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It was great to have a few days before this cold snap to get a chance to get outside and see spring arriving. The blossom on our plum tree outside our shop has been amazing this year and buzzing with bees. The cherry tree has also been full of blossom so should produce lots of fruit for the birds, who always beat us to the cherries so we just accept now the blossom is lovely to see and the fruit encourages the birds into the garden, no home made fruit wine from this tree!
The birds all seem to be enjoying the longer days and nice weather, both domestic and wild with a long loud morning chorus most days (including one cockerel that has a very early morning crow - must move him further away from the house!). We have also had some distress calls early some mornings and found a fox pacing around the pens, unfortunatly at this time of year we often get more persistant visits from the fox, probably looking for food for a young family, so we have to be on our guard and double check each evening that all birds are safely shut in and all locks are securely closed.
We have managed a couple of early inspections of our bees. Mostly all seems to look well and we found nice new honey stores where the bees have been working the blossom. One hive is worrying as there is no sign of eggs or brood so it is unlikely the queen has made it through the winter, we will therefore check again as soon as we can to see if we need to merge the hive with another.
Works are progessing to the outside area around our barn, the old polytunnel has been taken down and the bars are being repaired ready to be returned to give us a sheltered area for both planting and training courses. The area around our pond outside the woodstore has been tidied and we were really pleased to find frogspawn. The geese have been extremely stroppy so we expect goose eggs in time for easter!
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