To state the bleeding obvious, it’s cold. How cold? Our outside thermometer dropped to -10C last night. I thought it was faulty at first until the BBC weather site confirmed some of the other lows in the area. Our high today was -2C. But brilliantly, blindingly sunny. 
The ground is frozen rock solid – if you jump up and down on it it doesn’t budge a millimetre. Happily our chickens seem unperturbed by the cold, even the 9 week old chicks are thriving, despite living in a sub-zero shed. For those of you who know our birds, here’s an update. The white Sussex looks wonderful with her new coat of pure white feathers, unsullied by the cockerel’s footprints. She’s not laying at the moment so he’s leaving her alone. The black Sussex – the one that nicks biscuits from the unwary – isn’t laying either but she’s fine. The two bantams that hatched out in 2009 are both laying lovely little eggs every day, despite the cold. The cockerel as as handsomely regal as ever and spends his days working his way through all the neighbouring free range hens before returning to us at night.
Of the five new chicks I think there’s one obvious cockerel – with a silvery chest. He’s the first to show a comb and he has a definite set of pectorals. He’s the one at the back facing the small brown one.
Anyway, talking of hardy, we went for a wintry walk around Jodrell Telescope and Arboretum this afternoon. I must say the Arboretum is a bit haphazard and not well labelled, but it was a lovely site for a stroll and with the telescope breaking through the vista, quite visually stunning too. 
The trees help to give a sense of the scale of this enormous telescope, but this gives you a better idea. Spot the bloke with the yellow jacket on underneath it, and Dave at the far bottom right reading a board. The story has been told many times, but I love the idea of Bernard Lovell knowing he wouldn’t get the money if he told the Uni how much it was going to cost, so he just kept building it a bit at a time, scavenging bit of battleships and railway, each time he ran out of money daring people to pull the plug. A fabulous bit of British Heath-Robinsonesque pluck.
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