Aggie aggie update

Did I tell you about corralling the flock into one of the four 1 hectare fields to make them graze it down? I did . . . at length . . . with pictures. The poor sheep had to work their ticket for five weeks between 27Jan24 and 29Feb24. A couple of them had almost eaten their way to freedom through the Sleeping Beauty jungle of briars and furze along the unfenced ditch / dyke / wall / boundary. But I took a saw down and plugged the gap with fresh spiky bushes: "you will eat the grim looking thatch in the field". We are not yet ready to write it off to rutting deer and badgers.

After breakfast on Leap Day, we girded our loins, seized our crooks, and opened the temporary gate to the Field Over the River. The sheep were clearly delirah "man, the FOtR is so borrrring" and galloped through the gap, hoping for fresh pasture. We brought them over to the larger of the two Fields Over the Lane. On arrival, the younger members of the flock were quite spring frisky at the prospect of some nice fresh sprouting grass to eat. It took me about an hour of extra outdoor labour to re-patriate: the temp-gate hurdles; the mineral-lick bucket; the buckets for water (whc scrub clean); associated posts and cordage. 

Did I mention fresh sprouting grass? Grass is grand for sheep, but a mixed blessing for the areas of the farrrm which are No Go for sheep. NoGo because, like, roses, rhubarb and rocket. That grass is on me to mow. Consulting what3words says that this NoGo haggard is ~50m x ~80m or 40 ares in extent; about half of which is given over to buildings, shrubberies, roses, rhubarb and rocket. I can mow this, I have for 25 years mowed this, I will continue to mow this but the site is on a 1:10 slope, some parts steeper than others. My what3words attention drifted East and I found all 15 pixels sheep recorded on GoogleMaps datestamp 2024. Just that info narrows the time frame to 1st-27th Jan 2024, because that's when we moved the flock to the field next-door. The Man at DeptOfAg will know that we were up to quota for sheep for that month. What price privacy?

Meanwhile back in the haggard, Mon 26Feb24 was bright and breezy, so at tea-time I fuelled up the mower, fired that sucker up and thrashed the lawn flat bits in the yard and in front of the polytunnel. This time last year, at that stage, Dau.II (then resident) would have tag-teamed me and finished the job. It's a game of two 25 minute halves. Absent Dau the Mau, I stopped there. It would be toooo bougie if I pegged out pushing a goddam mower up hill at about the same age as my pal Paul Jaffe's heart blew out while pushing-starting a neighbour's car. I was ragin' the next day when all-day rain came back putting paid to any grass-mowing. Wot did I expect in Ireland in February?

 

The weather was similar on LeapDay, a bit crisper, but sunny enough; although Met Éireann was giving rain later. Having sank back exhausted after sheep shenanigans in the morning, a bowl of soup and a slice of toast at lunchtime revived me enough to finish the mowing. As you see above, you can now land your Cessna 172 on the hill up to the tunnel. There will be scones if we're given 60 minutes notice. As it happened, 10 minutes after I got the mower under shelter it started to rain - so that's a carpe mowem win. And the day after that, St David's Day, we had actual [soggy, unskiable] snow by lunchtime, along with half the country. 

Busy Bobby Barfly had a lot on that day, because he also planted 18 beans shucked out of withered brittle bean-pods saved from last year. They'd better take, because we've eaten the rest of our seed corn in that department; I'm not about to, like, buy beans to sow. For the now, I have them in the dark under the sofa, so they won't be short of methane. I'll give each ⌀ 6cm pot 2 tsp water every other day until they show.