Groan, groan, another day of grading with John Arbon. We have made it through the fawn and moved on to brown – in between doing a load of white that arrived on Saturday. We are stopping for a week now as it is the Royal Bath & West Show. We’ll be loading our show team up tomorrow at some ungodly hour as the alpacas have to arrive between 6.45 and 7.30 if we want to get in on Wednesday morning. Chas’s sister Ros has offered us a bed for the duration – thank you – and we are booked up for dinner on Wednesday and Thursday nights. Hopefully we’ll get in a meeting about the British Alpaca Futurity while we are there.
I had a telephone call, via computer, from Joshua the other day. He is now in Bolivia having recovered from doing the big tourist bit in Maccu Pichu where everything costs a fortune and there are teeming hordes piling out of coaches everywhere. His friend Jim is flying back to Quito in Ecuador – young love etc. – and Josh will be on his own for two weeks. He has decided to go on another Spanish course to improve even more and to have a rest from travelling.
Chas has taken delivery of a brand new monster lawn mower. Unfortunately the grass is sodden so we can’t see the beast in action just yet.
We have moved the latest group of heavy pregnant alpacas up to the birthing field after the early birth of one of the embryo transfer cria. She is tiny at 5.8 kilos and you can just see her little head above the sea of buttercups when she is sitting down.