Life is good

West Webburn Titan

Despite the awful weather we have had a great week, as many of our regular readers know Steve gave up his employed work at the beginning of last year to concentrate on our Alpacas, Llama walks and Holiday cottages.  He also went back to Landscaping on a part time basis, everything seemed to fall into place and we had a very successful year, enough work to keep us going, good Holiday bookings and the llama walks were really popular and we sold some Alpacas!.  We knew we needed to earn enough to take us through the winter if it was bad weather.  Well as we all know the weather has been pretty bad and Steve hadn't work since the beginning of December and we were starting to worry a little bit.  So this week has been really encouraging, we have had rain all week and have had to put work off again so we even got to the stage of clearing out cupboards, so its got to be bad.  Anyway the phone has started to ring with work for Steve, we have taken a couple of holiday bookings and had several more enquires.  Then best of all we had a phone call about Alpacas which has turned into a sale,  so five of our young boys are off to Cornwall at the beginning of April.  Titan our Dark Brown male who won a 1st at Devon County and 3rd at Swag is going to be a herd sire with Calypso as a companion possible stud male and the other three Quartz, Felspar and Stephano are going to be pets.  We wish their new owners who I can't tel you about as I forgot to ask their permission all the best for the future.  

Felspar and Quartz

We are now feeling that we will be OK for the rest of the winter and are looking forward to some nicer weather, this is what life is about, not being tied to a job that was frustrating, we work hard but we work for ourselves, we don't make mega bucks but we have enough to feed, cloth and house us, we live in a wonderful place and we really appreciate it.  For the first time since we have been breeding our Alpacas we can say that we don't have any males for sale so we are looking forward to this years crop of youngsters and then we can decide on what we would like to sell later this year.

We have been halter training in the rain and even if they look all wet and miserable they are all getting used to it and walking fairly well.  Golden Prospect as he is so small was getting covered in hay as he seems to like to sit under the hay bags and the other three, Murphy, Merlin and Stephano eat over the top of him.  Prospect is going into our very small show team this year so I would like him to keep clean.  With this in mind we decided to buy a small hayrack hoping this may help, so off to Mole Valley (as it was raining again) and a 4ft hayrack which fitted nicely into the back of the car was acquired.  It's amazing that the cost of the 4ft is nearly as much as the 8ft racks but they are much harder to move around and it is so nice to be able to put the rack in the back of the car if we have animals in fields over in Widecombe, saves a journey with the trailer.

We are having a proper day off today, well after feeding up,  we are going to some friends for lunch and probably tea, and possibly evening drinks.  They are neighbours and they are very good to us in the summer months as they see us working in the fields from their windows.  So they feel sorry for us and feed us quite often to save me going home to start cooking, ............ which is so nice.  Audrey is also teaching me to weave so I think we may be setting up the loom this afternoon.......... did I say this was a day off!


I have started knitting up some of our wool from the mill and I am really pleased with the results, it knits up so soft and I already have had enquires for some hats.  I am also hatching up a plan, it is very much in the planning stage at the moment. !