Alpacas See grass

For the first time for a couple of weeks we can see some grass albeit dotted with puddles of melted snow (water that is!).  The paddocks are looking populated right up until the end of the day instead of alpacas disappearing into their shelters to stock up on hay or haylage.

We managed to get out to clean the paddocks this morning for the first time in 11 days.   Our good neighbour, Pam, came to help as usual.  She, like us, was starting to get fed up with the restrictions of the wintery weather.  Although it has been foggy and damp, at least we can stand up and vehicles can drive up and down the track again.

Nick did not come this week as he had a fall in the snow and hurt his back.   We are hoping he will be able to make it next Tuesday as the goats need their nails trimmed, the alpacas are due for vaccination and Mike and Nick have an ongoing job clearing and laying the last of the hedges at the top of the farm.   They are also going to remove quite a few trees which are taking up valuable grazing space and also seem to be getting dangerously big. 

I have been making marmalade this afternoon and catching up on a few office jobs whilst the pot is boiling.   Unfortunately because I only do it once a year it does not come  naturally and I managed to miscalculate the amount of water so most of the time was  taken boiling off the excess.   It looks OK and Mike says it smells good, so let's hope it tastes alright despite my new cooking tecnique.

I am waiting for our website lady to get home from holiday so that our new online shop can go live.   At the moment I cannot load up the photos.   We will be selling from the Alpaca site instead of from our separate Alpacastuff site which I took over from my daughter-in-law, Jane.  Although the hand knits etc: will still be sold under the AlpacaStuff name, we will not be  keeping the separate domain name on the internet.