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needed time on his own to walk around and get a feel of the place, to form a plan. When the lad would eventually come to him, he wanted to have some ideas in his head. Since Kate had spoken about helping Danny, he had thought of nothing else. When he was a young fellow himself, he had always been grateful to old Edward Phelan for his encouragement. The old man had always talked over his suggestions and sometimes improved on them, and they had implemented their plan together. In this way they had improved Mossgrove. But it would be a big undertaking to turn Furze Hill around, especially when the cash flow was non-existent, although he had brought Mossgrove back on track himself after Billy had died, and money was scarce then too.
    Now, as he looked around the yard, he realised that Mossgrove had never sunk this low. There was not one decent farm building in the yard. But the entire yard was well brushed and clean, and all the overgrowth and briars that he remembered since the day of Matt Conway’s funeral were cleared away, and the stone wall of the piggery just left of the gate was almost entirely rebuilt. It was obvious that Danny was making a huge effort to bring the place around. To have done this much in so short a time told of dogged hard work.
    He inspected the piggery that was being restored and decided that Danny was getting that right, but when the walls were finished he would have to put in a new door instead of the broken iron bedhead that was serving as a makeshift door now. That door must make feeding the pigs a tough undertaking. Now the pigs, hearing the footsteps outside, were presuming that it was feeding time and were screeching and poking their snouts out through the bars of the bedhead. He could only imagine what a job it must be trying to get in through that contraption with the pigs screaming for food and jumping on you.
    Next was the hen house, which was a bit of a shambles, but then hens had the ability to function in any kind of a thrown-together situation. They were scratching around happily, but laying boxes and perches seemed to be in short supply. Jack knew from watching Martha in action in Mossgrove that a well- set-up and organised laying unit repaid well, and he remembered that Nellie’s egg money had sometimes kept Mossgrove floating when times were tough. So something would need to be done to improve things here. This hen house needed to be enlarged and reroofed. As he went slowly along, he was doing mentalarithmetic as to the absolute minimal cost of turning things around.
    Next on his pathway was the dwelling house. At right angles to the hen house, which made it the building that faced you as you came in the gate, was the long low house which, in the Barrys’ time, had been an old cow house. Conway had not even bothered to roof it properly. With its rusty galvanised iron, it must be bitterly cold in winter, and there had to be leaks. Windows that had been broken over the years were patched with bits of wood, and even the front door had been chewed at the bottom by his dogs and must cause freezing draughts on windy nights. Molly Barry had called it “the poke”. Looking at it now, he decided that she was right. Crazy Conway had moved his family in here and left a fine house empty. As he stood looking at the house where he knew a lot of family trauma had been endured, the seed of an idea ignited in Jack’s mind. But because the idea was so impractical, he was reluctant to let it come to the surface.
    He continued onwards to the adjoining cow houses, where he decided that a few slates here and there was all that was needed, and again a rebuilding of sagging walls. But there was no proper calf house, and they were wedged in behind the cows, overcrowded and uncomfortable, which was a far from healthy situation. When they saw him they pushed and struggled with each other to try to reach the door, but there was very little room to even stand. Strong healthy calves could not be produced in