The thaw

 

The great freeze that lasted over a week earlier in December has now gone. The great thaw produced little in the way of flooding as we suffered from frost rather than snow. The picture above is the last one I took before the that set in. The duck pond had about 5 cm of ice on the top of it. I appreciate lots of readers would laugh at 5cm, especially if they live in the continental USA or Canada but for us here in the North East of England are not used to bitterly cold weather.

When the pond thawed, the water level was much lower than we expected. I suspect we have sprung a leak. The pond itself is out of action at the moment as it is not in any of our runs. For the time being, all poultry in England has to be caged or in netted runs to slow the spread of avia flu. It will be a while before that ends.

Winter solstice dinner

 

Last week it was the winter solstice. The fact that daylight hours will start to get longer and night time shorter is definitely something worth celebrating. So our dinner consisted of pork (the joint was swapped with a friend) and roast vegetables, all locally produced.

The approaching thaw

 

I referred to an impending thaw in the weather in the post I wrote an hour or so ago. Here's the video I filmed down on the farm today in which I talk about the freezing weather and the that that has been forecast.

Bubble back home

 

A bit of a scare this afternoon. We found Bubble, one of our nanny goats on her side, looking as if she were in a death pose. We took her straight to the vet in Newcastle. Remarkably, she showed some recovery on the way in and she was able to walk into the surgery. The vet measured her temperature which was a bit low but otherwise she was fine. She thinks Bubble may have got cold lying down on her side and therefore couldn't get back up onto her feet. She is now back home and we have put her in our garage where she is warmer and we can keep an eye on her overnight. She has had a feast of carrots and hay and is enjoying having a blanket over her. We hope to get her back to the goat paddock shortly.

Waiting for the thaw

 

It has been bitterly cold over the past 8 days. The ground has been frozen solid, temperatures were rarely above zero and water butts and troughs have been constantly frozen. But it looks like this is going to change. Warmer weather is on its way. The thaw starts tonight and temperatures are forecast to be around 10C higher than we've experienced over the last few days. Thumbs up to that.