Now where do I begin? Part 1

Shadows of their former selves

Well the last two weeks have been a bit of a whirl and so this will be a blog in two parts. For those who follow our Facebook page you will know we finally got the boys sheared. They do look funny and were a little cold when the temperature dropped again.

Hard to tell which is Mr.P and which is a shadow

Two boys waiting their turn. Not happy as there was a lot of
humming going on

The cold weather really set us back with shearing and planting and meant we were running behind for  preparation for the felting course. Fortunately our felting tutor, Heather Potten, came a few days earlier to set up. I'm quite sure that weeding the greenhouse wasn't on the her list of to dos, but she was great and pitched in. We did get most things done but left a few jobs for Ian to finish off when we went to collect the participants. One of the jobs was to make a coat hook and he made a very nice one. He wasn't too happy though about cracking his head on it.

This is my best side

No this is!

Looking Sphinx like

One of the things we had to sort was some insurance and I asked a friend who does translations of formal documents for a translation for liability insurance. It was funny to see the look on the insurance agents face when we went with the translation. There ay have been a formal translation for the term, but it was still not something she had come across before.

Need to get the energy levels up after losing a fur coat

We were hoping to vote in the general election in the UK and thought we had registered for a postal vote. Unfortunately we didn't receive any voting forms. The area we could have voted in also voted in a Conservative to a seat held by Labour for many years and I thought it would have been a safe seat, obviously not. At least the difference was not just two votes. We did get to vote in our local election though, so we are pleased about that.

Smooth! He is hard to shear as he is difficult to see in the shed

We had some very keen visitors the previous week. They asked lots of questions, which Ian loves and they even took Brencis for a walk. They were here for two hours and gave us more for the tour for the extra time they took, which is always greatly appreciated. After the visitors went Ian came to fetch me, Aggie was not happy and making a lot of noise. The timing was worrying because it could signal she was in labour and an alpaca birth late afternoon is not good news. I crouched down at the door to watch, so that I did not stress her out and saw her baby

having a very good wriggle around. Ian moved in slowly, avoiding her gaze so she did not feel threatened and talking gently to her. Eventually he managed to get hold of her and then I went in to help. I held on and Ian had a feel of her tummy. We decided that she was probably okay and just uncomfortable from the baby. She perked up later.

And this is what they do after shearing - a good roll in the
dirt

Trying to get work done for the course was uppermost in our minds, but naturally there were also other jobs associated with managing land and animals. Ian spends a lot of the summer keeping grass under control and this year was no exception. We have moved quickly from the slow growing grass of cool days to rapid growth with the warmer days and rain we've had over the past few weeks. Ian has also made progress on the next alpaca house, but not as much as he would like, especially the day when there a few short sharp showers, just as he got everything out.

At least these don't sting, but they don't half cling on

Well that will do for part 1, especially as I am typing one handed due to getting a hornet sting from one that landed on my coat and wasn't happy when I picked my coat up. Thank goodness I'm not allergic too them