Spring cleaning.

What with this exemplary weather and the need to "spruce up" the place, we have been actively planting new shrubs and flowers in the newly constructed "planters" around the farm including the obligatory veggie patch. We have been without home grown vegetables for a couple of years now so I thought it high time to address this!

We have now seperated out our pregnant elite girls so that they have quite a large paddock to themselves with plenty of spring grass. Within only a few days, they are looking decidedly "rotund" however that could be also due to their fleece which has really "fluffed" up since the sun has removed the moisture. The weather has also created a significant "spurt" of grass growth and as a result, all of the paddocks are looking really good now.

The installation of the Kune Kune pigs within the woods at the bottom of the farm has created a source of evil intent as far as the alpacas are concerned!! Every time one of the pigs walks into view, a chorus of shrieks and screams are immediately emitted from our alpacas who quite obviously believe that the little chubby creatures will soon be wreaking carnage amongst them!!

We had an exceptional weekend at the Berkshire College of Agriculture's open weekend last week and whilst Sheila took along some sample garments simply to show what can be done with Alpaca fleece, they soon became "must have" items. Gloves, hats, snoods,etc all soon went! As last year, the event was a great weekend and we were very pleased with the outcome.

One of the jobs that I have been promising myself for a while now is the total clean out of the barn which has housed the girls on a number of nights during the winter months. Yesterday, we manged to remove all of the stale straw ready for a good jet wash later this week, a job which undoubtably will be somewhat messy!!

I am conscious that there are no pictures with this short blog but as the weather continues to be good, I promise to capture some images of the Easter-Wood herd for the next blog.

Have a good weekend and will be back soon.