Well, I'm not doing much out there, as my middle is growing ever bigger (I now have three months before my due date). But here's what's happening garden-wise:
The husband has been diligently sheet mulching the allotment, section by section: cardboard topped with a thick layer of partly composted stable bedding (horse manure and straw). The garlic he and the son planted earlier in autumn is growing strongly there, as are the red cabbages and sprouting broccoli, though none are ready for harvest. He says the Brussels sprouts are looking big enough to eat though--just in time for Christmas.
The chickens and ducks are all penned together in a fairly large yard next to the coop, and we have been adding a new straw bale to the yard every 2-3 weeks; it gets muddy/pooey quickly with 15 chickens and 4 ducks. The ducks are still the lowest in the pecking order, despite being the biggest; they have a small bath which the chickens deny them the use of by using the edges as a perch. Oh well. Not a single egg laid yet between all 17 female birds out there in the month of December. Hopefully the young hens hatched at the end of July will start laying their first eggs soon, but it might not be until the new year.
The vegetable patch is mostly bare now, with just a few celery rows and some very sparse chard left. Though the runner bean pods left for seed are still not fully dry, I think it's time I pulled them up and let them mature under cover. Might be a job for the husband though. He's been talking about clearing out the chicken coop to spread on the veg patch: now's the time to do that I think.
We've had some regular light frosts over the past few weeks, and one or two hard ones. No snow (yet) thankfully, and though there's been some heavy rain we've also had some good sun. I'm looking forward to the solstice this week and hopefully a bit more light during the day after a few more weeks.
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