Disaster of a day yesterday

On a farm you've got to take the bad as well as the good.
Yesterday was a bad day.

Truffle was due to give birth. The day before yesterday she had been making all the signs. Restless, keeping herself to herself, visiting the dung pile, walking that funny way. We checked her often and everything seemed normal. Sometimes they do this then don't even give birth for another week!

Anyway, yesterday morning she was looking pretty uncomfortable and I had a bad feeling. I checked her and there was a small amount of bloody discharge - I was sure that wasn't right, so we spoke to Christine at Naturally Alpacas and she said - nope not right, call the vet.
The vet was here in 15 minutes - no idea how she managed that. I can only assume she left while still on the phone talking to Lloyd.

The news wasn't good. The cria was very big and in breech position. It was also dead.

To get all this way and to die at the last hurdle. It's completely heartbreaking.

It's also incredibly rare to have a breech. Some alpaca breeders go their whole lives without having one. Poor Truffle was just terribly unlucky. Some breeches can be delivered but again it's incredibly rare and most die. The vet assured us that even if she'd come earlier it was completely unlikely that anything could have been done. And as Truffle had been looking normal yesterday we would have never known.

Not that that makes us feel any better.
Thankfully the vet (who we hadn't seen before) was amazing. Calm, and fast and very caring. It can't be nice for them either.

Truffle is dosed up with antibiotics and anti inflammatories and seems to be alright. She was up and about this morning having breakfast. She still looks a wee bit uncomfortable, but hopefully she'll be ok. I can only think that it must be terrible for her.

The cria is buried near the orchard, along with the chickens, and 2 of our cats, it's getting awfully busy in there :( I hate this.

And we feel like crap.

Sad news

Our donkey, Sheba died in her sleep yesterday.
She suddenly became ill on Sunday. We called the vet out and she took some bloods but basically was pretty stumped. Her symptoms didn't immediately point to anything. Over the next 2 days we had the vet out again and the blood results came back with nothing really showing up.
All the time Sheba was getting worse.
 The pathologist had called our vets and said now they thought it was most likely cancer. On Tuesday we had the vet back again, who gave her various injections of medicine and electrolytes. But said then that she really didn't think we were going to win this one and to call her in the morning, but unless there was a miraculous improvement there was only really one thing we could do as she was suffering.

But when I got up the next morning I could see that she had died in her sleep.
She was such a lovely, gentle donkey, very calm and adorable, really.
It's heartbreaking when one of your animals dies. And once again, Rachel is by herself. This time we're not going to get her another donkey friend. She is surrounded by alpacas so I'm sure she won't be lonely.

 Sleep tight, Sheba.

It's been a trying couple of weeks already, for various other reasons, and Lloyd and I are feeling tired, fragile,  and very sad.  I hope things will improve now.

Rain, rain, rain

Over it now! It's been raining for days and going by the weather forecast we've more days still to come. It was incredibly dry up here so we needed some rain desperately, but that's enough now.

My main work is outside in the garden and the farm. It's so miserable that I just don't want to go out in the torrential rain and weed... or cut the grass! However, if it keeps up for much longer I'll just have to. And it's making a right mess of my roses, which is just not on!

Also, sadly, this morning one of my chickens, Gertrude, died. She'd had a virus for 5 days and I had put her in a nice warm house on her own and had been giving her probiotic yoghurt to try to fight the bug but, I think yesterday, I really knew she was getting no better, so if I'm being honest I wasn't surprised that this morning she had died. I was sad though. I kept thinking, should we have put her out of her misery a couple of days ago ( when I say 'we' I mean poor Lloyd) but then I kept thinking what if she gets better. Anyway, she'll be buried in the orchard.

On a happier note, Mavis and her babies are all doing so well. From what I can tell there only appear to be 2 boys out of the 8 - if so this is great!
 And! this morning Mavis laid an egg. Back to laying already - what a good girl.

One good thing about this terrible weather, it actually does make it feel like a Scottish Christmas! Pelting rain and a howling gale ( ok it's not actually windy at all) we just need it to turn to snow and get rid of some of the humidity and it would be perfection. To get into the spirit of the whole thing we put up the Christmas tree. I love our tree. I have the same lovely glass decorations I bought about 20 odd years ago, it's a lovely feeling unpacking them every year.
Lloyd and Lulah both helped - if you look closely you'll see Lulah has her teddy in her mouth, she obviously thinks it would make a better fairy.

Very Sad

One of the boy ducks has gone.
I suppose in my heart of hearts I knew it was only a matter of time. They have taken to wandering all over the place, out of our farm, down the road, over to the neighbours, you name it they go. For a while we tried shutting the farm gate, but it made no difference as they went into the stream and swam out that way!
 So I was kind of resigned to the fact that one day one or all weren't going to be there for breakfast in the morning. He's been gone for 3 days now. I think he's definitely not coming home.

We feel horror and sympathy for everyone affected by the earthquake in Christchurch. After beginning the slow recovery from the earthquake in September, they were yet again rocked by a huge aftershock yesterday which has killed many and destroyed vast areas of the city and outlying areas.

Watching the news all day yesterday I was reminded of footage from the Twin Towers  - debris and dust clouds with people emerging from them. It's truly horrific.

It's incredibly emotional. New Zealand is a tiny country, we have a small population, this affects everyone. It's quite simply, a total disaster. 

may they rest in peace.

bit manic yesterday morning

If anyone was wondering why I was doing so much stuff yesterday morning, it was to take my mind off the afternoon.

After much soul searching we arranged for the vet to come and put Jojo to sleep.

I'd like to say both Mat, the vet ~ who knows Jojo well ~ and Lex, the digger driver made this a much more bearable thing to go through. They are so lovely and I know they'll never read this, but thank you both, from the bottom of my heart.

Joseph

Good night, lovely boy xx

I'm so disappointed.

It's a bit breezy today, but the sky is blue and the sun is shining so I didn't think much about it, until L and I were walking round the deck and he said "Oh no" I glanced over to where he was looking and saw my green house, splattered all over the deck. All the shelves had fallen off and my seedlings (with the exception of most of the tomatoes and beans which are hardening off outside today, thank goodness) were all squished and broken. I could have cried. The chillis, the eggplants, more tomatoes, basil,  all the flowers I'd planted and the asparagus. We've tried to rescue as much as we can and I'm going to be doing a fair amount of making and re-potting this afternoon, but tbh, I don't even know where to start. My poor wee seedlings.

This is all that's left of some of them

and what's back in the green house looks a right sorry sight.

Not a happy bunny.

☹

Edited to add

I made more pots and planted new seeds of the ones that were beyond help. Re-potted a lot of them - so they're now in pots with the wrong names! I think I lost about a third. Fingers crossed these survive!

Also I fixed it to the balustrade again.

 

Aaaawwww  Gladys.

My lovely boy had a heart attack this morning. Well I'm assuming that's what it was, there was not a mark on him and I know that the heavy breeds can have them, and it's not uncommon.

He was such a darling rooster. He was gentle with the ladies, giving them the juiciest food. He would let me cuddle him too. 

I'll miss his cockadoodle doo in the mornings.

This is the one thing I really hate about having animals - I'll never get used to it.

He's being given a State Funeral in the Orchard.

 

when he was still quite young xx

Anyone for plum jam?

Remember THE PLUMS? Well they were finally ready so Lloyd spent the day making jam, lots of it...

 

It tastes really lovely.

While Lloyd was busy doing this I was feeling sorry for myself and moping around because

mum went home yesterday and it definitely came too soon. I have been really sad since she left.

Wee Pixie Peep
(aka Princess Pixie Fae the Drum)
passed away yesterday afternoon.
She was only tiny, but the house feels very different without her.
We feel very very sad, when really we should be feeling happy for the lovely long life she had, but that's not really the way it works, is it?

Rest in peace my lovely girl xxx

Mixter maxter
Some garden stuff, some foody stuff and and last but definitely not least some animal stuff.

First the garden
This is the bed that I cleared all the jasmine from and we've filled the gaps with a gardenia 'tree' some native that I forget the name of but it has flowers that attract tuis and a dwarf frangipani.

We also went into the paddock and dug up some of the globe arichokes and planted them round the edges of the avocado 'orchard' which has no avocados in it yet! I think 4 out of the 5 have definitely taken and fingers crossed for the last one.
Some nice early agrias are coming up - these are by far our favourite potato.
Next the food
We had homemade yorkshire puddings last night - I even made the batter ( lloyd cooked the whole meal so I can hardly boast about making some batter!) but they were amazing!
2 eggs and one egg yolk
275g flour
150 ml milk
150ml water

whisk up until consistency of single cream

cook for about 20 mins in a hot oven ( put some oil into the baking tin)

Tonight we had a meringue thing made with the egg white left from last night and some others from various other things.Heat oven to 180
this is 5 egg whites
250g sugar

beat egg whites till stiff and then add sugar gradually till glossy.
I divided the mixture into 2 and spooned out onto 2 baking sheets to make 2 circles.

As soon as you put them into the oven turn it down to 150
cook for an hour ( they were pretty thin ones)
turn off oven and just leave till the oven goes cold.

Then whisk some cream and make a sandwich, I used passion fruit as well. Now honestly we didn't eat all of this and there is still a lot left!

Now the animal part..
Wee Pixie isn't doing so well so if you have a sec spare a thought for her.
As most of you know she's very, very old, in fact 24 now. She's been diabetic for the last 2 years and over the last few months has had 2 small strokes. She had a third one a couple of nights ago and is now very confused and shaky. She's sleeping a lot and has been to the vet. She could just come right again, of course, but at her age we know she can't go on for ever, however much we'd like her to. So please send her virtual cuddles.