Peace and quiet return.

Jazz our poorly llama seems to have got over whatever was troubling her, Steve went to feed up this morning and said that she came bounding over for her hard feed and then made for the freshly filled hay net.
I can't get out to do anything so I have to rely on Steve remembering to tell me what everyone is up to.

We have had a very noisy Christmas with lots of family here but today they have left to visit extended family and peace has returned although the house still has to recover from having two young boys here for several days, nothing is where it should be!

I am now going to try to work out how to use my super doper new camera, this may take a while!

Hope you all have a good time over the Christmas period.

Merry Christmas

I would like to wish everyone a very Merry christmas and a Happy Prosperous New Year. I have really enjoyed reading everyones Bloggs, It is so interesting to hear how different people do things.

I haven't blogged for a while really because it is a very quite time of the year for us and there is only so much you can say about poo picking and general husbandry, but here is a quick update of what has been happening here.

We have weaned all of this years cria and decided to do it differently this year, instead of taking the cria away from the mums and putting them out of sight we took the mums away and leave the cria with the rest of the herd.  This seemed to be less stressful for the cria and the mums didn't really notice that they were missing something when they saw the fresh grass in their new paddock.

It is very muddy here and getting across the chicken pen is a bit like ice skating, I can move the electric fence around except for the bit around the hen houses, so I have to hold onto the house to get around the back to collect the eggs.  Cleaning out is interesting as you can imagine trying to push a wheelbarrow up a very muddy slope, Steve finds this very amusing to watch!

Every year we have a stall at the Christmas market in Widecombe and this year we were asked to take some animals to display next to the Christmas tree.  What with all this mud our animals along with everyone else's are not the most attractive.  So we thought we would take the most attractive ones which would be the weanlings, problem 1 they were not halter trained, problem 2 we needed to get them into the little grassy area at the back of the hall, problem 3 everything is so muddy not easy to get the trailer into some of our paddocks.  So the weanlings are now all halter trained with varying degrees of success, star of the team is Caramel who seemed to know what to do the very first time she had a halter on,  so using Caramel as trainer the other four girls were walked one at a time around the garden and up the lane.  Lalique is pretty good but she has the same temperament as Caramel, being related.  Choc Ice is so small I had to make more holes in the halter to get it to fit properly walks lovely as long as Caramel is in front, difficult if I am trying to walk two on my own, and Tigerlily is surprisingly good considering she is Lily's daughter and Lily is the most loopy, neurotic  Alpaca in the world!  Finally Ivory the oldest, biggest cria is totally useless, so glad she won't be in the show team next year, only reason we got her where we wanted her was she didn't want to be left behind on her own.  So hopefully they will remember some of their training and will not take to much training before the shows next year.

The Market was very cold and pretty damp but we had a reasonable day and as usual lots of interest in the animals.

Today Jazz one of our Llamas was not very well, she was obviously in pain and reluctant to get up when approached which is unusual, she was bouncing around yesterday.  So we took her temperature which was normal so probably not an infection, so it looked to me like it could be a colic or acidosis thing, so as she was in pain we called Richard our Vet who luckily for us was at home so not to far away.  Anyway he gave her something for the pain and some anti spasm drug and said it was probably colic and if it was she would get better or if not it could be a twisted gut in which case she would not get better but he didn't think this was the case as her membranes were normal colour.  Jazz seemed to have improved this afternoon so fingers crossed she will continue to improve.  It is good to know that your own diagnosis's was right and by knowing your animals you can notice when something is not quite right.

I have finally finished  knitting my Christmas presents, this year everyone is getting hand knits as I really don't like Christmas shopping and it gives me an excuse to knit different things.

My operation which was cancelled in November was re scheduled for December 16th and cancelled again has now been booked in for tomorrow, so after messing me about for months they have now ruined my Christmas.  I should be home sometime on Christmas day, hopefully in time for lunch.  We have all the family here for the day so at least Steve will not have to cook or wash up for that matter.

One of those days

Today has been one of those day I find very frustrating.  After my operation was canceled last week I have been waiting for them to ring me with another appointment.  Firstly they promised I would know by Friday evening, then definitely on Monday, I hadn't heard by lunch time so I rang them...... answerphone,  phone again, got secretary ....."I'm working on it and will definitely ring this afternoon".... well I am sure you can guess that I still haven't heard.  So it seems I will have to wait in tomorrow as well, we have very patchy mobile phone signal around here and I don't what to miss the call (when it finally arrives) .
Obviously they consider that my time is not as important as theirs and i don't want to ring all my customers to rearrange work until I know when I will be going in.

The other frustrating thing today is .... and I would be hoping mad if I hadn't been waiting in anyway, I was waiting for a delivery which was promised sometime this afternoon............ it arrived at 7.45 following two phone calls to say he was lost!  shame people have lost the ability to read a map because they have a Sat Nav in the cab.

On a more positive note I cleared out the bureau and the drawers, amazing how much clutter you can collect, I have a very tidy bureau now.  I have also been knitting and getting the stock ready for Widecombe Village Market which is on Saturday.  I have completed one hat and sewed up another so not a completely wasted day.

A bit of a ranting blog

Well it is a quite time of the year for us now, Alpacas and Llamas all up to date with husbandry tasks, all the females that have been bred were spitting off when last checked and won't be checked again until spring as they would not be rebred anyway,  so fingers crossed they all hold. Not wishing to wish the time away but we are really looking forward to seeing the results of some of our breedings next year.  We decided to use some outside Studs this year as well as one of our own younger males, we will just have to wait and see.

I have been reading with interest other blogs about cria not growing, there seems to be a few this year, we have one who didn't put any wait on for weeks, wouldn't take a bottle, always under Mum who looked like she had enough milk, we gave up with the bottle and stood back and watched.  The cria 'Choc Ice' who is now five months old was still only 13 kgs at 3 months is now 28 kgs and is running around with the rest of the herd.  Not sure why she didn't grow, she is obviously smaller than the rest of the cria but she always felt solid and well covered and there didn't seem to be anything else wrong with her.  Her mother was a maiden but she was very good right from the start and we saw Choc Ice suckle so I am sure she got the colostrum very early on.  Who knows! these animals will always surprise you.

Now for the ranting bit!
It has been a bit of an odd week mainly because I was due to go into hospital on Friday so I had bee getting myself all geared up for it, rearranged work, stocked up the larder for Steve as I would be out of action for some weeks, arranged help for animals, cottages, grandchildren etc.  I even tidied the house and sorted out the office.  So Thursday came and I had finished my last job for about three months, fedd the animals for the last time and collected the eggs, got back into the car and looked at the phone to see I had a new voice message.  The hospital had been try to ring me and in the end left a voice message (we intermittent  mobile signal around here) They had canceled my operation ! now I was really upset about this, but it was to late to ring the secretary, I had to wait til the morning to find out that there was not enough beds.  Now I could be waiting until after Christmas for a new date,  to say I am not happy is a understatement, I had put my life on hold for three months which as it was winter was not too bad I could cope with that, but if the new date is going to be in the spring I won't be able to work or do anything during one of our busiest times. I do appreciate that it couldn't be helped if there were no beds available especially critical car beds then something has to go, just wish it hadn't been my operation.  So not good I have to wait until Monday now to hear when the new date will be.  In the meantime I have a whole weekend in front of me with nothing booked in as I shouldn't have been home so I am going to make the most of it and do what I like................now what shall I do!

Freezer full ready for winter

I am determined not to get caught out again this winter, last year with all that snow and ice we ran out of milk and bread.  So this year I have a good supply of both in the freezer which is OK until we sent the pigs in and I collected the meat from the butcher this morning and for good measure I brought half a lamb of one of our neighbours. Our freezer is now so full I have had to borrow some room in next doors!
I carefully wrote down our requirements for the butcher to pack the meat and somehow sausages packed in 8's, came back as one large bag of sausages, so I have spent the afternoon bagging them up. I asked for the small joints except for one leg which I wanted cut into two large joints ready for Christmas, I got one half pig cut into large joints.  Not sure how clearer I could have made it, was it me or did they just not read it right!
This weekend I was going to do some baking but as there is no room left I won't be doing that instead I am going to move the Chicken pen onto some fresh ground,and tidy the veg garden. Oh yes there are three Cockerels which need dispatching, have to try and get them into the freezer somehow.
Winter is definitely on it's way the female Alpacas just about mug me for the feed in the mornings, they have plenty of fresh grass but there is not the goodness in it now.  We have started to give the males and the llamas some concentrate again now and they are having plenty of hay.
I am busy knitting and spinning as I have so much I want to get finished before I can start my own Christmas pressies, I have decided that everyone is getting knitted gifts or Alpaca socks for Christmas as I really can not face going Christmas shopping. bah humbug, I really don't like that side of Christmas, it would be so much nicer if everyone made something which would be special to the person receiving it rather than just buying something which most of the time could be brought if wanted anyway.
Anyway back to the knitting whilst Steve is still working and we are having a late dinner.  Guess what?  Pork chops! we will be eating a lot of pork now.

Comings & Goings

It has been a long time since I have blogged, not because nothing has been happening in the depths of Dartmoor.
In fact there has been a lot happening here some of which has been very painful and upsetting which is one of the reasons I haven't felt like writing anything, some good things and some comings and goings.
Firstly Steve's mum passed away a few weeks ago and although not unexpected it is still very sad and we are going to miss her greatly. This will bring lots of changes over the next few months some of which may be challenging and it looks like buying the shed for a fleece workshop will have to go on hold for a while.
On the Alpaca front we had sold some females and their cria a couple of months ago and we had their new owners over for a day to do some husbandry training.  We always like to know that our animals are going to go to people who know how to handle them.  So as we had help we gave the whole of the female /cria group their Fasinex and an ADE shot, then we weighed them all.  Very good hands on experience for their new owners.  A couple of days later we delivered the girls and babes to their new home where I think they will be very comfortable.  Sue and Andy of Pippin Alpaca were waiting for us when we arrived and the girls were let out into their new Paddock, I think they were so impressed with the lovely long grass that they didn't really notice where they were for a while. Ella, Bramble and Phoebe with their cria Salvador, Calico and Amber settled in immediately.

 Ella is always the inquisitive one and was soon of to inspect the living arrangements closely followed by her Son Salvador, nice field shelter, plenty of hay, good grass, it's all good then! We had a message from Sue and Andy to say they were fine a couple of days later but I am always sad to see any of our animals go.  We would like to wish Sue and Andy every success with their new venture .

I finally managed to get all my fleeces packed up and sent off to the mill after a bit of a trial with the courier company.  We have sold most of our yarn to a London Knitwear designer this year so I have been agonising over which fleeces to put in to the mill and which to keep out for hand spinning. In the end I decided to send some extra fleece to the mill which will give me some yarn for me to use and to sell as well as the yarn going to the designer.  We are also having some rovings mainly because I am lazy and don't like carding much. So at the moment I only have a couple of our courser fleeces and some legs and neck fleece left.

In between everything else I have bee knitting frantically to try to get some stock together for our Christmas Markets as well as some commissions. I seem to have some knitting stashed in my bag where ever I go now!

As we had sold the girls and especially Ella who was one of my favourites and possibly our best Black female, we decided to go and find ourselves another black to replace her.  We had a good search around and found one we were interested in, better still she was due to give birth this year with a cria from one of our favourite stud males.  So off to deepest Somerset to have a look, when we got there we found that although she was a lovely animal she wasn't quite what we were looking for and she wasn't pregnant.  Whilst there we looked at a few other females and picked out another maiden who was ready to breed and also had the bloodlines we were looking for.  We then looked at an older pregnant Dark Brown Female with a light fawn cria at foot.

The cria has a cracking fleece and is well built and her mum as a lovely soft handling fleece which is quite impressive for her age.  So to cut a long story short we came away with three animals.  Hebe who is black with a white splodge on her nose and topnot, Olivia,  Dark Brown with her cria at foot who we have named Ivory. We collected them a few weeks ago as the two adults are now spitting off and we have had them in an isolation paddock before introducing them to the rest of the herd. Our herd is now looking a lot darker than before which is where we wanted to be.
That more or less brings us up to date, we have been doing all the usual poo picking, feeding and all the usual routine stuff.
Today We wormed all the females and their cria before moving them into a fresh paddock and the new girls joined them so there was a lot of sniffing and a bit of spitting before they settled down to eating the fresh grass.  Just got the llamas to do now, which are a little more challenging.
Finally a few of this years cria.

Choc Ice & Lalique

Calico before she left for Pippin Alpacas

This years star and leader of the gang 'Caramel'

Thats all for now.

The Day Job

Yesterday we spent the day at Widecombe fair,  the day started very early in typical Widecombe fair Dartmoor drizzle.  We loaded Lenny, Murphy, Merlin and Logan into the trailer and set off for the fair ground.  There is a one way system around the lanes on fair day so we need to get to Widecombe before this came into play.  Once set up we were surrounded by crowds for most of the day, lots of questions and the usual "they spit  don't they" comments.  Our knitwear, yarns and socks proved very popular and we had the most successful day to so far.  We didn't have time to leave the stand apart form quick dashes to the refreshment tent for supplies.  So we missed the Pantomime horse derby, Bale tossing and large straw bale rolling competitions.  I did manage to catch a glimpse of the Grandsons in the Hill Pony Display though, Josh had a hugh grin on his face all through it and Charlie fell of twice but got back on his pony to a round of applause from the crowd.  

As usual I forgot to take the camera, so no pictures again!

Today it was back to the day job

Thought I would share a few pictures of what we call work.

Steve and Merlin

Murphy and friend on Corndon tor

Break time

Don't look now but someone is creeping up on us!

Meet the locals

Amazing Views

Homeward Bound


Sometimes we have to remind ourselves we are at work!