Nik lives in Essex, UK and works in London as the editor of MacUser magazine. The posts and comments on this site do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions or values of his employers.
send an email // view profile
It’s so cold right now. It was -8C last night, and right now it’s -7.4C in the chicken coop. I don’t know how the hens keep on laying through it all, but they’re out there now doing their best to scratch at the frozen ground around their food hoppers. It must be absolutely miserable.
It’s bad enough in the house, waking up under a 13.5 tog duvet as the cold is enough to stop our boiler working every night. We wake up to stone cold radiators where the heating has gone off in the middle of the night as the condenser pipe has frozen, and have to go out with a kettle of hot water the next morning to free it all up. If we don’t, we can’t have a shower.
The pipes in the outhouse froze yesterday, and they were indoors where we have a little oil-filled radiator keeping the chill off, so the washing machine didn’t work.
Pretty, this weather may be, but it’s colder than I’ve known in a very long time. Certainly we’ve not had a winter like it since moving into this house.
Self-sufficiency- Reviving the rhubarb
- This year’s crabapple harvest
- The nasty death of a naughty chicken
- Struggling to keep the potatoes under control
- Eating the first lettuce of 2011
- We’ve transplanted our tomatoes
- The artichokes are rising… and so are the errant potatoes
- Curing the pecking hens
- Our rhubarb has made it through the winter
- Time to clean the greenhouse windows