More rain, dear?

They said my mum was mated to an exceptional stud male...

Wind battered, mud spattered - the second of two storms today has just passed over - if we'd not had the Eucalyptus tree reduced two weeks ago, it would be lying across the garden by now. The herd had their Christmas treat of vitamins ADE on sunday, and all were well behaved. They are in a filthy state, and will be heading off to a rested paddock to clean up. Joy has had a great run of felting workshops and sales evenings recently, resulting in lots of new ideas for next year.

In the last few weeks, I've taken down the ceiling over the Lounge and created a Gallery, so I've used the Christmas cards to hide the unfinished areas - I thought it was an inspired idea, but Joy has gone to bed in readiness before the big Christmas Eve(ning) gathering for friends, so I'll find out in the morning how inspired she thinks the result is...

Thanks everyone for reading and commenting on the blog, have a great, safe, Christmas with your families, friends and/or alpacas.

Alpaca-lyptus

Apparently winter has arrived - we did have the tale end of the gale here, which finished shedding the leaves off the trees, so we've been lucky.

We had our Eucalyptus tree trimmed last week and have a big pile of branches saved for the herd, as they love the leaves - I've been bundling them up and tying them to fence posts:

Tucking-in to Eucalyptus

Elstar enjoys it too.

Scrumpy (Clumpy) hasn't tried Eucalyptus yet - he's from Wiltshire - they're not sophisticated over there;-)

In 'other news', I've taken out the floor of the bedroom above the Lounge, to form a gallery, which has taken all my 'spare' time lately, today I've been chiselling, planing and rebating an Oak beam to support the remaining gallery floor - it 'only' weighs 106kg now - big heave next weekend - so it was nice to get out with the camera among the herd for a while.

Moira at sunset.

Catwalk cutie.

Some photographs of Joys products, modelled by our granddaughter Pixie, taken by our daughter Kerry, a professional photographer:

Copy and paste the following link:

http://www.kerrybartlett.co.uk/2013/11/a-p-p-l-e-knit-alpaca-products-autumn-shoot/

We went to the SWAG Autumn Show on saturday - a good venue, well organized, and although numbers of local entries may have been a bit low, they were boosted by some outside breeders - one of the drawbacks of shows at this time of year is the lack of Junior entries which usually are the larger classes. It was good to be able to spend a day catching up with fellow breeders and some of their animals. Whether there will be another autumn show remains to be seen, but well done to the organizers for trying it out and exploring the possibilities.

A very good piece on Countryfile last night, featuring Melford Green alpacas, hopefully restoring any damage caused by Kate Humbles comments a few months ago, giving a very food image of the industry - worth a watch on i-Player if you missed it.

I have a walk-along paddock cleaner (PC50 with new hose, bin and exhaust bag) for sale if anyone is interested, having 'upgraded' to a muck truck with 'poover recently.

A brief video.

Here is a little video speeded up which may fill a spare 3 minutes in your day - last weekend my son sat his GoPro camera on a fence post and left it for a while watching the alpacas go about their day - after a while you will see me assemble a catchpen, and then Joy joins me, we round them up and give a few vaccinations and toe-nail trimmings.When let out they have a quick roll in the grass before heading back down to the shelter where the hay bags are hanging. Scrumpy our herdsire, is in the paddock in the background getting on with his day.

Cut and paste into your browser bar:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyN-k7ukmU8

Set 'quality' to 720p HD for best clarity.

An explorer steps ashore.

Friday saw the arrival of the good ship Patou, skippered by Admiral Mark Steele, carrying EPC Columbus who, we are delighted to say, has joined us as herdsire.

"Hello Ladies"

He's a handsome boy, and has already covered some of our herd.

Yesterday, I moved the girls into a new paddock, and moved the shelters with them - they are still beside Columbus, but higher up the hill. We gave them all ADE jabs, and got soaked from one of these heavy showers in the process. Columbus had been nick-named 'Clump(y)', at Patou previously, so Joy decided (rightly) that he would from now on be known as 'Scrumpy' in line with our apple theme! (though, between you and me, I still call him Clump to his face)

Today, I got up close and personal with Clump, and led him around the property, and introduced him to the fibre studio:

"and this is where we take your fleece to be processesed'

I fitted in a bit more work on the new shelter this afternoon:

Yes, the trailer is on the patio (actually, the end of the driveway)!

Enjoying a change of view.

In search of the New World.

As sunday brought rainfall of near-biblical proportions, I considered buiding an ark, but instead I commenced building another mobile field shelter - the weather drove the hens in for shelter, and despite the sawing and drilling, they huddled in the corner of the alpaca shelter which isn't being used at the moment.

The reason for another field shelter? oh.....we are due to be joined by a Mighty explorer who is setting sail and heading west...

Final fling

Empress - sire: CCNF Talon of CME

 Following the scanning results last week, we had one final fling and took a trip to Wiltshire meet the boys at Patou Alpacas... and again Bramley quite clearly spat-off her suitor Qjori..so we'll have to wait and see whether the scan wasn't clear or whether Bramley just wasn't interested.

Empress - sire: CCNF Talon of CME

Meanwhile, yesterday we had a visit from our client Sally and her son Miles who now own  three of our males, and we took the opportunity to introduce them to this years cria, so we asked Sally to help us get some fleece shots - you can get an idea of the quality in these females, though the ones of Elstar don't convey the full brilliance of her fleece.

Elstar - sire Qjori of Patou

Elstar - sire: Qjori of Patou

It's been a fabulous day here in Somerset - hope you've all had a good day too!