Spinning Suri

Amongst other craft work and farm work I’ve been spinning my first Suri fleece, Mr Frizzle’s to be precise. 

Suri fleece differs from the Huacuya fleece by not having much crimp and by being silky and hanging in ringlets.  The lack of crimp means that longer fibres are required in order to get a thread that doesn’t break which is why Suri alpacas are usual shorn every other year.

I was told that it was simple to spin Suri direct from the staple, (the ringlet) but I didn’t find it worked for me.  So after a bit of experimenting I ended up with the following method.

Starting at the left of the picture above is the raw fleece.  There is no need to wash it as unlike sheep’s fleece there is no lanolin to contend with.

I separated out the locks into manageable pieces; they are shown above the hand carder.  I then drew each lock across a hand carder until I was left with a lock of straight silky fibres – the lock to the right of the hand carder. 

The soft fluffy fibres I removed, shown at the top right in the patch of sunlight will not go to waste.  They will all be drum carded, the fibres on the roll at the bottom right, and spun at a later date.  I will then compare the two types of yarn I produce.  But at present I’m concentrating on the long silky fibres and trying to produce a worsted type of yarn.

The colour changes in producing the yarn is also impressive.  Alpaca wool may not contain lanolin but anyone who has watched alpacas in the field will know they love to roll on the dirt.

So on the left are the carded locks, in the middle is the plied yarn having come off the spinning wheel and on the right is the balled yarn after it has been washed. 

It’s really hard to believe that it’s all come from the same fleece.

I’m really looking forward to spinning the combed out fibres too; they are much softer and fluffier that what I’m spinning at the moment and I want to try and spin them in a woollen style and compare the two types. 

The Hay Harvest 2013

 

The hay has been done and is in the barn: Three days of shifting hay bales, not all mine I must add.  There are three groups of us who get our hay cut at the same time and we then help each other to bring it in and store it. 

This year I had nigh on 300 bales but not all are usable.  The weather has been strange as I’m sure I’ve previously said and for the first time since I’ve been here, there was standing water down the middle of most of my hayfield and that’s even with the hay being cut nearly a month later than usual.

But I have a hayloft full of hay, around 240 bales thanks to some wonderful friends.  All the doors are open beneath the hayloft to help make sure it stays cool and, should any of the bale be slightly damp help dry them.  The bales have been stacked no more than 4 high and only one bale wide, (across, two bales lengthwise), and a gap of 50cm between each of the stacks.  The batteries have been changed in the smoke alarms and I’m now just going to be a bit paranoid for the next month or so as the barn is part of my house and I sleep right next to the barn!

Another Quarter Turn

That wheel just keeps on turning. The sun shone today and to celebrate I thought I would make a Brigid’s Cross.

While collecting the twigs for the cross, I came across this in the flowerbed. I think it’s a young weasel so I guess the tail-less decapitate one I found back in June 2008 was a weasel too.


My apologies to everyone who’s commented on my previous posts for not responding, I will try and do better. I’ve now put in the e-mail filter/rule on Outlook to separate out all the blog comments so I can easily respond to them rather than the notifications getting buried in amongst all the e-mails I get (sadly usually junk).

Nothing really major to report over the last week apart from enough rain to keep the ground unworkable but at least the ponds and ground water should be replenished. I’ve been working on my planting list. This is a very simple Excel spreadsheet, based on one from the Tiny Farm Blog, where I list all the seeds I’m planting along with when to plant, planting distances, where in the rotation they are going etc so I have all the information in one place on a few of sheets of paper. One advantage of this is that I can automatically work out how many of each plant I need for each row I want to plant in my pottager. As part of this I've also been through all my seeds and sorted them alphabetically so I can find them when it comes to planting.

I’ve also started to knit a scarf with the wool I spun from Chestnut. I know I’m biased but alpaca wool is just so lovely and soft and warm, it’s a joy to work with it. I'll post a picture when I've finished it.

I’ve also just had another delivery of oak for the wood burner and that will keep me busy for the rest of the week cutting it to size. The logs are all in the barn at the moment to keep them dry but I need to cut them and move them out so that the barn is available for the alpacas should I need it.

Lighting is provided by the floodlight as even with the door fully open and the single light in this part of the barn there is not enough light to work safely. The saw horse is a real boon, I was using a couple of hay bales but this is a much better height plus it also has a ruler so I know that I’m not cutting the logs too big. The cooker takes up to a maximum of 45cm so the 1m long logs are cut at roughly 35, 35 and 30cm; the two longer ones going to the wood-store and the shorter ones into the pile for immediate use. Sounds a bit odd I know but it’s the only way I’ve found to get the wood-store pile to stack properly.


So as you can see, everything is set; 2 cubic meters of wood, an electric chainsaw (no fumes in the enclosed space), heavy duty wheelbarrow to transport logs to the wood-store, face-guard, ear-defenders and Kevlar gloves on the saw horse. What you can’t see is me hobbling around like a penguin in my Kevlar chaps – smallest size and still they are too long - and steelies. Hopefully I can get most of it cut before my midweek trip to the chiropractor as I’d like to give my back a chance to settle once it’s been straightened out again.

Spinning a Yarn

I’m not doing too well on my posting am I. Time is just flying by and there just seems so much to do.

Over the Christmas period I took some time out to do a little knitting and taught myself to knit in the round on 4 needles (post on that to follow). I then thought it was time to get on with teaching myself how to spin since I have fleeces and more to come in a few months.

So this is the first bobbin courtesy of Chestnut.

A little uneven and bobbly in places but overall I am very pleased with it.

I then plyed it and washed it.


And now have two hanks ready to knit.


As I said, overall I’m pleased with the result for a first attempt; like most things in life it was a learning curve. The thing that I realise most now is the importance of proper ‘skirting’ of the fleece. I wasn’t rigorous enough in removing the guard hairs or the second cuts so it’s not as smooth as it could be, but there is always next time.

Stardate 27th May – 1st June

The grass was green, the sun shining and dry weather promised for a week so it was time to make the hay.
I then found out what happens when long grass gets wrapped around the PTO


The cleaning kit


And an hour or so later with help from the chickens


Cutting continued followed by the tedding and ….


By the next day it was drying well and didn’t clog the tedder.


Another day of tedding and it was ready to bale.


The next day it was time to start bringing the bales in. I’d had lots of people who had said they would help with the haymaking but, the week of good weather, coincided with the week everyone was unavailable - sod’s law really. So off I set to the field.


The set of steps is essential as I’m too short to get onto the trailer without it. I could only lift the bales as high as the base level of the trailer, so I had to leave a gap at that level to place the bales onto the trailer and to get on and off the trailer. Added to that, the planks on the floor of the trailer are pretty rotten so I had to be really careful not to fall through. It took about 4 days but eventually I got all the bales, 250 or more (I lost count), into the hay loft – and only fell through that floor once.


It was hard work but I had a real sense of achievement at the end; the hay looked and smelt lovely and best of all, the alpacas loved it.

Shearing Time

Stardate 30th April 2009

The end of April is when Colin the shearer visits France and undertakes a whirlwind tour of a large part of the country shearing herds of alpacas. I was down for the 30th of April. Colin would be brought to me by the people he’d sheared for in the day and after he’d done my 5 I was to take him to the next people on the list. It’s a bit like pass the parcel.

I’d remembered to get them into the barn the day before so that I was sure that their fleece would be dry as you can’t shear wet fleece. I’d put in a couple of rings so that Colin could stretch out the alpacas and shear then. I was also very grateful to Sandy who came over for the day to help out; a very needed and appreciated extra pair of hands.



After an hour or so the alpacas had their summer cut.

A Red Letter Day

Today was the day the alpacas moved into their new paddock. Ann came over to help and see them go in – she has been wonderful in helping me to finish all the fencing; I couldn’t have got all of it fixed as tightly or as quickly without her. And I’ve not forgotten all the help G, M & C gave with the posts last summer; thanks guys.

Dragging buckets of water over there is going to be a bit of a drain so that should spur me on to finish the roofing of the shelter and install a rainwater collection system there.

Moving the alpacas was nearly thwarted by the rain; yes folks yet more rain. Nothing torrential but just a few millimetres every day or so and seven millimetres last night just for good measure. Reversing the trailer became impossible, it just skated over the mud but by going round the block I eventually got into a position where we could load them up and take them over to the field. Once there they couldn’t believe their eyes, grass and space, it was then heads down and munch away.


Having got them into the field, Ann and I decided it was time for a celebratory tea. I mentioned that since finding the nests where the chickens had laid the last lot of eggs, they’d moved and I’d not had any eggs for 3 days. While I boiled the kettle Ann went for a hunt around and finally found the last few days haul. They were hidden away in the bottom of an old straw bale. Only one of the chicken is using the nest boxes I made. I don’t think my animals appreciate my carpentry skills; the alpacas never went into the previous shelter I built them.


I now have a mini glut of eggs so I’m thinking about trying to dry some as a method of preserving them for next winter.

Update For First Week in February

This week has thankfully been a bit less traumatic, I’m still waiting for the results of the autopsy on Theo (autopsy is used for animals here in France) but Leah visited on Thursday and has given me some general pointers. So the alpacas will be out in their field as soon as possible and a couple of them need a tooth trim. The hay is not bad but not good either. I cut it a bit late because of the wet weather last year and that means it’s not as rich as early cut hay. No one round here got any early cut hay, but hopefully this year will be better and I’m aiming for a cut in May.

There have been chicken things too this week. Sadly sick-chick finally succumbed to whatever was here problem. She was the one who had the three maggot attacks last year. She seemed happy enough but never really recovered. Over the last few days of her life I noticed her tail was down quite a bit and an extra dose of wormer didn’t do the trick this time.

Egg-wise, I was really chuffed when the hens started laying after the shortest day but they stopped after the storm. I was a bit miffed at this as I was just getting back into the swing of having plenty of fresh eggs. Then on Thursday I noticed that the young hen was missing when I was feeding them and I wondered if a fox had been round. I carried on working round the house and then just in the time it took to turn round I noticed another of the hens had gone missing and not a fox in sight.

I then spotted her under a log stack that sent me looking for the other hen. I eventually spotted her under the branches of the felled tree round the back of the house. Once they were both out and about again I checked the two spots and was rewarded by 2 eggs under the logs and 13 under the branches. They’ve only been laying outside for a week so I quickly gathered the egg and took them inside to test them in a bowl of water. All of them sat at the bottom of the bowl, so eggs are back on the menu here.

On Wednesday I noticed a group of cranes flying over, four weeks earlier than last year. Well I think they are earlier, it might just be that I’m outside earlier than last year and so able to see them. Still it’s another harbinger of spring along with the first of my crocuses flowering. They are a little late but since I only put them in the ground Oct/Nov I think they’ve done really well. I’m now waiting for the snowdrops but they might take until next year to flower.

Oh What A Week

Suffice to say this has been a tough week. I was very lucky in respect of the storm damage here but at the start of the week, I had another alpaca die. Totally different symptoms to the others but sadly the same outcome. I am now at my wits end trying to find out why this is happening and why my alpacas will not put on any weight.

I have been through many reasons and have been told many conflicting 'solutions'. Loosing my beautiful Theo so soon after Ashan has knocked my self confidence greatly.

Since the vets here have no idea as to what has killed them, I've arranged for an autopsy on Theo and am now awaiting the results of that. Robin at Utopian alpacas has been really helpful again; we've been through possible causes and our current thought is liver fluke, although why he should have got it when the others have been here for longer is something we haven't' a reason for. Until the results come back though it's all speculation.

Robin has also put me in touch with an alpaca breeder, Leah, who lives about an hour north of here. She has very kindly agreed to come down next week to go through things with me and see if there is something I am doing that is wrong, to look at the land and to look at the hay. Local farmers have said the hay is fine but their experience is with cattle so maybe...

Tonight though I'm suffering from backache; I've spent most of the day helping a neighbouring farmer in his orchards. He had around 900 trees blown over in the storm and the local farmers have been working on his property for the last couple of days.

Yesterday I made a couple of chewy chocolate cakes for the communal meal this lunchtime while this morning found me in the orchard with about 20 other farmers. Everything was in swing. There was a group collecting and distributing 6 ft log posts to each prostrate tree, then the next group of 3 or four would move down the rows with a bucket-less digger. The digger arm was used to press the post 3-3.5 ft into the ground and then they moved on. After them came another ground with a digger (because they are tracked they coped better on the land which is totally saturated), a strap was placed round the tree and it was hauled back to vertical and then strapped to the post.

After that the tree was heavily pruned and then came me, along with Ann and another friend, N, and our job was dragging all the branches to the middle of the track-ways so they could be bulldozed out of the way.

It was interesting again that none of the French wives worked in the orchard, their job was to prepare the mid-day lunch, it's still quite sexist here. Being single and a farmer I think I honorary male, especially after I did the tractor run to the plum drying cooperative back in the summer

Part way through the morning we had a visitation, the Conseil General - the department's general council - arrived along with their official photographer, the local mayor and photographers and reporters from 2 regional papers.

Lunch tile came and about 30 of us sat down for lunch at the village hall and in typical French fashion it was simple and yet a feast at the same time. A vegetable based soup that was delicious made by one of the men from the village as his contribution as he was unable to help in the orchard due to having his knee smashed by a kicking cow.

Then there was grated carrot and macadonie (mixed veg) served cols but mixed with vinaigrette, surrounded by quartered hard boiled eggs. It was a feast for the eyes as well as the body, oh and there was home-made mayonnaise too.

After that the main course was roast pork and creamed potatoes. I dread to think what the calorific value of the potatoes might have been, I know that they contained butter, milk and creme fraiche. Delicious.

Then came the lettuce with an enormous platter of cheeses and after that the dessert accompanied the coffee.

After that it was back to the orchard for another hour or so before I had to leave to do my chores here. I have to say there is something really heart-warming seeing how so many people here are turning out to help their neighbours. There is still community spirit, one of the reasons I wanted to move here.

Looking at the amount of work that is building up here, I think I'm only going to be blogging once a week, partly because a lot of the work is going to be very repetitive and partly because I think I'm going to be rather tired by the end of the day and I need to use what time I have for research.

As I'm probably not going to be blogging tomorrow, Happy Imbolic to those who celebrate it.

Saturday’s Work

As ever there are at least 101 things to be done around here so I made a start on another one of them. I need to clear the two poplar trees that were felled across the area I’m turning into the veg plot.

I’m sorting through the branches and cleaning and putting aside any wood of a suitable size to burn – of which there is not a lot really, and burning the stuff that is too small – of which there is rather a lot. Poplar isn’t a good burning wood; I’ll have to season the logs for a couple of years I think, but it also means that the brash doesn’t burn that well either.



Luckily I’d removed some old hay from the barn that the alpacas didn’t want so I could use that as a starter; due to all the seeds in it I don’t put it on the compost heap. With the hay, an old cardboard box and later on some barbeque lighting fluid and I was to keep the burn going for 3 hours. I eventually cleared the area in the foreground of the above picture plus made a start on the area behind the tree trunk that’s hidden in this photo.

It doesn’t look very much in the photograph but the trunk is over a metre in diameter and the end of the tree, that just passes the first line of posts in the distance is around 40 metres away. A bit more work needed I think.

I had my supervisor of course, Snowy was really pleased when I peeled off my shirt, yes it really was t-shirt weather in the sun yesterday, and sat on it to make sure it didn’t go anywhere. The mist in the background of the picture is in fact smoke hanging round from my fire and the cooker, there wasn’t much breeze yesterday hence the t-shirt, albeit with a thermal vest underneath.

Catch-up Post

It's been a while since I last posted about the farm. As ever 'things' rather took over, the main thing being that my beautiful PR alpaca, Ashan, died. I went out one day and found him in the field unable to get up. I rushed him into the house and called the vet; his temperature was very low but apart from that there were no other clues as to the problem. He had an antibiotic and IV fluids and I packed hot water bottles round him and covered him with a blanket - thankfully my kitchen floor (the warmest room in the house) is glass tiled on concrete.

He seemed to recover and the following day his temperature was back to normal and he was up and wanting the others. One fast clear out of the animal part of the barn and Ann came over to help me walk all the alpacas up to the barn so that I could keep an eye on Ashan and he would have the company and the warmth of the others.

The following afternoon he was down again, again the vet came out and his temperature had plummeted again. He'd had another shot of antibiotic in the morning and seemed fine. This time he was obviously suffering but with what?

Sadly he died in my arms at 9:30pm, I'd gone back into the barn on one of my regular trips to collect and reheat the hot water bottles.

The next day the vet came over to do a post-mortem. I was expecting it to be due to worms or coccidia again. I'd had a long talk with Robin at Utopian alpacas and discovered from him that the Panacur I had been given for the alpacas was not strong enough and I had been told to give a far to small dose. None of the treatments used on alpacas have actually been tested on alpacas by the drug companies and it seems my vet was giving me the treatments designated for sheep. So I was given 2.5% or 4% Panacur when I should have been using 10%. The vet nearly had a fit when I administered nearly 5 times the cattle dose to the alpacas but that is what it takes.

The initial examination showed that Ashan had a full set of stomachs and that there were no lesions or ulcers so it looks like the gut was fine. Liver and kidneys looked OK too - I had to hold the body still while the vet cut, I don't think I would ever make a vetinary nurse but it was interesting all the same. She took away the lungs and heart to be examined my the main vet and I heard back later in the day that they felt there was congestion in the lungs and around the heart.

This diagnosis, and after discusion with Robin the fact that Ashan was dribbling before he died, has thrown up the posibility of Blue tongue. I've only been trying to get my animals vaccinated for the last 3 months! There is no official confirmation as it's been the holiday period and I don't think I'll hear anything until after the 5th. I've been told that there isn't enough vaccine, that I would get the vaccine when a larger herd of animals was vaccinated as the vaccine comes in doses of 100 animals and the vet wouldn't open a bottle just for 6 animals but I think I may have been given the real reason this time. While I'm registered as a farmer with alpacas, I'm not registered as a breeder of alpacas so I don't have a breeders number. This being France, If you can't fill in all the boxes on a form, which in this case would be a breeders number, you just don't get.

If I'd been told this was the problem back when I first asked I would be registered by now. As it is, that will be another job to do when the agriculture department opens again on the 5th.

On the plus side, I how have all the alpacas in the barn where I can keep a close eye on them and they have had a decent dose of wormer and I've also given them a dose of anti-coccidia treatment, one recommended by Robin. I really need to give them another type of wormer, Ivomec-D to work on any liver fluke that may be present. I have lots of the snails that indicate the possibility of liver fluke and the field they were in was very wet. However the vet won't order it for me. As I said he was horrified with the dose of Panacur I gave and has said I can't give another worming dose for at least 4 months.

I would normaly be in agreement on that but for the fact that I have lost an alpaca and I know that despite me giving the alpacas the treatments recommended by them I cannot get the alpacas to put on weight, in fact they are very under weight. If it's due to them having really high worm counts (oh and the vet doesn't think it necessary to have worm counts done) as they've not had the correct formulation or amount of wormer then I want to get them properly wormed as soon as possible.

This may sound a bit hard against my vet, it's not meant to be. He's probably the best vet around here but as alpacas are not common here and they don't appear in the dosage charts for the various medicine he plays safe.

So a bit of depression and a lot of work - Ann has been coming over a couple of afternoons a week and we've been pushing on with the fencing and nearly have the first field fenced - and I've not been posting. However, tomorrow is a new year.

To Brest and Back

Well not quite but pretty nearly. A 10 hour drive north through the rain and spray and then a 9 hour – I’d beaten TomTom into submission and stopped him from taking me cross country - back the following day, complete with the animal trailer.

No I didn’t just do it for fun, it was to pick up the latest male in my life. So without further ado let me introduce you to Theo:-

Theo was unfortunately left behind in the UK when my other alpacas were shipped over 18 months ago. On shearing just before departure he had been found to have a bad case of mites and wasn’t passed fit to travel. Since then he’s remained in the UK until there was an opportunity to ship him with some others, which finally occurred at the beginning of November. He’s spent a few days with Robin and Linda of Utopian Alpacas in Brittany who are a wonderful couple. My thanks go to them and everyone else who helped in Theo's move to France.

The Next Shelter

I had a visit yesterday from C and his brother M from the next village, which was a nice surprise. What was even nicer was that C volunteered himself to help me put up the new alpaca shelter in a weeks time. It will be so much easier having two of us to bash the metaposts into the ground and get the 4 metre posts up onto the roof.

Knowing that a date is set for the work meant that I needed to get the kit of bits cut to size and today being a warm dry day was ideal to get on with it.

When I made the first shelter I only had a small surform to whittle down the posts to fit into the metaposts and shaping the six posts took me over two days. Well I decided to buy myself an electric plane and this time it took a little over and hour, and a lot of that time was spent repositioning the posts. Well worth the expenditure especially considering I have another 3 shelters to build after this one.



After cutting all the pieces I then stained them and they are now safely stored back in the garage awaiting C’s return. With luck we should get the shelter up in a day and then I’ll get on with fencing the field.

Back From The Twilight Zone

As quickly as my lethargy descended it has evaporated, life has started again. So what’s happening, well not much over the last month but the last three days have been busy.

Friday was day one of the recovered me and I set about finishing some to the things I’d started over the last few weeks but been unable to do. So the lawn has finally been mown and with the grass collector on as well for the first time this year. It's been on my to do list for ages and with the leaves now falling I wanted to add the mix of leaves and grass to the compost bin. At the beginning of the week I could only manage a couple of rows before having to give up, Friday there was no stopping me.

After the lawn I decided to get the rotivator out and make a start on the area Sue and I had cleared. After that I thought I should stop and make sure I didn't overdo it.

Yesterday was also a full day although I spent most of it sitting down and reading a book. Ann had her 'car boot in the garden' sale to raise fund for the cats she looks after. I help by manning the stalls and helping with the putting away – it’s a nice way to spend the day, meeting other people and reading when there are breaks.

So round to today when I was looking forward to a lie in but was rudely awaken by the sound of the hunting dogs close by the house. A lot of the dogs are not well controlled and I fear for the cats, chickens and alpacas so it was dressing gown on and outside to see exactly where they were and which direction they were going.

Earlier in the week I took a walk down the garden towards the pond and around the ‘wood’ field, leading to the picture at the top of the post. In the basket are the last tomatoes of this year. I then found a couple of mushrooms lurking in the field below the small alpaca paddock. I was hoping a light shower of rain the other evening would have persuaded some more to appear but sadly not. I also found some rosehips and after my double cold I am going to prepare some rosehip syrup to see me through the winter, although I think I will have to go on some walks with Ann to find a sufficient supply of the hips.

After doing nothing all summer, my mangetout peas have finally bloomed and I’ve just started picking some as the first ground frosts are occurring. In a similar vein my cape gooseberries bloomed too. The fruit is still green and I’m not convinced they will ripen but I’m really hoping some will.

Back to today, I decided to add a little alpaca manure to the ground I’d been rotivating. The soil itself is reasonably fertile but when I lifted the potatoes, which I’d planted on a shallow bed of the droppings the worms had loved the addition and the soil texture had improved. Digging out the old manure heap I discovered it was full of mycelium and beneath the couch grass that had covered the heap I found these.

I’m hoping that I will be able to get a good crop of mushrooms next year now that I know they will grow here and where to look.

Finally for tonight, a picture of Sick Chick. She’s still looking OK but I will be checking her again tomorrow or Tuesday. Her tail is still up and she’s moving round happily with the others and her diarrhoea has stopped as well. I still think she will have at least another maggot attack before the hole is fully healed but I am far more hopeful about her long-term prospects. She’s the chicken in the foreground.

A Stressful Day

Today was a day I’ve been putting off for some time; it was the day I administered the worming injections for the alpacas. Up to now I’ve been a wimp and got the vet to do them or used an oral version (for one of the 3 doses per year) but I’d decided that this time round I’d better get on and do it myself.

I’d been preparing the alpacas by getting them used to being caught and haltered using the CamelidDynamics technique I mentioned back in December. The training sessions stopped over the winter, as the ground was far too wet and have been sporadic over the summer but the alpacas remember well.

Even Dartagnan who was spitting all the time when he arrived allowed me to catch and put fly-repellent on him without fuss the second time I had to catch him.

Today was the day I could procrastinate no longer; the weather was warm but not too hot, there was no wind and the alpacas were really calm. Then the combine harvester arrived in a neighbouring field. I waited about half an hour and by then they were accustomed to the noise and in fact the general background noise masked anything else. I was also fortunate that the French air force were not out on one of their training sortie – they turn somewhere just passed me on their low level flights.
So with catch rope and wand, Dectomax, needle and syringe and a handful of granules to lure them into the catch pen, I took a deep breath and set off for the alpacas.

The granules did the trick and they were quickly shut into the catch pen and the first one caught. The Dectomax was to de given subcutaneously and the books all describe taking a pinch of flesh and lifting it away from the animal in order to make a tent into which you place the needle. So far so good, fleece parted to find clean flesh but could I get the skin to pinch into a tent … no I could not.

After about 5 minutes I eventually found an area where I could get the needle in and number one was done. And so it was with all the others, finding a tent of flesh was nigh on impossible but eventually I found somewhere on each that was flesh and not fleece. On the whole they were really calm, Dior decided to couch which made her easier to deal with as once on the ground she wasn’t going anywhere and Dartagnan made a bit of a fuss but he is small enough that I could hold him in place with my knee.

It took an hour to inject and check over the 6 of them but they were all really calm throughout more than could be said for me but it was actually much easier than I’d envisaged. Yes some blood was spilt but fear not, no alpacas were hurt in the process it was just mine. I managed to stab myself twice with the needle while trying to get the safety cap off – well at least I should be worm free for a few weeks.

A Post about Posts.

Just a very quick post to say, thank you, to everyone who’s commented on the blog and apologise for not responding individually. We’ve started fencing the 3-hectare field; nearly all the post holes have been drilled by the tractor around the circumference – except for where the ground is so hard it can only get about 6 inches into the ground – but there are still all the inside posts to sub-divide the field to be done. Around 60 of the posts have been tamped in hard so only about another 440 to go! I’ll try and post more when we are not so exhausted, after 10 or more hours working on the field thinking is rather difficult.

The picture below was taken this morning with the first 60 or so posts in place waiting to be tamped in.

No Posts Doesn't Mean No Work

I've not posted for a while for a few reasons. The main one being that most of the work has been 'more of the same'. It's also been hot, 35°C and humid so working through the day has been impossible. As a result of this I've changed my routine; I get up early (well for me) and start work outside at 7:30 - I'm not a morning person so this is at least 3 hours ahead of my normal. I then work until 12 to 12:30 by which time it is getting too hot for me. Lunch and siesta follow followed by some housework until the temperature drops enough for me to carry on outside. My farm is in a shallow south facing valley and it seems to collect the heat from the sun. I then work until 9:30 or until it's either getting dark or I'm getting too bitten by mosquitoes. By then I'm far to tired to post.

Also Blogger has started giving me HTML errors if I try to cut and paste from Word; I usually write the post in a Word document that I add to and edit during the day. And I've noticed while writing this post it doesn't seem to be spotting all the spelling errors

So just what have I been doing? Well there's always the animals; the alpacas are still loving their new hay and devouring a bale a day. The chickens have stopped laying - the best layer is the one with the chicks so I'm wondering when she will start laying again. My second best layer has just gone broody as well and the other two, well who knows. I did wonder if they were laying alsewhere in the paddock but I've yet to find any eggs if they are.

I've been collecting the eggs daily from the new broody, she lays 2 eggs every 3 days and one of the other hens has I think laid twice in the nest in the last 8 days. When we finally got to 5 eggs I put the 4 I'd removed back under her and this morning she'd laid another one, so we now start the 21 day wait to see if they are going to hatch.

The 3 chicks are growing well although they are still far too small to be allowed out in the paddock. I have at least one pair of small birds of prey nesting in a tree adjoining the chicken paddock and the buzzards are always around too.

This week also sees my children coming over for their holidays and I'm trying to create 3 bedrooms for them. While I'm not quite there yet it's getting pretty close so they will have somewhere to sleep although they may prefer to be outside in the tent if it stays this hot.

The highlight for the week has been a visit from Debs of Lehners in France. She came over today to meet the alpacas and was due here at 2 pm. When it got to half past and she wasn't here I began to get a bit concerned. It turned out that despite reading and re-reading my direction to her on how to get to my place I'd managed to write a right when I should have written left - hang my head in shame. Debs being Debs wasn't too phased by it. She did a tour of my neighbours got an introduction to the mayor and got the correct directions from him. It was really lovely meeting up with Debs again and before we knew it the time had flown past and she had to race back to feed her animals.

I've been attacking the weed patch jokingly known as the veg plot and fruit area. The weeds around the fruit trees were getting on for as tall as me so thank goodness for the scythe. I've also had a go at rotavating a bit more of the area but the soil is now so baked that the rotavator just bounces over the surface. So I've had a re-think on weeding and am now scything down the large weeds and then hoeing what I can and trying to either fork out or pull out anything else. While it's not perfect it's quite fast and will stop the weeds from seeding.

Where I used the straw mulch it has been moderately successful. It has suppressed a lot of the weeds but has been colonised by the bindweed so I see a session of pulling that and burning it.

So while I may not have been posting I haven't been slacking. I still find the heat a bit hard to work in but it is easier than last year so I may be acclimatising at least a bit. It's so good to have the sunshine again after nearly half a year of grey weather.

Hay Time

Hay making was an interesting time and great fun too, I really enjoyed it. I’d been watching the weather and the other farmers and when the forecast changed and threatened rain I knew I was going to have to get cutting on my own. While cutting on the Friday I kept a good look out for leverets and I found 2. I thought I’d photographed them – I actually stroked the ears of one of them but no photographs were on the camera when I downloaded. I tried checking the camera screen while out in the field but the sun was so bright I couldn’t see a thing.

The buzzard, along with a couple of other smaller birds of prey and a few crows were following me round the field so I chased the leverets into the cover of the surrounding ditch to give them a chance of avoiding the circling horde. I didn’t see the buzzard take anything but the smaller birds had a couple of mice and the crows seemed to be after the locusts. The locusts have grown so quickly; about a month ago they were average size now they are more or less full size, 3 inches, long. I love watching them fly, they seem to me to be like fluttering fairies – hmm maybe I spend too long in the sun. What I also spotted were the beautiful cornflowers and some camomile, so the bunch of flowers at the end of the blog are now adorning my kitchen and just yell summer to me.

Regis arrived Saturday morning and showed me how to set up the tedder and then I spent a very pleasant time turning the hay. As I’ve said in previous posts, there wasn’t much so it dried really quickly and in the afternoon I put it into windrows. Sunday, Regis was away so baling was done on Monday and is in Monday’s post.

So Monday afternoon found me lying on my back on the top of a hay cart surrounded by wonderful sweet smelling hay with a cloudless azure sky above and brilliant sunshine. Life doesn’t get better than that.

We got about 100 bales off the field and have stacked them in the hay loft attached to the house. It was an interesting experience; I’d not been brave enough to venture up there on my own. Nothing to do with any possible inhabitants there but whether the floorboards were rotten. They creaked and bent a bit in places but held and we got the two trailer loads of hay safely stored.

That evening I gave the alpacas some of the hay from the broken bales. They ate it quite quickly so I took some more down a couple of hours later. They almost mugged me for it; I dropped some as the bale was falling apart but continued over to the hayrack to put out the rest. When I turned round they were almost fighting over what I’d dropped. I think I have some very happy alpacas and I’m happy too. They’ve got good hay again and I’ve got easy to manage bales, I can carry it down in one hand and each bale fills the hayrack and there’s no dust or bad hay to sort through. Suddenly feeding them has become a 10 minute job rather than the ¾ hour it used to take to pull enough good hay from the large bales.

A Bonus Day

No, there’s not been an extra day added to the week but I didn’t get the rain and thunder forecast for today. Instead it’s been sunshine the whole day (and it was dry yesterday too), so I abandoned the rainy day stuff I had planned for today and got on with scything down the 1.5 metre high grass along the ditch on the other side of the new vegetable area. That with animal feeding and washing just about sums up today. It doesn’t sound a lot but it has taken the day.

The cats have loved the warm weather, cue cute picture of Cid giving Hazel a quick wash.

Still it gives me plenty of time to cover yesterday and Tuesday.

The fencing posts for the alpaca paddocks have arrived – hurrah; hopefully the person who’s going to put them in will be round soon. I’ve no idea who it is as it’s being arranged by Regis.

The main news from Tuesday was the arrival of two new alpacas so let me introduce you to Dior and Dartagnan. Dior, on the left is a female while Dartagnan on the right is a male. They have both settled in really well although I think Dartagnan is missing some of his previous herd mates and hums a lot. No such problems with Dior who I think will eventually give Silver a run for her money and not be bullied.

Wednesday’ main event for me was a trip to the dentist, yes, the 3 weeks wait was finally up and the appointment was at 3:30. I found the place without any hassle and went into the waiting room. It was quite a different experience from my dentist in the UK.

In the UK I was with a modern practice, all shiny, new, lots of receptionists and lots of people waiting usually over half an hour their allotted appointment time. Here I was the only person. Granted I did have to wait but not very long. The next difference was that there was only one dentist and a receptionist who worked in a room off the surgery and not in the reception area. It turned out they knew of me; the receptionist is a friend of my neighbour and I’m easily identifiable as the Brit with the alpacas. The dentist himself only lives about a kilometre away too.

I’d gone prepared with a drawing of my teeth and a list of relevant words with their French translation. I explained that I had one tooth with a big hole in it but it was the tooth next to it that was actually giving the pain.

Both teeth were worked on by my dentist in the UK. I had to go onto a private dental insurance due to a lack of NHS dentists in the area and I had more done to my teeth after going onto the plan than I had before going on to it and that included all the remedial work that had to be done before they would let you join the dental insurance plan. In this case, a deep filling had to be done, while the dentist pulled my tooth around to the point I thought he was trying to extract it he managed to dislodge a filling out of the side of the adjoining tooth, something neither of us noticed until later when I had to go back because I was having a problem with it. He drilled out the hole and put in a new filling…that lasted about a week. Back again and he drilled out a bit more and put in another filling. That lasted about a month; just long enough until I had arrived here and of course cancelled my insurance.

But it was the adjoining tooth that he’d worked on that was causing the problem now and oh I heard on the grapevine that he didn’t last very long at the dental practice.

The dentist here looked at the hole and decided to check that it wasn’t that causing the problem. Did he poke and prod, not at all, he used a cold spray which caused no reaction from me so he was then happy that it was the other tooth. Another thing that was nice was there was no dental assistant dragging open one side of my mouth while a dentist worked on the other, it was far more gentle I didn’t feel so assaulted and I was actually able to talk to the dentist.

He removed the filling from the other tooth and saw that 2 of the roots had been killed but the previous dentist had left/missed the third when he did the previous work. It’s this root that is now part dead and decaying that is giving the pain. I’ve now got a temporary filling while the gunk that’s been put inside the root is hopefully killing it and I have to go back in 3 weeks for the next bit of work.

Another difference to the UK was the lack of anaesthetic injection. They were almost standard at my last practice and often resulted in very sore gums for a day or two where the 2 or 3 (for some reason one injection point never seemed to work on my gums) needles had been inserted. I was really impressed as I felt no pain what so ever. I flinched a tiny bit when he very gently poked the live root which then confirmed that it was the problem, but really it was nothing.

Wednesday evening I realised that it had been dry and warm enough to dry the alpine strawberry plants and on closer inspection they had been ripening despite the lack of sunshine. As rain was on the cards for today, I wasted no time and got picking. While I picked, the mosquitoes feasted. I think I managed to kill about as many as bites I received – I have about 20 – they were biting through my leggings and tights as well as my arms, talk about voracious. Still it was worth it, I got two baskets of berries that are destined to become Alpine Strawberry Preserve. Scones anyone?

Update on Super Mouse; he may have had his chips. The trap was sprung this morning and there was a much smaller mouse in there than last time. I think it might have been Super Mouse but the trap is back down and I’ll see if I catch any more. I might bait the humane trap again as well, if Super Mouse still lives he’ll get the bait from there with no problem and I’ll know he’s still about.