I hate to say this but we need some rain

I really do hate to say it but we really could do with some rain, it has been lovely and sunny here on Dartmoor for a few weeks now and our grass is still not really growing. We were out on the moor on Monday for a llama walk and the grass up there is still very dry and brown, even our field which we reseeded last autumn is starting to look very dry and yellow, not good it should be romping away at this time of the year. We spread some fertilizer on it this evening hoping that this will help get it going. i just wish we could arrange for a little rain to fall after about 9pm and finish about 6am so it can dry up before I need to get out for work.

Last September we ordered some Gloucester old spot weaners which were due to arrive early spring but alas we have heard nothing from the breeder and I have not received any replies to my e.mails, so I am now assuming that they will not be arriving. So after several phone calls and e.mails I have now managed to secure 3 Berkshire weaners which will be ready at the end of May. We have had pigs in the past and we really enjoyed having them, they are so intelligent and I can see how you could get attached to them, I thought I may have problems when it came to eating them but our local abattoir did a very good job in sending them back looking like they had come from a supermarket - vac packed and labeled. We did sell some of the meat to cover the costs and we had some very good comments about the quality and flavour of the meat. So we are really looking forward to having pigs again - they don't get names though!

We have been giving our Alpaca breeding program some thought over the past week and I think we have decided on which males are going over which females ... but this may change as we see this years cria on the ground, these will be the first cria from our herd sires - Golden Nugget and Caliban, really looking forward to June when the first girls are due. We are bringing the males down from Lakeham Alpacas where they have been for the winter on Friday to start matings on some of the females which have been empty over the winter, this should give us some early April births next year.