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.