Back at the Old Vic

November is not generally my favourite time of year but this November has been full of surprises with a county first moth earlier on in the month and finding a Bulgarian mega last week. However this week was classic November- boring, bad weather, short days and long cold nights and all rather depressing with no moths and few birds. Fortunately work this week was quite busy (still double figure quotes to look at) and I've been fighting off the seasonal affective disorder by cleaning out the paludarium and aquariums, turning over the raised beds in the mini-farm, cleaning out the chickens and picking away at digitising my notebooks onto Ebird and catching up with the Azores reports. It's all a bit of a slog without the daily excitement of recording new species.  

Despite it being nearly December I am still able to scratch the odd meal out of the mini-farm. The chickens are still laying eggs (Light Sussex do lay all year round) and we harvested the last of the tomatoes and green peppers today. I've ordered the new fencing for Lazlo, the poor cockerel who has been in solitary in the dog kennel since he tried to kill Nadia (the main Hen). 

So basically not a lot happening round here. Need to plan a winter trip to give us something to look forward to while picking away at the winter work list. 

The mini-farm- I've tried not to over tidy it this winter as instead of strimming the 'weeds' between the beds I'm topping them and feeding them to the chickens 

Winter eggs 

Lunch made with nothing but food from  the garden either freshly picked or in storage (potatoes, garlic and onions). I was impressed can still do off grid meals in late November. Still got loads of pumpkins too to eat yet. 

The Panther Chameleon in the Paludarium - nice to have a bit of the tropics indoors. Some of the fish are breeding now and our clean up crew of cat fish, snails and crustaceans seem to be working well  too so we slowly getting a bioactive enclosure.