Real Eggs, Cold Spring

With the days beginning to lengthen visibly the hens are starting to lay in reasonable quantities again. This morning whilst baking I was struck by the glorious richness of the yolks and saw that they made lovely picture of wholesomeness and of what a good egg should look like. None of the pale wishy-washy faded yellow of factory-farm eggs. These are eggs that have been produced by very happy hens scratching around in the orchard on a diet of beetles, worms and the occasional handful of corn.

While the days are getting longer and spring is cetainly on the way with daffodils beginning to flower in time for St David's Day, it not not getting any warmer. We are still wrapping up well to go out and do things on the farm. The occasional glimmer of sunshine fools us into believing that there is real improvement in the weather and then an hour later we are plunged into grey dampness with a brisk wind that is bitingly cold, especially up on the top fields.
We have not started lambing yet and I hope that the weather will have improved by the time we do. While lambs can cope with cold they really do not like wet and driving around the locality we have already seen some poor little things standing hump-backed in rain-blown fields while their thickly fleeced mothers graze unconcernedly.