Winter challenges!

Good morning all and may we wish you festive greetings!

Things have been a little challenging for us here at Easter-Wood just lately as we have suffered the fate of frozen water pipes, loosing another two hens and struggling to keep warm......We are however still very bouyant as the temporary "living in a caravan" will soon come to an end and our Log Cabin will occupy the space of our static in February. Another "Cold" view of our farm below.

We are still bringing in our alpacas at night during this cold and snowy weather and it is very satisfying to almost hear their sigh of relief upon entering the barn! The frozen pipes however are not just resigned to the static, our two exterior taps on the barns are equally prone to freezing up and we have to be inventive to ensure that our alpacas get their water.

Since the loss of our last chicken (we are now down to 6), we experienced a strange thing this morning.........upon letting them out of their coop, we collected 8 eggs!! We are certain that there were none in the nesting boxes when we put them away last night so we either have chickens laying more than 1 egg or maybe the "lost" chickens are coming back to lay their eggs in the coop before wandering off again.......strange!!

Over the last few months we had received emails from Dianne Summers alerting us all about the bTB disease in alpacas and this has now been supported by BAS who have advised us to attend the bTB meetings that Gina Bromage will be talking at. Easter-Wood will certainly be attending the nearest venue in January next year.