A visit from Easter-wood Alpaca Stud

A visit today from Jeff and Sheila of Easterwood Alpaca Stud. We had been trying to arrange a visit for ages but births meant none of us could leave things. Luckily, they had a break in their births and with a farm sitter on hand over they came. It was really lovely to meet up and we had long alpaca conversations whilst doing a tour. Most surprising was Lina who appeared to fall madly in love with Jeff. I had warned Sheila that Lina was a bit protective and then over strolled Jeff and she was straight over for a neck rub! Bert, of course, wasn't being left out and wanted a cuddle - well most of them did! Jeff was attracting the girls like a magnet! We had a good talk about fleece and processing, future plans and heard about an excellent crop of cria they have had this year - looking forward to visiting soon to see them!

Sadly, that can't happen yet as Lina's baby is still not out of the woods. He has stopped putting on weight and is now shrinking - from a 7.9kg high he is now back down to 7.4kg despite the bottles. However, I have decided he must have a name now as I can't keep calling him Lina's baby - so he has been named Greeves. I am getting to know him exceedingly well (he was almost called Mr Kipling but Carl vetoed that!) as I am now having to up the feeding frequency as he cannot take too much at a time - he just spits it all back up again.

Carl is on mad barometer checking now the mower is mended - he's champing at the bit to get the next crop of hay and keeps looking gloomy and muttering, "It's going to be a hard winter, hay is going to be in short supply . . . " The fact that we have around 600 bales in the barn is forgotten. He and Sam seem to have teemed up on a 'We need a new tractor campaign' and I keep being shown pictures of 'cool' tractors and told about the delights of 'shuttle gears' and the merits of 'Valpadene' - I may have got that all wrong as, to be honest, they mention the word tractor and I shut down!