Piggin' great!

Following on a little from the last post, sometimes you see the more interesting appoaches to managing the countryside and farming on a smaller scale such as on smallholdings.

Here we have a mainly traditional wooden pig shed rather than brick or concrete that also looks as if it does belong in the countryside.

Here is one of the pigs out exercising although the going was rather soft as it rained heavily yesterday afternoon and overnight, being quite content and indeed trying to get close to me as I took his picture on a sunny morning.

Onwards!

 

Arriving one sees the bales of hay all wrapped up and the cows of the nearby herd grazing in the field.

It is most important to check and where necessary, review your route where animals such as them a re grazing if you value your life!

On the day in question, we had had heavy showers making access more difficult with much mud puddles of water.

On the smallholding

The weather has been somewhat better over the last few days so when I was out exploring It was more suited to taking some pictures with my better gear so I visited a small holding where I had expected to see more recent livestock after a short walk.

There are a good number of farms around here but obviously you cannot just climb through privately owned land just cos there's something you want to get close to not least for reasons of safety so fields by public rights of way are often the best you can expect.

Fortunately there are some smallholding which are more accessible and where public access is perfectly in order so long as you don't pet or feed  the animals and that is where I found these two.

The Alpaca is not native to Great Britain, but of South America although in recent years Alpaca farms have become more commonplace but I had notice in the last few weeks a few around this smallholding but conditions were not good.

As it happened I caught the attention of this one as it pushed his head over the fence so I let go back talking gently to it as I rather suspect he though I'd come laden with carrots for him.

While talking he was moving around so I took a series of picture and in the midst of that this particular pose appeared with 'final take' stamped on it composed very much on foot using all of the frame for a portrait.