The Forest Guild

04/06/2026

Something has been brewing and not just baby goslings!!

02/27/2026

Most of the time we have our arborist friend Kreg climb and take a good portion of a tree down. Often we have him leave a good portion of the trunk for animal habitats… Which is what we had done with this tree. However Jay decided it was finally time for it to go… as we needed that part of the land.

02/22/2026

The Alpacas were enjoying a beautiful morning.

02/13/2026

Alpaca p**p is a cold manure so you can use it immediately.

Another favourite use is using it to make compost tea.

It is rich in Nitrogen & Potassium.

It is a fantastic soil amendment.

Alpacas use a communal p**pers and go in what we call a dung pile… This makes collection extremely easy. They p**p about 5 lbs a day.

Bonus…. it doesn’t smell!

**p

02/12/2026

I have written about how we have been plagued by blackberries in many blogs in the past…

In 2016 when we bought our homestead, the blackberries hid the fact that there was an old heritage orchard on the overgrown property… It was a very happy surprise, but, what a mess it was. We had thick canes well up into the canopies of the fruit trees. We tackled them with gusto, but… they grew back with just as much gusto. We have heard that Himalayan blackberries can a grow a foot a day, though we have never taken a measuring tape to it, I can confirm that it is extremely aggressive.

Had I known then, what I know now, we would have worked in much smaller chunks and not tackled it all at once.

Years later we added fainting goats to the property to keep on top of them, but, they don’t eat the thick canes, and we haven’t had the same success of eradicating the blackberries as we have experienced with the pigs.

02/10/2026

02/09/2026

Beautiful afternoon for moving mountains.

02/08/2026

We too also move our Kunekunes using hog/cattle panels. It has been the easiest way for us.

02/07/2026

We received great news! Our wethered alpacas (castrated males) tests all came back negative, this was a huge sigh of relief. Some diseases can be passed to other species such as sheep, goats, cows etc… and since we know all our animals are disease free it is so important for us to keep it that way on our homestead. Once we got the news their nearly two months in quarantine came to an end. We let the males share a fence line for a week just to get to know each other and then we joined their areas. So fat so good! They are still sleeping in their own houses, but I am sure they will naturally merge as you can see a bit of confusion at bed time.

01/17/2026

Miss Marley Coal is our youngest alpaca, and Brooke’s treasured companion. She is a Suri alpaca and has completely different fibre than our Huacaya alpacas as it is long and silky with a beautiful lustre, versus the woolly teddy bear type coat. Less than 10% of the alpaca population are Suri’s.

01/16/2026

Welcome to the deer yard!