Here Is The News.... pt 2

Slowly catching up (see below for the first bit...)!

November News:

The beer supplied to Tesco (my, didn't it take some time to get the first order - thought we'd run out of date...) has sold well. Not that we have seen any official figures, but feedback from across Herts & Cambs and parts of Essex suggest that once on the shelves, stock was sold in a few hours, then shelves sat empty until the next re-supply, often a week later. Certainly Tesco have said they wish to continue, and we will start in anger just before Christmas.

In other developments, Polar Star has continued it's run of praise and accolades, and is worthy of a post of it's own. Which it will get, one day!

Late October:

MoreHens. Not a typo (for once), but a reference to the fact we seem to have gained a second, or possibly third, new brood of Moorhen chicks in the last few weeks. Sadly this latest batch are being hit by the colder weather, and so the original three soon became one. I've lost count of how many of these noisy quarrelsome creatures we now have on the reed bed, but they do seem to have settled in quite nicely...

In Other Bill Oddie Friendly News, we can report increased, almost daily in fact, sightings of Red Kite (maybe one or more adults?). Of equal note was the three way fight between some crows, 2 buzzards and a few pigeons. The crows mob the buzzards, who eventually get bored and turn upside down to bring their talons to bear on the aggressor. All of which is far more interesting than the cask washing I should have been doing. Quite what role the pigeons were playing in all this was not obvious, but then that is often the way with pigeons (unless they are in the frying pan of course). The onset of winter has a undesirable side effect, and that is the normally distant rodent population of the fields comes looking for the warm dry shelter of the farm buildings. Now many of the buildings here are grain stores, and as such are designed to be rodent proof, and (again) like the brewery, are protected by the rat-mans equivalent of thermo-nuclear warfare. As a result, they are not an internal problem - but they do bring an increase in close-by kestrel action, and in the evenings, some serious owl activity. This is currently highlighted in the shape of a very noisy Tawny Owl, who, quite literally, finds it a real hoot to sit near our roof vents and make as much noise as possible. The result gives the impression that the little bugger is in the brewery or the office area. No doubt one morning we will discover he really was in the office last night, and having been locked in, spent the night on the internet downloading owl porn.