Christmas Eve And A Peaceful Christmas Day On The Smallholding.

Christmas Eve was a beautiful dry day.  So we drove over to Durrus to put the wreaths on the graves.  It never gets any easier and it's nearly three years since my mum died and two years tomorrow for my dad.  Christmas will never be the same again and it's an awful thought that we will never see our parents again.

Whilst I was in a contemplative thought, stood at the grave side.  A scruffy looking terrier stood on top of the churchyard wall and gave us right thorough telling off:  He or she made me smile and I thought that my dad would have gone over to the dog and told it what to do or even try to stroke it.

We drove back to our little farm and a kind neighbour had dropped off eight cans of Newcastle Brown for a Christmas present.  What a lovely kind gesture.

Christmas day was a typical get up, get dressed and see to the livestock.  I gave them extra portions because it was Christmas day.  Then I (me. myself and I) made the Chilli Con Carne and helped set the table for a 'help yourself' buffet.  Then we watched the television for the rest of the day.  Rock and pop music programmes, 'Escape  To the Country' (wonder what that's about?), Sky News telling us about the Christmas Day truce in the trenches and that the tale of the soldiers having a foot ball match in 'No man's' land is probably a legend.   Who are they kidding?  Did you see that Germany spent 1 million quid for their 'training' camp in Brazil?  No the Germans would have built their own 'Vembley' in the trenches, no problem!  Then it was American and English car restoration programmes for the rest of the day.  Not my idea of entertainment, but it keeps the lads quiet.

We watched Miranda and it was brilliant.  I laughed out loud when she went to the door and exposed herself to Stevie.  Plus it ended with some good old 'tear jerking' pathos - brilliant telly.

I quickly turned over before 'Call The Midwife' started and we watched ancient 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire' for the rest of the night.

It was a lovely peaceful day on the smallholding.  We didn't see a soul.  Glad it's over and I am going to watch the Footity ball this afternoon.  Come on United!

Merry Christmas And Have A Great 2015.

Hope you all have a great Christmas Day tomorrow and a wonderful 2015.   Many many thanks for your comments and for reading the blog.  I look forward to reading your blogs and hope your vegetables are massive and the sunshines every day, even when it rains!  God bless you all.  From all of us (cattle, pigs, dog and cat, and the humans..) at Northsider Towers!

Fido wearing her bow.  She's looking forward to 'Dogs' Christmas'.

Mexican Christmas Dinner Update.

Just a very very short post today.

I posted a blog the other day telling you about us planning a Mexican Christmas Dinner. Well I watched Country File on Sunday night and they said that the Turkey actually originates in Mexico. So therefore everybody who eats Turkey on Christmas day. Will actually be eating a Mexican dinner just like us! Isn't it a small world?

Christmas Pressies From Across The Water And Some Rural Christmas Memories.

I remember back in the late nineteen sixties.  My grandmother would send us a very big and lumpy brown parcel tied up with parcel string.  All the way from Ireland.  It was always so exciting and such a joy watching my mother cut the parcel strings.  My mum knew what was in it but me and my brother never guessed that it was a freshly killed Turkey, an headscarf for my mother, some socks ("the stockings" for my dad) and a pair of leather boots a piece for my brother and me.  There would also be a long handwritten letter of about four or more pages.  Telling us all about the happenings on the farm in West Cork and how she was looking so forward to seeing us all at 'hay making' time next July.  

One Christmas my dad decided to visit his parents at Christmas.  He would go down town and pick up some train and ferry tickets and come home and say to my mum:

"Come on pack the suitcases we are going home tonight."  

He always called Ireland "home" although he lived fifty five years in England.  

My mother would not be an happy bunny and we would hear her say:

"But I have not got any clothes ready."  

A couple of hours later and we were on the boat train to Holyhead in Angle-sea.  You could be pretty certain that the sea would be very rough and it would be packed full of people going "home" for Christmas.  Perhaps Chris Rea was on the journey?  Any road.  The sea got rougher and rougher and people were being thrown about and being sick and nuns started kneeling down and praying like mad...  There was black and white nuns and blue nuns but I didn't see any drinking bottles of German wine...  

We lived to tell the tale and we spent Christmas with no telly (just the wireless) for the news and my granddad bought a plastic baby bath and put a blanket in it and made me a cot.  Lovely memories of a time gone forever.

Planning A Mexican Christmas Dinner On The Smallholding.

It's been gale season here all week on our smallholding in the countryside next to the sea.  The only ones who are getting wet and the cobwebs blown away are us humans.  The cattle are either chewing their cud or eating nuts and oats or tucking into the hay.  The pigs are inside their house either sleeping in the straw or eating vegetable and pig ration and oats.

We have been tidying and swearing at the state of the work sheds.  Nuts and bolts and washers all over the floor, old drink cans ("pop" not beer), old oily rags and all manner of farm flotsam and jetsam and detritus.  I found quite a lot of rubbish too!

Any road.  Since my parents went to heaven for their eternal rest and meet up with all their friends and family.  Christmas just isn't Christmas any more. My mother use to say:

"If I end up in Hell or Heaven.  I am sure to know somebody."

Christmas is no longer the same especially when your kids become teenagers.  You don't even see Mary Chipperfield or Billy Smarts Circus on the television any more.  So we decided the other year to change the Christmas dinner menu a bit.

Last year we had a beef curry and a buffet with pizza, onion bhajis, sausage rolls, cheese cake ("my favourite") and what ever else anybody wanted.  There's no eating a turkey and all the trimmings and the wife gets a rest instead of waiting on her men folk.  Best of all there is none of the left overs on boxing day and for the next week.   You know the usual:

"Turkey sandwiches, turkey curry, cold turkey (when the beer runs out) turkey and turkey.."

This is sounding like the Monty Python 'Spam' sketch.

"Spam and Chips, Spam egg and chips..."


We have decided we are going to have a Mexican Christmas.

Chilli Con Carne , Chicken Wraps, Nachos, dips...   What ever Aldi have in their Mexican range.  I just need some ponchos and some sombreros and make a Mexican cocktail.  I will be able to say to the wife;

"Hey Gringo."

Do you have a different Christmas menu?  I mean you have never had turkey and sprouts and all the trimmings before have you?  Do you  do anything different?  One year I went for an hike.  If I could just press my hibernation button and wake up in Spring.  Or at least when it's all over.  

Weren't The Smallholders Small Years A Go? Part 2.

"Didn't we almost have it small?"  

I could have wrote those lyrics for a famous Whitney Houston song, couldn't I?  

Any road.  The NEW hen house (no longer used for hens) door is now installed and it's even been given a coat of red oxide paint.  Number one son cannibalized (cut down and welded) a door and fixed it into place.  We were 6 inches (15 centimetres in new gas meters) short.  So he sent me to look round the smallholding for another piece of corrugated iron.  I remembered (light bulb moment) using one for part of a compost heap. 

So I set off to the plot (it's about fifty feet away) with my trusty English shovel, (the long handled Celtic shovel was having a day off) and did dig like a terrier looking for a rat and did push and shove and extracted the still intact corrugated sheet.  Then number one cut it to the right size and text screwed it into place.  Then I painted the sheets red and looked back at our work.  

Not bad for under a tenner and it will (should do) last me out.  We just need to attach a piece of rubber (piece of a car tyre) on the bottom of the door to stop Tom getting in.  Many many footsteps have worn the floor down.  Did I tell you about Tom?  I met him in the summer when we were making one of the gate entrances to the fields with the digger.  Silage contractors tractors and machinery are getting bigger (like the round bales) every year.  Soon they will be bringing the Ark Royal on wheels to cut your hay or silage.  

The door is complete.  Lets hope Tom doesn't get in.  Can you guess who Tom is?

Weren't The Smallholders Small Years A Go? Part One.

We finally decided to raise the height of the old hen house yesterday.  I am five foot eleven and number one son is 6 foot 2.  The number of times I (we) have banged our heads on that piece of wood above the door.  I have nearly knocked myself out a few times.  The air would often be blue with swear words.  Words that you would never hear on the Archers.   Words like:

"Flip"

And

"Oh heck."...

Me and number one son thinking about getting to work.  The poor brush gave up the ghost and we will have to buy a new one this week.

 Number two son towers over the wooden lintel.

Some time later.  We have removed an old flag stone lintel and lots of rubble stone.  We also found an old rats nest behind one of the stones.  Thankfully the rat wasn't at home.  Number one son attempts to wrestle with a cable going to an outbuilding.

We replaced the wooden and flag lintels and raised up the new metal lintels and built blocks on them.

No longer will we need to bang our heads.  Number one son just needs to cannibalize and weld a new metal door and we will use the old hen house for storing tools and farm stuff.

Next time I will (hopefully) show you the new door.

 New raised lintels made from galvanized pipes.


The new door space for the hen house.  All it needs is the door.  The cost of the smallholding hen house door alteration was 10 Euros.  That was for two bags of cement.  We had all the other materials lying around the smallholding.  Just shows you shouldn't throw anything away, you might need it?