Rough stuff

Posted on 6 May, 2011 by Simon

We’re getting rather overcrowded. No, I don’t mean the nine cats. Or the ever-bigger dogs. It’s the llamas I’m talking about.

Even though we are now expecting one baby fewer this year, some of the llamas are still beginning to look as though they could become short of grazing. We also lack any flexibility in where the llamas are placed, and this limits our ability to manage them effectively — for example, we can’t readily separate Lenny from the females to give them a break from his attentions, and to allow us to interact with them in a relaxed way.

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A matter of Life or Death

Posted on 28 April, 2011 by Simon

“Llilas is giving birth — and I don’t think it’s going well!” Val rushed in to the house on Monday afternoon, and departed immediately carrying a pair of binoculars.
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Trap Happy

Posted on 27 April, 2011 by Val

Job Done!

Both female kitten-cats (hastily named Fifi and Lula, because the vet does like to have names to put on the animals’ records, and we used up the Big Cat/Little Cat/Mother Cat/Tom Cat options long ago) are at this very moment unhappily installed at the vet’s, awaiting imminent surgery. Of course, the process by which they got there was by no means simple or straightforward, as anyone with any inkling of the nature of cats and the nature of Sod’s Law could have predicted.

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Where the Wild Things Were

Posted on 26 April, 2011 by Val

Having given up work with the intention of freeing ourselves from the Tyranny of the Deadline, we seem to do a remarkably good job of creating them for ourselves. The latest one is my next planned trip to Ingurland, this coming Thursday, by which time we need to have ticked off all the things on Simon’s ‘List of Things To Do Before Val goes Away’.

Given that there were four whole weeks between my return from my last trip and the start of the next one, some might find it surprising that The List only emerged into the light of Simon’s pressured consciousness a couple of days ago. Others (who know us better) might find it entirely predictable. As Alyce P. Cornyn-Selby says in her book “Procrastinator’s Success Kit” (which I haven’t read yet, but I will – one day),

A perfect method for adding drama to life is to wait until the deadline looms large

 
The main areas of focus for our drama this week are the Kittens-that-are-becoming-Cats, and the Rough-Land-that-is-becoming-The-New-Field.

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Reflections on the Road

Posted on 14 April, 2011 by Val

Well my thinking may be both cheap and lazy, but it clearly isn’t influential! We have just returned from the agri-store at Souvigny with 45 x 1.8m fence posts, 3 x 50m rolls of 95mm stock fencing, and all the necessary bits and bobs to put it all together. Because…
“Of course we can sell some llamas, but it would be good to have another field anyway.”
Oh, and it seems we need to do it soon, and get some llamas in it to eat the rampantly growing grass, or Simon will have to mow it.

I suppose if we deduct the effort of mowing all the Rough Land, from the effort required to fence it, we effectively obtain an effort discount. Bargain! And I suppose that, even though Simon will almost certainly end up with back ache and sore fingers from the remaining effort involved, he will Be Happy. Because he is always at his happiest when he is Doing Stuff – even, oddly, if he has cause to moan about it while he is doing it. As I have mentioned before Doing Stuff – especially farmery stuff – is his bliss.

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More or Less

Posted on 10 April, 2011 by Val

One of the problems with me buggering off to Ingurland so frequently to revel in my still fresh-feeling Grandmotherhood, is that Simon gets to spend a lot of time on his own. And when he spends a lot of time on his own, he gets to thinking. And when he gets to thinking, it’s not long before he starts Conceiving Projects and Making Plans. Unfortunately (some might say), his Plans rarely include anything along the lines of home improvement -useful things like completing the wiring in the bathroom, or removing the old, legionnaire-inducing water tank from the kitchen. No. Simon’s plans are grand and expansive and are generally Plans About The Land.

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Posted in Environment, Llamas | 2 Comments