A return with renewed vigour!

Having read many blogs recently, it is apparent that absence from the blogging world is usually related to problems and Mark's blog (Patou Alpacas) reflects this hypothesis so accurately! It is with this in mind that our return is also based. Our problems however were, amongst others, family related and without going into detail, kept us out of the alpaca world for too long.

Trying to catch up on lost time (in terms of news) is going to be a challenge but suffice to say, our breeding programme is now back on track commencing with today's matings using our two stud boys; Easter-Wood Lawbreakers Legend, sired by Eringa Park Lawbreaker of EPC and Easter-Wood Athos, sired by Cambridge The Chairman of ACC. 2015 is now earmarked for our return to the show ring and a long awaited catch up with our friends and colleagues as the social element plays such a large part of our enjoyment on the show circuit!

Whilst we had to put our alpaca business on the back burner for a while, we haven't been totally idle and  have managed to sell on a large number of our animals to a variety of customers and as a result, we now have a tightly-controlled herd of 13, down from 48. This has made the task of alpaca and farm management much more focused and both Sheila and I relish the development of our business on a better prepared footing in the future.

Signing off for now but will return soon.

A new home for some of our girls!

Where an earth has the time gone? I have only just noticed that an age has passed since my last blog.....no excuses, just been busy!

Last month, we had a call from a lovely lady, Emma whom we had been recommended to earlier in the year. During the summer (do you remember the sun and warmth?), a tree on the edge of our lane had been in need of some tree surgery and I got chatting to one of the team tasked with the removal of the aforementioned tree. Apparently, he had mentioned our Alpaca farm to a customer of his who had expressed an interest in owning Alpacas......referral is of course the best form of marketing without question! As a result, Emma called and duly purchased three of our young girls. She had deliberately chosen a fawn, brown and white. A couple of weeks ago however, she emailed and asked for another of our girls to make up the "Full Colour Palette". Thus one of our black girls became Emma's fourth member of her herd!

 Emma welcomes Midnight Sapphire with an affectionate kiss

 

Midnight Sapphire joins the other three girls with the onlooking sheep in the background!

This year has seen some significant changes at Easter-Wood, in particular, our show circuit boys: Athos (out of EP Cambridge The Chairman) and Lawbreakers Legend (out of EP Cambridge Lawbreaker). We are delighted with the development of their fleece and confirmation and have high hopes for them in the coming year.

The weather this year has had it's effect on the farm as usual with far too much rain and thus far too much mud! The one saving grace is that since we have sold a significant number of animals this year, we do now have a lot more grazing to go around!

Sheila's garment sales have grown in strength again this year and has had to employ the services of some knitting ladies in order to provide the knitted garments in time for Christmas.

.........and finally, a glimpse back to when it was sunny and warm!!!!

Roll on the summer!!

A serious lapse...........

There is simply no excuse! I have not posted on our blog for ages and whilst the intention is there, I have always found other jobs to do! So without further ado, here is my latest news;

Despite the recession, Sheila's garment production has been growing in strength and she now has a small army of helpers providing valuable knitting expertise to assist in satisfying the orders. With Christmas only a few months away (did I really say that?), she has arranged a number of "Alpaca Parties" locally to show that Alpaca fleece can be turned into wonderful, luxury items of clothing.

We have been out and about lately and have visited both the Honiton and Romsey Shows in the last few weeks. It was good to catch up with friends and share stories and of course, muffins and coffees. We were planning to show our Lawbreaker's Legend and Athos at the Romsey Show but discovered that Juniors were not showing! Great shame as both our boys (in my opinion) are stunning! Anyway, another time as Intermediates.

We finally managed to get away for a week's break a couple of weeks ago and so, with some friends staying here on the farm, we first journeyed to Banbury to collect some yarn we had processed at Haggers Mill and stayed for a couple of nights with my son and his wife, Neil & Liz. We had a great time and enjoyed some excellent home cooking! On the Tuesday we then drove to Tavistock to stay with friends, Jane & Paul where we thoroughly enjoyed walks on Dartmoor, trips to Cornwall and as usual, good food! On the way back, we B & B'd in Romsey and took in the Romsey Show on Saturday where we caught up with friends as previously mentioned. We couldn't have picked a better week as the weather was simply fantastic!

 A view of Dartmoor

 

Sheila and friend, Jane in Tavistock Market

Turning back to Alpacas again, we previously made the decision last year to purchase the "Paca Wagon". Having had a year to use it in anger, we have now however decided to sell it as we discovered that it is not quite large enough to transport the alpacas in numbers...... sadly, two is the maximum! We will instead, purchase a stock trailer which appears to be much more versatile (and cheaper to run!). Anyway, that's all from me as there are some paddocks waiting to be cleaned.....and the sun is out again!

Woeful Summer weather!

Every March we are blessed with normally dry, warm and usually sunny weather! It seems that there is a pattern developing with our British weather which suggests that summer no longer starts in May/June in fact it seems that it doesn't start at all!! Here at Easter-Wood, we are constantly challenged when it comes to decisions where the weather plays a part in conducting any work that relies upon a dry day! We have actually decided that this year we will travel to France for a week's break (the first for 4 years!) later this year to stay with my sister and her husband just outside Cahor in order to enjoy some sort of summer weather!

Leading on from the weather situation, we are unsure that we will be able to source any hay this year so we grabbed at the chance to secure 60 bales of last year's hay from a local equestrian farm this week. Our Alpacas are thriving on hay currently and are reluctant to actually leave the dry conditions of the barn to venture out for some grass of which we have an abundance of!! Mind you, it could be that they seem rather relaxed with the sounds of Radio 2 gently emanating from the transistor radio in the barn which is playing all day long!

We have now employed the services of a local tradesman (Bob) to finally finish off the Log Cabin build which involves adding some decking to the rear of the Cabin along with tidying up the lower section of the main building down to ground level as can be seen in the photo below. By the way, the ramp shown is more for our aging dog and not a reflection on our physical condition!!!

Having celebrated a birthday last month, I am now the proud owner of a rather special coffee machine which Gemma and Jonathan kindly bought me. I have always enjoyed "proper" coffee and since I had been bleating on about how insipid instant coffee is, they very kindly clubbed together to buy me this great machine! I am now a happy coffee junky!!

I have just returned from our annual golfing break down in Devon and whilst the weather was appalling (as usual), we did manage to play each of the four days we were there. As usual, my golf was pretty rubbish but I enjoyed the break immensely not to mention the high quality (and quantity) of food!! Sheila stayed here of course and took care of the farm in her usual efficient manner! The picture below indicates that the weather was kind to us............... for a couple of hours!!!

Finally to finish, just before I left for Devon and during a dry spell, I managed to "top" a couple of our paddocks but as the rain had encouraged so much growth, there were some area's which could not be dealt with by our lawn tractor. Diego and Porthos however were more than happy to attempt a "trim"!

Well the skys appear to be brightening, so duty thus calls. Be back again soon.

.......and off to pastures new!

It's been a busy time here at Easter-Wood lately and today marked the beginning of a new venture for two new alpaca owners, Julie and Colin. Despite the appalling weather today, we managed to load up Julie and Colin's five alpacas (oddly enough, without any protestations) into the trailer and head off to their beautiful farm near Whitchurch in Hampshire. Three girls and two boys are now settling into well designed paddocks which have an absolute abundance of grass!

Julie and Colin with their new girls.

After unloading, we retired to their farm house kitchen to be out of the foul weather and was treated to madeira cake and coffee followed by a fair amount of alpaca chat. We welcome Julie and Colin to this wonderful world of Alpaca breeding.

This weekend also saw a significant birthday milestone (the one that the Beatles had a hit with!!) which we celebrated with a lovely lunch out along with Jonathan and Gemma who very kindly treated us! Sunday was our wedding Anniversary but business comes before pleasure so we celebrated with hosting a visitor and his son who are planning to set up an Alpaca breeding enterprise very soon. I hope that they take the plunge and were inspired by our passion for these endearing creatures!

We also hosted one of our "Alpaca Experience Days" last Thursday which will probably be our last as we are now very focused upon further developing enhanced genetics into our elite herd and in order to do this, we have decided to concentrate on a selective program of matings during the year and also concentrate on finally having the time to attend shows with some of our elites!

As I write this, the rain has been incessantly tipping down and has done all day and whilst we all yearn for quality grazing, most of us and now saying "That's enough"!!

Will be back soon.

Back to mating!!

Throughout the last two months, we have been getting concerned over the lack of "spring growth" and thus the continued reliance upon dry matter for our alpacas. Now with the abundance of rain and the rise in temperature this week, panic over! We do however have a few more alpacas than we would prefer and following the sale of some females and a couple of our young boys a couple of weeks ago, we are slowly getting the numbers down to an ideal herd size. These girls however are to leave Easter-Wood pregnant and as Easter-Wood Diego is not quite ready to service the ladies yet, we headed out to Chase End Alpacas in Essex last Sunday to see our friends Joe and Ann to collect Cambridge Ice Cool Lad, our jointly owned stud male. He is the bees knees when it comes to "getting on with it" and we have always been absolutely delighted with his progeny in all the time we have used him! It was great to see our friends again and as usual, much alpaca chatter went on but once the conversation turned to knitting, Joe and I sneaked out to take on a herd inspection! They have some lovely alpacas there and as usual, the farm looked a real treat, despite a brisk, chilly wind!

Yesterday, Cambridge Ice Cool Lad was introduced to one of the three girls who are leaving us and without any hesitation, he was performing....What a star! Mind you, he made a point of stamping his male authority over the other young males here with, what can only be described as a parade superiority or putting it another way, "showing off"!! Today is the turn of the second female!

A couple of years ago, we sold our first male, Easter-Wood Navigator as a yearling to Petlake Alpacas of The New Forest but we retained a couple of matings from him once he had reached maturity. Following a phone call to Sue Sears the owner, we arranged to use him on one of our Elite girls this summer. Navigator's genetics are exemplary with EP Cambridge Ceaser and EP Cambridge Neptune on his Sire's side and EP Cambridge Peruvian Maximus and EP Cambridge Sara on his Dam's side. We are also bringing in another superior Elite stud to enhance the Easter-Wood herd this summer and so we are really looking forward to some superb results next year!

I just looked out of the window and the sun is shining, the temperature is climbing and work beckons!! I will be back again soon.

.....and another fine day!!

Well this would appear to be somewhat of a record of late!!! Three consecutive dry and sunny days (well until today that is)!! During those brief moments of spring, we managed to run one of our Alpaca Experience Days, clean up some rather neglected paddocks and have the herd sheared! I am so pleased that the shearing is over for the year on two counts: the herd now looks really smart and secondly, the rush/panic/trauma is over for another year. No matter how familiar you become with the shearing process, it is always tinged with stress, not only for the alpacas but also for us and everyone who helps out. Anyway job done and now the fleece sorting commences. We are very pleased with a number of them this year and hope to secure some recognition of this through the various fleece shows.

A neat and tidy Philby

Today normal service has resumed, at least as far as the weather is concerned as it is again, "tipping down". 

Today sees the "Paca Wagon" gets it's MoT so I am a little nervous as it is it's first, under our ownership and as we recently made a decision to scrap my Laguna as it had had a good innings with us and completed 120,000 miles, we are now reliant upon a roadworthy van!...........................concern over as whilst writing this blog, the van has been returned having passed the MoT!

Next up today is commence some matings with three of our girls whom we have just sold and now that they have all been sheared, we should have less of a problem (famous last words!!).