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Rachel's Diary! 30-Jan-2008 Hello! Just in case anyone has links to this blog, Alpaca UK has a brand new look and Rachel's Blog has moved to here. Those with RSS feeds can use this new RSS feed link. 25-Dec-2007
Happy Christmas - I have retreated briefly to the office before girding my loins for some cooking, drinking and present opening. All sons are asleep due to the fact that none of them is under 18, hurrah. Thomas and I went to midnight mass last night at St Peter's Church in Tiverton. It was throwing it down with rain but there was a very good turnout. It is a massive church and the congregation were excellent singers. Loads of people went up for communion, at least 60 I would have thought, all ages. The teenager who carried the figure of the baby Jesus from the altar to the crib was a classic. He looked very embarassed and sort of sloped down the church in a teenage manner after lighting the Christmas candle. Everyome else was tucked up in bed. Earlier in the evening after a very excellent goose from the farm down the road we had our own carol singing session at home. Tom played the piano whilst Matt and I sang and we decided our Good King Wenceslas was a winner and sang it twice. Chas appalled by the noise we were making and retreated - no earplugs in the house. We went for a bracing walk at Charmouth on Christmas Eve and the day before went on a round of visiting relatives. First to my sister Elaine's house for white wine, coffee and we were guinea pigs for some excellent cheese biscuits, should there be more paprika or less, should the biscuits be thinner or fatter - delicious! We took our dog Alice and one of Elaine's red setters, presumably over excited by Alice, peed on the Christmas tree. Elaine, ever on the ball, appeared in a trice with soda water. Then we bought some flowers and went to the graveyard at South Petherton where my mother and father and eldest sister are buried. The boys wandered around looking at lots of other Hebditch, Harding and Vaux graves, we are all related. Then to my brother William's where Liz was out on the lawn putting together wreaths and things and then putting up these wonderful Christmas decorations, it looked absolutely amazing, she is fantastic at this sort of thing. We walked up the road to see Uncle John and Aunt Marjorie who are 88 and 89 respectively and looking very well indeed. They live in the bungalow where our grandparents lived and every Christmas morning we used to walk up with their presents singing As with gladness men of old did the guiding star behold - one of my favourites. 19-Dec-2007
This is four layer weather plus all sorts of very unflattering hats, mind you mine aren't quite as bad as Chas's. The alpacas seem quite cheerful although we have several we are treating. The cria with the ear is still losing weight despite the best efforts of the vet and ourselves. He took blood yeaterday so maybe that will give us a clue as the ear itself is better. The female who was gored by the goat is making progress. Slight set back with an abscess at one end of the wound. Lots of clotted cream type puss but the rest of it is healing well. The vet opened it up at the nasty end and we have to wash it out every day with syringes of hibi scrub. She is reasonably pissed off about this but submits. A small gropup of heavy pregnant girls have been spenmding their days in the garden as the grass is plentiful and they may as well eat it as us mow it. Unfortunately they invaded my vegetable garden and have scoffed the purple sprouting, not cricket. Joshua has had his final briefing meeting in London for Ecuador and is now in France, near Bordeaux, for a few days staying with his father. I see he is busy buying useful items on my Ebay account - quick drying towel, hat etc! Tomorrow we are off to Cardiff for the second round of the BBC Young Musician of the Year in our role as Katy Hebditch groupies. My brother William, the marimba and Katy are going to Cardiff today. We are picking up my sister Elaine, Liz, Katy's mother and her brother David tomorrow at Taunton and whizzing them up there. It should be interesting as we will be listening to eight young percussionists doing their stuff followed by a BBC reception with their normal filthy wine no doubt. It is probably very pleasing to licence payers to know how mean the BBC are about the quality of the wine but for those who fancy a glass, it is dire. 12-Dec-2007
A nurse came today to do a test to see if we really had stopped smoking for a year - we have, it's hell. No, not really. Chas wants our life insurance to go up and the payments to go down The alpacas are eating far too much hay, I've put eight bales out today and even more yesterday. The sloping fields are still pretty wet and I absolutely hate driving down them as I am afraid the mule will start to slither. I want to shut my eyes and pray but that would be inadvisable in the circumstances. Come back Andrew. And my cleaning lady has disappeared, apparently the 'little maid' as they call her youngest daughter has been sick and threw up all over her father at the village pantomime. That's no excuse, I had to make Joshua hoover yesterday and the ironing pile is most alarming. 10-Dec-2007
The rain has been absolutely horrendous, rivers everywhere, floods down at Bickleigh, the only good thing is that the yards are marvellously clean. The alpacas have been eating twice as much hay as usual and we have had to bring the heavy pregnants in plus two mums with weedy cria. They have got to like being in the barn and are not that anxious to go out again. But finally this afternoon we have blue skies so the animals can start to dry out. I spent Sunday writing furiously for Alpaca World magazine. I had to get all the news items done as we are now at the final furlong and Jeff and I have to switch horses and get on with the Futurity catalogue. Both publications have to be finished and up at the printers before Christmas ready to roll straight after the New Year holiday. My son Thomas and I are nearly ready to put the redesign of the website up. Thomas was here for a couple of days last week as he had a meeting at the Eden Project for the free trade charity he works for Trading Visions. He spent some time teaching the technically incompetent, i.e. me, to understand how to change the content using Wordpress. I have to write all the steps down because these things never stay in my tiny brain. Then he was off to spend a weekend at Butlins at Minehead with five friends, including middle son Alex. Why Butlins? you may ask - it was an indie music festival - organised by Portishead. Apparently this kind of do enables the holiday camps to survive. 04-Dec-2007
We have emerged from Noah's Ark to find our fields sodden, more mole hills than you can shake a stick out, and too much alpaca poo. It is so wet that driving a tractor around to harrow would be insane and dragging the poo sucker behind the quad bike will be just as bad. It will make even more of a mess of the fields than too much poo. So I have organised a big moving about with everybody changing fields and just two resting. The four secondhand hay mangers we bought yesterday will also have to be distributed to the fields with just one manger at present. The stud males are going to have loads of room to gallop about. There are only ten of them on farm at the moment so they are moving into the third field we were resting. There are so few of them that the field will still be rested and they should have fun charging up and down the hill. Andrew, our stockman, is off on holiday for three weeks on Thursday. O gawd, my back hurts now, it is going to be a lot more painful after three weeks of heaving hay around. I have the magazine to finish, the British Futurity catalogue British Alpaca Futurity, the Christmas shopping to do etc. I have ordered the geese and the turkey, bought some ridiculous musical crackers - every cracker contains a whistle, someone shouts out the numbers on the music and miraculously a tune appears - presumably depending on the amount of drink taken. The Christmas cake and pudding or rather the lack of is beginning to prey on my mind...o dear. 03-Dec-2007
We had some serious weather yesterday with thunder, torrential rain, hailstones and so on. The roads were rivers, our storm drains were overflowing and I got soaked to the skin on my way to the house with a load of logs. I thought of all those poor drenched alpacas while we were indoors complaining of being too hot with the woodburner going flat out. And this morning we found a cria, about three months old, crashed in the field. Not dead luckily but very cold and miserable. He's had some warm milk and is sitting up looking quite cheerful in a big bed of straw while his mother is moaning loudly and stuffing herself with hay. The Devon Association of Smallholders magazine arrived today DASH. The ads are heavenly with an exotic range of hens, ducks, sheep and machinery for sale. I saw an ad for hay mangers, they are unbelievably expensive new, so off we toddled to Black Dog and acquired four four wheel, eight foot sheep hay mangers. Some new wheels are required but they sell them at Mole Valley, the mangers still have their axles, so all should be well. We managed to get all four on to the flat bed trailer sideways which made us somewhat wider than usual and able to do a little hedging on the way home. One of our cats is dead. Andrew found it just outside the office in a pool of blood with a big bash on the side of its head. I think it must have been under the car when Chas went out just now. It is rather sad as he was the friendliest of our farm cats and the one the dog Alice played with most. Embarassingly when visitors were present, she also used to attempt to bonk him. 02-Dec-2007
I neglected to mention that we also bought ten boxes of fake flowers - at least 2,000 of them - and some fake shrubs as well to decorate the barn for the party. They were all very cheap so when I got back and found out the price of these things on the net I thought maybe we should sell a few. Do we really need that many flowers? It was the Hacks Reunion yesterday in Bristol. I met Hilary at Tiverton Station where chaos ruled. There were engineering works on the line from Plymouth so the passengers were being bussed in. Unfortunately the station manager allowed the London train to leave as the coaches were arriving. Result outraged customers, huge queues for the loo and ticket office and panicky station staff. I couldn't get a ticket but H got us (a TV director and husband as well) organised, sent us smartly into first class and dealt with the ticket inspector. She did exactly the same at the hotel where the hacks were meeting up when faced with truly incompetent bar staff. It took them decades to deliver coffee so H steamed in and got the champagne organised pronto. The Daily Mirror (all of us were on the Mirror Group Training Scheme for baby journallists) had put £250 behind the bar, amazing. The organiser Paul Erlam seemed slightly worried that we wouldn't manage to use it up but maybe he had forgotten about the powers of big H and the joys of champagne. Some of us had not met for forty years, imagine, but once you realised who they were their young faces sort of emerged from the older faces. In fact just like the school reunions, some of the men were a lot harder than the women particularly if they had lost a lot of hair. It was great to see everyone and it was easy to talk but still odd, very odd after all this time. 30-Nov-2007
We bought it - a three metre illuminated palm tree, it is fantastic. The leaves are full of lights that flash on and off. The auction was wondrous, we also bought an illuminated bamboo plant and loads of fake shrubs and flowers to decorate the barn for the party in July. Chas and Andrew went off with the flatbed yesterday to bring this giant thing (180 kilos of it) home. They put it up and horror of horrors it didn't work. Good thing Chas is an electronics engineer, after quite a while in his workshop, he emerged triumphant and it lit up and started flashing. Every time I look at it I smile, it is so over the top and fantastic. 27-Nov-2007
All the weanlings with revolting runny poo seem a lot better today and none needed a good wash and brush up. The X ray up at the vets of the adult female showed no injury at all so she has to rest - easier said than done with an alpaca. We have put her in our smallest field in the hope that she will just sit around by the manger and eat hay. We were convinced that one of the girls in the heavy pregnant field was not pregnant but the scanner showed that there is someone in there, just wish it would hurry up and come out. We have decided to bunk off tomorrow and go to the MST auction at Dunkeswell near Honiton. These are amazing auctions stuffed with bankrupt stock, tons of very good office furniture and all sorts of wierd bits and pieces. Tomorrow they are selling the stock of a wholesaler who supplies Chinese restaurants and the auction includes fifteen illuminated palm trees. I feel I could do with one of those. 26-Nov-2007
The orphan is ill with the squits, just like water. She looked very miserable on Saturday. We had to give her a good clean up as she really was disgusting and then it was into the sick bay. We decided to give her Panacur and lots of rehydration fluids that went down in a bottle. By Sunday a second weanling had it and today a third. The other two are much bigger, stronger animals so we are not that worried about them. The orphan however has not grown on and is a bit thin. But today she is a lot brighter in herself and has started eating. The weanlings are being moved into a new field after all getting Panacur. They spent most of the day in the garden mowing my lawn and wrecking a few more shrubs before going to their new field which has been resting for a while. It was one of those weekends as an adult female appeared on Sunday on three legs. The vet has been today and fears it may be a shoulder dislocation so we have to take her up to the surgery first thing tomorrow for an X ray. I learnt a thing or two about suris on Saturday, just as well as I know bugger all. I was one of the handlers at an assessment course at Ian Waldron's farm where Nick Harrington Smith and Val Fullerlove were the trainers. I found the suri class very interesting as did the students as it was quite difficult. You could see some of them going into a fog every so often convinced that they hadn't got a clue how to place the animals. In fact that wasn't true, they just needed a bit of coaxing. It reminded me of 'O' level maths where you could score points even if you were a bit wrong as long as your workings were written out and you could support your arguments. 23-Nov-2007
My dark fawn female cria with a bad ear has STILL got a bad ear that is still floppy. So another vet visit this morning when he revealed that the ear was full of muck and he didn't have the right stuff with him. I was out shopping at the market - the fish man comes today - so I picked up the stuff on the way home and Chas cleaned loads of muck and puss out of the ear and in went the new ear drops so hopefully that will put it right. The vet also had a look at the girl who was gored by the goat and opened up the wound a little to drain it as there was quite a lot of fluid in there. She has to stay on antibiotics but things are looking reasonably good so far. Tomorrow Chas is going to the South West Alpaca Group annual meeting and I am going to handle alpacas at the Judge Training course at Langaton Alpacas. I love doing this as you a) learn quite a lot and b) watch everybody fighting to keep their cool as they deliver their first verbal reasoning. I find it hard to imagine why anyone would want to be a judge and stand in the ring pontificating - my idea of hell - even my ego isn't big enough to countenance that. They must have nerves of steel whilst I would be absolutely terrified. 22-Nov-2007
Phew, an early night last night driven away from the living room by the horror of the England match and post shopping exhaustion. Joshua and I spent far too much money but it was fun in a hideous sort of way mainly because we hadn't a clue what we were buying. We stood there gazing blankly at a rack of sleeping bags wondering why some were £200 and others £80 and had the misfortune to ask for help from the guy who had started work there that day, poor soul. An expert was called in so we did the rucksack and sleeping bag, decided the walking boots were a bridge too far at that point and wandered off for lunch. Some hours later having ooohed and aaahed at Exeter's new shopping area and all the serious frock shops plus a session in Topman (various extraordinary trendy outfits) and Boots, not so thrilling, (immodium, anthisan, mosquito stuff) we had to bite the bullet, go back to the shop, and get the cross over trainers (?) and the walking boots. At least I don't have to worry about his Christmas present now. Josh went off for the first of three rabies jabs today and seems OK, no side effects yet. We have sold loads of Warhammer stuff on Ebay to go into the Ecuador pot, bit of a black hole really, and the relatives, recipients of the begging letters, have been fantastically generous. 20-Nov-2007
I have heard some good reports from people who tried the alpaca meat at the AAA National Show and Sale. Of course many alpaca breeders have eaten the animals when they have visited Peru and Chile but eating animals bred in their own country has not been high on the agenda in the future or on the agenda at all. You will be pleased to know that the latest light reading for Chas when in the loo is entitled 'Keeping the lid on non-solid SMD electrolytic capacitors during a lead-free reflow soldering'. His reading habits send the boys into complete hysterics when they are home as the rest of us have no idea at all what it is all about. I bought a little wood and rattan old fashioned stool for £3 in the market for him to rest his electronics journals on as before it was balanced on a very scruffy box of jam jars. All jam jars have moved to the porch at the front door along with wine and full jam jars. We never use the front door and never hear if someone knocks at it which has resulted in several embarassing exchanges in the past. Today we are going through our breedings, replacing neck bands with ear tags on the cria that are old enough and doing the post 60 days pregnant lambivacs. There are various animals being treated. We have a cria with an ear infection so it has one ear up and one down, we hope this is going to right itself as we want to show her. The alpaca who was gored is coming, moving more freely now, no swelling at the stitches, so touch wood she is healing up nicely. 17-Nov-2007
Another visit from the vet after one of our alpaca weanlings appears to have been gored by the horn of one of the old goats. It narrowly missed the artery but she is all sewn up now, looking a bit sore, but walking around. I am going to bring her in tonight with the orphan as I'm worried she will get cold and the forecast is for rain. In fact so far today it has been sunny and rather nice. I have finally finished my piece for the magazine about Guanam Poma and his Illustrated Chronicle from Colonial Peru written in 1615. It involved reading several books and taking notes etc which always takes a while although very interesting, a bit like being back at school. Lots of gunshot this morning - pheasant shooting is now Wednesdays and Saturdays - so even more refugees have ended up in our fields and there are quite a few splatted ones on the road. Yum, yum - road kill. 15-Nov-2007
Gripped by the fact that the Australians have finally got into the meat business. I suppose it was bound to happen eventually particularly as there are nearly 100,000 alpacas down under. Will it happen here? Not for a while I wouldn't think as they are only getting 100Aud$ a head at the moment although they hope prices will rise once demand for it takes off. We had the vet round yesterday to do a health certificate, two castrations and look at various animals - a cria with an ear infection, ten drops a day in each ear for a week - one with a scabby back line - take away skin scrapings for analysis - a wound that won't heal - see what they grow out of the pus - lovely. He looked at the two swollen teats of the mother of the new born and concluded there was nothing we could do. So we are bottle feeding the cria every morning and evening although she is a lot less keen now and not very co-operative, maybe she is getting enough from her mother, the scales will tell us in a week or so. We had a heavy frost last night and it has been the most beautiful crisp, sunny day. I should have been out taking photographs but instad have been chained to the computer writing stuff for the next issue of Alpaca World. when bored I have been trawling the net as well trying to think of Christmas presents for everyone but a bit unsuccessful so far. 13-Nov-2007
The new cria is full of beans but unfortunately two of her mother's teats are horribly swollen whilst the other two quarters seem OK. Alarm bells ring at this point so we gave her some plasma IP in case she didn't get much colostrum and we are supplementing her morning and evening. The cria is a bit of a guzzler and downed 400mls of lamb milk replacer this morning. Cria are often hellish to feed but so far this one takes the bottle well. She weighed 7.4 kilos at birth so we have to try and get 10% of her body weight in milk down her little throat. The mother has had antibiotics and the vet is coming on Wednesday anyway to do a couple of castrations so he can have a look and see what else we can do. Chas is off on a four farm mating run today with four of the studs on board. I went last week and it is good fun chatting away to everyone. I think I make the whole thing a bit slower as I do enjoy a good gossip and large quantities of tea. So I have decided to stay at home as I have loads of stuff to write for Alpaca World magazine not to mention getting on with the British Alpaca Futurity catalogue. The word Christmas keeps appearing...and as usual I realise I haven't thought about presents properly so it will all end up as some hideous last minute rush. I also have the dreaded list from Joshua of stuff he has to get for the Ecuador trip, oh dear, we'll have to go to one of those outdoor shops and stare at rucksacks. 11-Nov-2007
I had this feeling that 202 was going to drop her cria yesterday. I checked before Josh and I went out at lunch time - nothing. But when we got back at around 4.30 there she was, a little brown female cria sat up in the field. 202 is a pretty ferocious mother and getting her and the cria up into the barn was not a lot of fun. She was screaming at me, trying to get in front to stop me etc etc, no spitting however. If the cria had been born earlier I would probably have put a coat on it and left it in the field but not knowing how long it had been out, or whether it had suckled as darkness fell was too big a risk. Anyway this morning they both look very well. When I came into the barn 202 was sitting down and the cria was stood up leaning against her neck - lots of aaaahs. There is nothing like a newborn to bring out the soppy in you. 10-Nov-2007
We set off for the wilds of Devon yesterday to a place called Chilla delivering alpacas. It takes ages to get there and it is a very beautiful and pretty empty area although they do have a Waitrose in Okehampton - I'm very jealous of that - and two fantastic markets at Holsworthy and Hatherleigh. The three boys joined Lucy's motley crew of horses, large and very small, call ducks, those crazy ducks that are very upright, chickens, a rabbit, guinea pigs, budgies and corn snakes, have I left anyone out? The alpacas looked a bit bemused but no doubt will settle in very quickly and hopefully help to keep the foxes away from the poultry. Chas is off to Hampshire - into the bluetongue zone - to park one of our stud males down there for the winter as the client has several girls that are empty. Hopefully the boy will be able to come back sometime in the spring. I was going to go but I think Joshua and I may go for a bracing walk at the beach. Low tide is around 2.30 this afternoon and we have to go to a beach where we can look for something. Just going for a walk is not very appealing for Josh. We have to see how his fingers are today after he dropped something very heavy on them yesterday whilst working at a warehouse in Willand. One of the fingers was still bleeding under the nail when he got home so that should look very pretty today. 08-Nov-2007
Robin Hodge, an alpaca breeder who lives in Brittany, came to see us yesterday and today. We went through our weanlings with him and were absolutely thrilled when we had a good look at the Jaquinto cria. They are really lovely, fine and dense with impressive character in the fleece, all those lovely thin staples. At last, we thought, some really cracking whites. We adjourned to the house for dinner and unfortunately drank far too much so we're all suffering for it today but it was a lot of fun and worth it. I drank at least a litre of water but my head still hurts and I had to go to the hygenist today. That's not much fun at the best of times let alone when you are already feeling sick. Robin and a French agriculture student he had with him, Jacques, have gone down to Coldharbour Mill where UK Alpaca has some yarn being spun before they get on the Plymouth Roscoff ferry. Rather them than me as it's very windy here so it's bound to be a lot worse at Plymouth. I think we'll be having an early night tonight as we really haven't got much done today, no working synapses. 05-Nov-2007
We said goodbye to five of our girls this morning as we delivered them to their new home. It was freezing, I didn't have enough layers, but the alpacas were, as usual, nonchalant. They leapt elegantly out of the trailer to avoid some muddy ruts, ambled into the field and were stuffing themselves with fresh grass in no time. The horses on the other side of the hedge seemed fairly astonished and lined up to have a good stare. We came home to a couple of hours on SAGE and lots of cheque writing as we paid each other what we owed. The trick is to come out on top which I managed this time. Usually it is the other way round and I get very irritated and shout a lot. Then I was sent off to Tiverton to do the chores as we had run out of milk, not good when you are inveterate tea drinkers, and to shovel ten tons of post into the Post Office. There were machines out on the lane and it looks as if they are filling some of the holes or will be. They've scraped some of them out so presumably tarmac will turn up eventually. However they have not gone anywhere near the bad bit down the hill where there are very sizable potholes. I keep meaning to ring the council and inquire whether they really want us to break our legs but haven't got round to it yet. We really need to send an old lady down there and get her to sprain her ankle, could that person be me?? 03-Nov-2007
Phew, we have more or less finished the autumn session of worming, vaccination and ADE jabs. The only ones left are the girls who are not yet 60 days pregnant who will get their lambivac once they have scanned up positive. It is unbelievably warm today, no coat weather, fantastic. I managed to take a load more photographs of the animals yesterday as it was so bright and sunny. I keep sending them off to Tom in the hope that they will be helpful for the redesign of the website. It is so difficult takin good photographs of alpacas, they keep moving just as you think you've got THE shot framed. I really need to spend hours and hours doing it instead of whizzing out for twenty minutes. 01-Nov-2007
Alpaca owners who want to sell their fleece should contact us. The barn gets pretty full in the winter with big dumpy bags of fleece. Then John Arbon and I and hopefully this year, a retired sheep fleece grader, will get to work. Lots of breeders skirt their fleeces so they are very easy to grade, they bag the neck separately and don't send us the seconds of thirds. We are selling coarse grade yarn to make woven rugs and an outer wear sock but we are using coarse grade blanket as the length is consistent and we can still process fully worsted which makes a much softer yarn.
30-Oct-2007
There are twenty one moaning weanlings in the field near the house now making a path along the fence line as anyone goes by. Even humans are not exempt although I have assured them I am not a wierd alpaca that walks on two legs. Most of them are five months old but weigh over 30 kilos so they are big enough to wean. We decided that the weather was so good that it would be better to do it now rather than wait a month when it might be a lot colder and nastier. They are fed every day in the yard so that we can keep an eye on them and they'll be weighed again in a couple of weeks to make sure they are doing ok.
Joshua has a nasty cold but has tottered up to the office to write his begging letters to our relatives in the hope that they might help to finance his trip to Ecuador to work for the charity Outreach International. I think the cold must be a result of two 12 hour shifts at Knightshayes and Killerton where he is a waiter, far too much contact with the general public!
There is a petition on the government's website urging the powers that be to order bluetongue vaccine. Apparently the German government has ordered 8 million doses but our lot are doing nothing. This is serious, please sign the petition before the whole of the UK's livestock industry goes down the pan. The link is http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Bluetongue/
27-Oct-2007
I stayed up late, late for me that is, not for the rest of you, and watched the Electric Proms. Noticed that most of the audience had the words of the McCartney songs off by heart, including me. Showing our age particularly if you get misty eyed over Hey Jude, a real end of party, gosh there is no wine left, anthem.
This morning I went into, you can't get the staff mode, as the yard had not been washed down properly and there was to much mess. I hate mess. My father was a very tidy farmer and blanched when entering farmyards full of crap and old machinery. However all that essential maintenance does take a lot of time. We've just started painting all the hurdles that make up the penning in the barn - we might finish by Christmas!
The female cria with pneumonia has died, she lost five kilos in a week, having grown on very well before that, a real shame. Only one other alpaca on the farm has ever had pneumonia and she is alive and due to have her first cria early in the spring. The newborn is full of beans, thank goodness, and is a very pretty little fawn boy.
26-Oct-2007
We went off on a little scanning trip today to the Blackdown Hills. All five were pregnant and we got to look at the amazing work Ernie and Gill Reeves have done in getting their fencing and laneways organised. It all works beautifully and looks very smart. We also talked about UK Alpaca UK Alpaca and the fact that we buy fleece from owners big and small. They get cash for their fleece and the opportunity to buy back yarns at wholesale prices - a whole lot cheaper than going to a mini mill. We are also making short runs of yarns for clients who want particular counts or colours and we can make fancy yarns too, thinks like boucle or slub yarns, exciting times.
There is a sickly alpaca cria in the barn that has probably got pneumonia, not sure that she will make it but she is on the relevant drugs so we will just have to wait and see. We came home to a newborn in the paddock, a pretty little boy who is wobbling about at the moment trying to walk and hopefully about to suckle.
24-Oct-2007
We set off yesterday to deliver some females. It was a beatiful day but we quickly ground to a halt on the way to the A303 and found ourselves sitting still for half an hour. Oh dear, rapid change of plan so we managed to get out of the jam and into Ilminster and wound our way through lots of charming Somerset villages to drop a very nice but very bad tempered animal off at Nick Weber's Westways Alpacas. Then to Arish Turle to scan a couple of their females and deliver my Cassandra with a stunning Jaquinto female cria at foot. They are going to Spain and are doing their isolation there along with another eighteen animals that will be leaving the UK in December. I have been worrying about her all night, I don't know why, they are in good hands.
We hear there is a group of English breeders over in Australia for the National Show buying animals - so much for supporting the home grown industry! There is also news of a minor fracas - gossip definitely does make the world go round. The alpaca industry is a small one really and gossip whizzes round the world in no time. I love it.
22-Oct-2007
This morning the sunrise was fabulous, the whole horizon a bright pink. Certainly cheered up the breakfast porridge. Breakfast is my least favourite meal but porridge does slip down pretty easily.
We spent the weekend training up two new owners of alpacas which was pretty good fun. I got thoroughly spat at by a disgruntled pregnant female all over the back of my coat so that every time I turned I could smell it, yuck. Kate Hobbs, one of our new owners, organises courses for DASH, the Devon Association of Smallholders, so Chas has resolved to go on a chicken killing course as we have two large young cock birds that really should be in the pot. The last time he attempted to finish off a road kill pheasant it was a bit disastrous.
Chas had decided he was going to watch the Grand Prix but as usual events overtook us when a couple rang up out of the blue and wanted to look at our pregnant females for sale. So we had to finish the breedings on one field, get the sale field up and by the time that was finished were exhausted and ready for a large glass of something alcoholic and a slump in front of the telly so that we could watch the end of the Grand Prix and see the boy racer getting beaten! A bit of a dull weekend for England. Chas was in bed by nine and Joshua and I were watching Dirty Dancing - apparently all his female friends think it wonderful - when there was a knock on the door and another client appeared looking for plasma for a cria that has had a tough start.
Today the vet is coming to do a load of castrations that somehow we thought had been done ages ago but haven't and five health certificates on females we have sold. These are to check heart, lungs, eyes etc and if they pass it means the animals can be insured.
Meanwhile Andrew is spending the day on the tractor fertilising fields. We had our grass analysed as our big sloping fields were growing very slowly. The agronomist came and told us what we needed so there are quite a few tons of it waiting to go on. It will take ages as our tractor is small, does not have weights on the front, so you can't put that much fertiliser in the spinner each time. Andrew will be happy as he will have some hideous music playing in his ears. He made the boys listen to some once and even they begged for mercy.
19-Oct-2007
After request from eldest son decided to play the dutiful mother and head out with hazel stick and basket to pick some sloes for his sloe gin. It is not that good a year for them. Last year the hedges were blue with sloes but yesterday I had to walk two fields to get a decent amount. It was very pleasant on such a beautiful afternoon to wander about the fields watching the alpacas. They look up when I appear but otherwise ignore me and get on with eating. The exception is the orphan who rushes up enthusiastically thinking I might have milk but nowadays rejoins the group pretty quickly so is becoming less tame - excellent.
As I was in a domestic mode I made Lancashire hotpot to a Gary Rhodes receipe. It took a while but was very good, more comfort food. The lamb came from a couple of orphan lambs we had reared that are now in the freezer. I know lots of people are squeamish about eating an animal they have reared but at least you know what it has been eating, what sort of life it had and how it was killed.
I bought a whole load of CDs recently of Pavarotti earlier in his career when his voice was at its best so we had an opera fest listening to Il Trovatore, La Fille du Regiment and Rigoletto last night. It was marvellous, cheered me up no end. I love going to the opera but it is good to listen to it at home because you can dance around to it, conduct and sing along which would go down like a cup of cold sick at Covent Garden.
18-Oct-2007
Big bags of alpaca fleece for UK Alpaca UK Alpaca are starting to fill up the barn as breeders get round to bringing it in. John and I will probably start grading in December/January. John Arbon Textiles John Arbon Textiles has two big Christmas shows to do in November so grading is not in their diary then. We have to start reasonably early in the year as it takes a while to get the fleece through all the fully worsted processes of scouring, combing and carding to top. The wholesale sales are increasing nicely with 600 kilos going to one sock manufacturer and other smaller amounts sold to designers and companies like Posh Yarns who take the pale natural colours and dye it to their specifications.
We met a lovely young Peruvian designer, now living in England, at the Knitting and Stitching Show. She makes these fabulous felted jackets with dramatic high collars and brushes the felt so that it is almost like fleece. She has been buying tops at very high prices from South America but is now going to buy the UK version as she is worried about her carbon footprint. That is what we want to hear as our fleece industry can and should be sustainable.
17-Oct-2007
I hope you get the Autumn issue of the magazine shortly. It was been stuck in the backlog at Royal Mail for well over a week now. I rang Buxton Press yesterday and they said that other magazines that the Royal Mail collected before ours still haven't got to their subscribers, o dear.
English weather is so amazing. Yesterday rain all day, loads of very low cloud so that it seemed dark and today we woke up to brilliant sunshine. My washing will dry eventually and maybe a bit of a walk at the beach is called for, low tide is early afternoon so I could go fossil collecting at Charmouth.
The digital box thing on the television has died. It happened when we went away, typical, so teenage son left with terrestial only. Chas took the box apart, gazed at it meaningfully, gave it various tests but it is a software fault and has to go into the bin. Chas can mend most things but was defeated. We watched the programme on teenagers from the grumpy old persons's point of view, it captured the spirit of how one views ones's teenagers perfectly and it made me laugh out loud. I remember going to collect Alex from Sussex University where he fullfilled all the cliches about students and found to my great joy a rotting pizza under the bed and, I am not sure about this, a little pool of sick.
16-Oct-2007
Our alpacas are sitting under the hedges with that, why do I live in Devon look, as it is chucking it down. I'll have to go searching for the waterproof trousers as it is very depressing when you slowly get wetter and wetter whilst handling the animals.There will be a run on the hay too as our alpacas always seem to eat far more dry stuff when it is very wet.
We went to this astonishing restaurant Les Trois Garcons near Brick Lane in London with the boys on Saturday night. We started off at the cocktail bar, you can't miss it, two flaming torches outside the front door, but we did, sad old country bumpkins until Alex showed up and guided us in. The decor was astonishing and the girl doing front of house was this amazing pale skinned blonde wearing a long lace pink frock, very nymph like, didn't look as if she ventured into the sun at all. We were very good and had alcohol free cocktails which were scrumptious. The loo was most unnerving, all black marble and almost no light, not that good for the claustrophobic amongst us, ie me. Tom and Matt were late, nothing new there, but thankfully did arrive in the end and then we went across the road to the restaurant. The flaming torches had not been lit there but inside the decor was fantastically over the top with a stuffed tiger, giraffe's head, various creatures with horns, one of those huge glass cases full of stuffed birds, grotesque chandeliers and strings of crytal beads handing everywhere. There were also a load of evening bags hanging in a group from the ceiling, rather a nice touch I thought.
Food and wine was pretty good and the service too. The place was clearly full of trendy and probably rather rich people and one really wanted to gawp a lot but tried not to be too obvious. Loos not so bad here as they were scarlet and you could see where you were going. Alex had the digital radio in his ears and kept updating us, the French are winning, o god they are still winning until golden boots did his stuff, hurrah!
15-Oct-2007
We have returned from the Knitting and Stitching Show with very sore feet and extremely tired after four days on the stand selling. It was good though, we sold about the same as last year. The purchases were smaller but there were more of them. It was interesting that lots of people talked about sustainability which is good for us as the fleeces are from alpacas bred in Britain and it is all processed here. Lots of customers are very anti plastic bags and tend to comment on the fact that we use brown paper carrier bags which they consider 'greener'. I have no idea whether that really is the case.
We had a rough time at the Travelodge in Covent Garden on the first night as they put us in a tiny room with a pathetic shower and the fire alarm went off in error in the middle of the night. All not acceptable but managed to get ourselves moved to a much bigger room and they promised NOT to purposely wake us all up in the middle of the night again when there was no fire.
We got into a little routine of setting off after breakfast for Alexandra Palace, stopping at the M&S food shop in Muswell Hill to buy lunch and get a proper coffee next door before facing the hordes. All the female exhibitors shoot to the loo before the show opens as once the coaches tip up there are immensely long queues. The facilities and the catering at Ally Pally are awful, you really wouldn't want to eat the food unless you have to and most of the shoppers bring a packed lunch. The big reception hall is packed with people having a picnic on the floor at lunch time.
Lots of the exhibitors were giving the organisers a hard time because of the attitudes of the security force who really messed us about. The organisers were claiming it was nothing to do with them and refusing to take any responsibility for making the exhibitors very pissed off. They should move to another venue in London that was actually built for such an event with adequate parking and facilities - that would do it.
09-Oct-2007
Slightly frantic here as we attempt to get ready for the Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace. John Arbon goes up first tonight and sets up the stand on Wednesday. We keep well away until Wednesday afternoon as JA has strong views on stands and there is no point in falling over each other and having to undo something because he doesn't like it. My printer has been going non stop printing out UK Alpaca wholesale and retail order forms and stuff for the alpaca sock yarn.
The stand is built from scratch using metal grids so it takes a while and means that we go up there with John's van stuffed full and our big car as well - more alpaca yarns than you can shake a stick at. It is complicated by the fact that John and Juliet have sold the lease of their shop in Lynton and are moving all the stock and fittings into their already full house. They are taking over the shop at Coldharbour Mill and all will be going there eventually once that shop has been refurbished - as you can imagine they are both VERY tired.
Our Andrew and Nella have been forced to join in and they have been making up the new sock yarn shade cards - only 200 so not too bad - and putting bellybands on the hanks of sock yarn in their spare time in the evenings - ho ho. We are hoping this will be successful as sock knitting seems to be all the rage at the moment and we are using the coarse alpaca fibre in this yarn. We need to find a profitable use for the coarse and we need to move a lot of it. We have around two and a half tons of coarse fibre in storage that we have paid for - dead money.
On the alpaca birthing front I was hoping the two girls who are overdue would pop before we go but it looks unlikely now. Maybe they will wait until I get back on Monday. There are seven others who have moved up to the field behind the house who are due between November and February - the stragglers! They will get plenty of feed and attention to make sure they and their unborn babies are in the best condition possible. We have never had any particular problems with winter births as we have a big barn that we can bang them up in if we have very wet weather and a freezer full of plasma.
08-Oct-2007
Three of our young boys are off to new homes after yesterday's visit from Lucy, her son and her mother. We were very impressed by Lucy's website that sells all things to do with horses, saddlery and the like. They have moved from Kent to Devon and like most of us who land here, love it.
The weather is unbelievable, glorious sunshine and really warm. I did loads of weeding last night as my vegetable patch had a lot of docks, nettles and brambles encroaching. I extracted another giant courgette, now marrow sized, and stuffed it for dinner and seeved it up with our own climbing French beans - these have been a real hit and more and more are coming. My salad onions have grown a bit too and I'm using them instead of the big, bought sort.
Joshua was called up to be a waiter at a serious Army wedding at Stoodleigh on Saturday. He came back exhausted after being flat out from four until ten and gobsmacked by the gallons of free booze everywhere and the amount of money the do must have cost. He has never done anything like this before where the staff are divided into teams and have just one fifteen minute break and now has a bandaged wrist!
It is the flu jab time of year again. I always feel I shouldn't be there but diabetics are called in so that we don't keel over although why we are 'at risk' I am not entirely sure. The surgery was stuffed with very, very old people, clearly they've got good genes to be still alive. The downstairs waiting rooms were packed. I was sent upstairs, hardly anyone there, I concluded that we were the only ones who could still reliably walk up 30 steps.
06-Oct-2007
Quite a few more of the visiting animals that were here for breeding have gone home now under the new license arrangements and we are down to 27 in the visitors' field now. We said goodbye to the lovely Jaquinto for the time being as he is off to West Sussex to catch up on stud work there. Hopefully they will get out of the high risk FMD area soon and be able to move stock out like us. The export ban is having a terrible effect on sheep prices down here. Our neighbour Lynnette's lambs fetched only £33 each at market, the lowest price her father can ever remember.
We hear that the sale of Alpacas of Wessex is approaching exchange of contracts so it will be goodbye to Michael Brooke and John Gaye who have been in the business since the beginning. There have not been that many retirement sales of alpaca businesses in the UK but some of the original breeders are getting to the age when tramping around in mud and rain and staying up half the night to look after a sick animal seems considerably less attractive! It is apparently an issue in Australia where the average age of the breeders is considered to be a bit on the high side and they feel they should be trying harder to attract younger people into the industry. Still we ancients have some life in us.
03-Oct-2007
We pushed the boat out last night when we took Chas's sister Ros and her partner Paul to the Charlton House Hotel for dinner. The bill was very frightening but worth it as the food was very serious indeed, surroundings country house but relaxed and fun and the company excellent. Most of the ingredients come from their own organic farm. I has scallops, venison and a plate of all sorts of little puds made from rhubarb. It satisfied all my requirements as the food was interesting and something I could not cook at home unless I has three years and a large team of minions.
The weather in Somerset was disgusting, fog and a driving drizzle but as we flew down the motorway this morning towards Devon the sun came out and the birds are singing here at Vulscombe.
02-Oct-2007
We have learnt how to create a cloudburst. It is very simple. We just shovel a load of stone into the mule and start filling the holes in the lane. We are guaranteed at least an inch of rain within 12 hours, honestly it has happened twice.
Another of the first time mothers produced a cria at the crack of dawn this morning. It is a black male by Discovery and is bouncing around the field, very strong and healthy. Three left to go in the birthing field...
We are getting ready for the dreaded Knit and Stitch Show at Alexandra Palace in London next week. This is four days of hard labour selling yarn from a stand that is always too small as space there is horribly expensive. We are always falling over each other, your feet hurt because you are standing all day but we cheer up immensely as the credit card machine starts whirring. Thousands of knitters turn up from all over the country and stagger out of the halls with far too many plastic bags for projects that they won't get to for ages. The temptation to buy is far too great for these yarn lovers!
It is an excellent opportunity to go out with Tom and Alex and treat them to an excellent dinner or two and catch up. I haven't done anything about finding somewhere to stay yet, that is moving up the list fast. Last year we were loaned a gorgeous little flat at the back of the Opera House in Covent Garden but sadly it is occupied this time.
28-Sep-2007
The news is out now that the EP Cambridge suri herd has been sold - a press relese arrived yesterday but sadly too late for Alpaca World magazine as it is extremely full and Jeff is already doing all the technical stuff before it goes up to Buxton Press for printing. It will be very interesting to see what happens as suris are not as popular as huacaya alpacas...no doubt all will become clear but not for a number of years.
Panic yesterday afternoon when a three month old cria started fitting, breathing very fast through its mouth etc. We watched in horror thinking it was going to keel over instantly. She went into the sick bay with her mother and we retreated to see if she would calm down. An hour later she was calm but her membranes were that horrible septacaemia colour so it was plasma IP, metacam, an antibiotic and it appears to have worked for the time being. Still alive this morning and out in the field. A female suri cria was born too and I wasn't happy with her attempts to suckle as her mother's teats are tiny. So we followed our rule. If there is any doubt give them plasma. The cria is still a bit weak although a good size and took 120 mls of lamb milk replacer from a bottle this morning. She probably needs a couple of days of supplementary feeding until she is strong enough to suck vigorously.
26-Sep-2007
As we are in the Low Risk FMD zone we can now move animals under licence and with strict biosecurity. We were waiting for the licence to appear on the DEFRA website and it has finally made it and doesn't look too daunting. Chas had to spend a little time attempting to download it as a word document so he could type in the details. This is so that no one will be subjected to his terrible handwriting, he does have a heart after all.
I have just about written or subbed everything for the autumn edition of Alpaca World magazine, just the editor's opening blurb to go, plague and pestilence no doubt.
25-Sep-2007
All our stud males are having a couple of days of rest and recuperation before we ask them to dive into the fray again - not that they have ever been known to have a headache. A second Tulaco Centurion cria was born today, a boy. The mother Classical Larissa was looking distinctly fed up, I went off to get Chas and when I returned, without him, the head and legs were out and going a fetching shade of blue. I got thoroughly spat at but persevered pulled the cria out, gave it a thump and it started breathing. After a couple of hours in the barn recovering from this rude awakening, it is out in the field looking lively. We keep getting these violent showers so all three cria will come in tonight. It is what I call Derbyshire weather. You go for a walk in the sunshine when suddenly you are blasted by freezing rain or hail and end up soaked and five minutes later - sunshine again.
I have just finished reading Mike Safley's Alpaca Chronicles as I have to review it for Alpaca World magazine. You come away from it astonished by the optimism and drive of alpaca breeders in the USA. A very welcome boost as I was feeling rather depressed by Bluetongue and Foot and Mouth disease. Still we are in a low risk area according to DEFRA so we will be able to move our remaining visiting animals off farm and back home and deliver ones we have sold so that is very good news.
The British Alpaca Futurity organisers have been working hard reorganising stuff as we have had to postpone until February 16 & 17 2008. Everything seems to be going to plan...so far.
24-Sep-2007
It was a thrilling moment yesterday morning when I peered out of the bathroom window at some ungodly hour and saw our first Centurion cria sat up by its mother. Shot out and sprayed its navel and put a coat on it just in case it got chilled. Our last two births have both been first time mothers who popped their crias first thing without any trouble.
Tulaco Centurion is our fawn male, our bright fawn hope, having done a lot of winning in the show ring over the last two years. This little one is a female, terrific,, straight legged and strong, medium fawn with loads of fleece in big curls, so looking good. Two more of his are due shortly so we hope all three will thrive and be little crackers when we hit show time next year. Who knows, might as well be optimistic. Centurion didn't start working until late last year but this year his hit rate has been excellent so we will have loads of his cria next year. It will enable us to see what he does over the good, the ordinary and the downright ugly.
Last night we had torrential rain, it actually woke me up which is akin to waking the dead. The yard is positively sparkling and hopefully the mushrooms will arrive with this rain as the trigger. We kept the newborn in overnight so she and her mother were the only dry alpacas on the farm. The others have big hedges to get under and all seem happy this morning. No doubt it will make my corgettes turn into marrows even faster.
My brother William, sister in law Liz and their daughter Katy turned up yesterday afternoon after being to a show of rocks, gemstones etc nearby. It was great to see them and we showed them the new house down the lane that is for sale. They made some helpful suggestions that we are pondering. At about the same time a Swedish lady and her husband arrived who had been delivering their daughter to Exeter University and were interested in alpacas so the afternoon vanished. We had spent the whole of Saturday and much of yesterday catching up with all the breedings - the stud males were working hard - and we did loads of scanning. That wasn't easy as we are both tottering around like old crocks with bad backs sustained by large quantities of ibuprofen.
21-Sep-2007
Jeff Brooking, the designer, and I have been looking through all the photographs for our competition this quarter. There are some great pictures. We found the competition winners and a cover picture today. We have a week left to put the whole thing together and I have quite a lot of news left to write - mainly bad - Foot & Mouth Disease and Bluetongue plus a review of Mike Safley's new book that I haven't quite finished yet.
I am waiting for the sun to come out to get out there and take pictures of some of the alpacas as we have more to put on the Sales list. We have sold three females, two with female cria at foot, and a young male recently. The vet is coming today to do the veterinary health certificates that all animals of ours are sold with. It is crucial as the vet can make sure there are no heart murmurs or cataracts, things that we could not identify. It also means that the animals can be insured with Armitage Insurance - a must, I think for the new owner. One of my first three animals died and I had only bought her a few months ago so I was very pleased that I had insured her and could get a replacement. She had a six week old female cria at foot that we bottle fed successfully and I still have some lovely photographs of Joshua feeding her. He was outraged when she was sold as an adult.
I have had a series of very annoying conversations with the robots at Orange HQ about their decision to stop dialup. We can only get broadband on one of our three lines but neither they or British Telecom give a toss. I fail to understand why these companies employ such Kafkaesque methods of communicating with their customers. I must change my mobile from Orange to another provider so they will have one less customer to drive up the wall.
19-Sep-2007
The Futurity sponsors gathered at our place yesterday for a meeting to decide what to do given the Foot & Mouth disease movement restrictions. We have had to postpone the event until February 16 & 17 as DEFRA said it was very unlikely that any licences would be granted for 'gatherings' in November. It is actually quite good news for all the cria that were born this summer as they will be old enough to show so our junior classes should be much bigger. It also means that some herdsires who did not have progeny on the ground will have for the February date, so let's hope the owners get them nominated. It was a very enjoyable meeting as we whizzed through a lot of business and had time for an interesting chewing the fat session as well. We have all been in this busines for a long time - Joy Whitehead especially and there was a lot of history sitting round that table but all the bitter disputes from the past have been more or less resolved and the arguments are healthy, good natured ones.
Newbury Racecourse have been very good to us and are transferring our very sizeable deposit to the February date - a bit of a phew moment that. A lot of my publicity materials will have to be reprinted and Chas has loads of work to do.
It is my eldest son Thomas's 30th birthday today. He is somewhere in the Atlas Mountains, happy birthday Tom. It is a little shocking to have a son of 30 as it reminds me of how ancient I am. He still has the big Pooh bear given to him when he was a day old by my friend Lesley Hall, who sadly died several years ago of lung cancer.
16-Sep-2007
It's been a busy few days preparing for our Open Day yesterday, falling over with shock at more Foot & Mouth and the death of the premature cria...not a marvellous few days. The cria had gone all floppy on Thursday morning and drifted in and out of a deep sleep all day and eventually died peacefully in the night. It was a real shame but we gave him the best chance we could.
The F&M is nasty, just as everyone thought life was back to normal. Luckily we got quite a few pregnant girls home in the 'clear' period so that halved our visitor's field. But it does mean that the two black males we co-own never turned up as they are banged up elsewhere and Jaquinto, who should be going back to Sussex on Tuesday, is stuck here.
What's the silver lining? We might get to even more jobs that have been delayed due to overwork, sloe gin, sloe and haw jelly may well be made and, perish the thought, I might get through a few of the books sitting there waiting to be read.
11-Sep-2007
Amazingly the little premature titch is still alive and doing well on Day 4. He hasn't mastered suckling from his mother yet but is having a very good try and will probably succeed today. He is out in the field tottering around and every so often attempting a gamble. This often ends up with him spreadeagled on the ground like Bambi on ice. He is taking about 500mls of lamb milk replacer every day so I am very hopeful now that he will make it.
We ran out of plasma yesterday so we had a nice vampire session with the older geldings taking 450 mls of blood from each and spinning it down in our centrifuge to get the plasma - nineteen tubes of which are now in the freezer so we have what is required should an iffy cria be born.
08-Sep-2007
The Silent Auction of stud services is now live on the website so get bidding! This is the principal fund raiser for the Futurity which exists to plug the British alpaca industry and the animals bred here. Lots of alpaca breeders don't seem to be aware that there are a lot of Australians, New Zealanders and Chileans intent on bringing animals here to sell that could potentially seriously damage the market for home bred alpacas. We need to raise awareness of our animals as they are very high quality nowadays and there are lots of advantages in buying animals born here. They have full pedigrees, are used to our pasture and weather conditions and have not been put through the stress of quarantine and export. Buy British, support the Futurity and keep your bank balance healthy!
Our premature cria made it through the night and took some milk this morning. Its temperature is in the normal range now but it can't stand up or hold its head up for long. Its ears, very very floppy, are bright red as is its nose but it is quite alert and calls to its mother who does vaguely acknowledge its existence. The cria is packed into a big plastic box with hot water bottles at the bottom wrapped in towels, then a wodge of hay and more hay all around it plus a coat. We are giving it a little milk every hour or so...will it make it? Probably not, but we are giving it the best chance we can.
07-Sep-2007
I am fed up with alpacas standing on my toes. The shoes I bought to wear around the farm all summer have totally collapsed and when I walk down the track I can feel every stone. This is not good as diabetics are supposed to take particular care of their tootsies. Joshua and I set off yesterday on a protective shoe buying operation. He got Trucker boots as he is working on a building site and tried them out while accidentally dropping a breeze block. I saw some pink and white trainers that have steel toe caps but sadly not in my size - the only attractive footwear in the place. I compromised and bought some shoes which don't look too bad but with steely toes, watch out, I could do serious damage with a kick. I got Chas to stand on my toes - fantastic, couldn't feel a thing.
A premature cria was born this afternoon from one of our best young girls - typical. It is nine months and three weeks and is still alive, temperature slowly creeping up, now at 36 after an hour and a half surrounded by hot water bottles. It has had a bit of glucose out of a bottle as he has a strong suck now. If he keeps going we'll give him plasma in an hour or so and then move onto a bit of milk tonight. His mother is not convinced and is staying on the other side of the pen for now. It will be a first for us if we manage to keep a cria born this early alive.
We have had the first two viewings of Lower Vulscombe courtesy of Knight Frank. Fancy a house with nine acres?
05-Sep-2007
We had lunch today with Penny and Roger. I was at Sidcot School with Penny about a thousand years ago and really in lots of ways we haven't changed a bit. We sat out in the garden of the Cadeleigh Arms in glorious sunshine generally amazed by the sudden appearance of summer. The food was pretty disappointing and expensive, starters fine, main courses pretty dull apart from the steak that came from our neighbours at Groubear Farm. Talking about school the awfulness of Latin classes came hurtling back particularly as we were all given Latin names and mine was Pomponia as my father was a fruit farmer. God, how embarassing, although I can still recite hic haec hoc at great speed and decline pes at even greater speed.
Joshua had his first day on a building site followed at five oclock by a nasty yellow fever jab. It cost £50 and apparently rabies is £150 and Hepatitis B another £150. His good works in Ecuador are going to cost a fortune. He's also had his first day being a waiter at Knightshayes, our local National Trust house, which I think he found rather more enjoyable than the building site.
31-Aug-2007
Quite a lot of people saw us on the Countryfile programme on Friday. Luckily I missed it so I am not squirming at the horror of it all. I knew I should have had a face lift. However Alice, our Havanese terrier, was by all accounts a little star as she was sat up behind the presenter doing his piece to camera looking alert, intelligent (I don't think so) and as if she was about to wave. Stil it helps to raise awareness of the wonderful alpaca.
Raising awareness is the point of the British Alpaca Futurity too at Newbury Racecourse on November 3&4. It is a big do with show classes, fashion show, trade stands, dinner, auction and so on and the point is to create publicity for the alpaca enterprise. Some owners are remarkably dim about this and still haven't clocked that to make this industry work for all of us, people need to know we exist and what wonderful animals alpacas are. All British breeders should take part as it is the only show in the autumn but sadly many of them sit on their hands and almost certainly moan about nothing happening etc etc. Time to get off their bottoms and DO something perhaps??
27-Aug-2007
Talk of a reunion of the journalists who were on the IPC Training Scheme in Plymouth took me hurtling back to Day 1. Amazingly, at least that's what my school thought, I got three good A levels and was offered a place on the scheme. The alternative was university but I was up to here with essays and wanted to earn money, have a car, escape the countryside and be free. My parents dropped me off at a B&B in Plymouth (no car yet) and I remember sitting in this tiny room sobbing thinking O s... etc etc. It all turned out OK though and I ended up sharing a house on Mutley Plain with three others including my great friend Hilary Bonner. We have known each other for ever and started in Fleet St, for me The Daily Mirror, for her The Sun, on the same day when we were 23.
I had been to boarding school and was brought up on a fruit farm in Somerset so Plymouth seemed pretty racy to me. Union Street was still awash with pubs and strip clubs and casinos. I went to all three one evening with the old Somerset jaw dropping to the floor as the stripping started.
Learning to write for newspapers was not that easy and I seemed to spend far too many months being hauled in front of the news editor and made to rewrite and rewrite...ad infinitum. It does work though and I used to do the same with my researchers and their film scripts in television. It was much, much worse on the Daily Mirror where there was a fearsome Night news editor who used to holler Miss H down the newsroom. After about eighteen months of late evening shifts and more rewrites I finally emerged into the sunny uplands and HE WAS NICE TO ME. Victory!
We used to go to the pub The Stab, short for stab in the back of course, for our evening breaks and everyone used to freeze when the phone rang and you had to abandon the drink, forfeit dinner and head out to a story. The reporter's Christmas lunch was an absolute hoot crowned by the marvellous sight of Ed Vale, crime reporter and not a small man, marching up and down the table, chair in arms singing Danny Boy and somehow making bagpipe noises at the same time. Umm, how did he do it?
26-Aug-2007
The restrictions have been lifted and we are free to move animals which is very good news. Mobile matings can resume and we can ship animals who are now pregnant off to their owners. It is a great relief that FMD did not spread anywhere else. All we've got now is bluetongue to look forward to.
Joshua has returned from France to a boiling hot Devon and Kyle is off at a music festival on Dartmoor somewhere. He will be TOO hot as opposed to the last one where he, the tent and all his clothes came back covered in mud. Various cryptic text messages were sent, possibly too much booze?, but the general message seemed to be that despite the mud it was very cool.
I picked raspberries yesterday and strawberries this morning before the start of a big jam making exercise. They are going through the raspberry jam I made last weekend too fast so more is clearly necessary and Josh has requested strawberry as well. I love making jam, it is so satisfying to see all those pots in the cupboard.
A reurnion is being set up for those of us who were baby journallists on the IPC Training Scheme in Plymouth - this reunion thing is clearly a function of old age...we are approaching 60 - oh dear.
20-Aug-2007
I am having a lovely time reading about Guaman Poma and his Illustrated Chronicle from colonial Peru. This is an extraordinary book of text and drawings he finished in 1615 in which he details the anguish of the Peruvian native people under Spanish rule and asks the King to intervene. I have ordered several books on it, one has arrived, two more to go as I intend to write about him for Alpaca World magazine. It has cheered me up no end as it won't stop raining and I am rather depressed by my lack of blood glucose control. Chas says I should throw away the medical books and not think about end stage kidney failure, blindness etc etc as I just worry and probably make it all worse! He has a point.
Josh is off to the South of France today for a short holiday with his father who has moved there permanently. It is 25 degrees, not bad. We turned the heating on in the office today as it was so cold.
18-Aug-2007
Well we still can't do any business because of the FMD restrictions. All our mobile matings have come to a grinding halt and two large groups of animals that should have left are still here. There is hope that we may be able to get movement licences after September 8 which would be terrific as we are anxious to conserve our grass for the winter. Luckily the vast majority of our animals were shorn in July as no outside shearers are allowed to move around. There is the odd female left that has just given birth but we shear those ourselves. So we are very poor but catching up on lots of stuff, clearing out accumulated rubbish, putting up shelves, mending fences.
A new cria was born very early this morning. We have brought him into the barn as we have driving drizzle and his temperature was slightly below normal. There is so much cloud, it is dark.
Alice, the fluffball, is no longer a fluffball but lean and mean as Chas took the clippers to her last night. She has had a bit of a flea problem and there were still some around after two doses of Frontline and spraying of everywhere she sleeps. She looks pretty good apart from the lopsided ears, hmmm, corrective clipping required.
16-Aug-2007
Hurrah! Joshua has got two As and a B and is into his favoured university. He had to get two Bs and an A to read Biology at UCL so all is wonderful. As is always the case he was just two marks off an A in Maths, ah well. I am very pleased for him. He now has a gap year and somehow has to raise £3,500 to go to Equador to do good works in January. I suspect it is a stint at Tesco for him plus some other fund raising this autumn.
13-Aug-2007
I was very sad to hear that Tony Wilson had died. There was quite a nice obituary for him in The Independent with a piece from Richard Madeley as well. Richard, Judy and Tony all presented Granada Reports. I was one of the producers. Tony was our best serious interviewer and a very good film maker as well although he always caused us some grief. He particularly liked sitting in the studio with a can of Coke on the desk while the titles rolled waiting for one of us to scream at him to hide it. We always fell for it. Mike Short was the other producer and he is dead too. We all wanted to change the world then, I remember Mike and I doing a Poverty Week on Granada Reports, its a shame we failed hopelessly.
Meanwhile back in the land of a life lived pointlessly, I have made loads of raspberry jam. I spent a good two hours at the pick your own farm in Halberton searching for the little blighters. Raspberries are very good at hiding under leaves but I picked more than 12 pounds and then went on to the strawberries, very fast in comparison. The jam is a success, it set well, looks pretty and tastes good.
08-Aug-2007
Well, the little male alpaca who we found crashed in the field is still alive and appears to be going to make it. All the stuff we shovelled down him has worked and he is walking around and suckling again. Today a client animal gave birth a month early. The baby, a female, had no temperature so it was straight into the sick bay surrounded by hot water bottles wrapped in towels. Within an hour her temperature was up to normal and she was attempting to stand and suckle. She's a bit like Bambi, stands up, sucks a bit, then falls down legs everywhere. The mother is extremely calm and stands patiently for the cria so I am sure all will be well.
I have finished the first mailing for the British Alpaca Futurity 2007. I've got stuffing envelope disorder...will I recover?
I am still trying to educate the boys - Joshua (18) and Kyle (21) about the large white machine that stands in the kitchen, a dishwasher we call it. Every evening when I go down to the house thinking about cooking dinner and a nice glass of white wine, I am greeted by a work surface strewn with the detritus of their meals. I am clearly an incompetent mother and stepmother as they are not trained or alternatively they don't give a toss about their poor benighted parents and think they live in a hotel where the bill never arrives.
05-Aug-2007
We had a bit of a torrid afternoon yesterday with a ten day old cria collapsed in the field. It had a temperature, nasty coloured membranes and was fairly floppy. Realised we would need to IV some drugs so called out the vet who inserted a catheter. It had plasma, antibiotic, metacam and saline - full armoury. Astonishingly still alive today. Of course it only got through a bit of the saline overnight as even though it was wedged between straw bales it still managed to wriggle out and rip the line. We put it out in the field for a while today but its mother totally ignored it so brought it back into the sick bay and gave it rehydration stuff down a stomach tube. It has just been reunited with mum and immediately started suckling. Good sign but who knows...
It is so hot, absolutely boiling which always makes me feel exhausted. I'm not much good at very hot, mild with a breeze is better. Perhaps if we had a swimming pool and a butler bringing cold drinks, my tolerance would improve. Some hope!
04-Aug-2007
Hell's bells etc etc, such awful news last night about foot and mouth. Anyone with livestock who got through the last lot will be filled with dread, terrified that stock will be lost and years of breeding destroyed. Hopefully this time the speed of the movement standstill will stop the spread and it will be contained. The farm is a beef fattening unit and the question everyone will want answering is whether the snimals were brought into the unit from elsewhere or not. And how did the virus get to Surrey? There weren't any cases there in the last outbreak.
01-Aug-2007
The alpacas are stretched out in the sun enjoying the heat. They often look as if they are dead but thankfully are very much alive. As a new owner I remember rushing up to them in the field to check if they were still alive and then the alpacas leaping up horrified out of their doze.
We have started mating up some of our maidens who are around 14 months old. They look absolutely gorgeous with about half an inch of fleece on them, so elegant. Most of them sit pretty readily for the male at this age if they are well grown. If they refuse they are sent off to think about life for a bit longer and we try again in a couple of weeks.
The tractors have been going non stop around here since the jetstream kindly moved a couple of days ago in a desperate race to get hay made and anything else that needs harvesting before the monsoon comes back. Maybe it won't and we are going to have a glorious August.
27-Jul-2007
We are quite pleased that we have got through the party successfully and our embryo transfer programnme and started to catch up on our breedings although we have loads more to do now of our own - the donors from ET and the recipients we didn't use. Not likely to start on those for at least a week. July 12th is the date for the party next year and we have booked the same band as they were very, very good - the best we have ever had. Our theme may be Italian and operatic. Colin and Linda Bell are coming to stay tonight so we will probably get some excellent ideas from them. Bizarrely they are off to a Kung Fu camp in Cornwall for a week, very odd.
I am feeling awful due to some kind of virus, lots of awful coughing, irritability and general out of sorts stuff. I haven't been ill, apart from the diabetes thing for a couple of years, so not happy. However Lynette's barn has burnt down taking with it a tractor, topper and haybob and her dog is dead so I think my complaints are pretty minor in comparison.
We have a sick weanling alpaca in the barn, not ours, that we fear has something horrible wrong with her. It is digestive and she cheers up a lot when the anti-inflammatory kicks in and starts eating and chewing rthe cud but when it wears off is pretty miserable. It is a watch and wait situation. The vet is on his way because we have an alpaca in labour but going nowhere. The cria is not even in the birth canal even though she is dilated and has a huge udder. It is late afternoon so she should have got it out by now so we are not sure what is going on.
The vet has pulleed a live female cria out. It was upside down which is why it felt so strange when Chas investigated. We had to put a clamp on its navel as it was bleeding but that has stopped and the two of them are tucked up in the barn as we are shrouded in drizzle.
24-Jul-2007
The party went very well and most of our guests struggled with the trains, or rather the lack of, the floods etc. and made it. Alex said it separated the wheat from the chaff and that everyone who came were most certainly wheat. The barn looked fantastic with loads of saris hung up in the ceiling and Matt's fantastic elephant made of withies that is now in the garden. It was a very impressive structure and looked terrific, gold stars for Matt and his minions. We were very pleased with the band too, the best we have had so far, we have to book them again for next year. There was obne dance where the caller had us all in a long line holding hands following him round and round the barn in ever tighter circles, very Pied Piper and very good fun. Some of the boys stayed up all night and all the next day - how do they do it?? We collapsed at around two oclock as we had to get up the next morning, see to the animals and clear up and get a working barn again as yesterday Monday we had Jane Vaughan, the Australian vet, coming to do some embryo transfer. We got 14 embryos which was great across three of our stud males. It was a dreadful rainy day so it was just as well we were stuck in the barn. It is gloriously sunny today and the first of many washing machine loads is on the line. And I have a boot full of bottles to recycle.
We are rather relieved that the Mid Devon Show has been cancelled so we get next weekend off. The showground is very, very wet although not flooded, and would have been a quagmire. The North Devon Show and the CLA Game Fair have apparently also been cancelled. We missed all the big rain here, we have just had ordinary bog standard rain for six weeks.
20-Jul-2007
I have been shopping for a day and a half now for the party. My hair is done, I've bought a frock and the requisite frightfully slimming underwear and an absurd head dress. There are two hams, three turkeys and two salmon awaiting my ministrations plus five litres of gin and rather a large number of cases of fizz. The boys are all in the barn making an elephant of withies, the saris are draped from the roof, Chas has got the lights, smoke machine, mist machine, laser and sound stuff working, three guests have arrived so they have been put to work. Hopefully all will be ready for kick off tomorrow evening. I have been over to my brother's farm and returned with three trays of his fantastic cherries, two trays of opal plums, a case of apple juice - Cox and Bramley mixed - and I went up the road to the Somerset Cider Company to get some cider - phew!
I am going to retire to the house to make supper as more people are arriving later this evening, and maybe cook a turkey or two. I think a glass of white wine might go down well.
14-Jul-2007
It was been a very bad month for our Ford Focus with the injector pump exploding (£2,000) and a few weeks later the flywheel and clutch (£800). This car has only done 47,000 miles and has a full service record. Chas has written to Ford about the injector pump as we cannot understand how this can happen in a car that age and feel they should have replaced it free of charge. HE HAS HAD NO REPLY from Ford. What sort of company is this that can't even be bothered to write to its customers?
We have gone right off Ford and are contemplating sueing them. More to the point we should sell the car pronto and buy something reliable.
Tomorrow we have a Discover Alpacas day and it is a full house. We are going to a big party in Dorset tonight so will have to be very restrained. Ummm, I love water. And tomorrow is mating the embryo transfer donors day, o dear. Even worse the fox has been back and taken two hens and two little chicks - unprintable comments from me!
12-Jul-2007
Astonishment all round - the sun shone on Day 1 of shearing. The shearer Mike Banks, his two helpers, Lynnette and Andrew with Chas and me as fetchers of the alpacas, managed to shear 104 animals on Wednesday, pretty good going. Lynnette was amazing, very efficient and quick. We only had 45 left to do today, as Chas had sheared 25 or so a couple of weeks ago, so the shearers were on their way by lunchtime. They stayed Tuesday and Wednesday night and we all went up to the pub last night where they regaled us with stories of nasty Antipodean snakes and spiders that kill you given half a chance. All we've got is the humble adder.
One of the black stud males Patrick has gone bananas and keeps trying to bonk everything in sight including this new black stud that has just arrived on farm. We had to remove Patrick and put him in another field with Toffee Crunch who stands no nonsense. TC obviously was missing the rest of the studs and escaped. The builder from our development down the road came hurtling up to tell us but TC was easy to catch as he was standing forlornly on the wrong side of the gate to the studs field. We tried another tack and put Patrick in with the old geldings but he just decided to rape them instead. Chas went down to catch him and got hold of him and promptly disappeared from view as he fell into the ditch with Patrick. It was very hard not to cry with laughter. Anyway Chas hung on to his ear, managed to get a halter on him and then the two of them emerged from the ditch. So Patrick is in purdah in a field of his own with the studs on one side of the fence and the geldings on the other until he calms down.
07-Jul-2007
Well, we have sunshine, it is a glorious day and no sign of rain after a solid month of it. Andrew is off mowing like crazy and we are about to do some breedings. I am hoping it will be barbecue weather this evening and that we can sit around staring at the view reading the Saturday papers - you never know.
We had a television crew here yesterday shooting a segment for a country type programme that goes out on BBC Daytime in August. They were really good fun and arrived a mere two hours late. It turned out that the presenter Adam Henson's sister is Libby Henson who runs the alpaca pedigree registry, small world as usual. They are doing the animal/fleece/yarn story that we can do quite well as one of our businesses is UK Alpaca that manufactures alpaca yarns. They had been filming with our co-directors John Arbon and Juliet Sensicle at Coldharbour Mill at Uffculme and then came on to us. They wanted Chas to shear an animal. Typically this older girl, fully halter trained, been in the show ring so you would expect her to be OK, took an instant dislike to the notion of being filmed and screamed and spat all through the shearing.
Alpaca World magazine's summer issue is finished now and up at the printers, thank goodness, but I need to instantly start commissioning for the next one this being the holiday season.
It was Joshua's last day at school yesterday that they celebrated with a Summer Ball. He looked very splendid in his dinner jacket and also got the biology prize at speech day. I am thrilled that school is finally over, I've been doing the school run for over twenty years and having to talk to headmasters. Hurrah, no more disapproving teachers castigating me for the sins of my children.
03-Jul-2007
Yesterday was not a good day as we found our lovely little brown weanling sitting apart from the others in the field. His fleece on his leg and part of his side looked wet. When I opened it up it was alive with maggots. Panic ensued. We carried him up to the barn and sheared him at once. He was literally covered in thousands of tiny maggots, horrible. He has a wound on his leg, not sure whether that was there already or caused by the maggots. While the others were sluicing hibiscrub into the wound to extract the biggest maggots I shot off in the car to buy Jeyes fluid. Of course it was 5.20 so all the farm type shops were shut but thank god for Homebase. We made a very weak solution of Jeyes fluid and water and poured it all over him which appeared to do the trick. He spent the night in the barn on a thick bed of straw and was given antibiotics and an anti inflammatory to help get the swelling down in the leg and ease the pain. The vet came today to do some health certificates and bleed the geldings for more plasma. He had a look at the boy and thought all was well and the wound not too serious.
We finally got to the house at about nine starving and not in the mood for cooking. Got a Chinese takeaway that relieved the hunger but always sends my blood sugar soaring and woke up very high this morning. Took more insulin to compensate but by mid morning into a hypo, coke and biscuits required. Today was equally busy with cria to look after, animals coming in for breeding and others going out pregnant.
John and Juliet arrived back from Woolfest in Cumbria having sold loads of UK Alpaca yarn, tops and fleeces which is fantastic. A whole coach load of Norwegian knitters turned up and loved our alpaca yarn which makes all that hard work grading worthwhile.
I am busy doing the final proofing on the magazine that goes to the printers, slightly late, on Thursday. We always end up doing our adverts at the last minute but we are nearly there!
01-Jul-2007
It is so wet that all our newborns are having to come in at night to dry out. This is terrible weather for babies even though it is warm. We have three cria that have been born far too early. Two are OK although small and a bit weedy. The third has just died. It is very sad, she was a beautiful tiny fawn cria who has survived for six days but then went down with septacaemia. Even though she was suckling she didn't put on any weight so we think there was probably something wrong with her digestive system. Who knows, she was probably doomed from the start. After all these years a death is still ghastly and makes you feel sick and upset.
A hen emerged from the barn with two little chicks yesterday. I have put her in a coop with them just in case Mr Fox should come ambling by or our cats decide a fluffy bundle would be an excellent breakfast.
The bereaved mother is still coming out of her field into the barn looking for her cria. We have removed it now but she still comes looking but seems quite calm. Sometimes they get very upset indeed but maybe she has realised now that it is dead.
28-Jun-2007
Hello, sorry I have not communicated for so long. We went over to France on Friday to deliver some animals and to take part in the first alpaca show in Brittany at Belle Isle en Terre. It started off prettty well with a nice calm crossing with sunshine. After that it was wet, wet, wet. Our show animals were already thoroughly damp before we left England as it had been chucking it down here and they just got wetter.
The British contingent consisted of John Potts and Nick Harrington Smith from The Alpaca Stud, Mary Jo, Iain and the baby Amelia from Bozedown Alpacas, Gary and Felicia Sanders from Popham Alpacas and us. We were very brave as we showed animals in several inches of mud and water. I didn't take any wellies either. We had been talking to the ever cheerful organisers Robin Hodge and Linda Hitchcock about the dangers of the alpacas getting too hot, ha ha, not about whether the river might burst its banks.
Anyway the English and French owners gathered on the Sunday morning with around fifty sodden alpacas. The judge Paul Cullen had very wisely repaired to the local supermarket and acquired some stout, waterproof walking boots and it was decided to clear the tent where the spinners and weavers were supposed to be and turn it into a show ring. We had brought a small pop up tent that was used as a shelter by all, including alpacas, on their way to the ring. Lots of stiff upper lips etc and bad jokes as we got damper and the mud climbed up our trouser legs. A bit like Glastonbury without the music or the drugs. As we were in France there was a mandatory two hour break for lunch when we all went to the local hotel. The windows steamed up immediately as this crowd of damp people tipped up.
Most of us came home with some rosettes and a cup or two, we had exercised our appalling French, thanked Bozedown from the bottom of our hearts for coming over in a camper van with coffee making facilities and generally decided that Robin's organisation of the show was first class. It was a real shame that the weather was so disgusting as lots of people ventured on to the show field but left pretty fast as the rain never let up.
That evening the boys from The Alpaca Stud or the grumpy old men as we fondly describe them, The Judge Paul Cullen and us had a hilarious dinner at a retaurant at the port of Treguier where we were staying. It was such good fun. Afterwards we went back to the hotel for a nightcap but the bar was shut. Then to our great amusement they turned the lights off! We decided to ignore this and as we had a bottle of wine in the car and some glasses brought that into the hotel instead.
We came back on the Roscoff Plymouth ferry on Monday afternoon and managed to spend the whole trip having lunch/dinner which made the whole experience less dull. The captain went slowly and it took an extra hour even though it really wasn't rough at all. Came home to discover a tiny, premature, fawn cria in the barn weighing in at 4.2kgs alongside another one which was enormous in comparison at 8.8kgs. The little premmie is gorgeous and still alive and feeding well so hopefully she will make it.
18-Jun-2007
Bit of a near death experience yesterday when we were pulling the flatbed up the lane with a very large number of flagstones piled on it. When we got near to the farm entrance and turned the corner the tractor keept on going but the trailer with me, the dog and the flagstones started going downhill fast straight towards the goat man's dairy. Chas turned round on the tractor and screamed and I went into panic mode and threw myself off the trailer before it hit the wall landing hard on concrete on my bottom. It hurt, it still hurts, I had to sleep on my front. The goat man Graham (he makes the fantastic Vulscombe cheese), peered out of the door, all togged up in his cheese making gear, saw the chaos of broken flagstones and rapidly retreated. Luckily our neighbours Peter and Penny had just driven in to borrow the flatbed and so were available to help pick everything up and unload in the yard. This came at the end of a long day tidying up after the builders...they do eat a lot of crisps.
A big 10kg cria arrived yesterday. Some alpacas are so laid back. The birthing field come in every day for a tiny bit of grub as there is a cria in that field we are supplementing. Hebe ambles in, starts eating, turns her backside to us and there is a head and two legs protruding, is the imminent birth going to stop her eating, I don't think so.
17-Jun-2007
We have had the top part of our lane down so everyone who has gone up and down on the giant bumps will be pleased to know that it is flat, for a while anyway. It was a bit like being on the Plymouth Roscoff ferry on a bad night but now it is most certainly the Macclesfield canal. Two enormous tractors tipped up, the wheels were taller than me asnd I am five foot ten. They grind up the existing surface and then put it down gain and compact it. That's the cheap version. In the expensive version they put cement in as well but that costs lots of thousands and as our neighbours wouldn't cough up, we went for the cheap option. Our banks and hedges are growing like mad so the lane is getting arrower and narrower, it's only foxgloves and ferns plus lots of little wild strawberries hidden away, but people do worry about scratching their cars. Why live in Devon which is full of little leafy lanes if paintwork is so important.
Meanwhile we are getting ready to go to a show in Brittany. We are taking over a stud male and a girl we have sold plus three littles ones for the show ring and we are coming back with a stud male who has been in France plus all the booze for the party in July. Normally we take the overnight ferry but there is no room for freight as it is stuffed with holidaymakers so we have to go in the afternoon instead. I am looking forward to a couple of days off without the hellish hassle of getting our development down the road finished. The painters are now in and seem very quick, clean and efficient. We spent some of yesterday cleaning all the windows of plaster etc before they are stained. Bernard, who makes fantastic hay, came down with his big tractor and moved the oil tank on to its plinth and took four one ton bags of stone off the flatbed for us, phew. We need a big machine like that. We brought another load of rubbish up to the farm and chucked it into the skip which is filling up alarmingly fast.
Then an old schoolfriend turned up. Great astonishment all round as I haven't seen Penny for years. She didn't come to the reunion at Sidcot as she doesn't like large gatherings. We had a cup of tea and a gossip and hopefully they will return in September for a longer session.
12-Jun-2007
Overcome with ennui today as I try to force myself to work, sort of bored, sort of irritable, need some excitement to perk me up. An alpaca birth might help or someone tipping up to look at alpacas or winning the lottery and the dreadful (!) prospect of a life of slothful luxury ahead. As it is Tuesday that seems unlikely and it is unlikely anyway given the odds and the fact that I never win anything in the smallest of raffles.
The painters go into the house on Thursday so last night we started the clearing up of all the builder's mess. We filled the Mule up with plastic, paper, cardboard boxes, crisp packets etc etc - many more of these trips to go I fear.
Following the fox attack, we spend some time every evening trying to persuade ALL the hens to go into their house. The three chicks, pretty big now, are the worst and very, very dim. Everyone goes in bribed with corn, while they hang around outside chirping trying to comprehend where the door is. Two hens are in the barn sitting, one according to our calculations should hatch soon but the other has only just begun. We still have one cock bird who is no longer sex starved as the fox took the big one. He is a grey Araucana so if he fertilises the eggs, will they all lay blue ones from now on??
09-Jun-2007
We are taking part in the LEAF National Farm Open Day. The barn has been swept and looks very good and we now have to work out where we are going to put some animals, whiz out and buy refreshments, get the alpaca socks hung up and ready for sale etc. etc. We have no idea whether anyone will turn up but some of our neighbours have threatened to come up for tea and cake so we should have someone to talk to!
The weather is fantastic, so warm that yesterday I ventured into the new M&S in Tiverton and bought quantities of barbecue food, very expensive I know, but at least you know there is no gristle is the sausages and burgers, something I cannot abide. The barbie was fun, followed by English strawberries and English champagne, part of my birthday present.
The alpacas are almost comatose today, sitting around the water troughs or stretched out in the sun asleep. We haven't had a cria since Thursday but maybe we'll get number 17 tomorrow during the Open Day.
Ernie, Gill, Sam and dog turned up today and have made an offer on three pregnant females so hopefully they are sold which will make their owner very happy, and us of course.
Our neighbour has two horses in the field we rent from him for the alpacas and they escaped today as we had inadvertently left a fence down. Chas looked out of the bathroom window this morning and did a double take as he saw this large brown horse wandering up the run. They do extremely large poos compared to alpacas, great steaming lumps of it all over the place. They are very amenable horses and toddled back into the right field with the alpacas quite happily.
05-Jun-2007
New female cria arrived yesterday taking the total to 14 so far this year, nine girls, five boys, excellent. It is fantastic weather for the youngsters, warm with a gentle breeze and not too hot. Fantastic for humans too and my vegetable garden.
I went to my sister's yesterday to take her birthday present and to pick up mine from my brother. I got lots of bottles of different fizz plus a giant bunch of peonies and loads of asparagus.
Our development down the road is at full pelt after various angry phone calls as we wondered whether it would ever be finished. The lane is blocked with vans and progress is being made - at last! The painters come in on Monday so they have to be out and we have to clean it up before they arrive. It has made our heads hurt but hopefully things will go, almost, to plan.
03-Jun-2007
We and our little alpaca show team returned reasonably triumphant from the show last night with two Reserve Champion ribbons and the one we most wanted for Centurion Best Fawn. Our progeny group was second which we were extremely pleased with. The animals were very happy to be back in a field after being banged up in small pens indoors for three whole days. Some people didn't turn up for the show because of the length of time - there were just 198 alpacas there which is a lot less than previous years. It had its good points though as there was plenty of time to talk to other breeders and look at their animals and chat to the Great British public who wandered through the alpaca sheds throughout the show. We were not allowed to use fans to keep the animals dry and stop them sweating up as the Fire Brigade claimed they were a fire risk. This meant the fleece suffered badly and the alpacas were not at their best. There was no attempt at a compromise by the Fire Brigade who threatened to close the building down - something will have to be done about this for next year.
I drank far too much on the Thursday evening which was bad but I did have a very good time. I had aspirins and porridge when I got home which meant I only felt moderately bad on Friday, June 1, my birthday. Paul Cullen called me into the judging ring and presented me with a flash bottle of champagne which was very nice, if embarassing! At the end of the day's showing EP Cambridge UK had a bit of a drinks bash so we had a couple there before setting off for Midsomer Norton and a restaurant called The Moody Goose. The food was very, very good. Then it was off to Ros's house - Chas's sister - for champagne and a natter. Got to bed at one oclock, up at six, to get back to the showground. It was our busiest showing day so there was a lot of rushing about, followed by a late lunch and some jugs of Pimms to finish off the B&W experience.
I came home to find this link in an email from Thomas about a big demo he organised in London to do with global warming and world poverty You will see middle son Alex dressed as a globe at the press conference - fantastic.
The fox has been about up here and taken my huge cock bird and my blue egg laying Legbars. This is most upsetting although the cock was a bit of a pain as he used to crow very loudly when you were trying to have a sensible conversation in the barn with clients. I did threaten him with death but didn't expect a fox to do the deed.
We came down to breakfast to find the utility room, where the dog Alice sleeps, a sea of poo. She has the runs and she ha |