Moo's Blog

Happy New Year!!

Moo — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 00:08:42 +0000

A Happy New Year to you all.
May 2009 bring you all that you wish for;
health, wealth and happiness!

More findings in family tree research!

Moo — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 07:56:11 +0000

I have been doing a lot of family tree research since we have been snowed in.
On one branch of the family tree…. a great grandparent on my first husband’s side…. I found an interesting fact.
John had been married to an Emma. Emma died and John had children with his live-in servant, a Caroline. Caroline it turns out was the neice of Emma! Caroline’s mother was Emma’s sister!!
This is one occassion where it has paid to research a branch (the fist wife) that is really of no relevance to the tree, other than to complete a bigger picture! Without the research on Emma, I would not have easily found the relationship to Caroline!!

Work house

Moo — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 03:43:48 +0000

I found a gt gt grandfather (my grandfather’s maternal side) a Daniel Tucker in a 1901 census. The exciting part was that I knew the area that the census was talking about. It was the Workhouse in Taunton, Somerset. This was situated in the parish of Holy Trinity, the parish where I went to my infant and junior school. My home was “just down the road” about a mile away! Not only that, when i was a child of eight, I went around the then infirmary, the hospital for old people, which in the past was part of the Workhouse!
In the same census I found some relatives of my direct line on my grandmothers side….. there was a Richard Maddock, his wife Elizabeth and their nephew William who was only 53.
On further investigation it appears that my mother’s grandfather, a Joseph Tucker was at this workhouse in his later years, and that her father took her to see her “granfer” there. Her father called him “Jack” so am assuming this was the name a lot of people knew him by. I will get his death certificate which should give the location of his death.

Family tree and emigration.

Moo — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 20:54:37 +0000

I got really excited the other day to find that a nephew of my grandmother emigrated. What was most exciting was the fact that on his landing papers (Toronto, Canada) there was a description of him. He was 17 when he emigrated and when he was 23 and ten months old he was having five days in New York visiting a friend. He was five feet four and a half inches tall (interesting to me as my grandmother was under five feet tall, and all her siblings were short too), he had light brown hair and blue eyes!

How to re-upholster dining room chairs.

Moo — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 07:30:01 +0000

I have a new web page. We recently got some new material for our dining room chairs. Although the chairs were only about two years old, the material on them was a cream color and had got stained with wine, paw prints, and from our work clothes when we would sit on the seats before changing our dirty clothes! The web page tells how we re-upholstered the chairs and also has a power point presentation with photos of the proceedure.
I have been finding it difficult to put photos on the site that are jsut little thumbs. So my way around it was putting the photos onto powerpoint, then uploading the power point presentation.

Girl alpacas settling in well.

Moo — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 01:24:37 +0000

The girl alpacas have been with us over a weeknow. They appear to be settling in well. They don’t eat as much hay as the boys, but they are a slighter build so I am supposing that is normal. The boys love gettign their grain forst thing in the mornings, and come running up to me and eat out of my hands, with Frankie eating out of the bucket. The girls took a few days to get used to me, but now they come running too,and can’t wait for the boys to get fed their grain and for it to be their turn. Keremeos was the first to take the grain, eating out of the bucket. Sasha, our girl alapca has been eating out of my hand for three or four days now. The littlest one, I call her Delilah, does not eat the grain either out of my hand or out of the bucket, but she does now nibble at bits of grain that have fallen on the grass. She still suckles from her mum, and is still very wary of getting near me.

Girl alpacas arrive tomorrow!

Moo — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 00:02:54 +0000

We are excited as our girl alpaca arrives tomorrow! Sasha is the new girl. She is about 15 months old and is the sister of Chopaka (male, single registered)and the half sister of Sumac (male,single registered). They all share the same mother, Keremeos (single registered), and she will be coming too along with a baby of hers so that Sasha (siingle registered) will not be lonely.
Alpacas need to have company. One on their own is no good as they get lonely. And since we can’t have our boys in with any female in case they mate, and particularly with Sasha who is a close relative, then we have done the next best thing to buying a couple of girls, and that is borrowing them!
Female alpacas are expensive to buy, more expensive than male alpacas. Double registered alpacas (those registered in Canada and the USA) are more expensive than single registered (those registered in just one country).
Sasha should be pregnant. Sasha is dark brown in color and Caesar, the male she was mated with, is a light brown color so we are hoping that the offspring will have brown fleece. We thi8nk she is pregnant as she spits and kicks at the male once she has “taken”. The cria, or baby,shoul dbe due about 11 months after mating, which means sometime around about September she should give birth!
We (the Royal “we” here…meaning mainly my husband!) have cleaned up the paddock where the horses used to be, fenced a new area off and made the shelter more suitable for the alpacas. Plus we have a heated bucket for the water for the females and more hay coming tomorrow to make sure they all have enough to eat over the winter.
Chopaka should be pleased to see the females. We took our males down to the neighbours alpaca farm (Sunshine Valley Alpacas) while we went to England and they stayed there for three weeks. (this is the farm that has Sasha and Keremeos and her baby, plus many other females,most of them double registered and the farm where we got our male, white, blue eyed (unregistered) Frankie.) When we got our alpacas back and walked them down the road back to our farm all but Chopaka were pleased to be home. Chopaka however spent many days looking over the gate to see if he could escape back down the road!!
I wonder what he will make of having females around?!

Horses moved

Moo — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 18:26:34 +0000

We have had the horses on our property for three years. They have been a pleasure to watch and although we have not had to look after them (apart from the odd day or two when requested), we have got used to having them there.
Last night, at about 6pm they moved location.
Their owners are moving out of BC to Swift Current. The horses are not able to go with them so they have been relocated for the time being to new owners about three or four miles from our farm.
Bo saw them going for a “walk” last night, their owners riding them (when he was in with the alpacas. However he was surprised and disapointed this morning to find no sign of any horses in their paddock. I know he is going to miss them very very much as he used to love to spend time watching them from the other side of the fence, getting in with them whenever he could!

The up side of all this:
we now have room to have female alpacas!!! We have “Sasha” coming in about a months time. At the moment she is at her farm, being bred with a male stud “Caesar”, a fawn coloured male. Sasha is the sister to Chopaka and the half sister to Sumac, so they will not be allowed to breed with her. Frankie Blue Eyes coudl breed with her if we choose to allow him. Hopefully Sasha, a very dark brown coloured female, will have a baby (cria) in 11 months time!!!!

Bo at the vets

Moo — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 00:13:42 +0000

I took Bo for his yearly check up and injections on Monday this week. The appointment was for 9-30 and at 9-30, right on time, Bo got weighed. Then we went into the room where an assistant came and checked Bo’s heart rate and took his temperature. He was NOT pleased to have a thermometer stufk up his back side. How do I know? He abruptly stopped taking the little treats I had for him, ignoring them completely!
We were then left to wait.
At 9-45 the vet came in and checked Bo’s heart rate, felt him over and gave the prognosis of him being overweight as his ribs could not be felt easily. Then she gave him his injections which he didn’t even seem to feel. Great!
Then we went out to await the billing. This seemed to take forever! And in the end we got the bill, and some new shampoo for Jaxx,but came away without the form being signed (it will be forwarded by mail) to say which injections Bo had had.
10-15 am all done (minus the signed form). a long visit!

So Long!

Moo — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 15:18:53 +0000

I can’t believe it is so long since I last blogged! I had great difficulty the times before that and nothing would get published. Then I got out of the habit! Now so much has happened i dont quite know what to write first!
We have new young alpaca. he is called Frankie Blue Eyes and is white and has blue eyes. It seems a lot of this coloured alpaca with blue eyes are deaf and Frankie is no exception. He is deaf. However he is equally lovable as the other two. The difference is when it comes to breeding Frankie’s offspring cannot be certified. The other two alpacas are Canadian registered.
I bought a Wii!!!! Now I am addicted to tennis, bowling, golf and baseball. The boxing has not captured me yet though I did knock a few people to the groudn when I was last in the UK playing it!
I have read 11 novels and have at last got roudn to giving a very quick review of each of them.
We have had our water leak seen to in the back yard. This involved getting a digger in to dig up the earth to a depth of six feet or thereabouts. We got a new water pipe laid out to the stable and also to the cottage. Leak mended! the drive has now been resurfaced as well as the area outside the workshop.
We have had a patio door installed in place of our dining room window. Our dining room is now our new lounge and our old lounge is now our dining room!
We have extended our deck on the side of the patio door. It has been sanded, washed and is awaiting a day or two before we put the stain on!