AUTUMN COLOURS

When you think of a good time to go alpaca walking – most people think of Spring and Summer. However, just 1 mile from us is Sheffield Park Gardens. It’s a National Trust property and the gardens were designed by Capability Brown. Its prime viewing times are Spring and Autumn. Specifically when the trees and shrubs are coming into leaf and flowering – and when the Autumn colours change the hues of the leaves…so October and November.

Here at Alpaca Walking with Spring Farm Alpacas, we are next door to Sheffield Park Gardens on one side. I can’t pretend our farm was laid out by Capability Brown, but its fair to say that walking alpacas at this time of year can be a stunning experience.

November alpaca walk

November alpaca walk

The trees and bushes on our walk are entirely natural English species. We are in Higher Level Stewardship so we don’t use fertilisers or pesticides – so you are seeing Mother Nature in her finest Autumn colours.

As the leaves drop and we head into Winter, your insight into the other wildlife on the farm becomes clearer. It may be chilly but the wild deer and buzzards become much easier to see. We are open all year round and whilst Autumn colours might be relatively fleeting, alpaca walking is a great all year round activity. You may just want to book up 4 walks three months apart to get the best possible experience!!

November alpaca walk

November alpaca walk

THE LODGE – A PHOTOGRAPHERS DREAM

If you come and stay in our holiday let – The Lodge – why not bring your camera and take pictures of possibly the most photogenic animal in the UK…the alpaca!

We recently had Aaron and his family staying and he was kind enough to share some of the pictures he took whilst staying here. I have posted a gallery of the ones I like the most, but I think you will agree, they are pretty amazing.

The Lodge is available all year round as a holiday let subject to a minimum stay of a week. It has a double bedroom and all “creature comforts”!! Come and stay and bring your camera- you will not be disappointed!

If you have considered owning alpacas or are curious to know what is involved – then we have the answer! A Spring Farm alpaca ownership open day.
Come to our free alpaca ownership open day and learn all about alpacas, handling alpacas, alpaca husbandry and how they will fit into your life! We have excellent facilities so you can really find out about owning alpacas and meet them in a relaxed and fun way. We specialise in our handling techniques and will run you through all you need to know about the idea of owning alpacas – plus you will get to meet some of our super friendly, halter trained alpacas!
Are you interested in alpacas? On our alpaca ownership open day, we will look at alpacas as a business, as breed stock, as show animals and as pets. We can offer alpacas in all colours and price ranges within all of these categories if you decided alpacas are right for you. Whether you are looking to stock a farm, occupy a small paddock, agist (we look after your alpacas here at Spring Farm at a small cost) with us – or to breed alpacas and get involved in showing, we can help you in all aspects of your search. Bear in mind that we started with no farming or livestock experience 17 years ago – we started our own alpaca ownership experience with a blank sheet of paper and an enquiring mind, and now are one of the UK’s top breeders of alpacas. Our alpaca ownership open day is intended to be good fun as well as informative and you can never ask too many questions!
We run a number of alpaca ownership open days throughout the year, so even if this date doesn’t suit you, please contact us and we will put your name down for the next alpaca ownership open day we run. Pease contact us for details – we keep the numbers small to keep things personal so please contact us first to reserve a place. We also provide a sandwich lunch so need to know how many to cater for and if there are any specific dietary requirements. We would also suggest sensible footwear to walk around the farm – and given its the end of September, bring some warm/waterproof clothing – just in case!
We are running the next open day on Saturday 30th September from 10.30am till 3.30pm. As the course is intended for prospective owners of alpacas, we don’t charge for the day. It is intended as an introduction so we wont blind you with science, but we will tell you all you need to know if you are interested in alpaca ownership and think they might be right for you.

Each month of the year is different here at Spring Farm – it is what makes our walks so special as we get to see the changing seasons in the English countryside. After a walk last week I got the camera out (a slightly rare event these days!) and walked 200 metres whilst looking for a number of wild flowers. We are effectively in the middle of a drought as it hasn’t rained significantly here for two months but still I managed to find 8 flowering April wild flowers in ten minutes. Sometimes its easy to pass by as they are skulking in the margins of fields – but well worth searching out for their delicate beauty.

Here at Spring Farm, the month of May normally sees the first orchids and the hay meadows bursting into life. Unfortunately, as I write this, there is precious sign of the hay meadows doing very much at all but hopefully with some forecast rain, all will be well – albeit a bit late.

In the meantime please see a selection of April wild flowers and if you wanted to bring a camera, you would be very welcome and I can retrace my steps to show the flowers off!

Over the last few days the weather here at Spring Farm Alpacas has been really glorious! It has been a real pleasure to do Spring alpaca walks around the farm as the wild daffodils are in full bloom and the wood anemones are just starting to flower (and the bluebells are not far behind). The only problem for us is the demand for weekend Spring alpaca walks seems to exceed demand by some margin! If you are contemplating a walk, we have plenty of availability during the week but if you are looking for weekends, best to get a date organised in advance as we hate turning guests away!

Last Saturday and Sunday we had one day of amazing weather and one day where we watched the forecast with trepidation but in the end, had a great walk as well. I have included some pics from the weekends walks. The eagle eyed will notice we have a llama walking as well as our alpaca walkers. This is Eron who is a gentle giant – who seems set to take as many llama photo bombs as possible!

One of the other things we do here at Alpaca Walking with Spring Farm Alpacas is alpaca showing. Its a bit like Crufts in that alpacas are entered within breed (suri or huacaya), then by colour (black, brown, grey etc.), then by age. Its great fun for both us as breeders and for the public who can watch the proceedings.

Lord Percy as a cria

This weekend, Vicki took Lord Percy to the Alpaca Showtime event in Cambridgeshire. Lord Percy was entered into the intermediate grey huacaya alpaca class and won his class – hence the rosette!

Lord Percy then was brought forward into the Champion Grey huacaya alpaca class and was awarded Reserve Champion! Well done to both him and Vicki – who missed a Bad Co. concert to take him to Showtime…

Lord Percy with his trophy’s from Alpaca Showtime

All that lives on the farm is not cute and cuddly! We are blessed with an abundance of wildlife here and we were lucky enough yesterday to see a dark bush cricket.

A common animal across the southern half of England, the noisy, irregular chirpings of the dark bush-cricket are a familiar feature of late summer. An animal of gardens, hedgerows and woodland edges, dark bush-crickets can often be seen in quite large numbers sunbathing on bramble patches. However, males are very aggressive, defending their territories against intruders. Females lay their eggs in late summer in rotting wood or bark crevices; they emerge 18 months later, so odd-year and even-year dark bush-crickets never meet.

The dark bush-cricket lives up to its name: it’s dark to red-brown, with a paler patch along the top of the thorax, and a yellow-green belly. The female has an up-curved ovipositor.

What I didn’t know is crickets have antenna longer than their bodies and grasshoppers have antenna shorter. Anyway, it might not have the initial appeal of an alpaca, but a stunning creature none the less!

Dark bush cricket

Cleavers and alpacas! Our alpacas like nothing more than browsing along our hedge lines and tucking into what they find. Unfortunately this includes cleavers (as we know them). Cleavers have many names including: goosegrass, catchweed, stickyweed, robin-run-the-hedge and apparently sticky willy. Cleavers officially is a herbaceous annual plant that loves Spring Farm. As we are in higher level stewardship we don’t use herbicides except via spot spraying for thistles and docks so we have an abundance of wild flowers on the farm. This is both good and bad with cleavers in the latter category! This is because the seeds love alpacas and alpacas love putting their heads into hedges and in so doing, pick up a multitude of the seeds which are a nightmare to get out of the fleece.

Cleavers and alpacas!

As to what have cleavers ever done for us? Ancient Greek shepherds would use the barbed stems of cleavers to make a “rough sieve”, which could be used to strain milk. Linnaeus later reported the same usage in Sweden, a tradition that is still practiced in modern times according to Wikipedia.

In Europe, the dried, matted foliage of the plant was once used to stuff mattresses. Several of the bedstraws were used for this purpose because the clinging hairs cause the branches to stick together, which enables the mattress filling to maintain a uniform thickness. The roots of cleavers can be used to make a permanent red dye. I can safely say “I did not know that” and just hope that our alpacas steer clear somewhat more than Osiria has done.