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.