Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

It is 8th January, it is definitely winter but our lovely light golden Bantam is broody!!! She laid her last egg yesterday and spent the whole day sitting as snug as she could in one of the nest boxes - even though I took both her (and all the other) eggs away!!!
Bless, it really is way too early for us to think about hatching chicks - although it is something we cannot wait to start to do - but the weather is damp and cold and as most of the poultry stay in the barn for much of the time (and we have days when we don't even let them out), it would not be fair to have little chicks running around with so many older birds.
It is going to be difficult to stop our Bantam being broody - there are always going to be eggs in the nestboxes from other birds (even with us collecting two to three times a day) and we know from last year what a determined broody she is. You may recall she raised FOUR broods for us and whilst she was not one to hang around with her chicks (she left one set to fend for themselves at just four weeks old), she is a fab mum for the time she is with her chicks.
We are going to wait until at least the middle of February before we even consider allowing her to sit on some eggs. Whether she will still be broody by that time remains to be seen...