Farm Alone

Every thing seems to be happening at once. The weather has been really wet so the poor old alpacas never have dry feet or fleece. So far they seem to be bearing up. We have opened up all the paddocks so they can have maximum grazing and roming space. We often have to separate group but at the moment all the cria have weaned. and there are no births due for ages.

On Sunday we gave them all a vitamin D injection as they can become deficient in the winter.
They are all quite lively and we can detect no signs of rickets amongst the youngsters, so the regular boosts seem to be working.

I am having problems with my washing. Because we are living in a park home until we get planning permission to build, my washing machine and tumble drier are in the barn which means I have to go outside to the laundry room like they did in Victorian times. I usually try and hang the washing on the line as the eco friendly way to go and if I cannot hang the clothes outside I hang them in the barn. The atmosphere has been so damp I cannot get it dry either way so have reverted to the tumble drier which has chosen this moment to stop working.

The frost has caused some leaks in our water system which feeds the animal water troughs. Managed to get these fixed today. Mike is using the excuse that he cannot walk through the mud with his crutches to get out of doing it.

My lovely neighblour, Pam, who helps me keep our paddocks clean has called in sick. She has the nasty 'flu bug which is going around. I threatened to dock her wages, but as she does it for love and no money, that did not work!!

One of my Mother's carers also has the bug. She is now off sick but we are hoping she has not infected us all, especially Mum who is quite sick and coming up to 87. Mum has had the anti 'flu jab, though.

The kittens have turned into little demons - they are lively, destructive and noisy!! They wind the dogs up and rush through any door that happens to open, so we spend half our lives chucking them out.

The chickens have decided that they want to live in the porch and take great delight in scratching the straw bales stored in the barn until they disintegrate and fly in the wind all over the place, but,bless them they are all still laying lovely eggs.

A lovely lady from Bridport Knitting club phoned me today to see if I would do a talk on alpacas for them. They are actually going to pay me!! She has also given me a contact nuumber of someone who does machine knitting. As the USD is so strong at the moment we cannot afford to import from Peru so I am hoping we can fast track our plan to have all our garments made from our own wool. Hopefully she will be able to knit scarves and some plain jumpers to give an alternative to the hand made sweaters which we sell at the moment.

Well I am really missing Mike doing all the jobs that he usually does. Makes me appreciate him more than ever, and really,really hope he is back to normal very soon!!!

Two people have kindly left comments recently, which is much appreciated. I will try and give Mike a better mention in future but he is very shy and would be embarrassed to be written about too much.