Nothing runs like a . . .

No day of rest today - but, brilliant!

Greeves has been on one of his weight putting on days - not lively and he still looks a bit wasted at the back end.  I think this is because he is not moving around too much and not building his muscles up - I am hoping that, as the weight starts to go on, he will move around more and get stronger.

We also have a new acquisition - and it is . . . a John Deere!  Actually it is Dad's old garden tractor but Sam loves it and will not leave it alone.  He has already constructed something so he can fix the garden roller on the back to roll things. At the moment the cutting deck doesn't work as it needs a new drive belt or some such thing but once Carl has sorted that out the nettles will be history!  The great thing is, I no longer have to keep shrieking at Sam to slow down on his quad as this is lovely and slow - even when you have got it on 'hare' which is top speed -  'tortoise' is nice and steady and you can drink a cup of tea whilst driving.  It is not as good a the Mule but still very handy.  Thank you Dad!

 In the background you can see we have finally cut the rest of the hay.  The weather forecast is a little dodgy for Tuesday but The Shepherd was round this morning and said we should be getting on with it and Carl didn't need telling twice!  We also got all the lambivac and the rest of the wormer up to date - plus a few feet trimmed so it was fairly hectic.

The really brilliant bit of today, though, was a very special encounter for Cool Dude.  Readers of the old blog may remember Islay's mating last year which was most unpleasant as she really did not want to get involved and looked at me very accusingly throughout.  She was scanned pregnant but didn't present anything.  The year before was the same.   This year we tried her with Dude a couple of times and she wasn't interested so we decided to let her in once more along with Belinda to do a spit off for Belinda - and Islay sat!  She had her ears pricked up the whole time and even gave Dude a little romantic nuzzle.  At one point she nodded off a bit and Dude, not being that experience d slipped out and went a bit frantic.  She just waited for Carl to reposition and they merrily carried on.  Better just make that last bit clear - Carl repositioned Dude on Islay, not himself obviously - he has to be very hands on at moments but I don't think he is replacing me with an alpaca yet!  Whether anything will come of it we will have to wait until next year to see but it was really lovely to see - and I didn't have the camera!

Then we had a pea incident.  We had some micronised peas to try with the alpacas to go with their Camelibra.  The only one who didn't like them was Sam.  He asked if you could eat them and I told him Les had tried them so the silly child put a handful in his mouth.  He has been coughing and spluttering ever since.