whelan2 wrote: » One of our Angus bulls had a pig tail post wrapped in his ring this morning
Present tags can be used until June. All EID after that.
After 1st January only EID can be purchased.
Happy Winter Solstice everyone.
Fantastic stretch to the evenings now, sure you'd get two days work in one............ 😄
I was just saying to the youngest lad yesterday when I was dropping him to the school bus in the dark ,at least when they go back after Christmas the mornings will be brighter
Is he finished all sports for the year
Still has goalkeeper training. He's out every chance he gets with a ball. All the stuff he wants for Christmas is sports related.
Winter proper😏 is only beginning..
Ya I agree in Ireland winter is normally from December - February inclusive. However it can extend beyond that. I always find it stupid/confusing the idea that spring starts in February.
Spring starts in march. It's just the teachers that use a different calender.
Ya but you will see media and others permutating the idea that spring starts in February. Its more the idea that summer is from May-July rather than June-August.
I agree. However long I live I'll never forget a story recounted by an old farmer. He was attending the local health centre between Christmas & New Year one year. In the waiting room with him was a "young trained farmer". I know both of them all my life. In the course of the conversation, the YTF comes out with this gem...
"Isn't it great to have Winter behind us"
...In December, in Connemara.
Well the same lad would want to be bet with sticks the seven miles to his house. Anyone paying attention has seen Winter nearly knock on the door of June in the worst of the years since I've been around.
Brainwashed.
On the upside of lengthening days, one wouldn't want to waste the daylight waiting for a particular season to arrive.
My father always reminds me that the winter doesn't start until after Christmas. To be fair he's right most year's, the best of weather now and come April/May you'd be going around with 2 jackets on and still frozen.
That reminds me of a local character that used to work for Stewarts Mills in Boyle back before they became part of Kiernan Milling. Once the take over had been finalised there was an auction of the mill equipment organised shortly before Christmas. Our man attended on the day for a last look around his former workplace.
It wasn't a bad day for the time of year and he retired to a pub up the town for a quick drink and a debate after the sale. Of course it wasn't long until the auction came up in conversation and he had all the news firsthand. Seemingly the entire equipment had been purchased by a foreigner as a going concern to be exported and reassembled overseas. Granted our man wasn't that well travelled so "foreign" took in a lot of different places. When pushed on where exactly the purchaser hailed from he replied that it was obviously a warmer clime than here, "He was going about with 3 crombie overcoats on him and still f#cking shivering".
That's only one definition and a lot newer than the February one
Feels more right to me so that's what I go with. Maybe it's time for the teachers to change. God knows their syllabus could badly do with a bit of a shake up.
You feel it in your waters.
St brigid brings us spring is what the kids are thought now, don't remember that when I went to school
My late dad used to say "the old people always said" that you need at least half your winter feeding left on St Brigid's day and that would be very true for around hear and guessing the further west you go you would need more.
I do a lot of driving around the country (covering all 32 counties) and one thing that amazes me come late February / March, down around Cork, Waterford direction cows are out on lushes fields of grass where as 3- 4 hours up the road in Cavan, Fermanagh, fields are yellow bare and its very much mid winter. Then you read the Farmers Journal and it writing about getting cows out and fertilizer for your first cut of silage, do the writers ever look outside their own bubble to see the vast differences that are across this island.
More like on my face
Well that's a very wet Christmas up to new year weather forecast.
Gona lash now.😳
It used be set at that as the first time growth returned to Ireland.
This year Summer should have started in mid July, Spring in October and we'll save winter for a bad blast in March and April.
Always grow a few spuds in the veggie tunnel to go with the turkey.
Proper high stool weather
Spring starts in February some years, but not till April in others. In terms of weather where would you put the dates? We had a Great Autumn this year, it only ended 3 days before Christmas 😀. I was still getting tomatoes from the poly tunnel until last week.
But I think the February spring on the calendar made sense to our Ancestors in terms of light, shortest day mid-winter and longest day mid summer. Autumn also works out well as the Harvest Season, August to October. There is only a day or 2 variation between solstice and equinox dates every year so it was a far more reliable metric than working out the seasons based on average temperatures.
That farmers journal bucket of stuff came to me yesterday evening. Walked into the house with it and was swamped by children and wife and the whole thing was distributed within 1 minute. The joys of fatherhood. I'm left with the bucket.
St.Brigid's Day is the 1st of February as that's the date on which she died.
She shared a name with the Celtic goddess Brigid who was goddess of Spring, fertility and health.
The two became intertwined here then.
St.Brigid's actual skull is said to be in Lisbon.
I lived in England for a few years and always thought their definitions of the seasons were more realistic than here. Spring starting on the equinox around 21st March until summer on June 21st. It would still be summer in August there when weather was good whereas here it was autumn 🍂
I've noticed/thought the Indian summer spells in to September have gotten later. Even October 2020 was quite mild.
We’re in Cavan here @ 650ft. Last frosts often 18-20th May with frosts returning late September. It’s a short season, I’d know lads who house stock 6 months, it’s an awful expense for sucklers. We would have been 5 months indoors when we had them here.
Last April/May was the coldest for 80 years - thankfully the summer that followed made up for it to a large extent
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