Winter updates

So it’s been a while since I posted – Christmas and New Year celebrations out of the way, it’s time to do a catch up!

Over the last few weeks, it has been very busy at work as well as very wet and/or snowy. So visits to the allotment have been brief to avoid being drenched or frozen.

The chickens continue well and seem to be settled at the moment although this peace could be broken at any point. We are getting a regular supply of eggs, usually somewhere between 2-5 per day. Cleaning the coop in this irratic weather is difficult as the water freezes your hands and it takes forever for the inside of the coop to dry when it’s raining. Plus the chickens are insanely curious about what you are doing so you end up taking three times as long because you have to keep stopping to throw out whichever idiot bird has just walked into the nest box, balanced on the door or even on the edge of the perch you are trying to remove!

We also have begun to dig over our very weedy plot however due to the waterlogged soil, we only managed about a third of it before calling defeat. If we manage to actually get a couple of dry days in a row, we will manage to finish it fairly quickly. If being the key word in that sentence.

In the next few weeks we will be putting up the greenhouse frame and using as a fruit cage to protect our berry bushes from marauding birds in search of a tasty meal. We are also planning on dealing with the waterlogged parts of the plot by building several large raised beds which should also improve the productivity of the plot.