Winter Weather but Spring is on the Way

We have snow! It has been only a light fall but enough to excite the children and to send them off to the slopiest field with their toboggans. It has been three years since the last snow show so the delight when everyone woke up this morning to a gleaming white world was immense. A sprinkling like this is lovely...it does not disrupt the running of the farm other than a few frozen water pipes which soon thaw out once the sun moves round. In fact as I write the tap in my kitchen is starting to drip as the pipes to the house start to thaw so I will be able to wash up the breakfast dishes before too long! We have had cold weather for the past few days which is a blessed relief after the persistent rain of the last months but not cold enough to freeze pipes until now. Work on the holiday cottage is going well with the end in sight. My painter/decorator finished last week and I'm steadily getting the place sorted out and back to a livable space. It is looking lovely with its newly painted ceilings and fresh colour schemes. As soon as I have photographs I will post them up here. The whole process has been just like moving house again as of course everything had to be packed away, all the china, glass etc. and having new carpet laid, new beds and a new kitchen (courtesy of the Farmer!) but it is well worth the effort. Despite the wintry weather there are clear signs that spring is not too far away. Yesterday I found the first snowdrops in flower and daffodils are sending their sage-green shoots up everywhere and the crosuses on the lawns are promising a great display later on. On a jaunt down to Pembrokeshire at the beginning of the week we saw many daffodils already in flower - it is a much milder climate down there and things are usually well ahead of us here. The birds are starting to sing and I have already seen some of our summer-visiting mallards returning to one of the ponds from their winter quarters down on the river.

The Farmer is keeping busy processing firewood to build up the supply for next yearand even the year after. We have a lot of trees down with ash-dieback and when the trees are brought up to the timber yard they are processed into wood fit for planking to be made into furniture at a later date or what is fit only for firewood. Whether the wood is destined for carpentry or firewood it all needs to be well seasoned so we have sheds full of stacked planks well-sticked for even drying and other sheds full of mountains of logs alsoseasoning for the wood stoves. Burning green wood is a complete no-no so it is left for at least two years to ensure we get the most efficiently made heat from the logs.