Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

The right hand photo is definitely calling out for a caption!! We think what Neptune was doing was telling all the chickens that had not ventured beyond the pop-hole to stop being so lazy and come on outside. He had a point but then again, given a choice between mud and the threat of rain or dry, lemon-infused bedding with food and water on tap... it's not hard to choose!!
Well, the alpacas certainly were relaxed and calm in amongst the poultry today but by mid-afternoon, the heavens opened and down came the rain and our anxious faces became ever more anxious as we pondered at the state of our land. The problem we are grappling with and have been exploring in the last few posts is that our winter poultry area is very wet and turning to mud and so not great for the alpacas (nor indeed the chickens) to walk on. We don't want the alpacas to be inside all the time as we need them to protect the poultry from the fox and we certainly don't want the poultry inside all the time either. And if we start to use the spring/summer poultry paddock too early (as we tried on Sunday) that may also get very muddy. Not only that, but for us to access it, we have to walk across a grassed area that would probably also get very slippery and muddy itself...
Our other problem is that no matter what, our alpacas cannot be in two places at once as we discovered this morning when at 9.30am, alarm calls sounded from the geese, as a chicken that must have wandered back down into the summer paddock, became breakfast for what we think is a lone dog fox. The fox has been spotted a few times and he took a neighbour's chicken a week or so ago. The alpacas were still in the barn but whether their presence in the winter paddock would have put the fox off entering the summer one, we do not know. The two are separated by a large row of rabbit hutches and a bank and hedge... To say we are gutted is an understatement!