Who was the coldest last night?

[JohnB]

The Saturday Telegraph says that people living in rural areas could find their oil costs rising to an extra £564 per year as a result of this recent price hike, 76p a litre was mentioned. :shock: :shock:

The Boilerjuice quote for my area is 70.99p! I hope I've got enough to get through this winter. The Rayburn will be gone or converted back to solid fuel by next winter!

 

[philpjuk100]

Temp -5c,wind speed zero!

 

[JoceAndChris]

That's a beautiful pic - is it today? It's gorgeous here, but very frosty. Still, I'm glad I can actually walk in the garden now without skating.

On oil - are we going to live to see oil fired Rayburns as an unfeasible way to heat the house? Is that going to happen in the next 20 years? I think maybe we should get rid of that old Rayburn and have a nice wood powered Aga.

Our £180 of oil that we bought on Wednesday won't last another week. I don't know whether it takes a massive surge when it runs very low like that or what's happened. I had to put the heating on a lot for my poor Mum, who was staying the night last night for my Christmas party- she has Raynaud's.

We are going to have to go and buy the same amount again, as there is no telling when they can deliver to us.

 

[MdB]

Over the last few weeks our heating costs have been double compared to what we normal spend during the winter (and the house has still been cold) so it probably isn't a surprise that your oil usage has gone up a lot.

 

[robgil]

The sun is splitting the trees here, its spring already.

 

[Moo]

a nice wood powered Aga.

With careful management, your field may well produce enough firewood to keep you in free fuel for the foreseeable future.

 

[Penners]

The sun is splitting the trees here, its spring already.

Actually, the snow having departed from the garden (temporarily, if the forecast is to be believed), we have a number of spring bulbs that have just about ventured a millimetre above soil level.

I suspect that they'll be wishing they could retract again, before the week's out.

 

[philpjuk100]

This is Odie,I have read the above to him and he says he will leave the leg on the kitchen table alone now!

poor little Odie,found him dead in the garden this morning,he had been playing happily only an hour before.R.I.P. Odie.

 

[Moo]

How very sad. Do you have any idea about the cause of his death?

 

[JoceAndChris]

Oh, Phil. I'm so sorry to read that. Poor little Odie - what happened? A stroke?

How very sad. Hugs. ((()))

 

[philpjuk100]

No idea what caused his death,no obvious sign of trauma,just stretched out on the lawn.Not a good week for us,we lost our oldest chicken earlier in the week so R.I.P. coco as well.(if things come in threes I hope the laptop was the third!)

 

[JoceAndChris]

I'm sure you gave them a lovely life Phil - small consolation I know. And at least your cat didn't suffer a painful old age.

 

[Flyfisher]

How awful. He looks so young in that photo. At least you found him - we once had a cat that just disappeared and the uncertainty certainly prolonged the upset.

On a similarly sad theme, Christmas came early this week for Mr Fox and four of our hens joined him for dinner.
That'll teach me to post that we've never had any problems with foxes. The two survivors are not looking at all happy.

 

[JoceAndChris]

Oh no! This thread became so sad - horrible horrible Mr Fox, I hate him. I suppose with all the frozenness he changed his route to include you. I hate to say it but he'll know the other two are there and may be back for them, extra fortifications are necessary. Was it a dusk attack?

I'll bring you some chicks in springtime if you like.

I've just found a very fresh looking fox hole in the spinney, only a few metres away from my girls' electric fence. Does this mean he's sitting salivating by the electric fence every night? I have re-sited it very securely and got Chris to strim all the undergrowth it was losing its current into.

 

[JohnB]

Here's an article about the oil price increase. Not sure it's very helpful though.

 

[Flyfisher]

Oh no! This thread became so sad - horrible horrible Mr Fox, I hate him.

Yes, apologies for adding to the bad news. I don't know exactly when it happened but we lock them up well before dark and went out to find two missing and two headless corpses nearby, which were gone the following morning. We kept the remaining two inside their run the following days so they were safe from any return visits, but we eventually felt sorry for them since that area is paved and they can't scratch around. So we're now letting them back out during the day.

I also wondered if the very cold weather had caused the local foxes to wander farther afield and change their routine. The previous week there was a large dog fox dead on the side of the road so I also wonder if his absence had encouraged neighbouring foxes to also change their routine. More likely it was just one of those things after two years with no signs of a fox.

On a more mercenary note, our girls had started to go off laying and we had already started thinking about needing some more in the spring anyway, but I'd rather Charlie hadn't forced the issue. If you do have some spare chicks then I'd love to offer them a new home, although I'd be devastated if anything happened to them as I'd always think of them as yours really.


To bring things back on-topic, I ventured into our attic rooms this weekend to recover a max/min thermometer I keep up there and was astonished to find that the minimum recorded temperature was only -0.9C. The car thermometer had registered -4C in the past couple of weeks, so I was rather surprised that it had been so much warmer indoors, considering that part of the house is completely unheated.

 

[Penners]

Phil and FF - sincere commiserations, chaps.

Why do we (and I include myself entirely in that pronoun) allow ourselves to become so fond of animals? We know that their demise will invariably precede our own, and that this will cause us grief.

With productive livestock like chickens, I can understand the motivation for wishing to keep them, but dogs and cats offer nothing other than companionship. Why then - when we are surrounded, nay overwhelmed, by others of our own species - do we need them?

Answers on one side of the paper only.

 

[JoceAndChris]

a nice wood powered Aga.

With careful management, your field may well produce enough firewood to keep you in free fuel for the foreseeable future.

I've been thinking about this all day - it's such an interesting idea, but, would require some serious research into wood harvesting. At the moment I'd say we spend about 2-3hours per week harvestng wood for, typically, one fire to burn for 3 hours a night.

I need some of FF' spreadsheets! Even without the new field, I think there's more wood here than we could burn - but it's chopping it up in vast quantities that presents the difficulty.

Here's an article about the oil price increase. Not sure it's very helpful though.

It was certainly interesting, and emotive - but the theme is that the oil price has massively increased during the cold snap, implying that the price will drop back down again next year - let's hope that is the case.

 

[JoceAndChris]

On a more mercenary note, our girls had started to go off laying and we had already started thinking about needing some more in the spring anyway, but I'd rather Charlie hadn't forced the issue. If you do have some spare chicks then I'd love to offer them a new home, although I'd be devastated if anything happened to them as I'd always think of them as yours really.

If it's eggs you're after Orpingtons might be more of a curse than a blessing, they take a year to mature so you wouldn't get any eggs until 2012 from next year's chicks. They don't lay if they don't feel like it either.

They're pretty though, and show the proper deference to a male. :wink:

Answers on one side of the paper only.

Perhaps because our non-speaking friends don't argue with us, blame us, or reject us they bring out our purest, most unconditional love, and connect us with what is best in ourselves. Also they're lovely and fluffy to stroke!

 

[middi]

As the thread has diverted into chickens.....

A farmer acquires a new rooster for his chickens. On arrival to the coup the " cocky" rooster immediately tells the the old rooster to beat it as he now is the new and better kid on the block. The poor old rooster pleads to let him stay and to let him have a couple of the older chickens for company. The new " kid" is not impressed and tells the old boy to b**ger off. At this point the the old boy bets with new boy that he thinks too much of himself and that he could not beat him in a race around the chicken run with the condition that he needs a couple a couple of yards head start. So confident is the new rooster that he agree. The race starts and the new rooster is just about to catch up with the old boy when ... BANG.. the farmer shoots the new rooster.
.."DAMMIT" ...the farmer yells.... " it's the third gay rooster this month".

( I leave you to work out the "cocky" youngsters moral of the story) :wink:
Middi