Shearing the Alpacas

A scream came from the sheering shed, much like that you would imagine from a scene at midnight with a full moon from a horror thriller. But this was mid day and not a movie and the scream came from a protesting alpaca. Protesting due to the fact that it was about to have a hair cut.

Shearing an alpaca requires a different technique than that of the regular sheep. They are obviously much bigger and feisty than their short neck cousin.

It takes two to manipulate an alpaca, after they are selected from the pen they are brought into the shearing stand and taken down onto there stomach with there four legs splayed. Their front and back legs are secured to anchor points to their front and rear respectively much like one of the torture devices that stretches the body. One man then holds down the head while the other goes to work with the clippers. The clippers run down the side of the body and down the rear legs, once one side is done the alpaca is flipped over for the other side, lastly the face and neck are clipped. Toe nails are clipped and they are then given a couple of shots Vaccine/Vitamins. Where as they come in looking like a fluffy bear they exit looking like an alien.

Spring has Spring

Its mid October and the plant life around the homestead has been showing us their goods for a couple of weeks now. The daffodils, Jonquils, around the orchard were just spectacular however they were pretty short lived. Their bouquet was amazing.

We are in the process of a redesign of the homestead garden but we would like to thank our predecessors for such a beautiful array of colours.

If you havent booked in at Greenvale in spring then you are missing out on a performance.....

First attempt at Rare Breed Naked Neck

Our venture into raising rare breed chickens is not off to the greatest of starts. Much like the piglets the we had less than a desirable number of live chicks from the 12 eggs we put in the incubator, one live Transylvania Naked Neck to be precise. As a control I did put in around 30 other of our own eggs which were of a mixed variety of which around 25 hatch, and all but one survived after hatching which I think is a pretty good survival rate.

The Naked Neck, although very ugly looking have allegedly the finest quality of eating meat of all poultry.

The Eggs where shipped from a supplier in New South Wales and when I performed the candle test, thats when you're in a dark room and shine a light through the egg to see if there is anything happening inside only three of the Naked Neck eggs seemed to be fertilized. Two never hatched..

So after a quick discussion with the supplier they happily shipped me another dozen eggs which should hatch next week.

So the single Naked neck that did hatch is with his other surrogate buddies out in the chicken shed waiting for me to build the pen that will allow them to spend most of their happy days out in the paddocks.

For further info on the Naked Necks

http://www.poultrymad.co.uk/chickens/nakedneck.html

http://www.ansi.okstate.edu/poultry/chickens/turken/index.htm

http://joycefoods.com/poulet-rouge-fermier.php

The Black Swan

Over the past little while the wild life has built up in our house dam with several species of wild duck in addition to our domestic residence, the geese and numerous small water birds, turtles and yabbies, although we believe the turtles seem to be eating the yabbies as we have been noticing the dismembered claws around the edge of the dam.

We have been honoured however with the recent arrival of a black swan, hopefully its not just for a short break and it (she or he) manages to pursuade a member of the opposite sex to join and build a family...... stay tuned.

The Veggie garden

The paddock where Maddions the lamb and Rory the calf spent most of this year has now been converted into the the Veggie patch. Around 6 tonnes of dirt has been taken from other parts of the farm. Most of the seeds that we are wanting to grow for this season are either in the ground or in seed trays under one of the two mini green houses we knocked together.

From memory we are/have planted heritage carrots and tomatos, several types of potatoes, leeks, lettuce, cappicum, chilli, pumpkin, beetroot, parsnip, corn, cucumber, celery, egg plant, shallots, white and red onion, radish, peas several types of beans, brussels, cabbage, cauliflower, silverbeet.

What makes it out who knows but the peas and pumpkin and some beans have already sprouted.

We have also purchased some berry bushes, Strawberry, Raspberry and blueberry, which may take a few years to really settle in.

The long term goal will be to offer our guest fruit and veg straight from the garden, you cant get more local than that, but we'll see how this little project goes first.