Winter's finally here

They promised us a cold winter this year.

I'm not sure who they are. I think they're related to someone, as in 'someone's hidden the bastard screwdriver again,' but that could just be by marriage, not a blood tie. Whoever they are, though, they said this year it would be cold. There would be bad news for four foot dwarves in the Pennines,* problems for the nations waterfowl, drunken men suffering frostbite in very personal places. We would have to dig ourselves out of our houses, hunt wild animals for food, revert to a caveman existence.

Really, I was gearing up for a blinder of a winter. They told me to.

I should know better than to listen to them. The voices in my head are more reliable.

It's been another mild one so far. We had a dusting of snow back in November, and it froze for about ten minutes the week before last. But in the main it's been grey, dull and wet. Just cold enough to make you miserable, just windy enough to blow the coal smoke back down the chimney.

Today was different. Today it snowed. Hooray.

The reason it snowed had nothing to do with them. They haven't got a clue when it comes to these things. No, today it snowed because today was the day the Horse Doctor had to spend all day outside talking to farmers. That's right, today was the Woodchip Open Day (whoop, whoop!) And what an exciting day it turned out to be.

Some explanation. Normally when farm animals are housed over winter they are given a nice bed of straw upon which to lie. They shit on the straw and then you put more on top. Over the course of a few months, this builds up to a great big steaming pile of manure (or midden, in the trade), which can be allowed to compost down a bit and then gets thrown on the fields to make them smell interesting.** But straw's been getting more and more expensive over the years, particularly in terms of transport costs. And since no-one grows wheat or barley in Ceredigion, there's not much locally produced straw for the livestock to use a loo paper.

There is, however, a lot of wood. Forestry commission Sitka spruce covers a large swathe of the county, and it's no good for building with (something to do with the climate being too wet, the trees growing too fast and the timber being too weak for structural use). So the Horse Doctor has been looking into alternative uses for it, one of which has been as bedding.

And today, lots of farmers came to see how it's done. Too bad that they couldn't see the pits of semi-composted woodchip where the experiments in mushroom growing*** have been taking place. They were all covered in snow.

OK, so I lied when I said it was exciting. I stayed in most of the day, where it's warm.


* A joke so old it's been drawing its pension for two decades now.
** Except if you're growing salad vegetables, in which case manure that might once have come out of a cow's bum isn't allowed anymore. Bloody regulations.
*** Shitake, Oyster and other gourmet varieties. Magic mushrooms still defy domestic production. Not that I care, all mushrooms make me ill.