The Dustbowl

Colin Otterey, Master Shearer and all round good egg (although he does moan a bit!)turned up today to do the shearing.

There was a mad panic yesterday afternoon converting the field shelter into a holding pen as the forecast was for rain in the night and the animals had to be kept dry.

But the sun shone and the day went without incident..Everyone was shorn and had their dentistry taken care of.
I do like to see newly shorn alpacas. They look so comical in their corduroy coats.Now the fun starts to try and recognize who's who.!
They didn't stay clean for too long though. It was straight to the dust bath!

Concours Bretagne,Terralies,St Brieuc.

It was the last show of the year for us and a well attended one. Set within the Terralies agricultural show at St Brieuc in Brittany. A three day event with halter classes held on the Saturday and Sunday judged by Nick Harrington-Smith.

We took just three animals, two young females Fanny and Fleur, and Atlas our black adult Male. Fanny took a first place in her class and Fleur a second. Atlas went on to the championship and took best black for second time.

Popham Columbus and Daniel, both standing at stud at Quelvehin were also entered and faired well with Columbus claiming reserve white huacaya loosing out to a beautiful junior female owned by Alpagas Sologne.

The show was won by Top Lines Aquaviva Marcus.

I had to leave the show during the championships on the Sunday to attend to a birth back home. Jake had discovered a cria mysteriously in the holding pen that interconnects three fields. As all the gates were closed and there were animals in each field he had no idea who it belonged to!

I soon established it was Evitas.She must have had it by the gate and somehow pushed it underneath and unable to get to it had wondered away.Mum and baby were re united and bonded straight away.

This is the first cria from Atlas for us as Bali aborted last years, and was something of a test of his strength of colour as Evita comes from at least four generations of all pure white stock.

The result is a solid mid brown girl. (Well a black would have been a bit too much to ask!) She’s gorgeous of course, and we’ve called her Hannah.

The cycling club visit

Earlier in the week Jayne announced she had taken a call from a cycling club that asked if they could stop off on route to look at the alpacas and maybe take a picnic on the farm.
Of course she said they would be welcome,and thought no more of it.
Imagine my surprise as I went to see what the the dogs were barking at this morning.Twenty five hairy arsed bikers were parking up and undoing themselves of all the gear that goes with motorbiking.
"Jayne" I called through the kitchen door "You're CYCLISTS are here! What are you like!"
We said our' bonjours' and then showed them around.The alpacas remained surprisingly calm throughout the ordeal considering they were surrounded on all sides by so much sweaty leather!
No,they were a great bunch, as bikers often are,and I should know being a 'Black Widow!'
They all seemed to enjoy their morning, especially when we made them coffee, and I luckily had an unopened bottle of Ricard to hand,which was pretty much polished off.
After making a generous donation to the Quelvehin coffers they were gone,and calm was once again restored.

DaVinci va chez Myriam

Da Vinci was delivered this afternoon to his new home at Kerporho. A sad day for Dinnadin, our favourite alpaca, as DV was his best mate. I'm sure we witnessed a tearful 'au revoir' at the gate as we led him away and Dinnas was still gazing over the fence looking for him when we returned.
Kerporho is a sprawling menagerie open to the public with all sorts of animals including an outdoor guinea pig village. There is a little cafe/tea shop and conference centre where we agreed to stage a spinning workshop from time to time.
Everything was beautifully kept and presented and DV was installed in his temporary enclosure of lush green grass, whilst we went to fetch his new partner from another part of the park.
Reglisse, a black female, whilst very calm and gentle was adamant she wasn't walking anywhere for anyone and after all attempts failed she was somewhat unceremoniously delivered to her new suitor in a wheelbarrow!
After a brief introductory sniff they both decided the abundance of grass was far more appealing than getting to know each other. Maybe tomorrow love will be in the air.

Suivre la route de briques jaunes

Today's been one of those days when you are reminded you live in a foreign country,but a good day for tying up loose ends.My time was spent at the Hotel d'Impots (tax office) for a quittas fiscal then the Sous Prefecture to query requirements for the Certificate d'immatriculation.Got a Controle Technique and applied to the DREAL for a Attestation de Conformite.
Jayne meanwhile was sorting a query with the DSV concerning alpaca bruccelosis testing,wrote a couple of email letters in French and then did a ten minute interview for RBG a local radio station about life in Brittany with alpacas .
All Frenched out now! Need a dose of Coronation St or better still that 'Over the Rainbow' show of wannabe Dorothy's. How great is that! Ok I make no secret of the fact that I detest Graham Norton but there is something strangely compelling about the elimination process of the girls and the seemingly heartless way they are rejected.Andrew 'Lord' Webber (who seems to be turning into a caricature of himself) presides over the selection from his golden throne.
"Well Emily you polled the least votes,you are not as well liked as the others,we thought you were a bit crap, you'll have to go" they as good as said.
"But before you go, sing us a song"
So fighting back the tears and probably feeling absolutely wretched the poor thing gives us her rendition of the classic title song. A song that makes me go gooey at the best of times.
Well readers, I was filling up it's true. I had a secret blub.

It's all go

Well I seem to have hit the ground running since arriving back from England.The sun has not stopped shining from the moment I got off the ferry and all those jobs that have been waiting for such times have been tackled.This has meant working into the sunny evenings with no time for this rubbish!
So the doors and windows have all been repainted,1 house,2 gites, garage and workshop. New truck cleaned, lawns mowed,verges strimmed, drives weeded. Truck cleaned, field shelters cleared of old bedding, tractor repaired,Poly tunnel cleared out and weeded ready for it's new polythene,lots and lots of logging and I cleaned the truck.
After six years here I'm finally in a position of having logs stock piled so I can burn the stuff that was cut three years previous and is good and dry.The only problem with logs is you always want to burn the oldest which invariably is at the back of the pile!
I should have built a bigger store.
Meg,our recently adopted (not pregnant) weimaraner had an appointment at the vets last week to have her 'ladybits' cut out. She is now sterile and never again to surprise us with little ones.
We have just removed the huge lampshade the vet fixed around her head to prevent her picking open the stitches. Poor thing has spent a week crashing into things and the simplest tasks such as taking a drink became a Krypton Factor challenge as she attempts to envelop the bowl within the contraption without knocking it over.
Her operation became something of a necessity in the end. You see we still have her male puppy, still called ' puppy' but is now actually bigger than she is! And we of course have old dog 'Shaft' our English Setter of some thirteen years.
Too old to be bothered we thought and anyway,he doesn't even like her that much.
How wrong we were!
Meg came into season and a womans needs should not be under estimated. She flirted and taunted him into submission. He turned from a docile pensioner that normally wouldn't give her the time of day into a drooling frustrated wreck in a matter of days.
Keeping them apart became a challenge of unbelievable complexity. Shaft in one room and Meg in the other,and letting them outside in rotation.
The fly in the ointment of this arrangement was Puppy who, being the brightest of the bunch learnt some time ago how to open doors by jumping on the handles, and regularly lets himself in and out whenever he so pleases.
I guess it was during one of his comings and goings that the deed happened.It was only a matter of time I suppose. Meg was well and truly, well.... 'Shafted'
Because we had working so much recently I decided we deserved a rare day off. So Sunday we took ourselves off to the beach with Puppy and Meg. Shaft doesn't understand new environments and just wanders off and gets lost so he has to stay at home.
It was the first time we had really taken the dogs out any distance in the car and it soon became apparent they were not good travellers. Meg was drooling buckets of slobber and Puppy soon threw up. And yes,I had just cleaned the truck!
Anyway we got to the sea side and had a great day.The waves at Guidel Plage are terrific and there was lots of kite-surfing going on.
There's not a lot happening alpaca wise at the moment.We said goodbye to Elsa last weekend as she went off to Gwen & Virginie's and Da Vinci is going this week-end to Myriams,so it's starting to thin out abit in the field,just in time to make room for the new borns,the first two are due in a fortnight,so it's regular checks outside from now on.
It's the Terralies show at St Brieuc in a months time. A monster agricultural show with an attendance of some 100,000 folk over the three days. This year the alpacas have their own 'village' in a marquee with a halter show judged by Nick Harrington-Smith and a Fashion show for mohair and alpaca products. So we have some dusty animals to clean up between now and then.

The black widow

Just back from a week in the UK where I picked up a new truck,all big and black and shiny.
Take a good look.It'll never be this clean again. It's a fact that men clean and polish new vehicles for the first couple of weeks and then loose interest. I've done it twice already!
It's just like the old one but posher and without all the squashed panels! This weeks job is to pinch some bits from the old one and get it Frenchy- fied and re-registered.