Barbara and Conor

 Its been a bit windy over the last couple of days  - first Storm Barbara thesn, 24 hours later, Conor.

The headline wind speed reported by the BBC was 82 mph.  Orkney has a number of weather stations around the Islands. The information they collect is available on the Orkney Harbours website 

Some data from Black Craig ( just outside Stromness) . Openstreetmaps has Black Craig  in the correct place. Google maps has it located in Shapinsay , for some reason .

The first peak is Storm Barbara, with a lull in the early hours of christmas day, then the wind gets up again for Storm Conor.   So 90.5 knot gust = 104 mph.

Kirkwall itself wasnt as bad - its sheltered ( a bit ) from string Westerly winds

So we would have been somewhere between the 2. 

Someone in Birsay lost the roof of  their shed 

And for us .  venturing out : 

 a couple of the lamb shelters got overturned and moved 

And some of the beds in the vegetable garden got trashed.  So i clearly didn't fasten  everything together as well as I should have done in the spring.

And you can see what turmips , swedes(neeps) and carrots look like with the leaves blown away

Christmas is coming

in the past we have kept cockerels through the winter   - but its a bit of a waste. They consume feed and  don't put on much weight .
So we have a concerted effort before we get  too much into the winter .

 They all get plucked, but some just have the breasts and legs removed. But some become roast chicken.

So we are self-sufficient in  chicken,