Is this the start of winter

This is the sight that greeted me this morning looking out from the front door when i was about to go to work, it was quite a shock allthough the forecast had said their was a chance of snow i was still suprised just how much of it their was. Luckily it hadn't frozen before snowing so the roads were no bother. I had fortunately taken the chance on Saturday to get on with some digging on the veggy patch and managed to get next years Onion and Leek bed turned over incorporating a lot of the compost that i made this summer as i went along then i gave it a splash of magnesium lime which i consider to be better than straight lime it seems as though the magnesium helps plants utilise N P and K more efficiently and then a bit more compost on top, hopefully the cold weather and the worms will do their bit and it should just need a quick forking and be ready to go without much work come spring. It is my intention to have a soil test done about end of February just to check how things are, the P H i suspect may be still be a bit on the low side after the 2 wet summers we have had so if i get the results back by beginning of March there will be plenty of time to get it sorted. It was inside work today and i have been trying to knock up a growing box i have a soil warming cable so if i can get some lighting sorted i may try starting some leek seeds of nice and early (first week of December?) to see if i can get them a bit bigger come August, i know most folks who show leeks start with bulbils but they seem quite a price for someone who is just learning so i think if i grow them from seeds, i might learn a bit as i go on and maybe next year if all goes well i might buy bulbils. The leek variety i have got is Windermere F1 from Medwyns it seemed an appropriate choice considering it's where i live.

Is it the end of September already

It seems hard to believe that we are nearly at the end of September with just the Leeks and Parsnips and Brussel Sprouts left in the ground to be collected over winter, with the weather we are having now been about the best dry spell we have had since late June it has been easier to get on the plot without churning the ground up into a sticky muddy mess so I have spent the day covering next years Onion plot which is quite a heavy clay type soil with a bit of FYM and a good deep covering of compost at a rate of a barrow load and a half per square yard on top, the worms can now get to work over the winter and i will dig it all in around February/ March time. I am fortunate that i can make as much compost as i could possibly need on the farm by using all the grass silage waste and any straw that has got a bit damp over winter and so is not fit to use for our livestock plus i added any sheep wool that was unsaleable . Last April I heaped it all up in one of our empty silos and turned and mixed it once a week (Sunday morning job) with our tractor loading shovel the heat that is generated is hard to imagine when you start the process but after about four months of regular turning it starts to cool and break down into compost it still a bit lumpy but that will soon breakdown over winter. I will also give all the flower beds a good covering through the winter to keep them as weed free as possible for a clean start next spring.