Tag: Smallholding

A Summary of the latter end of this week in Pictures

My eggs arrived! it was a record, they came through the post in less than a day, fully intact and ready to incubate! An Post is great. If it was a courier it wouldn’t have got here nearly as quickly. Sorry but I haven’t actually taken pictures of the eggs yet. They went into the incubator tonight. They should take approximately three weeks to hatch (providing they’re fertile).

Our new fire was installed and (wait for it…) a radiator in the living room, we’ve been soooo warm:

We also had a range installed that runs our central heating, I don’t think I’ve lived in a house with central heating for about 14 years, it’s great! The surroundings will one day match the cooker. I made pancakes this morning, then pizza tonight, to try it out. It is very, very nice. The only thing I really have to watch is keeping the littlest boy away from it because it gets so hot and trying to tell the oldest boy not to put plastic objects on top of it. Might have to get the fire guard back out for a bit maybe.

Finally, Chris’s dream came true, yes folks, he has a tractor!

He just has to get the mower to go with it and he’ll be away up off to the field with it. Up, up and awwaaaaaay, off to sort the field out.

God bless you all and see you soon.

What’s happening at the moment? Jobs…!

So what are we doing at the moment? It’s quite a busy time really. We’ve agreed to have our windows and door replaced, they should arrive for fitting over the next 4 weeks. The range and a new fire are being installed in just over a week (all being well) and an electrician is visiting tonight to check out the electrics (I am so thankful that he is coming).

Chris is currently strimming the field, all 3 acres – he has bought a steel brushcutter blade for the strimmer and it’s getting through it a lot better than the grass cutter blade. It’s very hard work and he’s building a shed today as a bit of break from it. (The future plan is to possibly get a little tractor and use that and to probably get a few goats). The shed will be great to temporarily store all our boxes that we aren’t unpacking yet and will allow us to do up the cottage more easily. I’ve decided I need to re-box a few things to give us more room, it makes more sense than winding our way through stuff we don’t yet have storage for in the house.

There’s a little plantation right next to our cottage which you can see on the above photograph. Eventually, the spruces are going to be chopped down as they’re very tall and quite close to the house and we’re hopefully going to have some native trees there instead. There are a couple of birch already in there but struggling and a lot of holly.

I knew there were some bottles in the wood, but this week I started investigating a little further and there are what looks like hundreds! I’ve started excavating them and am going to keep on doing so. It was suggested that we do a bottle wall, I’d love to in some ways but with everything we have to do now and over the next few years it is currently unlikely – so bottle bank here I come!

So I (Cathy) am watching Brexit and the UK and Irish responses to it with interest and I have to say, since we’ve been here we’ve met with nothing but friendliness and have been welcomed in general but Brexit particularly online seems to be stirring up a lot of anti English comments, I don’t know if that is because of the certain type of people who comment on online posts or if it is a general feeling, but I have to say the English or the UK don’t exactly help themselves sometimes. Whoever started the petition to get the Republic to join the UK is a little bit assumptive or taking the mickey methinks.

So anyway, back to the old homestead….I’m getting hatching egg fever again, I think I’m going to go for the breed Cream Legbar if possible as they are autosexing, you can tell if they’re male or female as soon as they hatch, which is helpful. I’m REALLY looking forward to hatching them, I just need to find a supplier over here. Cream Legbars have green/blue eggs and are bred mainly as laying hens, not for meat.

last year’s chicks 🐣

I’m also going to start reading up on goat keeping as I mentioned earlier, I think we have probably decided on goats as the main/first animal we will keep. Only a few as we only have 3 acres but we will see, there is no rush, as we also have to get the premises ready, as if you have livestock, you have to be registered with the Department of Agriculture as a goat/sheep keeper and be approved. We don’t know if it will be this year or next, but it will probably happen at some point.

Bye for now. May God bless you one and all with the knowledge of Him.

Cathy.

Post script

As a post script to the previous post (a bit of a delayed post script), about half an hour or so after I had written it there was a knock on the door and one of our new neighbours had brought some biscuits and cake round as a Christmas gift. Another of our neighbours also did similar on Christmas Day, such lovely gestures, which were really appreciated.

We’ve managed to get broadband now and it works really well so it should be easier for me to get things sorted now. There’s still a fair bit to sort, the kids need PPS numbers but I need to get an official letter off a doctors or a school saying they need one before they will issue them. I need the numbers before I apply for child benefit or medical cards too.

Christmas was good in general. Different, but good. I managed to cook a ham in our little oven (which we would be lost without) and we had our dinner, it was lovely. We went for a walk and messaged and spoke to relatives. It went very quickly really.

Christmas day, J in our field.

our littlest elf.

On Boxing Day (otherwise known as St Stephens day in Ireland) we went for a walk towards a mass rock nearby. Mass rocks are apparently where Catholics gathered and used as an altar when it was difficult/impossible for them to meet in public (mid 17th century). We aren’t sure whether we saw a mass rock (we need to find out where they actually are), but it was a gorgeous walk.

It’s a bit of a quiet/adjustment period for us at the moment but I think it will soon get busy, so we had better make the most of it!

Yesterday at Drumshanbo.

If I don’t post before..Happy New Year. May God bless you all in every way – The father of lights, in whom there is no darkness.

Day 7 in the house

(This morning) We’re in the car driving to Enniskillen. It’s so weird, there was no indication at all that we had just gone into the North, then we noticed a UK road sign. So strange.

And! We’ve just been to a petrol station as it was in pounds and I could pay with our Uk bank account. I found all this stupidly exciting.

(Now) Back at the ranch, we’ve had all around the cottage cleared by a fella with a massive digger and stones are being put down to make a drive. It’s been such a blessing, one of our neighbours was having some work done and asked if we needed any ground clearing. We said yes and the man came round to see Chris and started the work. The fella is a genius with the digger and has worked really hard for the last couple of days, it should be done early next week. Strangely, I don’t think I’ve actually got a digger picture.

before

After..

Some other random pics:

all this lot has now gone and is clear earth.