The paddock is a quieter place tonight. Usually at this time the ducks have been herded into their shed and you can hear a contented quacking murmur as they settle down. Now it is eerily quiet and my freezers are all full. With the self same ducks.

Last year, our ducks did not fatten as well and although we put a few in the freezer for the Christmas period, most were not ready until late January.

One year, when John had left the ducklings for much longer before he decided they were ready to kill, the females had matured enough to start laying eggs.

This year, I bought the ducklings in mid-summer when they were off heat and consequently bigger and stronger.

In previous years, I have bought them as day olds in May, and they needed to be kept under a heat lamp for weeks. This autumn, the ducks have thrived because the weather has been so mild and dry. Not a good end game plan when your future career is as a table duck.

Another impact from the weather for our poultry is that we are overhead in eggs. Normally by December egg production is down, but our hens are continuing to lay and chicks hatched in spring are all now grown-up enough to be laying as well.

These point of lay hens are not yet disciplined as to where to lay their eggs. Very few of them choose the hen house nest boxes. They love the big shed with its towers of straw and hay. As a result I have developed new mountaineering skills to locate their nests. A week being shut in the hen run with access only to the hen hut boxes will soon cure that.

I continue to try to think of new ways to cook apples; especially those that incorporate eggs in the recipe.

My mother, who remembered the rationing of war years, had a default mode of telling my sister and I that “it’s got an egg in it”, to persuade of us of the nutritional merit of any egg enriched meal.

Today I managed to get through 21. Three in bacon and egg sandwiches at breakfast, another three in the suet pastry for apple dumpling for pudding at lunch, three in egg custard to serve with the apple dumpling, six for a chocolate roulade for the freezer and six for the Yorkshire puddings, which we eat with gravy at the start of lunch.

I can feel the cholesterol clogging our arteries as I write. I did desist from egg mayonnaise sandwiches for supper ... perhaps tomorrow.

My desperation may even stretch to taking apples and eggs as raffle prizes. This is the time of year many villages are holding Christmas quizzes, and there is usually a raffle to boost local funds. Although donating apples and eggs as prizes can seem a bit cheap, there are probably people who will be glad of them.