A night off

It has been a lovely sunny day today, so different to yesterday you'd never believe the difference.

Mum and dad have gone home this afternoon after mum had helped me with a few lambivac injections. She's been a great help the last few days, god old mum - figure of speak, she's not so old, honest mum!

The sheep also need a bit of attention, they have all had their toe nails trimmed and there were some that needed routine vaccinations.

Thanks mum

I nearly couldn't blog tonight, our computer had a major issue and we couldn't even turn the thing on. Thankfully Paul has worked his magic and here I am.

Mum has been a godsend today, we have vaccinated the whole herd, every single one of them. Mum was panicking a bit about some of the boys, until I pointed out that the boys were well behaved and it was the pregnant girls that she should be worried about.

I started off by weighing all the youngsters with the exception of Ochre, he was just too heavy for me. I managed everyone else though, even Lucia and Kazuo who are round the 35kg mark.

There were a few toe nails that needed trimming too, that wasn't a pleasant job as their feet were all rather muddy. It is amazing how much we have had to trim nails this year.

I managed to pop over to Carol's today to take some fleece for Dave to card and some yarn for Carol to knit with. Can you believe I came back with another five items she's knitting since last Friday! Mind you I booked in another stall today so probably a good job.

On that note I am going to return to my hat knitting.

I can't keep up

I think winter has well and truly arrived today, it was so dark when I got up and it was dark really early this evening. I don't like the dark nights other than it's an excuse to knit!

Talking of knitting I spoke to Carol this afternoon and she has already knitting almost all of the black yarn I took over on Friday. She can knit faster than I can spin it and that's with Dave doing the carding bit too.

I am heading over to see Carol in the morning with more yarn, this time commercially spun supplies which should keep her going whilst I spin. I am also taking some more fleece for Dave to card who has almost finished, if not finished by now the Nefertiti he was working on. I decided to skirt Chiquita and Willow for him this time.

I really do need to train Paul up on a job, he can take his pick, knitting, spinning weaving or felting. Whilst he's laid up he could learn don't you think.

My mum and dad have arrived this evening, mum is going to help me with some husbandry jobs which need doing and two pairs of hands make toe nail trimming and injections so much easier.

Legend has a date

We have had a lovely trip out today, Legend had an appointment with a lovely girl Milly who we sold last year to Lavender Bee Alpacas, so it was off to the Borders.

I had a few spit offs to do before we went, Katia and Alice who are heading off to their new home shortly are both spitting off as is Oonagh who was our last girl of the year to birth. Unfortunately however Ursula sat again, so she obviously didn't take on her last mating.

As I have mentioned in the past we set ourselves a birthing deadline and Ursula has now pasted this so sadly she will stay empty over winter and be mated in the spring.

Juliet from Lavender Bee had kindly invited us for lunch with them and their children before Legend's date which was jolly nice. Thank you it was lovely, and you must be very proud of your children they are a credit to you.

We then headed off to the girls, it was the first time we'd seen the cria from their girls, a Golden Guinea daughter and a Gianmarco's Masterpiece daughter both are fantastic. Tatiana, the Guinea daughter is the spitting image of Meketaten, one of our Guinea girls.

Whilst we were there we helped out with a quick pedicure. Long standing readers may recall Geena's 2008 cria Gaussian who had had immense trouble to feed seems to dislike toe nail trimming as much as he did his bottle! Although saying that he was too badly behaved really.

Milky mush

Not a lot to report today so I thought I would share a couple of photo's with you.

Every herd has one, and many of the regular readers will know that our girl that is most difficult to deal with is Kate. Kate has a fabulous grey fleece which has won ribbons which is why we put up with temperamental behaviour. Luckily for me she likes men even less than she like me!

Anyway this year Kate has a male cria, Ochre, at foot which has thankfully inherited his sire's (Golden Guinea) pleasant nature. In fact Ochre has to be one of the nosiest cria we have ever had. He had no fear and will run up to anyone or anything to investigate it, he causes many of the local horse riders grief by running along side them in his field which usually spooks the horse.

Here is Ochre having an early tea this evening......

Until that was he saw me with the camera and came to show off his milk mush!

Macmillan Coffee morning

As today was the Worlds Biggest Coffee morning for Macmillan we decided to nip round to Carol and Dave's for coffee; they always have nice biscuits there!!!!

I went to take some more yarn as Carol was running out but what with running round playing nurse to Paul and being so excited by the latest batch of Mary's black yarn I'd spun for her I forgot to take anything other than the black!

I was soon forgiven for my blond moment once I produced the black yarn and a pattern that I knew Carol would love. I'll drop off the rest of the yarn next week - honest Carol.

Carol has been busy knitting to replenish the stock and I've sent mum a couple more special orders. So I'd est get my knitting needles smoking before they get on to me.

A new coat

It started off nice and sunny this morning but the rain that was forecast soon arrived, thankfully after I'd got my washing dried.

I'd set myself the task of making Minimus a new coat today. Regular readers may recall he was my 4.04kg cria born two months ago, well he was just short of 14kg when I weighed him earlier in the week so I'm quite happy with his progress.

He was bursting out of his old coat so I needed to get the sewing machine out today. I like to make all my own cria coats, that way they are made to measure and I do enjoy being creative. So this evening Minimus is sporting a new blue number. I did intend to take a picture but the batteries in the camera needed charging!

It certainly feels like winter has arrived this evening, it is cold wet and was dark very early. Hopefully this winter will be kinder than the last one.

At the risk of being called a nerd!

In between nursing and fetch it carry it duties I have been immersing myself in fleece stats today.

We have received this years fleece results from Yocom-McColl and I love to contemplate and compare, it's the nerd in my Dave!

Our finest cria from last years comes as no surprise, Sandstorm, our fawn boy from Little Miss Irraquoy. I'd estimated he would be about 16 microns, close he was 15.3 with only 0.4% over 30.

I won't bore you with all the facts and figure but I will just share one of our elite white stud boy, Gianmarco's Masterpeice's stats, 19.9ADF 4SD 19.9CV 1.7%>30 - not bad for a four year old working male eh! He has produced us and clients some fantastic cria this year too.

On a much lighter note, I promised to share with you some photos of the sheep race trophy we won at the weekend. Well here are the proud winners

Animal and human taxis

In between all my nursing duties and providing a taxi service for Paul (who is still immobile), he needed taking to the doctors, I have finally managed to give the trailer a complete clean and disinfect following the trip to Whalton show at the weekend.

I also give the little sheep taxi a clean too as that had also been used. I wish I could be so thorough at cleaning the house!

As Paul is out of action the littlies haven't been weighed for a little while, so this afternoon I went out with the sling and scales. It's not the easiest job in the world to do on your own when no one wants to stay still.

Minimus is still gaining nicely and was 13.91kg which is pleasing. He is a chunky little fellow now, hopefully he will gain some height soon too. Rory, my top up bottle fed cria is also gaining weight, not quite as quickly as his mates but he is 15.7kg so nothing to worry about there.

I have almost finished the latest scarf, you'd laugh I was sat outside the doctors knitting in the car waiting for Paul and when I looked to my left there were two old ladies doing exactly the same thing.

I'd been taking to mickey out of Paul when we arrived at the doctors as there were two old men shuffling in and I said he looked like one of them so I was glad that by the time he finally came out of the doctors they'd both gone or he would have been saying I looked like one of them.

When it's gone it's gone

After this weekends show I have been on shop updating duties today. The on-line shop seems to take forever to keep up to date but it's one of those jobs I can't afford not to do. It would be just my luck to sell something on there which I have sold at a show.

That happened once last year, whilst I was at a chow I sold a hat and scarf set only to come home to find an online purchase for the same thing. Thankfully the customer was happy for the set to be done in a slightly different colour!

I have got a number of markets booked between now and Christmas but at the rate things are selling I might run out of stock. I proud myself on only using fleece from our own animals so once it's gone it's gone.

Paul is really suffering today, so I am even more of a slave to him than normal, it must be bad as he's going to the doctors tomorrow and we not frequent visitors there. In fact I've not been to the doctors since we moved up here 4 years ago and I never even registered anywhere at the house before this one!

Well done dear

After sheep racing yesterday it was Paul's turn today, he was running the Great North Run in his naughty nurse costume, despite being crippled earlier in the week by some idiot riding his mountain bike on the pavement!

Paul completed with 13.1 miles in 1 hour 43 minutes which I think is fantastic, he wasn't so pleased as he was expecting to do it 10 minutes quicker before his injury. He has managed to raise in excess of £3,000 for Macmillan Cancer, so a big thank you to everyone who sponsored him. He is already tucked up in bed with a very sore foot.

Going back to the sheep racing Sam along with lots of other people have been asking how I managed to get my sheep to run and jump the hurdles. I think I've mentioned on more than one occasion in the past my sheep are all very friendly and some of them (Mia in particular) don't think they are sheep so they have been quite easy to train. Sheep will do anything for a bit of food, plus knowing their names helps.

Good luck with the training Sam if you get up to scratch you will have to enter next years race!!

Finally I thought I would share a few more photo's from yesterday. Here we have Golden Guinea with Hughie in the background.

Here we have Loki stood with Sandstorm and Tenzing relaxing!Here is part of our knitwear (after it had been touched and felt so not as neat as it was as the start of the display).

We are the Champions!!!

Today has been manic, it was the Whalton Show so it was up and at it early for me again.

Typically Rory wouldn't have his bottle this morning; why do they do that? We were going to be out until tea time so we was missing his lunchtime top up and he wouldn't have his breakfast, he always has his breakfast - well not today! He was very pleased to see me this evening and guzzled his bottle without stopping.

We were taking along some of the boys to Whalton, as nice mix of colours and sizes, which went down well. Thankfully I had a few helpers, Denise who stewarded for me at Kelso and Carol and Dave (Happy Birthday Dave!) who knit, card and button make for me, not to mention relieve us of lots of manure.

I spent a lot of time dealing with the sheep race so without the help we would never have managed, so thank you again folks.

The sheep race really drew in the crowd, there were four heats of four sheep then the grand final. First out for Barnacre Baaaarmy Bolters was, Chop Chop Bruiser! He went storming off round he course and over the hurdles and won, I was so excited I'm surprised you didn't hear me cheering down at the GWR fleece show.

My next racer was Ewe Try It Ebony, she's actually Bruiser mum. She to won for the Barnacre team. Third out was Mocha to Go, and boy did she go, we won this one with the biggest margin yet. So far three out of three, I was hoping for an all Barnacre final.

Mia (Me-a) Racer was out last sheep out, and she was leading until the last hurdle when she heard somebody rattle a crisp packet and stopped dead in her tracks as she thought she might be missing food which let the rest of the field through. Oh well I suppose it was only fair we gave someone else a chance.

The winners race for the Championship Cup was the grand finale and I'm pleased to say having given up one of the places to one of the other competitors (through gritted teeth mind, we'd earned it but thought we'd give the others another chance). So two in the final Mocha and Ebony and we came first and second!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Not bad eh, I think I might have to take up sheep race training.

I can hear my bed calling now so I will share more with you tomorrow.

Just one final note, good luck for the Great North Run tomorrow Paul for me and all your paca friends. xx

Sheep race preparation

It has been another busy day, I really do wonder what on earth I did with all my time before we got alpacas. I still have few things left on the list so this will be a short blog tonight.

All the latest knitwear is labelled and ready to go tomorrow to the whalton village show. It is going to be rather hectic for us, not only have I got my knitwear there I also have the alpacas and sheep for the sheep race - more on that tomorrow though.

Because of the restrictions relating the movement of sheep, they had to be taken to the showground today. Things didn't quite go according to plan when one of my sheep racing team spotted fresh grass and jumped the trailer ramp! After a few cross words I managed to get them all in and they are now in where they should be.

Saying that Mia, my escapologist sheep, doesn't usually stay where she is supposed to so I just hope she is still there in the morning and doesn't try to make her way home. She was none to impressed when I left her in the company of 'wild' sheep.

Just time to take your shoes off

I have been frantically knitting today to finish a grey scarf that I wanted to take with me at the weekend to Whalton Show along with all our other alpaca goods, and I am pleased to say I managed it, and here it is.

Carol and Dave have returned from their holidays tonight and Carol has been busy. She texted me on her way back in the car saying that she was busy knitting and would have some more stock for me to collect if I wanted to go and fetch it.

I was so excited to see what she'd been knitting I hardly gave them time to take their shoes off let alone unpack! All the new stock which includes a couple of new lines, which you will have to wait and see when I get the camera out are great. Everything has now been washed and is laid out drying ready to be labeled and boxed.

I thought I would also share with you a couple of photo's I have received from Lavender Bee Alpacas, the first is their lovely Gianmarco cria, Anastasia. She looks stunning, her mum Milly is from Accoyo Remarque so she this little girl has a very good pedigree to match her impressive fleece.

Here we have both of their girls 2010 cria, you may recall I posted a photo of Tatiana when she was first born, she is from Golden Guinea and is the spitting image of one of our Guinea girls, Meketaten, who I have just noticed Paul has missed off the Meet the Herd section of our website!

wind chill

It has been another day of sunshine and showers today with gale force winds, so I made sure I held on tight to the gates!!

Jayne commented that it looked like summer on my photos yesterday, well it felt like it in between the showers and when the wind stopped blowing. It has been cooler today but just as sunny at times so I managed to get a nice shot of little Minimus.

He is gaining weight nicely, although time will tell if he catches up with the others eventually. He certainly doesn't realise that he is smaller than most of his playmates. Today he was jumping on Gabby, much to her disgust.

My parents have gone home this evening, they are always a great help when they are here. Mum has been busy knitting whilst dad has been cracking the whip over her and helping me 'fix' things.

This evening we took them out for a lovely pub meal to show a bit of our appreciation. From there mum and dad went one way home and Paul & I came back home the other.

What the man doesn't know..........

It has been really windy here again today, so much so this morning as I walked through the gate with some hay in my hand the gate blew back with such force it completely sheared the hinge off the gate!

Thankfully my dad was still here so we have fixed it before Paul even knew I'd broken it! Well what he doesn't know won't hurt him, it's a good as new now look...

I managed to do some spit offs this morning, thankfully none of the girls I was testing were interested in Gianmarco. Fingers crossed that means that Katia, Oonagh and Ursula are now pregnant.

Whilst the sun was shining I managed to snap this photo of Katia (Mary is in the background), Katia is usually camera shy, it's not very often I manage to get a nice shot of her.

I also caught Freyja and Wynfor playing, Freyja seems a little confused as is usually the case she was jumping on the boys!

Flying off the shelf

I have spent today catching up from our weekend on the road. This morning I sorted out all the stock and did a full stock take to make sure everything tallied, and I'm pleased to report it did.

This afternoon I have been updating the shop as I spoke to many people over the weekend who were planning on having a look at our online shop, which is now looking rather depleted again! I better get cracking the whip with mum and Carol, although saying that mum has just passed me a pair of gloves she's just finished. They are knitted in Chiquita's own yarn and are incredibly soft. I will get a photo of them to share with you soon.

Taking of knitting I met a lovely interesting lady, Vanessa, whilst we were at the Berwick Food Festival who was very passionate about her knitting. She writes a great blog do you mind if I knit which is a good read and has some fabulous photo's on, not only of her knitting.

This evening we were planning on doing some spit offs but the wind is gale force and there are all sorts of things blowing round and banging so I thought rather than walk the boys up the lane I would wait until the morning; hopefully things will have calmed down by then.

It will have to be a short one tonight as I need to get writing my sheeps' racing cards for the weekend - more on that next week I think.

Berwick Slow Food Festival

To say we are tired is an understatement, Both Paul & I and the boys (Loki, Sandstorm & Tenzing) have been none stop all weekend at the Berwick Slow Food Festival.

It was a lovely weekend, we met lots of very nice people who took great delight in enjoying the alpacas, our knitwear went down very well too. I now need to get the on-line shop up to date before anybody tries to buy things I sold over the weekend, there were a number of people who were planning to look on-line.

We spoke to a few people who were thinking of getting, or looking into keeping alpacas who were very keen to know about our young boys that will be available later in the year. Having friendly relaxed animals at a show like this is a great way to show the public what a great experience alpaca ownership can be.

It was only Tenzing and Sandstorms second outing and they were very well behaved letting the public stroke and inspect their fabulous fleeces. Loki being an old hand it these 'away days' was happy to lay in front guarding the hay net all day.

Mum has coped superbly looking after everything at home for me, Rory was a good boy for her having most of his bottles.

I kept both mum and Carol updated with the latest knitting sales so they can make a start on replenishing the stocks ready for the next outing which is actually next weekend at the Whalton Show.

Ready for the off

It's just a short blog tonight as I've still got some labels to print, and a bag to pack and I've got to be up as some stupid time in the morning as we are off to the Berwick Slow Food Festival. Paul gets up just in time to get into the car so everything else is a pink job, i.e mine!

The car is almost packed, mum has finished the last pair of gloves and I've just put the last few phone charms together so fingers crossed we will have a good couple of days up there. We've never been before so it will be nice to go somewhere new with the Barnacre range.

I haven't told Hughie but we are leaving him at home this time and taking Loki, Sandstorm and Tenzing instead. The two younger boys need to get used to seeing strange people, with not going to the shows this year they've not been out much.

The three boys are spending the night at the side of the house to save trying to get hold of them in the dark in the morning. Some of the girls came flying over to see who was coming, Star and Sandtstorm were clearly pleased to see each other!

Happy Birthday Gianmarco's Masterpiece

Today is Gianmarco's Masterpiece's fourth birthday, he is one fabulous boy on all fronts, Marky's pedigree, personality and his fleece are simply superb.

At the risk of sounding 'nerdy', we are awaiting his fourth fleece stats back form the lab at the minute but his third fleece stats speak for themselves. With a micron count of 17.9, SD of 3.7, CV 20.4 and only 0.5% over 30. Just as a matter of interest I just typed into Alpaca seller search a stud with a micron of less than 18, SD of less than 4 and less than 1% over 30 and there were only 6, two of the results related to boys 15 months or younger, and one one of the results was a fleece result from 6 years ago. So there were three then, not bad eh!

This year has seen the first drop of Marky cria, he has produced us and clients some lovely cria who already have extremely impressive fleeces. We are really looking forward to watching them develop & grow.

I menetioned the other night about how the young girls had been reunited with their mums, and how Kealani in particular was desperate to be allowed near her mum Oonagh ("U-na") who was treated exactly the same by her mum, Blossom.

Kealani has been sitting with Oonagh's current cria Freyja in the hope that this might mean she can get closer to mum, but it's not working.....

She keeps on trying though..........

Interesting reading

Record keeping is an essential part of alpaca breeding and it is something I am particularly stringent with.

Now that all the birthing is over here at Barnacre I have been looking at all of our data to plot all the averages and spot the trends and anomalies. Amazingly the Barnacre average gestation at the start of 2010 was 346 days, and this years average is 346 days even with the bad winter and many more births (15) than we have had in previous years.

Our average birth weight was 7.68kg, even taking into account tiny Minimus who was 4kg, who is now a healthy 12.52kg. Our cria weight gains have been much higher this year than in previous years which we are thinking is probably down to the new field we have rented. It has not been grazed for many years and according to a Shepard friend this would allow different types of grass to appear with a higher calorific value.

All very interesting - well I think so!

The last cria of the year

I thought I'd woken in the middle of the night this morning it was so dark, in fact it stayed dreary until mid morning. Great excuse to sit knitting!!!

I have been waiting in for a couple of courier collecting fleeces to go down south and coursework for some of Paul's many students. Can you believe the collection window was between 9am and 7pm! The fleeces didn't get picked up until 6.30 either so I'd not dare venture far in case I missed the courier.

It did mean I managed to finish of the gloves I was knitting so that's another pair for the stall at the weekend; hopefully it won't get blown away.

I received a phone call from Lavender-Bee Alpacas this evening to say that Milly had given birth to a stunning female cria from Gianmarco's Masterpiece. I'm looking forward to seeing her.

That was the last cria due from our boys this year, they boys have done us proud, we are really pleased. Gianmarco has had 3 boys, 2 white and 1 fawn and 2 white girls. Legend has had five white cria 3 boys and 2 girls and Guinea has had 3 boys and 3 girls, all fawn or brown.

I've just been looking at the mating statistics for this year and the first two girls mated Sienna and Malika are exactly a third of the way through their pregnancy's today.

Fleece skirting

I have been busy skirting fleeces today. I did some at the weekend ready for the GWR fleece show which I'm waiting for the courier to collect so I thought I'd best carry on and get some ready to be sent off for processing.

I'm trying to find time to spin more myself this year, I'm not quite sure which night a week I'm not going to bed! When else I will fit it in I don't know; but I'm sure I'll manage it sometime.

I am planning on sending off those fleeces that I want to blend as the mill does a much better job of that than I can by hand, it is always a much more consistent colour. I'm about half way through, but the cria fleeces take ages as they are full of all sorts. I really don't know what more I can do to try and keep the youngsters clean other than wrap them in plastic bags!!

The wind is blowing an absolute gale at the minute, and has been all day. I'm hoping that it calmed down before the weekend as we are at a show with the knitwear and everything will blow away. We are also planning on camping on site!

On the move

Another busy day, I'm not sure what on earth we found to do with ourselves before we got hooked on alpacas!

We had some spit offs to do this morning with a number of the girls. Katia (who we recently sold with Alice and their respective cria), was mated two weeks ago and she was not at all impressed to see Gianmarco's Masterpiece so that is good news for Lisa & Karl down at Willowbank in Leicestershire.

Gabby who hates doing spit offs was off across the other side of the field as soon as she saw the boys approaching. She then had a dilemma as her very independent 9 week old daughter Lady Godiva was hanging round wanting to see what was going on. Gabby was calling and calling but Godiva had that convenient loss of hearing that we all get now and again. Gabby eventually decided there was no alternative but to come over, not before she had puffed herself up to twice her normal size, tail up and ears back.

Unfortunately Ursula decided to sit again, so we have remated her. This will probably be her last chance for this year as we don't really want any late born cria, so fingers crossed third time lucky.

We have reunited the young girls back the main herd today, it is always interesting to see how the mums react with they see their daughters from previous years. Nefetiti was particularly interested in saying hello to her first daughter Sienna, the same couldn't be said for poor Palm-Olive who was getting spat at by her mum Molly.

We left the trailer open in the field for a little while whilst we moved food troughs and hurdles so that everyone could reaquaint themselves with the ramp.

I was expecting Ochre to be the first one in there, he's not usually shy, however it was Alice who went in first closely followed by Chiquita and Ursula both of whom where used to going in there to the shows as juniors.

As you can see Alice (her son Kazuo is behind her) decided to camp down, I'm not sure if she though she was off to her new home or she would guard the ramp!

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Where are they

I'm glad you all enjoyed the photo of the naughty nurse, and yes I agree he was far to comfortable in a dress.

We had house viewing today, so I had to do some internal chores this morning; I much prefer being outside, and it certainly shows.

This afternoon we have been scrumping more hay, well not scrumping really. Alan had asked if we could deliver a trailer load to someone who has a shetland pony, and if there were any spare we could have them, so we got a few more to add to the winter supplies.

The kittens are in trouble tonight, they have stolen my alpaca ear rings! They have managed to removed them from my wooden mushroom and I can now only find one, so it is a short blog as I need to find the other one.

The naughty nurse

If you read yesterday blog I'm sure you are desperate to see what Paul was up to but scared at the same time - wise move; it was very scary!

As I've mentioned before, he is running the Great North Run in aid of Macmillan Cancer Support. Paul has agreed to run the half marathon in fancy dress if he raised enough money. Well today he went to work as the naughty nurse.

I am slightly concerned that he felt far too comfortable leaving the house in a dress this morning!! He has raised lots more money though, so I will let him off on this occasion.

Back to things slightly more sane, Little Miss Irraquoy is 4 today. She is a top class girl with NWA Ltd Ruffo in her pedigree.

Last year we got a cracking fawn boy from her sired by Cambridge Buckingham, we have high hopes for Sandstorm. Having only attended the one show this year, this has been Sandstorms only outing and he was placed 1st Junior Fawn Male.

This summer Irraquoy has had a very impressive white boy sired by Legend of Spartacus, we are so pleased with him we have remated her to Legend in the hope of a little girl of equal quality next year.

Stacking our loot.

After all the excited of hay gathering yesterday, today I had the trailer to unload, we ran out of daylight hours last night.

Great exercise for mum I thought; well she said she wanted to loose weight and get fit! No, honestly she said she wanted to help, so we emptied and stacked our loot. The girls got all inquisitive when they saw me with the trailer on the move; they really don't miss a thing.

I nipped over to Robson and Cowan, our local Country store to pick up Rory's milk and a new tarpaulin as the mice seem to have had a bit of a feast on mine and I had to keep poking mum to keep her awake (I will be in trouble when she reads this!).

They are on their way home as I type so hopefully she will manage it without having to stop to wake herself up. Mum and dad are always a great help when they are her, thanks to both of you.

Anyway must dash I have Paul's nails to paint - come back tomorrow to see more, if you dare!!!!

Yippee, hay at last

It has been another lovely day today, in fact it has been nicer today that it was for most of August. I also heard on the radio that September is supposed to be going to be a good one - not that you can really ever trust the weathermen!

I got the nod from Alan this afternoon, his hay has been baled so I could go and get some supplies. Unfortunately he doesn't have his usual stocks so we were restricted on small bales this year. Hopefully he will be able to top us up over winter with large bales.

The youngsters were getting rather excited as they watched us filling up one of the shelters with hay and the trailer is full of it too. It got too dark to start rearranging the garage so it all fits in tonight so that is tomorrows job.

Today is Kealani's 1st birthday. She was our first baby from one of our own babies and is just like her mum Oonagh in every way, very friendly and doesn't like to eat from the troughs.

My mum has been feeding the local wildlife today - Midge's, she is covered in bites from head to toe. On the plus side at least they have left me alone!!!!