Sweet Harmony Farm

Our little guy Henry and new friend Cowboy have not been very eager to take that ‘leap of faith’ and hop into Val’s van.  So today, only North and Earth came home to our little farm.  They were both hesitant to get out of the van, but with just a gentle pull to the leash, a quick hop out they did.  They both walked on their leashes very proudly down our little farm road to the barn.

Yesterday Dan had put up some hog panels from the corner of the barn out to the fence line, creating a small pen enclosure in case our 5 boys here were a little too rambunctious towards the newcomers.   Val and her daughter Annie walked North and Earth to just inside the gate.  It’s best to introduce new alpacas to the herd over a fence.  Julio, Guinness, Bo, Coty, and Arlo were all cushed in the far pasture.  Arlo noticed the new arrivals first and suddenly all 5 came running like bats out of hell!  Julio was the first to arrive of course, and instantly all 7 boys were sniffing each other excitedly over our little temporary fencing in the paddock area.  There was no fighting or snorting of any kind.  After a couple minutes Val decided all appeared well, Dan unhooked the gates, and we brought the new boys in.  They were quite nervous at that point so Val just unhooked the leads and took off the halters.  We all watched and waited.

Instantly, all the boys began to run!  In one big group they ran right to the back of the pasture.  Julio went through the gate and decided to watch things from the other side of the fence.  North and Earth sniffed and sniffed the trees, the grass, the fencing, just as my original 5 had when they arrived last year.  Bo, Coty, and Arlo sniffed and sniffed North and Earth!  Everyone sniffed Julio through the fence.  Guinness stayed back a bit, then lay on top of the dirt pile and watched from afar.

Coty has always been the most curious and today was no exception.  North is just about his (huge) size, so Coty’s been following North.   An instant bonding happened.  They chased each other and neck wrestled, occasionally bumping into the others to join in on the chase.  I think Bo looked relieved that Coty is no longer chasing him!  North even nipped at Julio’s heels!  Julio looked so surprised and ran and ran, with the whole gang following.  Then sometimes Julio would stop and stand in the pasture and just stare at me as if to ask “What did you do?”   Within minutes he was cushed again; he could care less!  Then Guinness joined him.  The new boys are also loving pasture to graze on, even if it’s not the longer, greener grasses of summer.  Earth is a few months younger than Arlo, and Arlo looks pleased to have both a new playmate, and someone just a bit smaller than him.  Dan and I are relieved that all the boys are getting along.  And Val is so happy to see them all running and playing, as if they’d been the same herd forever.

Ahhhh............alpacas running together ................. a simple joy.

Left to right:  Coty, Arlo, Guinness, Julio, Bo

Every alpaca owner follows this annual cycle.  An alpaca is born on or brought home to the farm.  It is cared for by feeding hay, minerals, and usually pellets, water buckets are cleaned, emptied, scrubbed, and re-filled, given pasture to graze on, poop is scooped, toenails are clipped, vaccines and de-wormers and other medications are given when necessary, straw bedding is put down when winter is arriving, snow is shoveled away from paddocks and gates, gutters put up, and mud is cursed when spring rains come and melt the snow. 

The warmth of spring arrives and our alpacas are sheared.  For a fiber farm, that shearing day is our annual harvest!  The fleece is usually put into bags according to alpaca and divided into 3 units:  firsts (blanket), seconds (neck), and thirds (leg, belly, chest).  A lot of farms will store their fleece this way in their barns, basements, and attics, later on skirting some of the blankets for fleece shows, or for submitting to mills to be made into yarn.  Some farms have chosen not to do anything with their fleeces!  The bags are piled up for years, sometimes allowing for mice to build their nest with, sometimes just rotting away, and sometimes it just gets composted.  To hear stories of this happening to beautiful alpaca fleece saddens me.  :(

Beautiful alpaca fleece is a simple joy of life.  

From the onset of our farm, we have had our fleece sorted as well.  We have always been focused on the fiber part rather than the show aspect and learned early on that alpaca fleece is generally not uniform in micron across the entire animal.  ‘Sorting’ separates the fleece into grades (small ranges) of micron, and by length, and by color.  So now some of my bags of fleece are combinations of alpacas, if their colors are the same.  And yes, my sorted fleece has been sitting in our house in the bags!  My rationale was that we’re a small farm (we only started off with 4 alpacas) and I wanted to combine fleeces of similar grade, thereby making the yarn process much more cost effective.  I also have 2 white alpacas, Bo Jangles and his full brother Arlo, and although I love them both dearly, white just isn’t my favorite yarn color!  I was also hoping to have different colors but same grades to blend in with their white fleeces.

Yarn is the basis of all textiles.  Fleece must be carded into roving and then spun into yarn before it can be woven into fabric.  It only makes sense that the basis of your product (yarn, fabric, roving, and batts) be as uniform as possible.  To Dan and me, submitting fleece by grade for processing makes more sense than submitting fleece by individual animal’s blanket.

In April I decided we’d waited long enough, and I dropped 2 batches, i.e. several bags of fleece, to our local mini-mill, Sallie’s Fen Fibers.  Sallie Whitlow has a fabulous reputation for the beautiful yarns she spins and we are so fortunate that it is really just a short drive.   My yarns now and most likely in the future will probably always be some kind of ‘Herd Blend.’  Alpaca is said to come in 22 natural colors, which to me means when I blend grades of different colors, the outcome (color) will always be a surprise!  Sounds like a lot of fun to me!    Most people tell me ‘oh but the white fleece dyes so wonderfully.’  And they’re right!  And, guess what, the non-white alpaca fleece dyes wonderfully too!  Lots of time the (naturally) colored yarn will take on a heathered look when dyed, especially if some of the raw fleece is dyed first and then blended in with un-dyed fleece.  It’s all so lovely!  For now though, I am enjoying the natural shades and natural blends.

Last week Sallie called to tell me my yarn is ready!  I drove over Friday in a storm and was absolutely delighted with the results.  My first batch is my herd blend, ‘The Geldings’ Dark Chocolate.’  Guinness’ medium brown huacaya fleece was blended with Julio’s bay black suri fleece.  Sallie did blend in a little black merino for stability for the suri fleece, and the yarn is an awesome grade 3 in a fabulous dark chocolate color.  The other batch is my herd blend, ‘Cria Coffee Ice Cream.’  Here I blended Bo’s white cria fleece, Coty’s medium fawn cria fleece, and Arlo’s white/beige cria fleece.  Sallie spun this as a 2 ply, and then plied those again, creating a really neat cabling effect.  This cable method helps to strengthen that tender cria fleece.  I now have darling coffee ice cream-colored, super soft, grade 1, baby alpaca yarn to enjoy.

I am in yarn heaven!

Slowly but surely the remaining fleeces will be sent off to be made into yarns or my new favorite fiber process ~ felt fabric!   I can only weave so fast!

Sometimes, a sign says it all. 

We strongly believe in the 'Buy Local' movement.  Just call us locavores!  Locally grown food is by far fresher than any produce found in a grocery store, and therefore much tastier.  To me there is nothing tastier than a tomato or apple or fresh herbs that I grew right in my own backyard.  And when weather has other plans, I just head for the farmer's market.  Luckily here in New Hampshire we have plenty of those, so we can eat local 7 days a week during the gardening season.  We also prefer that our alpacas 'eat local' too so we try to buy hay only from local farms as well.

Fall has arrived!  With this cooler weather we're all getting back to our knitting and weaving and other fun fiber arts.  Locally raised fibers are also a good thing!

(Thank you to our neighbor on South Road / Route 43 for putting up this sign in his hay field.  In case you can't read the fuzzy picture, it says 'Do You Like this View?  Support your Local Farmers')

Spring arrived early this year, followed by an early starting and very hot and humid summer.  We are so very grateful that after several years it’s also been a very dry summer.  Continuing this new trend, it now appears that autumn is arriving early.  That’s fine with us.  We love the cooler days and crisp nights, with the daytime colors of the trees slowly turning to brilliant shades of orange, red, and yellow.  The grass seems to start growing again and turns a deep green.  Against this backdrop is a perfectly bright blue sky.

Wildlife abounds this time of year.  Wildlife is always abounding when you live near a large state park as we do, but we seem to notice them more when the cool weather starts.  Furry and feathered friends are beginning their annual gathering up of their food storage for winter and pass through our property daily.  A local family of red fox took up residence under our woodshed for a couple weeks.  We haven’t seen them in a while; I imagine they grew tired of Stella chasing them out of the yard.  We see the hawks circling the yard again over the treetops, and today I heard at least 3 flocks of Canadian geese fly by overhead.  Soon the bats will be gone.  Acorns and pine cones are starting to fall from the trees, keeping all the squirrels and chipmunks busy.

Lately the alpacas have been amused by a family of wild turkeys that travel through the yard in the mornings.  The turkeys hobble along the path just outside the fencing, hop onto the stone wall along the back of pasture and walk along it, then off into the woods.  The alpacas will at first all stand up straight, ears straight up, necks outstretched.  Then staying close together, they all but tiptoe over to the fence and then will follow the turkeys along the inside of the fence line, never making a sound.  The turkeys do not appear bothered by the sheer size of the alpacas and continue their casual pace.  I sip my coffee and smile.

In the evenings we try to keep a closer eye on Stella, but while we’re in the barn that’s not always too easy.  I was arranging feed bowls one evening and had all 5 alpacas blocking the tack room door, eyes fixated on me intently.  For no particular reason, Coty, who tends to be our most curious alpaca, walked away.  Coty has grown so much this year and is now also our tallest alpaca.  He doesn’t walk; he struts.  He strutted casually around to the back of the barn.  Finding this odd, Dan followed him.  What could be more interesting than getting fed?  In the darkness I suddenly heard Dan holler sharply ‘Stella ~ come!’  Before I could ask why, I could smell why!  Luckily the skunk had bad aim because our little Stella doesn’t smell too badly.

And thankfully none of the alpacas were skunked!

Some mornings when I go into the barn to check on our alpacas, I start wondering ‘what goes on in here at night?’  Their fan is pushed over onto its back blowing air up to the ceiling, the hay bale feeder (i.e. heavy) is pushed several inches over sideways, the outside feeder is also pushed sideways, there’s water on the floor under the buckets, there’s fresh spit on a wall or post or someone’s neck, a post for the temporary fence is bent over, the poop-shovel-and-rake is knocked down, and their communal poop piles are well, not so communal.  In the summertime we usually have all the windows in the house open and our bedroom balcony door also faces the barn; you’d think we’d hear if a ruckus was going on.  Yet apparently they’ve made up because all the alpacas are cushed together!

Last evening I picked this fabulous assortment of tomatoes ~ roma, celebrity, and cherry.  Also in there is one fabulous hot pepper and one fabulous bell pepper.  Teamed up with my parsley, fresh salsa for sure!  And look at that purple basil!  The plant is huge, and along with my other basil plants and flavorful olive oil, I'll be making pesto.  Yes, folks, the white-kitchen-trash-bag-tied-to-a-stake trick has successfully kept away the deer this year.

Hope your gardens are yielding you great treasures too.

Another wonderful thing about having male alpacas, especially the younger ones, is they play a lot!  They chase each other, climb all over each other, roll around together, nibble each other’s ears and toes, and other general good-natured wrestling.  It’s always fun to watch, another simple joy of alpaca life.  They usually play in the pasture but sometimes in the paddock or barn.  Like most other alpaca activities, it’s pretty darn quiet out there.

As they mature this playtime occasionally turns into a bit of actual fighting.  We’ve had our lovely little herd here for just about a year now and up until recently it’s all play.  Julio and Guinness, our geldings, are both 7 this year and watch the goings-on between Bo, Coty, and Arlo in bored amusement, if they watch at all.  Bo is a year older than Arlo and Coty and is now starting to define his place in the herd.  His intentions are usually directed at Coty, who is one very tall alpaca.  I’ll hear the scuffling and heavy breathing associated with playing and go to the window to watch.  Suddenly, it gets serious with loud squawking and grunts and serious rough-housing, complete with pushing and shoving and real biting.  Then, in true alpaca form, some serious spit starts to fly.

Oh my god, my alpacas are fighting!  I holler out the window “Hey boys ~ play nice!”  They’re alpacas and therefore ignore the crazy, hollering human.  I run outside with Stella underfoot, put on my barn boots, and in my hurry usually trip over Stella or my own feet (happens every time!).  As I’m running down the path to the barn I continue to call out to them “Bo ..... Coty ..... No fighting!  Stop that!”  By the time I get to the fence they’ve usually stopped.  I go in anyway to give them a stern stare and remind them that this is a nice farm; we only play nice here.  Thankfully I’ve never had to physically pry them apart and the fighting has only happened a few times.  Coty will look at me like “what did I do?” and casually start eating grass or hay.  Bo will stand there with his lower lip down, drooling green slime and unable to move his mouth for a few minutes; it’s the camelid reaction to spitting.   It’s not pretty.  I remind him that he could be eating hay too if he just stopped being mean to Coty, and that he looks silly and undignified with his lower lip hanging down like that.

Other alpaca people have told me not to interfere, that it’s normal behavior and the boys need to work it out amongst themselves.  And there I am running outside at the first sound of a possible fight hoping to nip it in the bud.  Oh well!

It’s August, and those lazy, hazy days of summer are upon us.  Humidity and afternoon showers and thundershowers are here.  Considering the past few years, I feel a bit odd saying this ..........we could use some rain!  Not a lot, but the gentle showers we’ve been getting are refreshing and most of the rain is happening overnight, creating a picturesque early morning fog.  Things are starting to green up again in the pastures and all the boys are out grazing in the cooler mornings and evenings.  The hot afternoons are what we now call ‘siesta time’ where the boys cush in the barn and paddock areas in the shade and take long naps.

We set up our farm so that we could see into the barn and pastures from the back windows of our house.  It’s such a beautiful and peaceful sight for us, watching our gentle alpacas graze the fields as the seasons change.

This is the view from our kitchen on this foggy morning:

And this is what we see when we stand on the balcony off our second floor bedroom.  The fog clears up quickly as the sun comes up. 

Look at the beautiful stone wall Dan has been building near the fence line!  Our veggie garden is just to the left of this picture.  It’s still hard to imagine that this new stone wall and all the pasture area, and most of the side yard up from the barn, was covered in thick woods just 2 years ago. 

I love that part of summer when you head out to the vegetable garden and seemingly overnight all the plants have grown to double in size, and also have a bud of something starting to grow.  It always feels like I’ve just accomplished something big.  And even better is finding your first tomato, well hidden amongst all those leaves, that is ready to pick.  In July no less!  Picking tomatoes in July in New Hampshire is, well, really wonderful.  So is not having the plants eaten by the deer!

Some days, during the quiet times of farm life, we like to reflect on the wonderful things and the simple joys that have happened and continue to happen to us.  We sit back with a big smile and thank God and the Universe for all of our abundance.

Being thankful is a simple joy.  Being thankful is good karma. 

To some, we seem to have so much; to others, we seem to have so little.  To us, we are just grateful, and continue dreaming of a wonderful future full of simple joys and that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

I  happened to be listening to National Public Radio this afternoon, when on the 4:00pm news they stated this:

    'The ... oil ... has ... stopped ... leaking.'

Huge sigh, a big smile, and tears of joy!

This is the usual scene in the barn in the evenings when we arrive to do chores.  The tack room door is in the upper right corner of this picture, and the fan is to the right of the door, just a few feet away.  And there's the gang all cushed in front of the fan!  The fan not only helps to cool them down, but it also keeps away those nasty mosquitoes and horseflies, making their lives much more comfortable.  Happy alpacas = healthy alpacas.

Last summer we had just one day where the temperature reached 90 degrees.  I heard it’s been about 8 years since it’s been 100 degrees.  Well, this summer we’ve had several days of 90+ degrees weather, and yesterday, it was 101 degrees here in New Hampshire!! Yes, folks, it was record heat.  The weather people are saying it will be just pretty darn hot for several more days.

Our alpacas’ barn is really a 3 sided run-in style shed with an awning that doubles the space.  The awning has really neat walls/doors that fold back but we’ve been keeping them closed to provide as much shade as possible.  And with windows across the back wall, there is plenty of cross-ventilation.  The boys have remained in the barn most of the day, but sometimes they’re silly and still go out to graze and sunbathe.  Yes, wooly alpacas lie in the sun and sunbathe!  In the afternoons, they all cush in front of the fan which we have running 24/7.

Yesterday was so darn miserable that in the morning we decided to try hosing them down.  The alpacas saw Dan coming across the yard with the hose, all ears went up and in a somewhat single leap, they all greeted Dan in the paddock.  They know what the hose is for!  Dan sprayed and sprayed alpaca bellies and Guinness and Bo eagerly turned around so Dan could spray under their tails as well.   Guinness and Julio cushed in the mud puddles.   Arlo was trying to drink from the hose at first while Dan sprayed his belly, and then realized that getting sprayed under the tail is a wonderful thing.  Each was trying hard to push in front of the others to get sprayed again, although Coty was a bit unsure, until Dan got him good in the belly and then he was the last to walk away. 

They were so obviously happy and we couldn’t stop laughing at their antics.  I tried to take pictures of the whole gang but Arlo was the only one willing to pose.

            Home of the free, Because of the brave.

 Enjoy the picnics and fireworks as we all celebrate our beautiful country's 234th Independence Day.

We’re really late this year planting the garden.  Usually I like to have everything planted right after Memorial Day weekend, but this year we’ve moved the garden to the back yard, near the corner of the pasture fencing, and behind the old shed that was here when we bought the property.  A garden near the garden shed sounds logical!  And now the hose will reach every part of the garden easily, and I can see it from the house.  Dan built 4 more 4 X 12 garden boxes, and we’ve moved 3 of the 4 from the old garden in the side yard.  The last box has some rogue lettuces and scallions that sprang up on their own (I love when that happens!), my huge garlic chive plant, and my really, really, huge oregano plant.  I’m waiting for the lettuces to bolt and the scallions to be ready to be picked, and then I’ll figure out how to best move the oregano plant and then we’ll move that last raised bed.  The oregano plant is more like an oregano bush, and I want it to continue to do well.

We filled up the new boxes with compost from the local nursery, and I’ve been busy planting and planting.  I’m hoping that because I’ve planted a few weeks late, and during the week of the summer solstice, that the bugs will be few and far between this growing season.  Dan put in several stakes around this new garden area, and tied white plastic trash bags to them.  This is my neighbor's trick to keep away the deer; hopefully it will work for us too!   What a beautiful week we’ve had, these longest days of the year, warm and breezy and perfect for planting.

Now I have 8 large raised bed boxes, arranged somewhat in a square, with a four foot path going down the middle both ways, sort of like 4 small squares with 2 raised beds in each.  I wanted the paths to be wide enough to accommodate the garden cart.  The north side of the garden is the side closest to the pasture fence, and Dan will probably build me a long, narrow garden box, and eventually I’ll grow vining veggies there, like sweet peas or maybe pole beans, with some morning glories mixed in.  Around my veggie plants I’ve always planted marigolds and petunias, both for bug control as well as color.  Bright red tomatoes are great, but we won’t see them until late August!

The little garden shed that is here was surprisingly painted purple (!).  It’s in need of some repair, mostly to the roof, but basically serves its purpose.  Dan even thinks he may be able to build a small chicken coop right off the back.  Fresh eggs!

The best part is that I’m really close to the alpacas now.  Coty and Arlo love to graze together at this far end of the pasture.  I can see right into the barn and watch the others cushed in front the fan, my ‘vampire’ alpacas that they are on these hot days.  I call out to them easily, and they all look up at the sound of my voice.  They watch me curiously, as I work in the garden, Stella sleeping in the cool grass under the maple tree nearby.  

A few months back, I wrote about my wonderful, winter-worthy muck boots for doing barn chores.  They’re still wonderful, but mighty hot now for this time of year.  It’s time to get a different pair of boots for summer.  I’m still wearing the Muck Boots brand, but now I have lightweight purple clogs!

Purple!  My favorite color. And much, much cooler on the feet.

Like so many of you, the growing disaster of the oil spill in our country’s beautiful Gulf Coast region is continuously on my mind.  If you are new to reading my blog (and thank you) and are curious as to what the oil spill has to do with alpacas, please read my prior blog post here.  Today, I simply want to vent.

I love our beautiful planet Earth with all its magnificent treasures.  In an average human’s lifetime, there would probably never be enough time to see, hear, feel, touch, taste, or otherwise experience all there is on planet Earth.  I’ve always felt it is important to appreciate nature and how it intertwines with all life.  I’ve always felt it to be very important to take care of the Earth and do all that is possible to keep our planet safe and healthy, which in turn keeps all of us safe and healthy.  Why wouldn’t we want to take care of our planet?  This is the only place we can live.

The Gulf Coast oil spill is shaping up to be worse than the Exxon Valdez oil spill.  There is no shortage of depressing broadcasts and video.  I am a happy American, and I do believe in democracy, capitalism, personal wealth, philanthropy, and a free society.  I believe that these ideals are worth continually striving for, that they create a better life for all.  This disaster is heartbreaking, yes mostly for the residents in the Gulf Coast region, but also for the rest of the Earth’s inhabitants, human and otherwise.  WE WILL ALL BE AFFECTED AT SOME POINT.

The blame game is going on now and who is to blame?  And is there just one answer?  Is it BP, and/or the companies they worked in conjunction with?  Is it our elected government and/or its appointees?  Is it us, the American citizens, with our insatiable lifestyle?  And right now, who is going to clean up the spill?  Oil is gushing out daily by the thousands of gallons, ruining more and more of the Gulf Coast region, and spreading out of the region.  It seems like everything is working in slow motion while oil is spreading out polluting the ocean at the speed of light.

I think of all this while I quietly take Stella for a walk, plant and weed in the gardens, pick lettuce and herbs for dinner, hang out laundry, skirt fleece, weave and knit, watch Dan work the pastures and build gates and hay bins, and take care of the alpacas.  In my lifetime I have tried to only drive fuel-efficient vehicles, car pool, turn off lights, turn down the thermostat, open windows and use fans instead of air conditioning, shut off the water when brushing my teeth, use lukewarm water for washing clothes, hang out my laundry, grow a lot of my own veggies, plant perennials which attract pollinators, garden without pesticides or herbicides, buy organically grown food and products, compost and recycle everything I can, promote solar and wind power and renewal energy, etc.  I always wonder if I’m doing enough, or too much, or if it really makes a difference in the big scheme of things, whenever I see a large environmental disaster unfold.  I am trying so hard to remain optimistic as well as realistic, and I will continue to do what I’ve done with a better focus, and continue to find new ways to keep our planet safe and healthy. 

The best way to clean up the Gulf Coast Oil spill, and to prevent future tragedy, is a positive outlook and a 'we can do it' spirit.

One of my favorite environmental protection groups is the Natural Resources Defense Council, www.nrdc.org.  I’ve always found them to be very effective.  Their blog is continually being updated regarding the spill ~ http://switchboard.nrdc.org/gulfspill.php.  One of their writers also writes her own blog and has this post on a similar theme as to what I’ve just written today ~ http://www.nrdc.org/thisgreenlife/default.asp.       

Thank you all for listening.