Tuesday 28 May 2013

It's a busy life!


It’s no exaggeration to say that we have had an incredibly busy weekend – in fact a busy week in total. 
It’s that time of year when we are very busy with Bed and Breakfast guests and our holiday cottage in Corbridge is proving to be extremely popular, even though it is the first year that it has been let.


Then last Tuesday, we had a film crew here for about five hours, filming us preparing the alpacas for the Northumberland County Show.  Not that we do an awful lot to get alpacas ready for a show, but there were topknots to be trimmed and toenails to be clipped not to mention a bit of last minute halter training.  Since we hadn’t been able to get the animals inside the night before, they were soaking wet by the next morning as the rain had been torrential overnight.   The film crew were here as there's to be a series of programmes on the BBC in the autumn about people who are passionate about animals and we were asked if they could film us with our alpacas.  It was quite good fun but I hate having my photograph taken at the best of times, so I’m not really quite sure why I agreed to this – especially as we were wired for sound and then were filmed all day at the show yesterday.
 

Saturday afternoon was spent at the showground putting up the pens in the alpaca tent.  A big “Thank You” to all those who came along to help. I had promised them all tea and cake, but only managed to take the cake, having left the flasks on the back doorstep of the house.  I think that they would have been more worried though if it had been the cake that I’d left behind!
 

We got back home on Saturday afternoon at about 5.30 pm – only to find that Nemetia had given birth just a few minutes earlier to a beautiful dark brown female cria.  I could have done without it happening so late in the day, but better then than whilst we were at the show yesterday.  It did mean however that neither Mike or I got much sleep that night as we weren’t sure just how well she was feeding and if she had got enough colostrum.  However, both mother and daughter seem to be absolutely fine.
 
Sunday afternoon saw us back down at the show ground, completing the finishing touches which all take so long and of course, doing the pen inspections of those breeders who had arrived the day before to avoid a horribly early start the next day.  Speaking of which I was up at 4.15 yesterday morning as we were expecting the film crew here again at 5.30 am!  There’s obviously a price to be paid for stardom!
 

There was a great atmosphere amongst the breeders and the judge, Nick Harrington Smith worked tirelessly throughout, not even stopping for lunch.  Barbara Hetherington did a great job as an apprentice – particularly in her judging the Junior Handlers competition at lunchtime which had the crowd in absolute stitches.  Our Fallowfield team of alpacas did very well – we got Reserve Show Champion, Best Northumbrian Alpaca and a whole host of rosettes – I promise I will post all the details tomorrow when I can get my brain properly in gear again! 

 

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