Back to normal....

...well as normal as standing in the dark at 7 in the morning, in the middle of a field with snow falling trying to break the ice on a child's paddling pool can be considered normal.


Yesterday everyone returned to work after the Christmas and New Year break. Owning your own business does mean always having to deal with the never ending paperwork and phone calls, meeting up with clients, especially second home owners who have come down for the holidays and need to discuss further work and the small emergency jobs that crop up regardless of Bank holidays. However it is nice to be more relaxed and not have to clock watch the whole time. We normally try to get a few projects done that need more attention than just a weekend, but somehow this year didn't seem to. Everyone in the house has been struck with the cold/flu virus that is about and the continuous freezing weather conditions have made many jobs difficult if not impossible.
Now though the tree and decorations are down and we are back to early morning starts. Cold and dark early mornings ! The ground has been frozen for weeks now. Yesterday the temperature remained at minus 2 most of the day dropping even lower in the afternoon, by bedtime it was - 7.6 Needless to say this morning everything was frozen solid, the taps, the pools for the geese and all the drinking water containers. Even the water tanks were frozen over and had to be broken with a hammer to make a hole just large enough to fill the buckets. Throughout the day the drinking water will need to be checked to make sure it hasn't frozen again.
The sheep are on a small amount of concentrates and ad lib hay, the geese are being fed corn twice a day and the chickens are having extra greens in the form of sprouts tops as well as the usual corn and pellets. They also appreciated the unfrozen patch of grass from under the small ark when I moved it this morning. All the livestock are coping well with the cold conditions, it is the wet they hate so much. Luckily we haven't, yet, had any of the snow that has been sweeping the rest of the country, although it is doing it's best to now and more is forecast for this afternoon and tonight.