprus and his paintings for a few years now after I first saw him on Gardeners World.  He reminds me of a modern day LS Lowry.  Quite a few of his paintings subjects are allotments.

Any way.  Enough about what I think.  Have a watch of his video I found on You Tube.  If this doesn't inspire you then nothing will.