Well I am a horrible blog hostess! I think about it, come up with some awesome ideas to talk about, and never seem to get around to it! I apologize and hope that the new year will make me a better blogger, otherwise I'll turn into a blobber!
This post is to invite you to our 2nd annual Holiday Boutique on the farm. We have a lot of new items that we didn't have last year. I am gearing my shop more towards a fiber crafting store and consequently we have Jerry's handmade knitting needles and his yarn winders that I absolutely love! I am contributing some new items that I have designed and made up, scissor holders (called chatelaines), crochet and needle cases to keep all those extra sticks contained together, hand dyed natural fibers, and some neat knitting markers. Along with the usual alpaca yarn I have now enough of my handspun, hand dyed yarns for sale.
We have a new stock of hats from Peru, nice colorful ones that keep you warm and cosy for the cold weather that is about to arrive! Lots of pretty handmade scarves have been added. And of course we have some neat gift items that are unique.
There are also some awesome alpaca christmas cards, specially designed for Aardvark Alpacas by Linda Hornberger, artist extraordinairre!
Oh, also we will be offering handmade goat milk soaps and lotions from El Coyote Ranch, our friends and neighbors (in Texas terms).
So, come on by, have some hot cider, join in the festivities, buy some unique gifts, and spend time visiting with the alpacas. Don't forget to see our newest boy, Waylon Jennings! We can now boast that Aardvark Alpacas is home to Waylon & Willy & the boys - literally!
10 am until 4 pm
Monday, November 19, 2007
Thursday, October 18, 2007
The Black Hand
So, when I started this blog I thought twice a week would be easy enough to manage. . . NOT!
Where does time go?
Well I had an elightening experience last week. I had alway thought that the term "The Black Hand" originated in pre-Mafia times in Russia or Italy or somewhere! Well I am her to tell you that is not so. I have done some research of my own and here is the "Rest of the Story!".
Long ago in Russia, when people were downtrodden by the Tsar's and had nothing to live for, the peasants had to make do with what they had. The winters were so bleak, nothing grew in the frozen ground. What they did manage to grow during the good months was all taken away by the soldiers, to feed the masses in the cities.
Then one day, some village women were gathering up the fallen pecans from the native trees. They were still in their hulls. These hulls provided the much favored brown dye that the peasants used to dye their clothing. A nice rich brown was useful in these times where clothing was not washed often, and the color hid the dirt.
The only problem was that the pecans needed to be removed from the hulls so that they could be hidden and used for much needed nutrition in the village. It was the womens' job to take care of the hulling and making of the dye. This was a day long process of removing those hulls and even though the hulls were a pretty spring green color, they produced, as mentioned, a lovely brown hue when used in the dyeing process. This brown oozed from the hulls once cut open and consequently got all over the womens hands. The obviously caused their hands to turn a very dark brown, or even black color.
Now the idiots in the cities did not know at this time about pecans and their values. They had no idea that these village women were utilizing them for their uses. They saw these women with the black hands and thought that they were smitten with some deadly disease that was turning their bodies black.
Women, being women, used this to their advantage. During these times these peasants were terribly persecuted and never seemed to get the upper hand (pardon the pun) on their opressors. But these women were smart, they already knew that their men had banded together to form a partisan group against the upstarts. They knew that by keeping these persecutors undereducated on what they were doing, they could fool them into thinking other things.
You must remember that in these times no-one was exactly "educated" in our sense of the word.
So, when the persecutors came to get their usual rations from the village, the women with the black hands were there to hand them out. Well, of course when the soldiers saw these women's hands they did not want to take anything from them. They were afraid that they would get the same affliction from whatever they touched. They got back on their horses and rode off back to town.
The villagers were so happy. Their women had fooled the soldiers into thinking that they had the "curse of the Black Hand". They knew it would be a while before they even thought about venturing back into their village.
Meanwhile, the villagers held a celebration. They had rations to get them through the winter. They had pecan nuts to nourish them through the hard winter months. And, within a couple of weeks the womens' hands were back to their usual pink color.
So, this is where I believe the term "The Black Hand" originated. The upstarts were so impressed with the women's cunning that they felt it would be an apt title for their organization. After all, weren't they going to fool us into thinking things aren't as they appear?????
Moral to this story: Don't peel pecans without rubber gloves!!! (not that I would do anything like that!)
Where does time go?
Well I had an elightening experience last week. I had alway thought that the term "The Black Hand" originated in pre-Mafia times in Russia or Italy or somewhere! Well I am her to tell you that is not so. I have done some research of my own and here is the "Rest of the Story!".
Long ago in Russia, when people were downtrodden by the Tsar's and had nothing to live for, the peasants had to make do with what they had. The winters were so bleak, nothing grew in the frozen ground. What they did manage to grow during the good months was all taken away by the soldiers, to feed the masses in the cities.
Then one day, some village women were gathering up the fallen pecans from the native trees. They were still in their hulls. These hulls provided the much favored brown dye that the peasants used to dye their clothing. A nice rich brown was useful in these times where clothing was not washed often, and the color hid the dirt.
The only problem was that the pecans needed to be removed from the hulls so that they could be hidden and used for much needed nutrition in the village. It was the womens' job to take care of the hulling and making of the dye. This was a day long process of removing those hulls and even though the hulls were a pretty spring green color, they produced, as mentioned, a lovely brown hue when used in the dyeing process. This brown oozed from the hulls once cut open and consequently got all over the womens hands. The obviously caused their hands to turn a very dark brown, or even black color.
Now the idiots in the cities did not know at this time about pecans and their values. They had no idea that these village women were utilizing them for their uses. They saw these women with the black hands and thought that they were smitten with some deadly disease that was turning their bodies black.
Women, being women, used this to their advantage. During these times these peasants were terribly persecuted and never seemed to get the upper hand (pardon the pun) on their opressors. But these women were smart, they already knew that their men had banded together to form a partisan group against the upstarts. They knew that by keeping these persecutors undereducated on what they were doing, they could fool them into thinking other things.
You must remember that in these times no-one was exactly "educated" in our sense of the word.
So, when the persecutors came to get their usual rations from the village, the women with the black hands were there to hand them out. Well, of course when the soldiers saw these women's hands they did not want to take anything from them. They were afraid that they would get the same affliction from whatever they touched. They got back on their horses and rode off back to town.
The villagers were so happy. Their women had fooled the soldiers into thinking that they had the "curse of the Black Hand". They knew it would be a while before they even thought about venturing back into their village.
Meanwhile, the villagers held a celebration. They had rations to get them through the winter. They had pecan nuts to nourish them through the hard winter months. And, within a couple of weeks the womens' hands were back to their usual pink color.
So, this is where I believe the term "The Black Hand" originated. The upstarts were so impressed with the women's cunning that they felt it would be an apt title for their organization. After all, weren't they going to fool us into thinking things aren't as they appear?????
Moral to this story: Don't peel pecans without rubber gloves!!! (not that I would do anything like that!)
Friday, September 28, 2007
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!
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!
Sunday, September 16, 2007
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?
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
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!
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!
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Pictures of "The Flood" and cricket season
Well here are the pics I got on the digital camera of the results of the 7.5" of rain last Saturday (Aug 18th 2007)
This is the car port and it is covered with about 2 inches of water! Below the water is the mud that always seem to come along with the rain!
Now further down this page is a picture that is not for the squeamish! I just want to warn you now in case you don't want to view it. If you have a phobia about bugs then you might want to prepare yourself!
Meanwhile, something that everyone can look at, everyone needs at some time in their life and something I thought I'd NEVER, EVER make. . . . yes I have made my first pair of alpaca socks!
They are hand dyed (no feet included in this) by ME! Yes I dyed the yarn, then I got up the courage to knit with 5, yes I said FIVE, knitting needles, double pointed no less so twice as dangerous. What a challenge this was in the beginning, I was beginning to think that all those sock knitters out there were genius's..... WOW what a challenge it became.
So here we have it. . . my first pair of socks. Jerry is the lucky recipient. Believe it or not he's thrilled as he absolutely loves alpaca socks. Wears the thick terry alpaca socks in the middle of the summer heat. He says because they have this wicking quality he can keep cooler in thick alpaca socks than he can in cotton socks. Go figure!
OK, as warned earlier. . . if you aren't ready for this sickening picture. . . go no further. For those brave enough to continue here it is. . .
This is a picture of the crickets that were on the outside of our window Saturday morning. Because all the ground was covered in water they climbed up the side of the house and were clinging on anything they could find, the window screen being one item they could easily hang onto.My camera battery decided to quit at this point and I didn't get pics of the side of the house and the back yard fence. They were even more disgusting than this. If you could imagine 2 1/2 feet from the ground up, completely covered with crickets. . . yuck, yuck, yuck. Ooh I hate bugs.
But there is one more thing that's worse (for me) Somehow every evening, while I am sitting watching Law and Order (what else is there on sattelite TV?) knitting my socks every darn evening, at about 10pm a cricket lands on ME. Yes, ME. Did I mention that I absolutely HATE bugs? How they have the audacity to land on ME I don't know but let me tell you what happens next is not what they expect. I scream, jump out of my chair, kind of shaking and hitting myself to get this, this thing off me. Yelling at it to get OUT, get out, get out. It gives me the willies just thinking about it.
Now I have to mention that this was not a single incident. Every evening for about two weeks this happened to me. I swear that they were crawling up into the heater vent during the day and sitting there waiting for an opportune moment to kamakaze drop themselves right onto my right shoulder. Yes they even had a spot picked out for this adventure. I couldn't believe it. Did they "attack" Jerry, oh no. . . only me. How dare they!
Somehow, since the "flood" the cricket olympics have ceased to happen. Why I don't know, but I'm happy.
The other thing I don't think everyone knows about crickets. When they die. . . they stink. I mean sickly stink. I found that out last year when we were inundated inside with them (how dare they) and I spent every morning vacuuming up all of them, dead and alive. After two days of vacuuming I discovered that every time I turned on the vacuum this foul smell came wafting up to my nostrils. I told Jerry I thought it was the crickets, dead in the bag. Oh no, he didn't think so.
Well now that same stink is outside the house, outside the back door, in the back yard, on the side of the house, by the front door. . . . . everywhere! I am about ready to go outside and vacuum around the house.
Well my education has now become your education on crickets. They are immune to insect sprays by the way, don't know why.
Next year we are going to start early and spray indoors and out, and if I have my way I'll make Jerry spray all the heater vents up in the ceiling too! The neighbors told us that each year they always get a plague of something or another. Can't wait for the bol weavils (just kidding!)
Monday, August 20, 2007
We survived!
Well it's Monday morning and we have survived the rain. It all started Friday evening, we were expecting rain, we knew it was coming, "I LOVE the rain", "I miss the rain", "isn't it nice, all the rain we've been having since we moved to Texas?". . . . and it rained, and it rained. . . all night it rained.
We got up about 7am and looked outside. Boy oh boy, had it rained! The rain gauge was full, which means we had AT LEAST 6 inches (it's max). The back garden was soggy lawn, the front yard was soggy grass, the circular driveway was "blocked" at each entrance with a very large puddle and you couldn't see the road in front of our property, it had turned into a stream!
Now we know that our alpacas are housed in some low points of the property so we were dreading what we were going to see. The boys especially when we get a good downpour have a "stream" running through two of the four pens for a day or so. Alpacas are not fond of walking through a stream that is very soggy and unstable at the bottom! It was as we expected, but lots worse. It was still raining when we went out to survey. We had to get the boys moved into the barn. They were so wet and bedraggled but luckily for alpacas their hair is very fine and even though they looked wet through they were completely dry on their insides.
Alpacas are herd animals and it appears the more there are, the happier they are. We separate our herd into three groups, the girls, the teenagers and the adult males. We had three "teenagers" to move in with the other four teenagers and one little girl who cannot go back in with mom for another month (after weaning). The boys all waited at their gate in anticipation of their buddies coming back in with them. They were greeted and then all settled inside the barn out of the rain.
Willy Nelson, our stud, was brought into another section of the barn and Kenny Rogers got the center of the barn to himself. So now all were re-situated to wait it out in comfortable quarters.
Even the barn was soggy on the floor and we put raking out the old straw at the top of our list, once we had the property evaluated. Alpacas are pretty adaptable and were quite happy to be in the barn all together.
We decided to go for a tour of the neighborhood to see if anyone else had a lake in their acreage. We have two county roads for access to the freeway and the rest of the world. Did I mention that we are situated out in the "country" 3 miles from the city (population 350)? We are actually 30 miles from Abilene and 15 miles from Sweetwater, the two metropolises that we do our business. Well the first county road had pretty fast flowing water and we were on the edge of it and the water was flowing over the base of the tire. Jerry decided to try the other county road and see if it was as "bad". So we backed up about 1/2 mile and off we went in the opposite direction. It really wasn't any better but our neighbor had decided to check it out too and was in front of us so we could see what we were in for. We got through, although it was no better than the other county road we took the plunge (no pun intended!).
Well we discovered that in our community water, in large amounts, flows north, right to our property. Not to say that there weren't properties that were as water logged as ours, or worse in some cases! We drove back home and decided to wait it out. It finally stopped raining around 2pm. It's amazing, in about an hour you could see how the water was soaking into the ground and the roadway started to appear once again.
Sunday was spent cleaning out the barn. We took advantage of the opportunity of wet feet by trimming toenails on all the alpacas. Yes alpacas have padded feet with two toes. Very much like us they have toenails that grow and since we moved to Texas on lovely soft soil, their toenails grow, and grow, and grow. They don't like their legs being touched so it's quite an effort on some of them to stand still while we do it. It was quite a workout doing about 15 sets of feet!
We were expecting more rain Sunday but were lucky enough to be spared a couple of days, the weather reports kept putting the next storm back a few days. Now they are saying late Monday or Tuesday. At least this deluge can soak down before the next one.
All I can say is that I am thankful we live far enough from the gulf coast not to be worried about hurricanes, but we do get some of the backlash!
Well that's it for the great rain of 2007. We are way, way above our national average for this year, the farmers are happy and I have enjoyed the rain. It might have been a bit better if it had been spread out a litte more! All in all we "reckon" we got about 7 1/2 inches of rain!
We got up about 7am and looked outside. Boy oh boy, had it rained! The rain gauge was full, which means we had AT LEAST 6 inches (it's max). The back garden was soggy lawn, the front yard was soggy grass, the circular driveway was "blocked" at each entrance with a very large puddle and you couldn't see the road in front of our property, it had turned into a stream!
Now we know that our alpacas are housed in some low points of the property so we were dreading what we were going to see. The boys especially when we get a good downpour have a "stream" running through two of the four pens for a day or so. Alpacas are not fond of walking through a stream that is very soggy and unstable at the bottom! It was as we expected, but lots worse. It was still raining when we went out to survey. We had to get the boys moved into the barn. They were so wet and bedraggled but luckily for alpacas their hair is very fine and even though they looked wet through they were completely dry on their insides.
Alpacas are herd animals and it appears the more there are, the happier they are. We separate our herd into three groups, the girls, the teenagers and the adult males. We had three "teenagers" to move in with the other four teenagers and one little girl who cannot go back in with mom for another month (after weaning). The boys all waited at their gate in anticipation of their buddies coming back in with them. They were greeted and then all settled inside the barn out of the rain.
Willy Nelson, our stud, was brought into another section of the barn and Kenny Rogers got the center of the barn to himself. So now all were re-situated to wait it out in comfortable quarters.
Even the barn was soggy on the floor and we put raking out the old straw at the top of our list, once we had the property evaluated. Alpacas are pretty adaptable and were quite happy to be in the barn all together.
We decided to go for a tour of the neighborhood to see if anyone else had a lake in their acreage. We have two county roads for access to the freeway and the rest of the world. Did I mention that we are situated out in the "country" 3 miles from the city (population 350)? We are actually 30 miles from Abilene and 15 miles from Sweetwater, the two metropolises that we do our business. Well the first county road had pretty fast flowing water and we were on the edge of it and the water was flowing over the base of the tire. Jerry decided to try the other county road and see if it was as "bad". So we backed up about 1/2 mile and off we went in the opposite direction. It really wasn't any better but our neighbor had decided to check it out too and was in front of us so we could see what we were in for. We got through, although it was no better than the other county road we took the plunge (no pun intended!).
Well we discovered that in our community water, in large amounts, flows north, right to our property. Not to say that there weren't properties that were as water logged as ours, or worse in some cases! We drove back home and decided to wait it out. It finally stopped raining around 2pm. It's amazing, in about an hour you could see how the water was soaking into the ground and the roadway started to appear once again.
Sunday was spent cleaning out the barn. We took advantage of the opportunity of wet feet by trimming toenails on all the alpacas. Yes alpacas have padded feet with two toes. Very much like us they have toenails that grow and since we moved to Texas on lovely soft soil, their toenails grow, and grow, and grow. They don't like their legs being touched so it's quite an effort on some of them to stand still while we do it. It was quite a workout doing about 15 sets of feet!
We were expecting more rain Sunday but were lucky enough to be spared a couple of days, the weather reports kept putting the next storm back a few days. Now they are saying late Monday or Tuesday. At least this deluge can soak down before the next one.
All I can say is that I am thankful we live far enough from the gulf coast not to be worried about hurricanes, but we do get some of the backlash!
Well that's it for the great rain of 2007. We are way, way above our national average for this year, the farmers are happy and I have enjoyed the rain. It might have been a bit better if it had been spread out a litte more! All in all we "reckon" we got about 7 1/2 inches of rain!
Thursday, August 16, 2007
My First Day as a Blogger
Well here I am in the land of Blogs! I said I wouldn't do it but everyone else is!
I will share some of the fun side of my life (of which there's lots) showing you what I'm up to, at least on a weekly basis but hopefully more regularly than that! I'll share stories about my alpacas, my cats, life on the farm, my projects and designs, and my hopes for the future near and far.
It's mid August, we've had a wonderfully wet summer, but that has put the cabosh on a lot of outdoor projects. Working full time and coming home to take care of the fuzzy critters (once it cools down a bit from the high 90's) takes us to about 8pm each evening. Since I don't like to cook any more (retired myself about 20 years ago but it's more like a semi-retirement!) I hope that Jerry, my partner, is not in a hungry mood and takes care of himself. Bless his little heart, he's more than happy to do that, or have a "hydraulic sandwich". Me? Well I'd prefer sitting and getting working on one of my many projects.
To back track for those of you that don't know us and what we are doing. Five years ago, when the stock market stunk and I lost a lot of my pension, I decided to "re-invest". From suggestions and seeing the TV ads I decided to look into alpacas. Now we're talking about someone who didn't own a pair of tennis shoes and had barely purchased her first pair of jeans. Long fingernails and high heels were my wardrobe and I loved it!
Anyway, we found that there was two alpaca farms in our little community and off we went to visit them. Well if that is not the dumbest thing for an impulse shopper to do! Guess how long it took to decide to buy alpacas? One week........ we purchased two females and a gelding.
Over the past five years we've had our share of "bad luck". In this business the females are worth a lot more than the males, of course we've had all males but one. Since one of the first girls we bought was named Wynonna I decided to go with a C&W theme for naming my animals. I thought I'd never get my Reba! Well finally she arrived, July 2006. Gretchen Wilson arrived on October 31st last year to make our total girls up to 2, woohoo! All in all we've had a wonderful string of wonderfully healthy boys and we're hoping that next year our luck will change.
With all this happening to us, we've not had the growth in our herd as planned on in the beginning. We have spent a lot of time purchasing females to get our herd going and to date we're up to 8. They will all be bred this fall to give us late summer babies next year.
Meanwhile I have revamped our business plan. We are now working more diligently on the fleece side of our business and as I love to knit, crochet and do all sorts of fiber arts my next natural progression was to learn to spin.
I live in the middle of nowhere Texas and it's not like I can sign up at the local yarn store and get going on what I want to learn, oh no, not that easy for me! So, I got my spinning wheel out and sat down in May and taught myself to spin. Believe me it wasn't that easy, I spun, and spun, and spun, and spun and thought I was never going to "get it". Then one evening it happened, I got it! Then I was off, spinning and spinning and spinning. . . I love it!
Well that's it for my first post. You will learn lots more about me and my life as I progress from here. Please visit often, send responses if you'd like, share with me. That's what life's about, giving and sharing.
I will share some of the fun side of my life (of which there's lots) showing you what I'm up to, at least on a weekly basis but hopefully more regularly than that! I'll share stories about my alpacas, my cats, life on the farm, my projects and designs, and my hopes for the future near and far.
It's mid August, we've had a wonderfully wet summer, but that has put the cabosh on a lot of outdoor projects. Working full time and coming home to take care of the fuzzy critters (once it cools down a bit from the high 90's) takes us to about 8pm each evening. Since I don't like to cook any more (retired myself about 20 years ago but it's more like a semi-retirement!) I hope that Jerry, my partner, is not in a hungry mood and takes care of himself. Bless his little heart, he's more than happy to do that, or have a "hydraulic sandwich". Me? Well I'd prefer sitting and getting working on one of my many projects.
To back track for those of you that don't know us and what we are doing. Five years ago, when the stock market stunk and I lost a lot of my pension, I decided to "re-invest". From suggestions and seeing the TV ads I decided to look into alpacas. Now we're talking about someone who didn't own a pair of tennis shoes and had barely purchased her first pair of jeans. Long fingernails and high heels were my wardrobe and I loved it!
Anyway, we found that there was two alpaca farms in our little community and off we went to visit them. Well if that is not the dumbest thing for an impulse shopper to do! Guess how long it took to decide to buy alpacas? One week........ we purchased two females and a gelding.
Over the past five years we've had our share of "bad luck". In this business the females are worth a lot more than the males, of course we've had all males but one. Since one of the first girls we bought was named Wynonna I decided to go with a C&W theme for naming my animals. I thought I'd never get my Reba! Well finally she arrived, July 2006. Gretchen Wilson arrived on October 31st last year to make our total girls up to 2, woohoo! All in all we've had a wonderful string of wonderfully healthy boys and we're hoping that next year our luck will change.
With all this happening to us, we've not had the growth in our herd as planned on in the beginning. We have spent a lot of time purchasing females to get our herd going and to date we're up to 8. They will all be bred this fall to give us late summer babies next year.
Meanwhile I have revamped our business plan. We are now working more diligently on the fleece side of our business and as I love to knit, crochet and do all sorts of fiber arts my next natural progression was to learn to spin.
I live in the middle of nowhere Texas and it's not like I can sign up at the local yarn store and get going on what I want to learn, oh no, not that easy for me! So, I got my spinning wheel out and sat down in May and taught myself to spin. Believe me it wasn't that easy, I spun, and spun, and spun, and spun and thought I was never going to "get it". Then one evening it happened, I got it! Then I was off, spinning and spinning and spinning. . . I love it!
Well that's it for my first post. You will learn lots more about me and my life as I progress from here. Please visit often, send responses if you'd like, share with me. That's what life's about, giving and sharing.
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