Familiar faces

Now with Summer slowly slipping by (that sounds terribly depressing!), we will soon be saying farewell and bon voyage to our family of swallows who annually nest in our stables. The parents have, I believe had two sets of youngsters this year and the current occupants of their nest are well and truly on their way to making that momentous journey south................see pictures below;

Another non-alpaca story is that since we have had our chickens decimated by that scoundral of a fox, we have been constantly keeping a watchful eye on the remaining two chickens which are permitted to roam, free around the farm only during daylight hours. The other day, I was surprised to see that one of them had bagged itself a very large frog!! There it was, trying its best to swallow the poor creature with, not surprisingly, little success! The very next day however, the same chicken had taken a fancy to a sloworm which it had disturbed from the undergrowth. I made an attempt at rescuing the aforementioned reptile but this time, the chicken made off at full gallop running away from me with the sloworm wrapped around it's neck like a college scarf. I did however manage to catch up and am pleased to say that the creature was relatively unharmed apart from a shortened tail! I guess if I had not rescued the poor chap, we would have had to put up with slow-boiled eggs for a while!! :o)

We had a visit from a lovely couple from the New Forest last week who are investigating the possibility of setting up their own Alpaca business. They are due back again this Friday to have further discussions so we are looking forward to meeting them again and having more "Alpaca chat", along with the customary coffee and cake of course!

Since we now have Cambridge Ice Cool Lad back at Easter-Wood, he has been busy mating our girls for next years stock and to date, he has had 4 "interviews" with another 11 to go including the 3 girls we sold recently as they are on agistment with us.

Our farm is adjacent to a public footpath and as I was closing the entrance gate the day before yesterday, I was approached by three walkers/ramblers who commented that they could not see our Alpacas and so I duly invited them in to take a look at our new crias. After the regulation footbath, we walked across the paddock to introduce them to the youngsters. If they could, I am certain that they would have secreted a couple of the cria in their rucksacks as much "oohing and ahhing" took place with some of the youngsters even bold enough to allow the occassional stroke!! How can anyone not fall for these adorable animals?

As it is harvesting time, I managed to spend half an hour today picking blackberries. We have an abundance of these growing all around the perimeter fences so it would be a waste not to collect them. Looking forward to a nice Blackberry pie Sheila!! Yet again, we also have had a bumper harvest of mushrooms this year so what with fresh eggs and mushrooms, we have been spoilt for hearty breakfasts!!

Finally, whilst out with the camera today, I took a few pictures of our girls and boys.......

This one of our "mature" ladies; Torn Ear

Easter-Wood Leia out of Wellground Close Encounter

Here we have (from left to right) Easter-Wood Leia from Wellground Close Encounter, Easter-Wood Diego from Cambridge Samson and Easter-Wood Metisha from Cambridge Neptune