Well, there’s quite a bit happening at Garrendenny HQ this week but nothing is finished as yet!  The children learned how to paint!

Brian has made the irons for Kate’s new ‘old antique oak bed’ and will be making the frame for the mattress before Friday!  It has been primed and undercoated and will be finished before Friday!

This chair has been stripped and will be painted but not re-upholstered by Friday!  In case you are wondering what there is such an emphais on Friday, it is a certain little girl’s 6th birthday party and I’ve promised I’d have her bedroom finished bar curtains and such other inconsequential details!

Will’s tub chair has just gone to be re-covered in this fabric and I’ll be working on his bedroom next week.

2 Aga Men have called to discuss flue, connecting to hot press etc and I have definitely decided to go with a reconditioned Aga in the kitchen but I think the decision over the colour will require a blog post all on its own!!

We have had an addition to Garrendenny Farm – 18 chickens that are 2 weeks old. The intention is to kill, pluck and eat them ourselves. The only thing is they won’t be free range as there are too many predators (our dog, farm cats and a neighbouring fox with cubs) around to let them out until Brian has had time to build a run.

And we have even had a little bit of time for some socialising. Sheila from the Australian Folder of Ideas  blog has been holidaying in Ireland and came down to see us with her 2 sons. The children got on great and the eldest two are going to write to each other as penpals.  Sheila and I covered lots of topics too,she’s doing an interior design course at the moment and her blog is always full of lots of inspriration.

Well, we had a lovely lunch and bloggers get together yesterday at Jim’s Kitchen in Portlaoise.  Many of the bloggers are in the book club so there was much chat about the current book, The Children’s Book by A S Byatt and while we are enjoying it, I don’t think anyone has finished it yet so we’ll be reviewing it in a week’s time instead of today!

Grannymar, Lily of Lily’s blog, Kathy from Rumblestrips, Susan of Queen of Pots, Steph of The Biopsy Report, Marion of Made Marion, Marie of Diary of a Country Wife and JBBC, Elly of Ellybabes.

Conversation ranged from weddings to blogging, from tweeting to blogging, from facebook to blogging and lots lots more but you do get the general gist. Grannymar did a lovely toast to kick it all off and then we indulged in a gorgeous lunch. 4 hours of solid chat – my jaws ached driving home!

Marion mentioned that she has deleted her facebook, linked in and twitter accounts and she blogs about it here. I totally get where she is coming from and admire her resolve.  I can still remember the cold turkey I experienced last February when I was taking part in Not Enough Hours and had to cut down on my time on the laptop.  I thought it would all be simple enough, a piece of cake actually when Owen left on the Thursday and by Monday I was practially gnawing my nails up to my knuckles!

Maybe it is because the kids are on holidays and I’m conscious that I need to be more organised with my time if I am going to have enough time to play and yet get some work done, maybe it is because we met up with Owen for an hour last week after our trip to the zoo (he is incredibly good with the kids – they both think he is the bee’s knees!) and then the third thing happened – meeting Marion and her feelings of liberation post-no facebook!

Fear not, I am not going to stop blogging and neither am I going to delete my Facebook account (simply for business reasons you understand!).  But a comment Owen made when he was on the Tubridy programme recently, that people compare losing their iphone to losing a partner, is really going to extremes and yet, I could see the possibilities, more and more people are becoming addicted to social media and to being connected to their businesses even while on holiday.  Yes, I admit it, I am addicted to my laptop and while I am getting to the stage that I need an iphone for the business, I am putting it off cos I know just how bad that could be!

Apparently, it takes 21 days to make or break a habit so here goes, for the month of July, I am climbing back on the ‘Not Enough Hours’ wagon – doing a detailed diary plan for the day ahead (cos otherwise with the kids on hols, the hours just disappear), restricting my laptop use and making plenty of time for fun. Sounds easy doesn’t it? It all starts tomorrow

And if I fail, maybe I might just have to follow Marion’s example

I had a couple of comments on Twitter from followers who didn’t know what silage making involved and remembering when we had 2 friends from England come to stay during silage and they thought we re-spread the silage on the field as fertiliser!, i thought I’d share the process with you!  And this is especially for Bob who requested some photos. I’m beginning to think the farming is taking over the interiors on this blog but heyho – it probably reflects my life at the moment

Silage is long grass that is cut and chopped and then stored to be fed to cattle during the winter when they are kept indoors.  It is important that it is of as high a quality that is possible as this reflects the feeding quality of it during the winter and that means cutting it dry and getting it in as dry as possible which can be easier said than done in Ireland . It is an expensive process too so doubly important to get good quality – for example, it cost us €11,000 to get the first cut of silage in.

Starting to mow – they use 2 mowers, one in front of the tractor and the other to the back and side.  Will had a great time doing three rounds of the field.

As kids, we always loved jumping over the swards and my kids do too

Cutting silage in the Chapel Field

Grass up to her waist

Picking up the silage. There is usually 4 or 5 silage trailers bringing it into the pit.

Tipping up

Rolling the silage (to ensure it is packed in tightly)

Covering the silage last year.  The silage is covered with 2 layers of black polythene and then either dung or tyres are laid on top to keep the air out and ensure that the polythene is not torn by birds etc.

Last week our new (well, very second-hand) JCB loader arrived so we were able to cover the silage ourselves. Hence, I was out spronging dung and throwing tyres around instead of taking photos! A good workout

Icecream is an essential part of silage-making!

The breeding season started here about a week ago – the time of the year again when it is time to put the cows in calf so they will calve next Feb/March. We use about 95% Artificial Insemination in order to improve the EBI (Economic Breeding Index) of the herd.  So the AI man visits morning and evening.  Last year, whenever Will saw his car going up the yard, he would say in a very knowing tone ‘That’s the AI man, he’s going to put a seed into the cow which will grow into a calf’, and it just used to crack me up as I just knew he was picturing an apple seed or something similar.

He is now nearly 8 and this is the conversation we had the other day:

Will: Mum, can I go up the yard on my bike?

Me: No, wait until Paul has gone

Will: Who is Paul?

Me: The AI man

Will: What is he doing?

Me: Putting a seed into the cow that will grow into a calf.

Pause – Will is thinking.

Will: Why does he have to put a seed in?

Me: Um, well, the calf grows from the seed

Will: So you have to put a seed in to make a calf?

Me: Yes.

Long Pause

Will: So for cows, you have to put a seed in.  Is the seed already there for humans?

Me: Yes!

End of conversation!

Following on from a post some time ago on Memories of Childhood Weekends, and regarding the emphasis on Farm health and safety I thought I’d share a couple of stories with you from when I was young and foolish!

When I was about 9, I used to bring in the cows to be milked. Unless the bull was out with the cows, I used to do it on my own with our useless dog at the time.  On this particular day, the bull was out with them so the workman Tommy came for the cows with me. The only problem was he was in a hurry for some reason and set off without me and he was at the top of the hill by the time I had started into the field.  Then over the brow of the hill came this large black and white bull who stopped and stared across at me. (and Friesien bulls tend to be quite wicked) A red and white cow ambled up beside him and she gazed at me too.  I could feel my knees dip as I tried to leach my bones into the ground and disappear.  The bull stood majestically and tossed his head as if to say ‘I don’t think I can be bothered with such small fry’, and then he picked up his hooves and ran down the hill, whereas I screeched ‘Tommy’ and raced up the hill as fast as my legs could carry me.

K in front of some large (but docile) bulls at a show

We are much more conscious of the road safety now, even though I still see kids driving in the back seats of car with no safety belt or almost worse, on the knee of a parent in the front.  But back then, I often travelled sitting on a trailer behind a tractor. On this particular day, we had loaded up the last trailer load of bales from a neighbouring farm and it wasn’t quite a full load so I asked my dad if I could ride home on home of the bales.  I guess  I was probably sitting at a height of 10 feet from the ground.  I was happy enough as the tractor ambled along, it was a sunny day, there wasn’t much traffic and it felt quite relaxing sitting at the top of the world. Until the tractor and trailer hit a bump and the bales shifted.  It felt as though the bales were going to slide off the trailer and I with them. I lay down on my stomach to shout at my dad who couldn’t hear me.  I thought we would never get home, even worse was driving up the avenue as it felt as though the bales were going to fall off the back, all I could do was lie on my stomach and hold onto the bale twines for dear life.

There was also the time I tried to climb down a very high load of bales from the front of the trailer. The bales were packed tightly and were quite slippery.  I lost my toehold and fell to the ground with a large thump from a height of about 12 or 15 feet.  I was very lucky I didn’t hit the drawbar or any part of the tractor or trailer – just my pride!

There is actually a facebook group called something like ‘I used to race along the piles of bales when I was a kid’ and glancing at it, I couldn’t believe how many people used to do it and yet, how dangerous it is. One slip and it could be a broken bone or much worse – getting stuck and suffocating.

How about you? Any tales to tell?