National Alpaca Farm Days

Anyone who has seen alpacas knows what unusual, cute creatures they are. We are one of hundreds of alpaca farms that are opening their gates this weekend to the public. It's a way to introduce alpacas to people that don't normally get an opportunity to see alpacas and learn about them.

Come to Trent, Texas (directions on our website at www dot MyAlpacaStuff dot com) and see spinners, weavers, knitters and fiber art. We have lots of alpaca related items for sale in the farm store.

A good time will be had by all! Also, if you're travelling from further afield than Abilene there is also a hot air balloon event all weekend so you can make the trip really worth while. Ballooning in the morning and alpacas in the afternoon. What more could a person wish for???

See you in the pasture!

Gardening?

It was going to be so much fun. The climate here is great for gardeners. We knew that because when we moved here we had a very large lawn that had been nurtured for years. It was trim, manicured and looked nice. That's why we bought the place, it really had curb appeal.

So Jerry bought his stock, cantaloupes and honeydew melon, green beans, green peppers, corn, and of course tomatoes. We did not buy any squash, people around here tend to overgrow them and we are the recipients of their excesses. Well we're just two people that don't always eat dinner so two squash go a long way! Anyway, I digress, back to our gardening story. All got planted after the frost and before summer was well on its way to some hot days (so we thought). We had been a little hot last year in July and August when the temperatures soared to 106 and stuck there. We found out that living at 5,000+ feet in the Rocky Mountains has a little different affect on the weather than living at 1,700 (barely) in West Texas! In Arizona the temps would fall at night so that sleeping was possible. . . NOT in Texas. It went from 106 down to 94 or so and was miserable.

We are not ones to abuse air conditioners, in fact we'll wait until we are really uncomfortable until we turn one on. We would have to turn on the air half an hour before we went to bed, just so we could sleep. We then slept with the air on all night, just so we could sleep. So we were preparing for this "heat wave" and hoping we would harvest everything before the heat "hit"!

It was great, we got rain. Everything started peeking through, the carrots and onions first. Jerry was happy, he had put a lot of fertilizer into the rich soil to help it with nutrients for his project. He could see that it was worth the three trips to the neighbor to get his cow manure that had been, shall we say maturing? Then we got more rain. Suffice to say that the rain was constant all spring. It rained every weekend, hardly ever got a drop from Monday through Friday when I was at work in the office, no, every weekend we got it. It dumped on us every weekend and it wasn't small showers either. We not only live in the "Bible Belt" we are also,it appears, on the edge of the "Tornado Belt". I myself fit into the "tight belt" category and Jerry, as everyone knows is in the "having a belt" category! It got so wet that Jerry couldn't walk into his garden to pull weeds. It was just too soggy, so very soggy, soggy, soggy. We weren't too concerned, we would have Monday through Thursday to let it dry out and every time Jerry said "it should be dry enough by tomorrow to pull weeds" guess what happened? Yes, it rained, and rained.

I do love rain and I was really enjoying this year of rain. The cotton farmers were going to be happy, even though the hay farmers were concerned. Too much rain and they can't cut the hay, it would mould if its put up wet. I was not too concerned, Jerry would get those weeds cut and we'd have a great harvest. Got to, look at all the rain we're having.

The picture above is the result of rain on Jerry's vegetable garden. I am 5 feet tall and some of those weeds are as tall as me! He is not able to venture among these giants to harvest his crop. We got some wonderfully sweet honeydews. A few enjoyable cantaloupes. Enough tomatoes for me to make four pints of my own recipe for tomato sauce. We were never able to find any carrots or onions. Sadly the green beans and corn never made it. Our neighbor Robert would come to visit and he told Jerry that green beans and corn don't do well here. Seems like he was right, he would know, he's lived in Texas a long time. So we learned that we won't plant a garden without pre-planning for inclimate weather. We will put down weed cloth and probably spend $1,000 putting in raised beds so we can harvest a crop of tomatoes that would have cost us $40 at the store. I know, we were never too good at economics. Why does doing things yourself to "save money" always end up being so expensive?

the day after the great holiday!

Well here we are, the long weekend is past and what did we accomplish? Well actually quite a bit. It's amazing what can happen when you can't sleep past 6am on your day's off!

Having arisen even BEFORE 6am on Saturday I had a bunch of things on my mind to accomplish. We were going to see about getting a storage room, yes a room not a building or garage. Where we live it's a small town. The old school was donated to the city of 348 people and they spent a year cleaning it out, re-flooring, getting things donated, cleaning up the kitchens etc., etc., etc. We found out (through the grapevine) the there were storage rooms (aka classrooms) available for renting for a mere 5 cents per square foot. I was ready to move in and live there! You cannot build anything for 5 cents, yes, CENTS per square foot. The average home is supposed to cost $100 per square foot but you know that is before you add that lovely italian marble tile, that "over the top" carpeting, those gorgeous sinks, and what about the window coverings - nobody wants shades any more! So, 5 cents a square foot got us not just one but two rooms for a mere $33 per month. All we had to do was furnish the padlock - a mere $15 with the hasp. $15 for a padlock chapps me, they are made in China (I hate buying foreign stuff - Did I say that? I'm a foreigner myself!!).

We got this carpeted room, sorry two carpeted rooms, nice blue industrial carpet that we couldn't wear out even if we tried! Blue pretty much goes with everything but that doesn't matter anyway, all my storage tubs are blue anyway!

Down one wall (24 feet long) is built-in cupboards and shelves. On the other wall opposite is a kinda store display cabinet, perfect for dust-free storage. Then we have like 20X24' space on top of all that! I'm going to have a field day. I love organizing (at least the first time) I will get to take all of my craft items (everyone that sees it says I have enough for my own craft store!), my fiber, my tools (yes, even crafters have drills etc) and store them out of the DUST that accumulates on a farm minute by minute! Do you know how much dust is blown into your house on a daily basis? Just live on a farm and you'll find out pretty darn quick (that's PDQ for you computer savvy people!). Every day, yes, every day the wind blows. No, I don't care where you live, the wind blows. I've lived in New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona and now Texas and everywhere I have lived I have had dust on my furniture. Yes, can you belive it? That was like when I found out that weeds grown in EVERYONE'S yards! (That's a story for another day)

Well, with "out buildings" as the realtors like to call them, you get double, even triple the dust that everyone else gets. Along with the dust comes the dreaded HORNETS. Have I told you how much I hate bugs?

When we moved in there were more hornet condos on the property than all the apartment buildings in Phoenix. Yes they were everywhere. Mud daubers, yellow jackets and those black ones. They even had the nerve to build in my bird houses. Opportunists. . . you bet. They can find the smallest crack in a building and they can move in 14 families into a hole so small you didn't think anything could fit through it. I bet they're even charging rent!

We did find out that these pesky pests have two redeeming charteristics, one: they dont sting (noone told us about the biting though), and two: they eat spiders. So, I thought, we could eliminate over 1/2 of them and still have "spider eaters". So, I have a plan.

First Jerry saw an ad for an EXTERMINATOR! Yes the real kind. There was an ad in the local paper, good prices, regular service, blah, blah, blah. But this caught his eye as a small swarm of bees had decided to move into the eaves of our house. First they had wanted to move into the eaves outside our bedroom door, along with the hornets. Not a friendly site when you're trying to get back indoors, or go outside. We didn't know at that time if they might be AFRICAN BEES!!! So, Jerry sprayed hornet/wasp spray and they left. Two days later the bees had taken up residence on the outside of the house, but still moving into the eaves.

It was time to take action. The Exterminator came today, yes he could remove them (that is another word for "kill"), he'll be back tomorrow to do the dastardly deed. His main concern was if the dog would attack him once he donned his bee-killer outfit. I told him our dog may be large, and bark, but she'd never attack. Not like I expect the bees will do once he starts into their domain. I wish we could have just had them "moved" somewhere else but apparently it's really hard (and expensive) to find someone who will take that stand. I have a real liking for bees, they are very hard working insects, and look at the end product they produce for us. . . honey, mmm, mmm, good!

Where would Honey Bunches of Oats be without bees? Where would the bears be without honey??? See, it affects lots more than you think!

So how did I start off with a post about moving "stuff" and end up talking about insects??? Have I told you I HATE bugs?????

So. . . tomorrow is the mass murder, oops, removal of the bees. Tomorrow I am going to post a picture about Jerry's wonder vegetable garden. You can't wait to see it. (Say, "I can't wait to see Jerry's vegetable garden tomorrow")

So, until then, feel sorry for the bees, try to think about humane bee removal and then think, "Would I do this?". OK, food for thought!