We went to Whitham Park yesterday for a splendid and amusing lunch and came away with five female weanling alpacas – they way you do. We are a little short of fawns so we bought three of those, a very dark brown and a blue grey. They have some growing to do before they will be ready to mate and we are going to shear them next week as their fleeces are very long. We were home so late that they spent the night in the barn but are busy trying out Devon grass now.
After that it was on to my brother’s house where we went out to inspect the cherry blossom, a sea of white and very lovely, followed by the Bramley blosson, much more pink. The Bramleys are the only trees left that were planted by our father over thirty years ago. All the rest of the fields have been re-planted by William. Then we went to look at the redcurrant flowers which were hanging in beautiful sprigs. Nowadays William has bumblebee hives to help pollinate the apples. Apparently they are much better natured than honey bees and very hairy so they carry more pollen. They come in long waxed boxes that carry several little hives and you just order them from a bumblebee company – amazing. The fruit bushes have bare earth around them and then in the middle of the row a line of grass and weeds which is designed for the predators to live in – beetles, earwigs etc who mop up aphids and other unmentiobnables. William said that the way they deal with pests has totally changed in the last couple of years due to the money that has gone in to research in to organic farming and that has thrown up all sorts of new strategies. Nowadays fruit is tested for pesticide residues so growers have to find ways of producing unblemished fruit without using many chemicals.
We got to talking about road kill as they have a load of rabbits with myxie and William revealed that although he braked sharply the first Brimstone butterfly he had seen this spring smashed straight into his windscreen. That’s dedication to butterfly welfare for you. Remember to avoid driving behind him.