Ice and snow

Well, we've had snow on the ground for a couple of days now and the temperature didn't get above -2 yesterday so there was an icy crust on everything. I hadn't realised just how cold it really was until yesterday evening... I am putting a ceramic dish of water in the bunnies hutch as the water bottle inside is freezing solid; I went to replenish the water ans slopped some on the patio. When I came out of the back door two minutes later, it had frozen solid into a puddle of ice right outside the door! *roll*  We woke to falling snow this morning and the temperature has steadily risen to +2.9 at lunchtime, so some of the snow has melted but the temp is going back down now and the cloud tells me that it might snow again. I'm just longing for the warmer months, the pup really likes the snow though and races around like a demon and licks at it, this also means that her favourite snack of chicken poo is frozen just like ice cream! YUK

I had my first blue egg of the year today *grins*, I don' think that it's old Dolly coming back into lay as the egg is too small, but Phil thinks that he saw one of the new auracanas going into the cube, so it could be Dizzy, who is the older of the two - I shall have to keep an eye on her. At this rate I will be able to stop buying eggs from Lesley soon.

I finally got around to getting the wineberry cuttings at the weekend and mailing them off to J, who has just confirmed that they arrived OK. I'm going to get some for myself too so that I can have some of the berries too - the bushes themselves are so pretty too, so I don't mind having them as plants if they don't fruit in the first year.

Jude and I are looking to develop our chicken keeping courses; now that she's the Omlet retail outlet, we are going to run Omlet courses from there, and just need to get them online and committed so I have set up a meeting with Johannes, James, Jude and I at my place next Wednesday evening to sort it all out. We are also trying to work with the Poultry Club of Great Britain to see if we can use their tests to be able to award everyone who attends  the courses with a certificate at the end of the course. We are also writing a junior course which we hope will be certified too - the first date for this will probably be 16th February at Jude's yard. Lots of work to do, but it will be worth it all to get it set up and running for this coming summer.

The photography on this site about dragonflies is truly amazing - we get a few flying through the garden and I really love watchinng them. Unfortunately the chickens and the cats love trying to chase them!