Monthly Round Up: January 2023

For a month that notoriously drags, and usually has at least 359 more days that its allocated 31, January has flown by. Between illness, freezing temperatures and trying to wrestle the contents of the house into some semblance of order after Christmas, there's hasn't been much time for much beyond "the basics" of chicken and quail care. The hens have been absolute troopers this winter, and we've never been without at least a couple of eggs in the kitchen and never had to buy any in for our Yorkshire Puddings. Not bad considering they're all about 3 years old and there's no artificial heat or light in their coop. Even some of the quail have started laying again! Admittedly it took a week to fill an egg box, but again that's to be expected as we're not providing them with the 16+ hours of light needed to stimulate laying.

We've struggled to heat the house at times, t the point where there has been ice on the inside of the bedroom window. We only have one small working radiator downstairs, and it's an open-plan layout, with a central open staircase. That, coupled with very thin walls with no insulation in the walls (and some considerable gaps in the beams!) has meant the log burner and open fire have had their work cut out for them. A Sussex longhouse certainly wasn't built for the modern age of EPC ratings, central heating and sedentary indoor lifestyles. In fact, it would have probably been warmer in here during the lives of the peasants that would have once lived here, sleeping in the rafters above their livestock, warmed by the breath and the bodies (and the dung) of the animals below. It didn't quite get to the desperate levels of trying to calculate the British Thermal Units of 3 hens and 13 quail in order to determine whether it would be worthwhile bringing them in as a heat source. We're just so grateful that our current load of logs was payment for some work MrEOP did, so we don't have to see it as money going up in smoke.

The upstairs central heating is mediocre at best, and days at my desk working have been difficult. Some more coffee and heading out to bring in some more logs is usually the answer. The kids, thankfully, seem totally impervious to the cold, and I shiver just looking at them scampering around with barely anything on (aka only one jumper). But even the usually hardy MrEOP has been heard to mutter and swear on occasion, mainly when he has to swap his beloved shorts for some jeans.

For all of those complaints, we've had some glorious sparkly-sunshine-and-bird-song days. We've had few exciting feathery visitors - marsh tit, gold crest and sparrowhawk. Then right at the end of January three male and a female bullfinch in the cherry tree. The blue tits are back in greater numbers, and the long tailed tits are making their regular cheery appearance to the fat balls. I spotted a rather cold looking bumble bee zig-zagging its way between the hellebores on one of the few sunny days in mid Jan. Flowers are sadly few and far between here in January, though by the end of the month we had some snowdrops, viola and iris reticulata up. No idea what's happened to all the winter aconite I planted...

As part of the Twitter campaign of "NewYearWildFlowers I did a walk around out fields, checking under the hedgerows and throughout the grass. Sadly, not a single wild flower to be found. Few flowers on some of the (cultivated) shrubs, but nothing wild. This is something I really want to rectify for next year.

Much of the month has been spent huddled next to the fire thinking ahead to the next year. Contacting pig breeders (piglets were born early Jan - eeeep!!), following up on the fencing/infrastructure work (so impatient, might do it all myself) and planning and buying seeds (more on my 100% guaranteed foolproof approach to that here). As much as I love writing lists, making plans and re-writing lists, it can get a little frustrating when I'm not seeing any actual progress.

As well as baking more (lemon drizzle cake, blueberry and banana muffins, cherry and almond muffins and smashed egg vanilla cake), I've managed a couple of kitchen firsts this month too - yogurt and marmalade! I've also been trying to switch my shopping habits. So rather than relying on a supermarket delivery van to bring me everything I could ever want (and more), I've been heading up to the local farm shop where the produce is all beautifully arranged and helpfully labelled so you can see what is local, what is British, and what has been imported. Although the food is considerably more expensive than supermarket prices, I'm buying less of it - not least because I'm trying to build a couple of smaller food shops into my week, but also because the majority of it is loose. So it's a case of taking what you need, not the quantity the supermarket has pre-packed for you. They stock meat from a local butchers, so we've had a couple of amazing mid-week dinners of pheasant and venison.

We may live like peasants, but we feast like kings.