Farm Life

In spite of the dire warnings about Hurricane Earl, the weather’s turned out to be lovely this weekend. The hurricane changed course and left us with clear, cool, breezy days that feel like fall.

The term “holiday” is used loosely here.  We don’t have holidays from taking care of our animals. Long weekends and nice weather usually mean more tourists and farm visitors. It keeps us busy!

Our first fiber festival of the season, Southern Adirondack Fiber Festival, is coming up soon, so one of my projects this week is to wash, skein and dye yarn. I’ll start with sock yarn. And I still have a lot of fiber to skirt and send to the mill. It’s not easy to find the time to get everything done!

The last couple weeks have been pretty hectic here at Snowshoe Farm. First, we prepared for our Mid-Summer Sale and our efforts were worth it.  We had beautiful weather and a good number of visitors. A number of alpacas were sold and will soon be going to new homes. Thank you to all who visited and to our friend, Doug, for all his help with getting the farm cleaned up early each morning that weekend!

We’re happy to announce the winners of our drawing for free breedings: Foggy Bottom Ranch won the breeding to Nibblewise of Elfenwood. Many thanks to our co-owners at Elfenwood Alpacas for letting us give away a breeding. Stonewall Fields Alpacas won the breeding to our champion white male, Snowshoe Aristides.

Our niece and nephew visit last week and we put them right to work.  We had 4 crias born over the weekend and put over 600 bales of hay in the mow.  They were soooo much help!  Now we’re faced with putting in the rest of our hay with just the two of us – we’re spoiled!

Last night was a late night with a dystocia that ended up with a cria born at 11:30pm.  A dystocia is when you have to assist with the birth. This cria had it’s front legs bent and the vet was called out late on a Saturday night to fix the problem. Large animal vets are amazing!  We are so lucky to have access to good vets who are willing to come any time. Our friends Tracey and Kathy from Foggy Bottom Ranch came and helped hold the dam and give moral support. Thank you!! In the end, the cria was pulled and was up and nursing in less than an hour.  The dam, I’m sure, was sore, but she is a great mother and all is well with the pair.

We spend a lot of time in the summer waiting for crias to be born.  The length of an alpaca’s gestation is quite variable.  We always assume 11 months as a “due date”, but we’ve seen gestations almost 3 weeks short of that and we’ve seen others over a year long. We currently have four females that are past their 11-month due date. There’s not we can do but stick close to home and keep an eye on them. They’ll be ready when they’re ready….

We’re having a stretch of very hot and humid weather that’s a bit unusual for us.  Thank goodness! Neither Ron nor I like this weather. And the alpacas don’t like it much, either.

We spend a lot of time trying to keep the alpacas cool in this weather.  Of course, they have access to the barn and we have overhangs on most sides that provide additional shade.  We set up fans in the barns to help circulate the air and provide some cooling. Water buckets are filled over and over with cool water.

All our pastures have a sprinkler or two.  We use the round brass rings. These work well as the alpacas like to lay down on the sprinklers and there are no moving parts or sharp edges. We set them to spray up just a couple feet above the ground. This lets the alpacas cool off their legs and bellies. We rotate sprinklers all day, just leaving them on for 15 or so minutes at a time in each pasture.  The alpacas cool themselves off and go back to grazing or to the barn.

We picked up our first load of 2010 second cut hay yesterday! We usually get our first load of hay in late August, so this is early and very welcome!

It always feels so good to start putting up hay for the season. You have to keep in mind that we don’t have pastures available year ’round in Vermont; they’re usually covered with snow for months. So we depend on hay to feed our alpacas during the winter. The weather can wreak havoc with haying – too much rain and it won’t dry, fields are too wet for tractors, etc. The weather’s been cooperating so far this year and allowed farmers to get in first cut early and gave us some good drying weather this week to start on second cut.

Putting up hay is not a fun job. Hay doesn’t dry well on cold, rainy days, so it’s HOT on haying days.  Ron picks up the hay in the field or from the wagon and the two of us stack it in our hay mow. So he gets to handle it twice – throwing it in the trailer and throwing it to me in the hay mow.  My job is to stack it in the mow. That’s not too bad when we start, but as the layers pile up and I’m working higher and higher up in the mow, it gets really hot!  And hay bales are really scratchy, so you want to have pants and long sleeves, but can’t stand it because of the heat.  Which means you end up with “hay rash”.  And the bales are heavy. But the smell of fresh hay is heavenly and the satisfaction of having a full mow, ready for winter can’t be beat.

Another wet day. The grass and weeds are loving this, but we’re not.  The garden needs weeding and the lawn needs mowing. And wet weather means wet dogs – ugh!

We’re hoping to get a break from the wet weather soon, but the forecast sounds like we have scattered showers and humid weather again tomorrow.  It’s shaping up to be a good day to spend skirting fiber in the barn. I hope to get a few batches off to the mill this week – finally!

Spring is a very busy time on the farm for many reasons, but mainly because Ron is busy shearing at other farms every day. Now that shearing is winding down, we are starting to catch up on all we let slide for the last few months…like posting to our blog. I’ll do better from now on!

We’ve had 8 crias born on the farm so far this year and lots more to go.  I’ll post some updated cria photos soon – promise!

We woke to 20′s and snow this morning!  This spring has been warm and the pastures have been greening up nicely.  We knew it was only a matter of time before mother nature threw a wrench into the works.  That’s what we get for taking the chains off the tractor!

We have several new additions to the farm this week.  Seven females and one young (and very promising!) male from Starry Mountain Alpacas and two lovely yearling females from Green Vale Alpacas. All these alpacas are here for sale on consignment. I’ll soon be getting new photos and fiber stats on these alpacas – check our sales list on our website. Excellent quality alpacas at great prices!

We had a scare last night with one of our prized herdsires, Nibblewise.  Just before 7pm, Ron noticed Nibbles was cushed and groaning and salivating.  He was obviously in pain.  Our first thoughts, of course, were “worst case”: intestinal torsion or impaction or something like that.  Our wonderful vet was out within the hour, checked him over and administered banamine and bute. All his vitals were good and pressing on his belly didn’t seem to cause pain. All good signs.

We got up twice during the night to give injections and he seemed better each time. So far this morning Nibbles seems fine. It appears this might have been some sort of GI upset that corrected itself. We’ll keep a close eye on him today as any lingering effects of the medications wear off.

Over the years, we’ve been very lucky to have experienced few events of this nature. But you never know when something might happen and it reminds me why I like to stick close to home. And how much we value having a good vet nearby!

It’s another beautiful day in the Kingdom!  Cold nights and warm sunny days are perfect for sugaring, skiing and drying up muddy roads.   The ‘pacas are happily eating hay out in the sun and we are starting to eliminate hay bedding and, hopefully, getting their fleeces cleaned up a bit before shows and shearing.