Nothing Much

It's been pretty cold around here lately and things have been pretty quiet. Nothing much is getting done, at least by me. The cold weather just makes me want to stay inside the warmness of the house. I do try to stay busy, though, contrary to popular belief that I sit around, read magazines and drink cups of tea. I am forced outside a few times during the day to check on the chickens, mostly to make sure they have water to drink and not ice.

I did try to make some strained (Greek) yogurt the other day for the first time. It was fairly good but I am going to work on it a bit more. I might share that later if it works out. And I also had a go making powdered laundry detergent. One small batch is going to last me weeks.

We had a tiny bit of above freezing weather on Tuesday, so I took the opportunity to rearrange the electronet fencing around the chicken coop. We have had too much attention from a hawk lately so I tried to make the area more challenging to prevent an easy kill. We're down to eight chickens (6 girls and 2 boys), but are surprisingly getting 3-4 eggs a day. Go girls!

I ventured out this morning and took a few photos to share.

It was 30 degrees on the front porch this morning around 9 o'clock.

Not sure what to call these little balls of frozen matter - snow? sleet? hail?

The tap on the back porch has a tiny little leak. The bucket is solid ice.

The tiny drip created an unusual ice sculpture that looks like an eagle head.

The drip was frozen this morning.

Sad hydroponics - nothing alive except some rosemary and remnants of strawberry plants.

The strawberries were surviving fairly well in the cold until the goats ate them down.

I arranged the electronet fencing in a shape of a + (plus sign) rather than square.

I'm hoping the narrow run will discourage a hawk from swooping in.

I arranged a small area around the back chicken door for variety.

View from the end of the run