Whoops!

We took our eye of the ball, or rather we took our eyes of the growth of the pigs. We had been aiming for a live weight of 80-90kg for Porky and Bess, our friend Kay had visited them a month or so back and considered that they would be ready at the end of August. Today finally, we got around to measuring them to do the weight conversion, they are both around the 125kg weight, so now we have to frantically find someone with a trailer who is willing to transport them to their final destination, the local butcher who will do the slaughtering for us, and also confirm when the butcher can in fact take them for us.

Porky and Bess enjoying supper.

                             I just hope our large freezer is big enough.

A mountain in Sligo.

Sunday saw us visiting another Secret Garden of Sligo, this garden was mainly set out as a series of outside rooms with the main features being the large mature trees, a small area was given to raised vegetable beds and another small area was planted as an Irish wild flower meadow. It was a very calm and pleasant garden but sadly lacking in colour, very few flowers were apparent, maybe in spring time it has  flowering bulbs. We will look forward to the next garden that we plan to visit.

The garden however was in Sligo, a place we never need an excuse to visit,

                   so we explored the area taking the long way home,

A barrow on top of the hill, possibly a passage tomb.

                  the views made the whole trip well worth while.

Parks Castle, on the shore of Lough Gill.

Summer seems to be slowly moving towards autumn, the evenings are definitely getting a little chilly, the summer flowers are giving way to  autumn ones,

the Lucifer Montbretia  is nearly over but it looks fantastic against the White Foxgloves.

The roses are now enjoying their second flush, Gladioli are just about to bloom, garden colour will remain for a few more weeks hopefully.
All of this years chicks are doing well,

Three la Bresse, two Copper Marrans, one Buff Orpington, one ??? 

and are now all outside enjoying the sunshine.
Hatching is more or less over for this year apart from duck eggs which we have in the incubator,

Arnold, the Muscovy drake.

the ducks having failed to hatch any of their own eggs this year, we have had to take over although we would have preferred not to be having young at this late stage in the season, still that is rather counting our ducks before they hatch, we might fail as well.
The kittens get cuter by the day,

Freddy looking cute, again!.

again just a photo of Freddy, Misty does not stay still for long, Freddy is far more laid back.

Waves from the big storm, 3rd February, Lissadel, Co Sligo.

As requested by Gabriella and Stewart, the picture which gave us first prize at the local agricultural show.
Gabriella and Stewart have a lovely blog;

Permaculture in Brittany.com

Well worth checking out for people interested in Permaculture.