Sadly its not all easy and peaceful here, however we try to concentrate on the good and be grateful. But some things have really effected us more than we could have imagined. Because we are new and still building the finca we have huge outgoings on workers, feed, vet bills, building supplies, architect and license fees, we have no income other than donations, we are very lucky to have some very generous supporters, but due to being so new we don't yet have a big following. We are fortunate to have some horses feeds covered by people sharing them, this has stopped due to people not being able to visit, this has also resulted in people not turning up with bags of cat or dog foods ( luckily this happens quite regularly) We rely a lot on food donations that we have found connections with over the year, left over from restaurants, bakeries, green grocers and supermarkets. This feeds not only our animals but us and our volunteers too. All of this have stopped except 1 small supermarket, however they have sold out of most items due to panic buying. This has all meant that our food bills for animals and humans has become huge. Luckily our volunteers are very understanding and have become part of the family so we are all getting quite good at cooking eggs ( thanks to the rescue chickens and ducks) or pasta. The animals cant be quite so adaptable, our regular suppliers are from the mainland or further afield, but due to a drop in boats main suppliers are not supplying to small businesses like us, or if they are they have a huge wait. This is a further problem as not only do we need to buy more food, we have to buy it all full price or in bulk.
We managed to raise some money to buy a few extra bales of hay in preparation of a shortage on the island, but we still need to buy more.
Feed is not our only problem just this biggest one. There are other little problems to such as the poor horses are starting to get very bored, we are not permitted to ride them, even inside our own land only lunge or in hand walk on our private land, our land is not big so that would take all of 3 minutes per horse and many of our horses are incapable to lunge due to injuries or health problems, those who can don't generally tend to enjoy it, i think the poor horses are suffering more than we are. If you have been following us for sometime you will know that we finally got the planning permission a while back for the official horse stables, we got it built and signed off by the architect. The architect had an appointment with the town hall on the monday that the lockdown started, this has put our sign off much further down the line. We are still waiting for this 1 very very important stamp to finalise all of our project, to sign off the license on the land and we can all sigh a huge sigh of relief that it hasn't been declined. Until this moment we still have this very big fear hanging over our heads that we could loose it all. So the lockdown just took this date futher away, but we will carry on building and working with faith and a high spirit that we are glad to say our amazing volunteers and team have almost everyday! Thank you all, especially the current Finca family ! Next week i will update with another blog on the mini adventures we have had on the finca such as a mummy duck accidentally hatching chicken babies and our 9 cats who have moved from the house to the finca with us!