Preparations

Larry is going to start dismantling the old barn which is to be our new home on Monday so we have been busy emptying out all the things that have been stored in it for the past six or seven years.  Some will eventually go out as rubbish or scrap but Mike will find a use for most of it I am sure.  We are keeping personal effects in the attic over the farm office and all the farm and workshop stuff will go into the new barn.  It is so much bigger that even with the feed bins,  sacks of seeds for re-seeding the paddocks, piles of scaffolding planks and plenty more, there is still room to hold a barn dance.

Larry built a block wall to partition off  Mike's new workshop.  We used some left over blocks and some used thermolight blocks from Mike's garage in Salisbury.   They look a bit odd so maybe in the distant future I will get round to painting the top to match .

Mike has decided to sell his Jaguar XK150 which we bought about 30 years ago and he has never had the time to restore it.  It is a bit sad but will help us along the road to speeding up our build.  There seems to be quite a bit of interest in it, but no firm offers yet.

Nick and I tagged the new kids.  It is the job that I hate most on the farm but it is a Defra requirement that all sheep, cattle and goats have to be tagged for identification purposes.   The new ruling from last year is that sheep and goats have to have a tag in each ear,so the kids look they are wearing huge earings.   I check them every couple of days to make sure that the hole in their ear does not get infected.  So far so good.   Some of them are very brave but one or two really bleat what sounds like Mu....mm really loudly.  The time limit is actually 6 months but the bigger they are the stronger they get and it is no joke trying to tag a wriggling,bleating, horned young goat.

We are keeping a close eye on the alpacas now.   Some of them are nearly due to give birth.  I am checking on them three times a day and next month we will bring them all up to the home paddocks so they will be under close observation.

The boys are still loving their free ranging around the house area and we love seeing them.  They love climbing on the the piles of earth remaining from the earthworks for the new barn.   With the dry weather and the scalpings which form the farm yard and driveway it reminds us of our trip to Chile when we went over to chose our alpacas when we first began our new enterprise.