Visits, peas - and a Uni-paca!

On Monday we headed north to see Alison and Brendan of Seafield Alpacas at Portmahomack and their wee herd of lovely boys.  Merlin is in front, Flyn in the middle and Chocolate at the rear.

Merlin in front again and he is uncannily like our own boy, Fergus.  Behind are Echo (Wee Eck) and Chocolate with Flyn about to do his 'business' on the left.

Alison and Brendan's boys look really great and not phased at all by humans, dogs, ducks or cockerels!  Gully is on the right of this picture.

Chocolate is a lovely boy with a 'Colonel Blimp' style moustache and beautiful, fluffy ears (well, the fleece is fluffy - not his ears!)  Thanks for a great visit Alison & Brendan and really pleased to see the boys again.  Hope you managed to get all your hay turned and baled before the rain came!

Heading back home we called in on a private estate which homes 'rescue' llamas, alpacas and various other animals and birds.   It was a lovely day and the setting was glorious.

Llamas form the majority of the animals and with a few alpacas.  They are cared for in acres of meadows and mixed woodland, all getting on very well with each other.

And this is George!  This ostrich is huge, towering over us and giving us the 'beady eye!'  He has very long legs and huge feet, and whilst we did not see him run we are quite certain that he could 'move' if required.  It was a great visit to a lovely estate.

Back home and it was time yesterday to hit the veg garden and pick more peas.  This has been a bumper year for peas, broad beans and runner beans.  We've already blanched and packed peas for the freezer, had peas and beans every night with dinner, given neighbours a few bucketfuls, and still there are plenty more to pick.  The two bucketfuls seen here, when shelled, filled the yellow bowl to the brim.  They weighed over 9 lbs which gave us another 16 bags of peas for the freezer.

And finally............ our lovely wee neighbour Danielle came across to see us one evening and decided to leave us a drawing of an alpaca with a horn sticking out of it's forehead which she has named a Uni-paca!  There's no answer to that.  Thank you for the lovely drawing Dani but I think Fergus would only want one thing on his nose and near his mouth - and that would be food!