We have SNOW!

Well we know most of you have been suffering the snow for a while now - but here at Black Sheep Croft we have been missing out! Apart from the occasional dusting there has been hardly any snow to speak of - not even enough for a snowball.

However, on Saturday the children were delighted to wake up to a snow covered garden! Cue sledging, snowballs and a snowman...

And even a snow-alpaca...!

The alpacas however, don't seem as enthusiastic about the change...

I have had a long weekend off school and have been catching up with all things alpaca. We have recruited an enthusiastic, talented and dedicated local knitter who is going to produce our first proper knitted items from Jasmine's wool!!! We can't wait to see the results!

Also, we have been contacted by The Heb which is a glossy, annual magazine and pictorial as they want to do a small feature about us and the alpacas.

I have eventually got round to felting with some of Jasmine's left over bits. The bag is wonderfully soft and such a lovely mixture of colours...BUT although it looks ok in the picture there isn't actually a proper handle and it didn't felt as well on the inside - so it's back to the drawing board!

Finally, I have been chained to the computer developing our new website, complete with shopping cart, however in keeping up with the current trend...it is a secret and you'll have to wait for the grand unveiling!

The boys are in town

After a 600 mile round trip and 2 ferries at the weekend I arrived back with our stud, BBKing, and his pal Karl. Alpacas don’t like to be on their own so we thought it only fair to bring Karl along for the journey and to be his field buddy. They are best pals and have worked together in the past on fox duty for other sheep farmers.

BBKing admiring the girls!

BBking (left) and Karl

To a Mouse...

Belated Happy New Year!

Sorry I’ve not posted for a while, we’ve been very busy over the holidays with visitors and then getting back to the usual routine with school, nursery etc.

We’ve been very fortunate with the weather compared to the rest of the UK although our kids don’t think so. This [pic above] is the worst we had of any snow and it was gone within a day. Stornoway and other parts of Lewis did get it quite a bit more but I think since we are a few hundred yards from the shore then the sea air has an effect.

Anne did get a chance to experiment with felting, not sure if we will put this into production just yet! Neddle Felted Guinea Pig and Needle Felted Mouse (using merino wool and glass eyes)

Felted Rose Necklace (wet felted and needle felted with sewn on seed beads)


I’ve been working hard on the fencing so that this weekend I can pop over and pick up BB King, our stud from Campsie Camelids.

Another new addition

Not an alpaca this time but a 4 horn Hebridean ram. We took a trip down to see Scalpay Linen at the weekend who have very kindly let us borrow him. A big thank you to Shiela and J.F. He certainly is persistent although I haven't witnessed him actually getting very near any of our girls yet.

Since this is an alpaca blog here are some alpaca pics we took during the sunny spell before the storm closed in on Sunday.

Jasmine with a sticky face from the lick


New girl, Nichole, has been pestering Jasmine all morning, guess she is showing who is the new top dog!

Family Reunion

Last week, despite the weather, we managed to get across the Minch and back in one piece. I'm usually very ill if the crossing is rough however I had taken a couple of SeaLegs and was fine. Although the winds were touching 40mph, the crossing wasn't actually too bad (a few big hits but not too much rolling about) so I'm not sure how effective the pills were but I'll be sure to keep them handy for next time. We all (kids included) had a lovely break at a hotel in Ballachulish and had time for swimming and a visit to the sea life centre near Oban. Anyway, the main purpose of our trip was to pick up 2 new breeding alpacas, Nichole and her cria Nadia - both light brown and lovely additions to our herd. Anne is over the moon and has spent hours out photographing them!

Nichole is also mum to Nicholette who has her own cria Rose. It's great to see Nadia and Rose who are Aunty and Niece instantly getting along and playing together.

New girls, Nichole and Nadia in foreground

Nichole and Nadia

Rose, Nichole and Nadia Nadia and Nichole

Nadia

Nadia

Alpaca Alarm

A few days ago we had a missing dog in the village and despite a coordinated search party the light quickly faded and we had to give up. The following morning as I was about to take our dog out I heard the alpacas doing their alarm call (http://www.gentlespiritllamas.com/html/alpsounds/alarmcall.htm) , something I have rarely heard since they came here. (They had never seen a sheep before and, in the first few weeks, anytime a sheep came close to the fence they would do their alarm). Anyway, I quickly nipped outside to see where they were looking and right enough there was the missing collie rounding up some sheep in the field across the road. To everyone’s relief the collie was well and hadn’t strayed too far, she was eventually captured later that day.

With Rose being the only cria produced we have been in discussion with our breeder who has very kindly offered us a discount on 2 more females – Nichole (Nicholette’s mum) and her cria from this year, Nadia, who is sister to Nicholette and aunty to Rose. This will be great for Rose since she is constantly pestering the others to play and although Jasmine tries she can’t keep up. Nadia is a little older than Rose but I’m sure they will keep each other amused - can't wait to see them running around the fields togethter.

Progress on the fencing has increased by 300% - 3 strainers now in place!

My parents were up visiting at halloween so we had our bonfire early. Here are a couple of photos.

I’ll post some pictures of the new alpacas when we pick them up in a couple of weeks.

Post at last!

No, not the Royal mail, just meant blogger post.

Rose

Although we haven’t had a visit from the vet yet it looks like Rose will be our only cria this year as Jasmine and Tara are nearly at 390 days. They are bigger than Nicolette but we now think that that is just because she has lost weight since having her cria making Jasmine and Tara big in comparison. Even Anne who had been convinced that they were pregnant has conceded that it is now very unlikely and that they have probably just put on a little weight since arriving here.

Jasmine and Tara

Rose and Auntie Tara

In other croft news we decided it was time we had use of our barn back from our peacock, peahen, chickens and the 200 starlings that sneak in at night. After placing an advert in the local papers our barn was soon silent although in need of a good mucking out….another job added to the list!

I’ve finally started erecting some fencing that will split our main field which is about 4 acres into smaller paddocks of about 1 acre. This is so we can rotate the alpacas providing them with clean pasture every few weeks and also separate them from our stud who we will get next year.

Admittedly, I’ve not got very far with the fencing!

Will they ever come?

Ok, we are now at 369 days since both Jasmine and Tara were last mated, and with the normal gestation period being 315 to 370 days, we are concerned that either one or both of them won’t produce. We have compared photos of them when they arrived here back in July and they are definitely bigger around the middle but maybe they are just fatter. I have booked a visit from the vet who will hopefully determine if we are to expect anything.

Has anyone else ever hit or gone past 370 days? Here are a few pictures take recently.

Jasmine looking rounded but is it just a tummy full of grass?


What about you Tara, do you have anyone in there?

Our 1st cria and what a cutie, wee Rose at 1 month.

Wind? What wind?

As you can see from the photo below our alpacas aren’t phased by the 70mph plus winds preferring to be out and about. Only very heavy rain sees them return to their shelter in our barn. Both Tara and Jasmine (middle and right) are now at 363 days so we are expecting that they can’t go much longer without bursting. I guess they have been holding out for a calm sunny day but there’s not much hope of that for a while.

View from the beach in front of our croft

The storm having calmed a bit has left its mark.

A journalist from Fios (the local paper here) popped round for a visit last week and very kindly put an article about us. Thanks Hamish. If you click on the below picture you should be able to read it.

In other news from the croft I finally got that last load of peat off the moor but not without a struggle. As I drove onto the now soaking moor in our 4x4 the risk of getting stuck was very high and indeed was realised. Even with both centre and rear diff locks engaged the car just sunk right onto its belly. After spending several hours with a spade and trying to jack up the car to put stones under the wheels I realised I was getting nowhere fast and in fact lifting one side of the car only made the other go deeper into the muck. A call to a neighbouring farmer was required and he very kindly pulled me out with his tractor. Thanks to David from South Galson Farm however my problems were not over. After numerous times going forward and reversing it was apparent that the rear diff lock would not disengage meaning that I had to drop the car off at garage and was not to get it back for most of the week. As Anne needed our other car for work and not wanting our son to miss out on nursery I decided to get my bike out and attached a child trailer we have. Nursery was only 4 miles away and I thought the usual 5 min drive would be a breeze to cycle... how wrong could I be! I soon realised that not only would I have to cycle the 4 miles there and back but would have to repeat the feat again to pick our son up…. 16 miles and 2hrs of cycling in total and mostly uphill in both directions or so it felt! I managed this for a couple of days but with the wind and rain the following day I was glad of the excuse to keep Harris off. Thankfully we got the car back later that day and with Harris at nursery again I took the opportunity to return to the peat although this time I parked at the roadside. The last 18 bags were 200m away and again I misjudged the effort involved in carrying them across boggy ground. Anyway, after 2hrs trudging back and forward all the peat is now down and next year, I'll be sure to have it all done before the end of the Summer.

Quick update

No signs of our other 2 cria yet, Jasmine and Tara are now 4 days overdue so hopefully something will happen very soon.

Sheila from Scalpay Linen called the other day to let us know she had left our alpaca wool that she had spun in our porch ... we didn’t even notice it was there. I’ve never seen Anne move so fast when she got off the phone. Sorry we weren’t in Sheila, hope you didn’t come all that way just to see us. We have seen and felt plenty alpaca wool during our visits to other alpaca farms and we were not disappointed with ours…… thank you so much Sheila for doing a fantastic job. Here is a picture of her hard work.

In between watching out for any new cria I have been busy bagging and bringing all our peat off the moor and finally finished bagging with just a few more runs to collect it. Think I’ll celebrate with a couple of beers tonight before I think about embarking on my next mini project. I have 300m of fencing which needs done before we get our stud alpaca.

I noticed our hit counter jumped about 11,000 overnight. I’m guessing our blog isn’t that popular so there must be a glitch with it. Anyone else experience this?