February 9, 2011 in Ireland

The morning started out fairly warm and sunny. The pigs were good and stayed inside of the electric fence for most of the day. We had a good Irish experience of sorting through loads of homegrown potatoes. We gave the bad potatoes to the pigs.

As we were removing our shoes to re-enter the house, their orange and white cat ran into the house. Not thinking much of it, we washed our dirty hands. We were not in the house for two minutes when we heard a tremendous crash. We ran into the kitchen where the cat had dragged the thawing steak for dinner down from the stove and onto the floor. He had taken the tea kettle with him. We threw the cat out and cleaned the mess. Then we ate fresh duck eggs and sweet potato soup for lunch. Unfortunately, the rain came. We were hoping for an afternoon of running and photographing. Instead we "topped and tailed" the rest of the brussel sprouts that we had harvested yesterday. We learned that bargaining is necessary in Ireland (and most of Europe) if you want to avoid being ripped off. This will be very important information for us to remember, especially when we plan on renting bikes to go mountain biking on some of the Irish trails.

Around 4:30PM the pigs got out and Bernie ran down the road to catch them and I lured them into the glass house with grain.

That was our day so far. In the meantime, we are planning a future mountain bike excursion and possibly trying homemade blood sausage which is allegedly delicious.

Regina