A quick update

A very, very fluffy alpaca

I still have lots of deadlines to keep me busy and the weather has suddenly turned rather warm. It's over 15 degrees warmer than it was last week and much more humid. Our alpacas are struggling and so we are are shearing, or at least trying to. We are having to time our shearing in between the showers, as we don't have a nice big barn to do it in. Shearing also means I have to catch up with work in the evening, so no long-winded blog this week either, just some pictures to be going on with.

Ian has been doing a lot fixing on the
greenhouse. The old plastic is definitely showing
a lot of wear and tear, especially in the windy
weather we were having in the last few weeks

Aggie is smiling because she's in the shade.

We had help to shear Brencis because he is such a handful
when it comes to shearing. However, he wasn't too bad at
all. We still needed a bit of extra help, but we wonder if he
was just looking forward to getting rid of his winter coat.

I thnk it's Vanessa. So hard to tell with
these girls after they've been sheared. Even
Ian is getting them mixed up.

So here we have a white fawn alpaca. Errr! How long have
we had fawn alpacas?

Mari is looking as fluffy as her son 

Mr. P doing his cardboard cutout impression. He's so dark
when sheared he looks like a shadow. You can also see a
fluffy George in the background eating over the fence. Tut
tut! George.

We wonder if Turbjørn has injured his neck or if he has
arthritis setting in - common in alpacas unfortunately. We were
very gentle with him when it came to shearing. 

We've had plenty of dramatic skies and some dumping of
rain. Good for the garden and the grass is almost growing
as we watch. Soon it will be haymaking time too.

I know the feeling Herkules. Another one who had to be
handled very gently this year and sheared carefully. He's
full of wrinkles and as skinny as anything. Fortunately he
is very much better than he was a few weeks ago. 

The view of a hare from our caravan. There seems to
be a lot of them this year. May be it was the mild winter.
Just hope it wasn't off to eat my vegetables.

I found this little chick near our outside loo. One
of the parents was feeding it. It wasn't in a very safe
place because our cat could easily find it. The nest
may be in our barn roof, so no way of putting it safely
back in its nest. I got out the cat basket and popped it
inside. At least it could still be fed and get out when
it wanted, but at least allow it time to recover and
keep it safe from our cat. At least she can't get into it, without help.

Our sign has been cleaned up and re-varnished ready for
re-opening. We have had some visitors, just small groups and
no talk about what we do or the shop set up. We will open up after
my defence with a coach load. Ooerrr! Still the infection
rater for Covid19 these days in Latvia is very small.

Before shearing. Too hot and melting!

So some other snippets of news. We have done our regular shearing in Estonia. Ian is so much faster these days that we managed to do 14 in one day and still be home at a reasonable time. That doesn't sound much when some people can do many more in one day, but then they don't have great food on offer either. Again we are fairly safe doing this as our friends are also living in remote areas. When it comes to those we don't know or in less remote places, like mini-zoos then we will be much more cautious. 

More progress on my PhD too. A copy of my thesis has now gone to the library and some copies have been printed. Hopefully I will get my own copy soon.