Comings and goings.

On a warm day, 'Apples' cuts out the middleman to fetch her own water.

It's been a few weeks since the last post, but plenty has been happening involving the alpacas. We were invited to Cossington Village Flower Show, and took Golden Delicious and her cria, Flamenco, plus some of Joys creations to demonstrate what we do. We were fortunate with a warm sunny day, and took commissions for wrist-warmers and scarves.

This was followed by an invitation to attend a company fun day, and the following weekend we took Autumn Gold in addition to the other two, making three generations. There was lots of interest from the employees, their families and other stall-holders, and we got another sunny day.

Yesterday, we had a birthday Alpaca Experience visit from Kate and her family - our luck with the weather had run out, and it rained all morning, so we tidied the shelter and brought the 14 very wet females over the hill, but fortunately we had an hour of respite, the girls dried a little and we could walk them back over the hill, and see the males, before the rain closed in again, driving us back to the Studio to show the fibre processing, with a cup of tea and Joys Victoria sponge.

Joy is tough, and doesn't need water-proofs or long trousers!

In between these events, we have had a few matings on-farm with a visiting stud male, and off-farm where we have taken a female to the home of the stud, and also with Scrumpy our own stud male. Fingers crossed that they all hold, for an exciting summer of arrivals next year.

'Keeper of the fleece' - Pixie lies in the sun, with some of Joys dyed fleece.

Gala continues to gain weight steadily, and is now over 20kg, currently gaining around 200g per day.

The major event however, is to announce that we have sold a package of three breeding females to a nice local couple, who are entering the fantastic world of alpaca ownership and breeding - more on which alpacas later, but there was a time when selling any of these was un-thinkable, but it is the reality of breeding, and, like your children, they grow up and 'want' to broaden their horizons - this gives them, and us, new opportunities for breeding, and we know that their new owners have fallen for them, and will give them a good home.

To close for this posting, I spotted this grasshopper on the back of Golden Delicious: