I've just been looking at the bird 'flu guidance for when the current control order runs out (at the end of the month). Given that free-range birds can only be kept in for twelve weeks before they become barn-raised, which happens at the start of March, I was expecting some changes and had my fingers crossed that I'd be able to start feeding the ( Read more... )

Weather and Mike playing Skyrim mean I've been making great progress with a hand quilting project: it just seems like the right sort of weather to be sitting with a quilt on my lap. And a blanket underneath it.

The boys didn't get any carrots today:

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Part of the reason it's so chilly down here is because this is what it looks like at 9:30 in the morning:


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It's been quite chilly here (yesterday, on the evening weather forecast, they mentioned that the afternoon had been sunny with a high of 13 in Scotland, and sunny with a high of 1 in Kent...), and we think that last night may have been the coldest since we moved here: the ducks' water bucket, inside the duck house inside the stable, was frozen over ( Read more... )

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It seems there's a bird 'flu outbreak in Europe, and Just In Case there are now restrictions on birds in EnglandWe can't practically keep the ducks indoors (the stable where they sleep is small and dark), so after a bit of a ponder we decided that they definitely have to stay out of the front garden, where there are far more wild birds. As (bad) ( Read more... )

When I made the juice for the medlar jelly, we didn't have any apples in so I thought I'd just slosh in a bit of bottle pectin when I boiled it up today ( Read more... )

Novacon was mostly nice, and fairly quiet, but involved late nights (as ever ( Read more... )

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Last weekend, we were given a bucket of cooking apples, and today I peeled and chopped and lightly cooked them before putting four big bags in the freezer, ready for making crumble latter in the year ( Read more... )