Very, very, very cold right now. I was expecting a small sprinkling of snow last night but was informed by the wonderful BBC weather people that it would have melted by the morning due to a slosh of rain. However come 3pm yesterday afternoon the snow began to fall (pictured above), and when I went to bed at gone midnight this morning it still hadn't stopped. Anyhow, it was going to rain wasn't it? Nope!
It looks like it snowed through the night, we have had a couple of inches which is a couple of inches more than I first imagined we would get. It was melting quite quickly though, but it was funny walking up to see the chickens this morning. Lesley and Geraldine have seen snow several times before, but the poor bantam girls looked very startled. Being born only last summer they have not seen a downpour of the white stuff before.
If I had have known we were going to get so much snow it might have been an idea to move them to a hard standing part of the garden rather than leave them on the grass. The front section of the eglu run looked like a big pooey mess as the snow starts to thaw. I just had to take a picture.
They were glad to see me and were given a nice handful of oats in addition to their normal layers pellets. It wasn't much fun breaking the ice in the water bowl either!
Hopefully this snow is an abrupt end to the winter. I see that we are due cold temperatures for a couple of weeks but hopefully after that we can start getting serious in the garden again. We visited a local garden centre on Friday, one of those which are more about 'status' and 'trendynous' with some of the older generations than the actual gardening stuff they sell, it is also one of the more pricey ones too. Anyhow we did come away with some bargains and also our seed potatoes. We are re-evaluating the way we grow potatoes this year. We had moderate luck with the grow in a sack method last year (small sized potatoes, small yield), so this year we are going back to traditional ways and putting them in the ground. They are currently in egg boxes as we await the 'chitting' process to begin!
I also found other items rather irresistible such as packets of seeds and some magazines. I have a massive problem. Every time I see a magazine involving vegetable growing, chicken keeping, smallholding etc. I just have to buy it.
It's almost time to sow the first seeds of the year so I hope you'll come back to read about what I'm doing over the next few days and weeks.
I can't wait to read your blog and see what you are doing too!!
Martin
