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| << February 2022 | March 2022 | April 2022 >> |
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1st: Otter Way too cute - and her first full day without any of her siblings!!  |
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2nd: Back to normal And with the pups all now gone, our front room is now back to normal!!! Mixed feelings!!  |
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4th: Rites of passage Rites of passage: youngest members of the 'Relaxed' team meet the oldest of our smallholding custodians, Neptune the alpaca! Same alpaca, same human, different pup, 17 months apart!!!   |
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5th: Land and sky The land may be wet and muddy but the skies are breath-taking!!  |
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8th: Grown Up |
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10th: 10 years and 10 weeks Buzzard isn't really into cuddling up with his house mates any more - aching joints and the need to stretch tend to put paid to it. Quite what 'allure' 10-week old Otter has, we are not sure - but this was a real 'awww' moment - not sure who we were the most proud of!!  |
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12th: Numbers We are starting to wonder about getting our sheep and alpacas numbers down to make the winters easier but also because we wonder if we could get more rig commissions and therefore not need to make so many of our own - it's all food for thought and no decisions reached yet!!  |
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13th: The Allotment A very productive day on the allotment as we planted rhubarb, raspberries, gojo berries, blueberries and blackberries. Our aim is to be totally self sufficient in soft fruit all year round - we have been eating our own frozen raspberries from last year all winter but we will run out before this year's start to grow.  |
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14th: Mixing well The younger rhea out with the older rhea - it is great to see them all out together - even if getting the former back inside the barn each night is a little timely!  |
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18th: Best buddies Best buddies: Chalk and Chips (and Cheese was not too far away...) All three were bottle babies last year - the bonds they have made will last their lifetimes (which we hope to be very long).  |
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21st: First eggs of the year Our first two rhea eggs of the year, a day earlier than last year!!!! Fingers crossed for a more successful hatch and survival rate.  |
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22nd: Sick bay We have Whalsay, Mrs B, Mrs W and Muckle in the new barn/ gathering area as between them we have limps, mucky bums and skinniness - they are well strawed out inside and are getting ad-lib hay and hard feed twice a day - hopefully meds and tlc will help them all get a bit fitter!!  |
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24th: Hedge sorting Cutting back our very overgrown hedge between the garden and gathering area - the aim is to get it layered a bit and encourage it to really thicken up - the additional light it will then create will be a bonus for the garden!  |
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25th: Granite Way A fabulous walk on the Granite Way with Jennie K - we took Dragonfly and Roxy who were impeccably behaved!!   |
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27th: Potting Area A very tidy potting area - we actually have plans to turn this into an area for washing fleeces!!!  |
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30th: First off-site walk First 'off-the-smallholding' walk today with mum and best friend and favourite human (apart from her erstwhile owners, obviously). They were all fab, on and off lead.  |
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31st: Matching Accessories Love this photo of one of our alpaca rugs in its new home: definitely a case of 'matching accessories'.  |
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