Welcome to 2016

If anybody else said this, I'd be accusing them of spouting superstitious mumbo jumbo, but I've got a feeling that 2016 is going to be a very good year.

It's not even 9 o'clock in the morning yet and I'm already having a great day. The dogs are tearing around playing happily as I sit here with my morning coffee and tap away at the keyboard.

It's a couple of years ago now that I did my year of sunrises and I have no plans to do it again, but if you can't see the sunrise on 1st January - though of course, for me the New Year really started on the Winter Solstice.

There were no wild celebrations last night. Sue is visiting friends so it was just me, Arthur and Boris, Gerry and Angel (dogs and cats). It was still nearly 3 before I got off to sleep though - I was busy making plans. So was the Little Owl. I could hear it calling outside as I lay in bed.
So, 2016 and I was up with the larks - actually, just about the first bird I saw was a Barn Owl which flew across the veg patch right in front of me. Not a bad start to the year.
There was a light frost too, only the second of the winter and the first was almost undetectable. Not enough to penetrate the soil though, but enough to make for a clear, crisp morning.

I took a few photos, just general ones mostly. I like taking photos of the smallholding, for when I look at them I often see things in different ways. It's good to catalogue the changes too.

 

The chickens have started laying again. As predicted, egg numbers rose sharply after the shortest day to the point where we had a bit of an egg mountain going on in the kitchen. We'd gotten out of the habit of using them. Appropriately for the start of a new year, this morning both our Ixworth hens laid an egg, the first time this has happened. I half expected it as yesterday's egg was covered in yolk. Often the first couple of eggs laid will be soft shelled. The young girls' eggs are small at the moment, but they'll get bigger with time.

Anyway, I'm off back outside now. It's a new year and I'm keen to get stuck in. More importantly, it's dry and it's a beautiful morning. And my coffee's finished.