The nights are getting slightly shorter every day. The dawn comes a little earlier each morning and its now just on light when I wake up.

It a very nice feeling to sense the return of the sun, even though it’s just a hint.

The trees in the stone fruit orchard are starting to bust into flower. This time last month there was only just the one very early peach, but now there are several trees in flower. The almonds, peaches, nectarines and the first plum tree.

We also are enjoying a very pleasant display from my floral border plantings around the pottery retaining wall. 

Earlier this week, we ate the first of the new season asparagus. However, our main garden produce remains the brassicas, and will be for some time to come.

The peas have just started to climb the new twin wire trellis and have also opened their first flowers. So much to look forward to.

Last week we had a firing in the wood kiln with a bunch of amazing students. The weather held, and although it was crisp, it wasn’t too cold for the over night shifts.

After the unpacking, we all got stuck in and spent a couple of hours after lunch carting, stacking and splitting wood.

I had spent a couple of days during the cooling period, chainsawing fallen dead trees out in our forest. I had to do a bit of clearing to make a turning circle, and then snigging out the logs with chains into the clearing, to be cut up into ‘hob’ lengths for our bourry box fire box.

In the garden, I’m picking winter veggies, mostly brassicas and then dining on roasted vegetables.

In the pottery, I have been making some small batches of experimental new clay bodies based on my local weathered basaltic gravel that I make my Balmoral Blackware from. Just small 5 kg batches. I have no idea how they will turn out, but there is only one way to find out, and that is to make some pots out of them and fire them. I’m planning to fire them in the wood kiln before I go to Korea to work next month. If I can find the time to fit it all in in time. If not, then it will be when I get back.

Winter brings on the truffle season, so we are enjoying French Black truffles very thinly sliced over our beautiful chickens scrambled eggs. Just another black treat in this season. 

We keep the truffles in a container of rice in the fridge, so that we can the full truffle flavour in the eggs and the rice. The infused rice is used for truffle flavoured risotto for dinner.

I think that I prefer soft scrambles eggs on toast with the truffle shaved on top, but as we have two good sized truffles this year, we also try dicing and micro planning the truffle into the egg mix. I think that we get slightly more flavour in the eggs this way, but I rather like bending over my breakfast and inhaling deeply to catch the delicate fragrance while I can see the round black slices on top of the deep yellow of the eggs. It’s a feast for both the eyes and the nose.

Roll on the seasons. Next stop is spring!