Today is pleasantly warm with a soft breeze and the sun is shining brightly!  It is so wonderful to see no clouds in a gloriously blue sky!  We’ve seen robins here and there, and daffodil tips are peeking up along the foundation to the house, sure signs that spring is on its way.

The alpacas had been romping around the pasture early this morning.  There’s still some snow covering most of the ground and with all this quick melting there’s also plenty of deep puddles and mud.  Thankfully my boys hate to get their feet wet so they hop over the puddles and quickly walk through the mud.  The sun has dried the straw that we’ve put out in the paddock for them to cush on.  They’ve been basking in sunshine for hours.

Arlo greeted me at the gate as he usually does although today he’s totally covered in straw.  Apparently, he’s been rolling!  They’re so funny when they roll.  First they sniff out an area like a dog would, probably to be sure it’s ‘clean.’  Then slowly they will cush, and suddenly they kick out their feet as they roll onto their side, and kick and kick while they slither on the ground.  Then they’ll go back to a cush, spring up, and shake.

As I went about my chores, Coty came into the barn and started sniffing the one stall with no straw, just the stonedust.  Next thing I knew, he was dropping and rolling!  After rolling in stonedust, Coty’s rosy-fawn fleece looks kind of gray.  Guinness had been cushed near the hay feeder so he just flopped over on his side and rolled away.  He too was covered in straw as he sauntered over to the water bucket.  I turned around to see Julio coming into the barn from the tack room side, sniffed at the straw, and he too dropped and rolled.  During all this rolling, Bo had been quietly eating some of the fresh hay that I’d just put into the wheelbarrow.  He only had straw on his legs from cushing.  I let him know that I had seen him rolling out in the paddock from the window this morning.

I guess all the alpacas have spring fever too!

I just love to go barefoot.  In the warm weather, the sun on my toes and the feel of grass or beach sand beneath my feet is such a relaxing sensation.  I’ve always hated to have anything on my feet except for wool socks in the winter when I’m in the house and my feet are cold.  I only put slippers on to run down cellar or going onto the porch for wood.  When I come into the house, whatever is on my feet I quickly kick off.  Dan even has a family friend who does go barefoot in the winter, even outside!  (Hi Jeff)  My mom often reminds me of the Easter day when I was 2 years old and cried all day.  That evening when she took off my new little shoes, my feet were covered in blisters, and I stopped crying.  I imagine I’ve hated wearing shoes since then.

I do have to have something on my feet to drive or walk or get around so in the warm weather you’ll usually find me in something like Teva sandals or Birkenstocks.  I can easily take them off before I start driving.  If I’m hiking in the woods I will wear proper hiking boots to protect my feet.  I wear the hiking boots for getting around in the winter too.  And somewhere I do have men’s type work boots for safety when we cut and stack wood, move rocks, and other yard chores.  And now we have livestock, so another boot beckons.  It just wouldn’t be healthy for me to be barefoot in the barn and pastures!  Dan on the other hand, has no shoe issues and always prefers to wear something on his feet.

So what’s a barefoot loving girl to do?  She wears boots from a company appropriately named The Muck Boot Company!  We are lucky enough that the feed store here in town carries them.  We were looking for a boot that would keep our feet warm while doing barn chores in the snow and wind and we tried on their ‘Artic’ boot style.  Oh my!  The sole is quite cushy but also has arch support and while walking around the store, my feet were actually comfortable!  They come up almost to my knees which keep out deep snow, but they also fold down so I can easily tuck my pants in, and then roll them back up.  How great is that!  They are rated to keep your feet warm to 40 degrees below zero.  And may I dare say, my feet have never been cold while I’m out in the barn!

During those weeks of below zero temperatures and fierce winds, all I could think of was Elaine on a Seinfeld episode when she was writing for Peterman’s catalog:  “Thank goodness I was wearing my Muck Boot company’s Artic zone boots!”

Last weekend at the feed store Dan was showing me some clog style boots for spring and summer.  Lucy, the owner, quickly opened the catalog to show me that they also come in purple.  Purple!  How can I resist a boot that comes in my favorite color!  Come summer folks, you will probably find me about the farm not barefoot, but in my purple clog-style farm boots.

Oh what a gorgeous spring like day today!

Yesterday’s storm was rainy and yucky but not at all as horrible as predicted.  The little road to the barn is very muddy this morning but most of the ice is gone so I could walk down quickly, not inch along like I’ve had to do.  The pathway in the paddock is still pretty icy and the mud is slippery but at least it’s just a short path to the tack room.  It’s warm enough today that I didn’t have to lug jugs of hot tap water.  I just used the water pump in the barn, wow!

And the alpacas are enjoying this burst of warmth too.  Dan had put some straw down on one end of the paddock for the boys to cush on a few weeks ago and the sunshine today has dried it up nicely.  Straw from the barn has also blown out, so now there’s a really large cushing area for them.  They seem to be basking in shifts.  This morning Guinness, Bo, and Coty were all out for hours, and now it’s Julio and Arlo.  Last night their fleeces were all wet and muddy with hay and straw stuck all over them.  Today they all look so much cleaner.

The rest of the paddock is an absolute muddy mess and this is where they’ve now decided is their poop pile of choice, all of it!  Better than inside the barn.  Last year when figuring out how to deal with the mud (i.e. drainage), it was suggested to us that the paddock area be considered a ‘sacrifice area.’  A sacrifice area is where no grass is grown and instead just stonedust or cement blocks, etc. is used.   It sounded like a great idea and clearly worked for that farm.  So what did we do?  We brought in loam and planted grass!   Once spring is really here we will move all that loam and bring in stonedust.

There’s so much still to learn!  But having a great time ..............      

Oh what an absolutely beautiful day today!  The sun has been shining and not a cloud in the sky.  The sky is so blue, blue, blue making this weeks’ additional 1 foot+ snowfall look so white, white, white.  Best of all it’s been just above freezing this afternoon, about 34 degrees, and the snow is really melting, running down off the roof like a stream.  It feels like Spring!

We thought it would be a good idea this weekend to clear out a lot of the snow from around the barn and the house in preparation for the upcoming rainstorm headed our way on Monday.  It’s supposed to be a little warmer with ‘significant’ rainfall.  We want to be sure the rain and melting snow are directed away from the barn and pasture and our cabin.  A warm and rainy Spring in New Hampshire, and especially Spring-like weather in January, could easily mean flooding due to all that fast melting snow.  The weather people are probably doing the usual ‘doom and gloom’ forecast, but this is our first experience with our little alpaca farm and rain with melting snow and we just don’t want to take any chances.

Our tractor has been good to us for working on our pastures.  We’ve moved rocks and roots and stumps, and leveled the loam for seeding it.  We’ve dug swales and made berms for drainage.  Now we have come to realize that it is an invaluable tool for moving snow!  Having the bucket in the front and the blade in the back allows us to move snow much, much more quickly than using just a snowblower would.  Watching Dan play (oops I really mean work) with the tractor today, I am so happy we purchased it while setting up our farm.  We’re using it more now in the winter than we did in the summer. 

Dan cleared out the entire paddock (again) and made long paths through the pasture (again) for the alpacas to pronk.  And pronk they did!  They romped around the tractor.  They all ran up and down the paths.  Coty wrestled with Arlo for the first time!  Bo managed to find green grass in the paths to graze on.  Guinness did his signature ‘rolling’ in front of the tractor.  When he finally walked away, Arlo laid down and rolled too.  Copycat!  And such a cute copycat he is.   We’re so happy that he’s finally grown enough to ‘play with the big boys.’  It was great to see them out in the sun after days and days of staying in the barn with snowstorm after snowstorm.  When they tired of pronking, they all went into the barn for a good hay fest on the fresh hay I’d just put out to distract them so Dan could work.  Julio instead stood near the hayfeeder, eyes glued on Dan working.  The path out of the paddock leads over to the main swale through the pasture, so runoff is directed right to it.  There’s a bit of an indent in the snow where the swale runs down the pasture to the back fence.  We’ve created huge snowbanks in the front corner where the fences from the 2 pastures meet and the swale begins.   

When Dan was done with the paddock, he cleared an area alongside the tack room end of the barn.  This will now direct runoff from the path to the barn, past the tackroom and over to a narrow swale under the snow.  This swale runs on a diagonal away from the back of the barn, under the fencing, and into the woods. 

Phew!  We’ve had so much snow already that we’re running out of room to put more.  Wouldn’t it be nice if we’re done with snowstorms for this winter!!            

We have had gentle snowfall for 6 days now.  We’ve probably picked up close to another foot of snow.  At least it’s come in small increments so it makes it easier for us to clear the driveway and pathways around the house and down to the barn and over to the big poop pile.  Dan hooked up something called ‘skid shoes’ to the bottom of the ‘blade’ attachment on the tractor and has a fairly easy time ‘plowing’ all these paths out.  It’s much, much faster than using the snowblower even if he has to be turned around plowing backwards the whole time.  He used the tractor bucket as well as the blade a few weeks ago to clear a path in the pasture for the alpacas to run around on.  They all followed him and pronked behind the tractor while he worked.  Guinness was so excited he was pouncing around the tractor and then laid down in front of it and rolled and rolled and rolled.  When Dan was done, they all had races up and down the paths sometimes tripping over Guinness when he decided to roll again.  They continually find endless ways to amuse us.  Now when they see Dan coming down the path to the barn on the tractor they get excited, thinking he’s going to clear another path in the pasture for them. 

The strong winds continue and I’m constantly re-shoveling the drifts that keep accumulating on the paddock walkway.  Today the sun is shining brightly and I wish I could find a way to get the boys out of the barn.  Julio is a good guard keeping the others in the barn out of the wind but the sunshine is so refreshing!  Alpacas, with their wonderfully dense fleece can withstand the cold easily but it’s the wind that creates havoc with their health.  Wind blew snow up and over the tarp and onto the straw we’ve put down.  A few days ago I was actually shoveling snow off the straw in the awning area of the barn.  The boys must be heartier than I keep planning for as most days I find them cushed on the stonedust in the 2 stalls where we did not put straw down.  Usually at least one is cushed in front of the hay feeder entirely in the wind.  Arlo enjoys the thick straw in the pen the most although I wonder if the reason he likes cushing in the pen is because that’s where we feed him his grain! 

We’d been visiting our alpacas in the winter up at Pam’s during the 2 years they’d been there but this is our first winter to watch them ‘grow into their fleece’ on a daily basis.  Wow!  What a show!  The more their fleece grows the more gorgeous of an animal alpacas are.  It is so soft to the touch and with gloveless hands my fingers are instantly warm.  Their fleece right now is as long as my fingers are or longer.  When I touch all the way down to their bodies, their bodies are warm.  Yeah!  Sometimes it’s necessary to put a coat on the younger alpacas or the older or sick ones.  With this wind I’m tempted to make little ear warmers and booties for them although I’m sure none of my boys would wear them!    

I hope all of you had a better Christmas weekend than I did.  I spent most of the time on the couch, sick with some sort of mild flu.  I only left the house in the evenings to go out to the barn with Dan to feed our happy little herd.  Standing among the alpacas, they radiate such joy and good energy it’s hard to feel sick.

I love New Year’s and the hope for new beginnings that it brings.  On New Year’s Eve Dan and I like to sit back and reflect on our past year and create our goals for the New Year.  Our reflections start with the good, i.e. all the goals we did accomplish or are completing, and then on to the setbacks.  But instead of dwelling on any bad experiences that we may have had, we talk about what we’ve learned from those experiences so that it may help us in the future.  And then we laugh and talk about what we are looking forward to, jot down ideas, and from there our new goals are formed.  It's the end of the year.  Every end is a new beginning.

With the alpacas physically here it will be much easier for us to visualize the direction our farm is headed.  I’m sure all farms sit back every year and say ‘Hhmmm, what needs to be fixed?  What do we need to buy this year?  What could we improve?’  Necessity and the budget usually dictate what will come first.  If the alpacas could speak, I’m sure they’d like us to keep working on a better pasture, free of rocks and roots, and filled with lush, green grass!

As I type, big, fluffy snowflakes are falling covering all the tree limbs, fence posts, birdhouses, and all the mud left by yesterday’s rain, once again transforming our cabin, yard, barn, pasture and woods into a Norman Rockwell-esque painting.  I love a fresh snowfall.  Everything looks so peaceful and new.   

Here’s to wonderful new beginnings!

Wishing you all a joyous, healthy, and prosperous New Year!

Bright Blessings,

     Mona

Well, all alpaca owners experience it; I already have several times.  It’s been happening at least a couple times a week to me.  Dan, on the other hand, has not experienced it.  But on Sunday night, he did experience it for the first time.....What am I talking about?  Dan was showered in the face and hair with alpaca spit.

On Sunday we also had another snowstorm.  We are far enough north that we were lucky to only get another 2 inches of powdery snow that makes the pasture look like we just spread white frosting all across it.  Everything looks fresh and clean.  The alpacas like to cush near the openings of the stalls.  The winds blow in snow and cover the edges of the straw in little drifts, and decorate the backs and necks of the alpacas.  They have no idea that they’re covered in snow; their fleece has gotten so thick and long.  Guinness easily won the “Most Snowy Alpaca” award.  The sparkly white snow on his dark brown fleece looked like vanilla icing on chocolate cake.  Of course I left the snow on him.

Julio is still imposing his ‘no leaving the barn while it’s cold and windy’ rule and the boys are getting quite cranky and stir crazy.  Bo and Coty wrestle with each other right there in the barn, sometimes over the poop pile.  Arlo keeps trying to join in but he’s still too little.  But it’s Julio and Guinness who get the others all riled up at feeding time.  They get jumpy and spit at each other, and then start chasing the others around the barn when we bring out the feed bowls.  Last night was quite a circus trying to get them to settle down to eat!  No one was in their usual place but after a couple minutes every nose had its own bowl and the steady munching started.  When they’d finished they all started eating hay and another spit fest started.  Dan was right there watching them and whoa!!!  All of a sudden he was showered in spit and I laughed for about 5 minutes straight.  I was still in the pen with Arlo and instead of spit, I got an alpaca kiss. 

Today it is the first official day of winter and it is sunny and frigid cold again.  The fierce winds are blowing the snow around sometimes making little ‘tornadoes’ dance across the pasture.  Surprisingly though it is above zero even with the winds.  The alpacas still won’t leave the barn.  I love the winter solstice.  The days start to get longer again! 

The water in the bucket was frozen again when I went out to the barn this morning.  And once again they weren’t concerned, just I was.  The past several days I put about 2 gallons of hot tap water in the bucket and carry it down along with the gallon jugs of hot water.  I am putting all hot tap water in the bucket and it’s still freezing up, hopefully not as fast.  Julio likes to drink the hot water and Guinness also seems to, but the others will put their noses in and look up quickly at me “What! What happened!”  After a few minutes, once it has cooled a bit, then they come back and drink.  I guess the alpacas don’t like tea as much as I do.  Hmmmm, perhaps I should be putting a tea bag in the water bucket ....

Another thing about autumn is the coyotes.  In the evenings and throughout the night you can hear them howling.   Lately it sounds like it’s coming from the woods down the street, but many times it is the woods across the street from us in the state park, or in the woods behind our house.  Sometimes the pack behind our house howls back and forth with the pack in the park.  It’s a haunting noise and when the howls are close by the hair on the back of my neck stands up.  Our little alpaca herd doesn’t seem overly concerned, but of course we are.

We went up to Maine yesterday morning to pick up our new guard llama from Nancy Durst at White Barn Meadows Farm.  Nancy runs a gelding alpaca fiber farm that is picture-postcard beautiful.  Senator is a well experienced, well mannered guard llama that is easily handled.  He is just perfect for us. 

The initial meet and greet was in a word, hysterical.  Our boys all huddled around the paddock fence while we had Senator on the lead on the other side.  The happy sniff fest went on for quite some time, our boys much more curious about him than he was of them.  Once we led Senator into the paddock, Coty quickly instigated the others into chasing him around the paddock.  The same thing happened once we opened up the pasture.  Our boys ate their dinner quietly with virtually no fighting amongst themselves and then peacefully ate hay together out of the same feeder.  Senator ate hay from the big feeder and then stood just outside the paddock, observing the woods.

After dinner and hay our boys weren’t quite so spunky so Senator got to check out his new home in peace.  He carefully walked the fence lines and checked out the gates, sniffing and sniffing the air and I swear each inch of pasture.  It was a full moon night and the whole pasture was lit up.  He was very observant and alert over every little sound, dogs barking and howling, owls hooting, crickets chirping, leaves rustling in the wind, and I’m sure things that we humans can’t hear.  Finally he settled down and cushed in a spot along the middle pasture fence line and its gate.  Here, he has a perfect view of the barn with his new herd to protect and the entire pasture.

And Stella won't look at him either!

There are several horse farms and horse owners here in our town.  In fact there are at least 6 horse farms/owners here on our street, plus the vet.  Our farm is also within 7 miles +/- of three different feed stores, each selling 1 of the 3 major brands of alpaca grain/pellets (Poulin, Blue Seal, and Mazuri), all which also sell hay, so our alpacas will never go hungry.  Because the overwhelming majority of livestock in our area is horses, the hay is usually 1^st cut Timothy hay.  There is certainly nothing wrong with 1^st cut, especially when it’s still very green, but it does tend to be coarser and ‘stemmy.’  Alpacas will usually pull out the stems and not eat it, leading to quite a large amount of waste.  Alpacas’ digestive systems requires a  higher protein value than horses or cattle, so the hunt for green, grassy, 2^nd cut hay for the fall and winter is on.

We purchased some 1^st cut hay from our neighbor when our alpacas first came home.  It was pretty green.  The alpacas seemed to like it although they have definitely been pulling out the stems, and as a bonus they also seemed to enjoy grazing on what little grass we have growing in the pastures.  Next spring we will have our soil tested so that we can fertilize the pastures properly.  But right now it’s autumn and it’s getting cold outside, and our vet would prefer they put on some weight before winter.  It will be easier to maintain their weight from then on, rather than trying to have them put some on during the cold weather.

We went over to a friend’s house yesterday to pick up a couple dozen bales of 2^nd cut hay from his fields.  Beautifully green, fabulous ‘just cut’ smell, and much softer to the touch!   I pulled out the other hay from the feeder and re-filled it with the new hay.  When the alpacas see me, they generally all come running (yes, it’s a nice feeling!) and run they did!  They took a few good sniffs of the new hay, a few bites, then turned around and walked back out to the pasture.  Silly, silly boys!!  All except our littlest guy, Arlo, who happily eats hay from my hand.  I’m guessing that because we’ve had some light rain occasionally the past few weeks, there must be new growth on the field that they like.  Right now as I type, they’ve just come back from the pasture and are chowing hay!  I guess they like it after all.

We’re having such a great time with the alpacas.  They do have their individual personalities and over the past month, we’ve begun to decipher them.  As I’ve mentioned, Julio is the self-appointed guard and leader.  When he heads out into the pasture, the others all follow within minutes.  When he heads back up to the barn, here they all come.  In the evening after sunset, he stands by the paddock entrance and seems to scan the woods.  When he hears something, his ears perk up and his body stiffens.  We’ll sometimes shine the flashlight to see if we can see anything, but we never have.  Sometimes we’ll hear a neighbor’s (it’s the country; neighbors aren’t exactly ‘nearby’) dog in the distance, but usually we don’t see anything.  Then he’ll slowly walk off into the pasture, look around again, and start grazing.  One by one, the others follow, and graze under the stars.  They’re all such a friendly little group together.

But alas, that changes somewhat when food is involved!  Fighting over food is normal in the livestock world as well in the wild.  We try to make things as fair as possible, like one would with their own children.  Some evenings they pleasantly eat their grain and then go back to the paddock and cush.  Some nights the spit is flying!  The usual instigator is Guinness, who for some reason seems to think that all the bowls are for him.  Dan will try to move him from the others’ bowls, then everyone rearranges themselves; what a riot!  We always put Arlo, our littlest and shyest guy, separate from the others or else he’d never get to eat, and I ‘stand guard’ by him until he is done. 

And then there is the hay feeder.  Usually all is fine, with everyone quietly munching.  Then they see me getting more hay to add, and I’m usually bombarded by alpaca mouths.  That’s fine as I can still easily add that flake or two into the feeder.  Once again, Guinness seems to think the hay is all for him.  His first victim is usually Julio who when it comes to fresh hay, always fights back.  Yesterday the two went at it, spitting and screeching at each other for a good solid 5 minutes.  The others were eating on the other side of the feeder but when the spitting started, they stood back with me out of the line of fire to watch the spit fight.  What a riot my 2 geldings are!

But what we love the most is in the evening when the alpacas play.  Either Coty will head butt Bo Jangles or vice-versa, the other returns the favor, and off they go.  They’ll run gracefully together side by side around the pasture, stop for some head butting, wrangle their longs necks together, and roll all over each other.  They make gentle snorting sounds as they wrestle and off they go again running.  Sometimes they’ll head butt the others gently to join in the race around the pastures.  It’s so beautiful and peaceful to watch, under just the moonlight and stars.

In a previous post, I had mentioned how our alpacas had easily adapted to their new home here on our farm, and that because they’ve been so calm, we’re kinda irked that they haven’t done something.  Well, now they have!

They were all hanging out by the awning and hay feeder, cushed and chewing their cud, when suddenly they all leaped up, instantly alert, and Julio ran to the back of the pasture.  He was intent on something past the stone wall.  The others cautiously came to the end of the paddock and one by one they stepped out slowly into the pasture in a line, but never quite reaching Julio; Coty first and then Guinness, followed by Bo with Arlo bringing up the rear.  Oddly enough, they were in a line from tallest to smallest.  I called out to Dan who was in the garage and he ran out back along the east fence line.  I got the binoculars and went out down the west fence line.   Julio was definitely eyeing something, and the others were cautiously standing still and watching, with Bo constantly looking over his shoulder at Arlo as if to say “Don’t move!  Stay right there!”  When Dan got to the middle of the stone wall that follows the back of our pasture, Julio turned around sharply and ran up to the barn, nipping at everyone’s back end to hurry along.  It was quite the sight to see them all running together as the herd that they are. 

The fuss?   Apparently there was a red fox sitting on the stone wall watching them.  It started to run off when Julio approached, and Dan saw it run off into the woods.  When Dan got to the stone wall where the fox had been, that’s when Julio called the gang back up to the barn.  It’s good to know that our alpacas can distinguish between Stella and our neighbors’ dogs (no threat) and with a wild animal (big threat).  Julio, being the tallest and heaviest, is the undeclared leader and guard.

Good boy Julio!

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Our first week of raising alpacas has been basically, blessedly uneventful.  They’re such quiet and peaceful animals.  Not that we were expecting them to be constantly animated, but after a few hours we were saying ‘hey guys do something!’

I love to read other alpaca farms’ humorous tips and stories, and now we’ve acquired a few of our own.  These are in no particular order.  We will also keep this list in our “Other Stuff” section of our website and update it periodically:

 ~ There is always a pecking order.  Our boys were in a large herd and now there’s just the 5 of them of various ages, so by default it appears Julio and Guinness, our 2 geldings and the oldest at about 6 years old each, expect to both be the alpha.  We think Julio will eventually reign, but until then, there’s some spatting and occasional spitting.  When the spit starts to fly get out of the way!  Yesterday we both got caught in the crossfire.

 ~ When there is barn work to be done in the heat, humidity and rain, wear a bathing suit.  I wear a tankini with men’s swim trunks.  The trick is to wear a color your husband would never wear; mine are purple.  As you get wet from the rain or drenched in sweat, the suit will dry quickly.  And when you get hot, just hose yourself off.  This has been a wonderful idea for working in the garden (my mother in law’s trick) and it works great for the barn too.

 ~ Keep the herd out of the barn while you arrange feed bowls.  Ours have walked right into the tack room and started helping themselves, and all but attack us as we walk the bowls out to the stall.  I swear I think we were being orgled too.  (note to self:  order panels!)

 ~ Alpacas love the leaves on saplings.

 ~ Barn poopers happen.  Just accept it.  And it is easier to clean up then the poop piles in the pasture in the rain.

 ~ Always be grateful to your Mr.-fix-it husband who can finagle electricity to the barn while you are watching a weanling to make sure it is OK after an episode of choke.  Also, have a chair available for him to sit on.  He knew in his heart that our little boy would be fine, but waited in the barn with me for 2 hours anyways because he was worried about me.

 ~ Ladies, you will almost always find hay in your bra.

 ~ And also, Ladies, sometimes your hubby will actually forget to remove his shoes before entering the house.  Bleach (non-chlorine) will help you feel much better.

 ~ If you are the type of person who is always checking to see if the toaster and iron are off and unplugged, you will also constantly be checking gates and doors to be sure they are properly closed.

 ~ After spending thousands of dollars clearing 3 acres of land and fencing it in, your alpacas will spend the majority of their time on the 1/3 acre surrounding your barn.

 ~ Your dog may be mad at you for having alpacas (see my post: Oh Stella!) but your indoor cat couldn’t care less.

 ~ Work your poop piles from the outside in.  Your shoes will definitely stay cleaner.

 ~ Alpaca males can and will open gates when there is an open female, surprise!

I got up bright and early at 5:30 a.m., nuked up some coffee and starting checking email, the weather, and the news.  Suddenly, poof!  The power went out.  A bright and sunny summer morning, no wonder the power went out; this is rural New Hampshire after all.  Dan was listening to the radio (back up battery) and apparently a squirrel had gotten into a substation and ............ which knocked out power for several towns!  While I feel terribly for the squirrel, we found it to be a rather amusing story, and what a way to start our day, the day ‘the alpacas come home.’

The dragonflies are at it again this morning, flying around the yard and pasture gracefully.  We’ve been playing phone tag with our neighbor for a few days now.  Our first order of business is to swing over there and pick up some hay.  Our beautiful new wooden feeder will be ready in a few days, so for now, our yellow muck-wheelbarrow, new and still clean, will serve as the hay feeder.  It makes for some interesting pictures!  Their grain and minerals were on order and due in some time today, so we’ll run to the feed store later this afternoon.

Our little crew arrived at lunchtime with Pam beaming ear to ear.  Yeah, she loves our place!  The boys were a little confused getting out of the trailer but we easily got them into the barn.  We put out water and hay, and they all drank and started munching away.  We stood and watched them for a while, while they investigated their new barn and pasture.  They’re even enjoying what little grass we’ve got growing.  All in all, it seemed to be a simple, stress-free transfer for them.  What a wonderful way to start our transition to alpaca farming.

Welcome home, Julio, Guinness, Bo Jangles, Coty, and Arlo!

 Our alpacas will start coming home to our farm soon, and now is when we realize that oops!  There is so much more to do.  But like any farm, or business, there is always ‘more to do’ or ‘something that needs getting done.’   All farms are a continual ‘work in process,’ and ours certainly will be no exception.

I suppose there will always be a new gate or gadget needed, an extra water bucket here, move the grain feeders there, that sort of thing.  Running through all the major things we’ve done .......We’ve cleared land and improved the pastures with, oh my, lots of drainage.  We’ve built the small barn with an awning.  We’ve installed the hydrant for water from our well.  We’ve put up fencing and adjusted gates and sealed off the low areas where rainwater has washed out underneath, allowing small critters such as the red fox access.  We’ve seeded the pasture with pasture grass mix and excitedly watched as it started to grow, albeit in large splotches!  Our first pieces of alpaca equipment is appropriately enough a poop scooper and large 2-wheeled wheelbarrow.  Our hay feeder is on order.  We’ve secured a hay source and grain/feed source.  We’ve decided how to divvy up the barn stalls and which directions to put the gates and panels.  We’ve purchased that very well used but sturdy horse trailer. We’ve prayed for clear, cool days and sunny skies.

So now we sit back and say, the alpacas will be here in a few short days, and we’re not ready!  We have waited for this moment for almost 2 years so how could we possibly not be ready?   We’ll need some grain feeders and oh yes grain, something to store the grain in, water buckets, the wire type tape to block off the area behind the barn where it’s still a bit mucky, and that tape to block off the stall where we’ll store some hay, oh yes ~ hay!, panels to divide the stalls, a scale, one of those awning things with metal supports to store our tractor in as we need the barn space for the alpacas now, where to put the pile of poop, and also...............  I’m sure after they arrive, we’ll constantly be saying ‘gee we really need to get a .......’  Until then, we can improvise.  Dan is very good at improvising, or as he says ‘mousing it.’

We are life long animal lovers and in that sense we are not nervous about the alpacas’ arrival.  Even though we’ve never owned livestock, we are comforted by the fact that there are several alpaca farms with kind alpaca owners within a 30-45 minute drive, our vet is walking distance away, and of course Pam is always available for our multitudes of questions.  Thanks Pam! Your patience and kindness to your animals, and now ours, is cherished. 

I headed out to the garden earlier to pick some more cherry tomatoes.  Isn’t this wonderful?  Weeks and weeks of heavy rain and cool temperatures, yet I’ve been picking cherry tomatoes!  So tasty right off the vine, it’s amazing I can walk back to the house and still have a couple for my salad.  The plum tomatoes and sandwich size tomatoes are still green, but there are plenty of them!  The zucchini plants are getting huge, but have still to give me anything to pick.  The beets, spinach, kale, and carrots have grown and there are lots and lots of buds on the green bean plants .......... and weren’t there more leaves yesterday???  I’m in a daze, probably because of the shockingly sunny day, and then I noticed the hoof prints again.  Only a few leaves were missing, but in the next box ........... all the leaves off the sunflowers were gone!  Bummer!!  I just love sunflowers in a garden.  The deer are beautiful creatures, but I’d rather have them in our garden than the alpaca pastures!

 All the work that Dan has done to help with drainage seems to be paying off.  We are continuing to have excessive rain, but as time goes by, more and more of the pasture area is usable, i.e., you can walk without sinking halfway to your knees!  Our little ‘farm road,’ which is the road that’s been created from the driveway down to the pasture is now relatively solid, despite all the rain, as is also the yard area around it.  The main gate to our pasture, near the barn, stays dry as well.  Parts of this pasture and the swale itself still get quite mucky and slippery, but they too are drying out sooner and sooner.

 So with this relative good luck, this past weekend we decided to seed the pasture.  There are shoots of green grass sprouting up here and there, but we need to speed up this process pronto.  Dan lightly rototilled on one side of the swale, and lightly tilled with the york rake on the other side of the swale.  This is to test which method will seed faster!  We’ve never been much into building lawns; we’ve always prefer to just rototill up the grass and plant more perennials.  So it’s rather ironic for us to be out there with our teeny little lawn seed spreader, walking back and forth spreading seed.  Much alpaca information will say that brome grass is best.  We decided on a simple ‘horse pasture blend’ of grasses.  This blend was closer to the native grasses that grow here naturally.  Once the pasture is well grassed, we plan to regularly overseed with brome grass in spring and/or fall.  After we seeded, that night we found ourselves in the unlikely position of actually hoping for a light rain!  And it did rain, lightly, just perfectly!  We then spread out mulch hay to protect the seed from hot sun and keep the moisture in.  There is also a perfect forecast for the next several days: sunny, warm but not hot, dry air, and no rain.

 An added benefit to the mulch hay is that there are plenty of grass seeds in it.  One tack supplier we recently spoke with said that all she did was spread out mulch hay – no seed – and her pasture came in beautifully!  We have our fingers crossed for the same good luck.

(Don’t worry........ this is not an Alfred Hitchcock type entry!)

A fun thing about living here is all the birds!  Ever since we’ve moved here, we’ve been focused on creating our pasture.  We did move several hundred perennials over here from our former home, but otherwise have not done too much to attract birds.  And they are plentiful!  We’re enjoying all the usual backyard birds:  robins, chickadees, goldfinches, cardinals, hummingbirds, juncos, house finches, sparrows, blue jays, mourning doves, downy and hairy woodpeckers, etc.  We’re surprised and excited to see the others that have showed up:  indigo buntings, Baltimore orioles, scarlet tanagers, evening grosbeaks and rose breasted grosbeaks, bluebirds, northern flicker woodpeckers, pileated woodpeckers, catbirds, bobolinks, and more.  They have me running to my Peterson’s field guide so that I can identify them, when they stay in one place long enough for me to do that.

Even funner than just seeing all the birds is that some just love to nest on the criss-crosses of the log ends.  So far it has just been the robins doing that, and one mourning dove pair did once too.  It’s ‘normal’ for us now to walk by certain corners of the house as quietly as possible so as not to disturb momma robin and it’s great to just stand quietly and look at the 3 or 4 beaks peeking out of the nests.  And, now, we even have a bird friend nesting in the rafters of our little barn!  We haven’t identified her yet, probably some kind of finch, although the 4 little heads looks like juncos.

There are always tons of birds around throughout the day, singing their beautiful songs and chit-chatting. Sometimes they do all get quite squawky and we start looking frantically for the most likely cause – a hawk.

Don’t get me wrong; we absolutely love hawks.  They are also gorgeous birds and we are always amazed to watch them fly and soar.  BUT, we get protective over the little bird nests!  We just have to stand nearby and the hawk will fly away once it notices us.  The hawks have to eat, but not our baby birds!   

Our fencing is the 5 foot, woven wire no-climb type, with pressure treated pounded posting.  These posts are perfect for setting nesting boxes and bat houses on, which we will start doing as time allows. Oh, have I mentioned the bats? ................

Here in the Northeast it has been raining for the past week and it seems like it’s getting to be time for us to build the ark.  I’ve been reading a rather funny thread on alpacanation about all rain we’ve been getting here in New Hampshire, Maine, and the entire Northeast.  I say funny only because I just thought it was a funny topic to start a thread on.  But, here in the Northeast excessive rain is certainly a real concern for us alpaca farmers.  The rain brings out the slugs, gross little creatures, which bring along the meningeal worm, hosted by our cute wildlife, the white-tailed deer.  M-worm is of particular concern for alpaca farmers as it is a deadly disease, and here in the Northeast we routinely de-worm as part of our prevention program.  (Note to self:  get chickens, sooner rather than later.)  And of course, any of us with new pastures from recently disturbed soil, as well as anyone with clay soil, is having additional problems with mud, mud, and yes, more mud!!

Not to mention all that standing puddle water is a breeding ground for mosquitoes and all the yucky diseases they carry.

So times like these make me appreciate the dry Southwest more and more, and like I already mentioned, make me start thinking about building that ark.

Or perhaps at least I should remind myself of the good things about rain........  The most obvious benefit is it waters, usually evenly, our lawns and gardens.  In a previous post I mentioned that I had planted seeds and transplants for our little vegetable garden.  I’ve only had to water once, the day I planted!  Most of the seeds are sprouting, but by now, they could certainly use some sun! ............  A related benefit is that I don’t have to be out there watering morning and night, and subsequently feeding the mosquitoes while I stand there.......... Another benefit is that is replenishes our wells.......Rain runoff from our roofs fills up our rain barrels, to water the gardens............ The birds have plenty to drink naturally, rather than me filling up birdbaths.  Water attracts birds to your yards, and birds eat many, many, bugs; no need for pesticides! ....... And as my friend Deb says, "At least we're not shoveling it!"

But we’ve had many, many inches of rain and we’re more than ready for sunshine!  Those of you who practice yoga, please join me daily in spirit for a Salute to the Sun!!!!

Late last summer we had a local logger and his crew clear about 3 acres of woods and brushy overgrowth.  It was done ‘rough grade’ as Dan wanted to do the finish work himself.  What a wonderful job they did!  There were many, many large rocks that they carefully placed on the property lines creating a boulder style stone wall.  The stumps were all buried alongside the rocks so as to be outside and around the pasture area, a farm road of sorts.  It looked fabulous and then, the rains came!  First a tropical storm bringing about 5 inches, and several smaller storms, and anyone who lives in New England remembers the rain and resulting ice storm in early December!  All that rainfall saturated our new pasture, with ‘sink to your knees mud,’ washing out a lot of the topsoil, creating ruts and little streams, and rendering it impossible to work in it.  Clearly we had a drainage problem, unknown to us before due to the thick woods.  Disappointed, we knew we had to wait until spring for things to dry out before the alpacas could come home.

 And dry out it did!  We’ve had a pleasantly sunny and warm spring. Another local contractor has come by a few times giving us ideas on how to divert runoff and rain.  We’ve seen swales before but never knew the correct term. Dan is in his glory on the tractor, digging and moving dirt and making one heck of a swale diagonally down the pasture.  He’s also been making several diagonal berms down the ‘farm road’ from our driveway to the barn gate and alongside the fencing.  'Berm' is our new favorite word.  We have huge piles of dirt now in the pasture, beautiful dark brown dirt!  After we sift it, and add in a little compost, this loam will be wonderful for gardening perennials.  Now to continue on picking up rocks and roots and york raking the whole area smooth.......And the rocks... oh my!  There are more huge boulder-sized rocks, all the way down to baseball sized and pebbles.  Dan will be busy making decorative stone walls for years.   

 We’ve been told that actually all that rain was a very good thing(!)  It helps to pack down the freshly disturbed land so the grass can grow.  The grass will then hold everything together.  So far, this does seem to be happening!  There are plenty of green shoots sprouting up all over.  We are very happy and grateful for that.  And soon the alpacas will be here, grazing and pronking....................