Sweet Harmony Farm

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More recipes coming in the next few days!

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!

Our dog is just wonderful and we’ve done an excellent job at spoiling her.She just loves the attention and is happy all the time.But now that the alpacas have arrived, suddenly she is sullen, clearly jealous, and not too thrilled with us!!First thing every morning for months now, Dan gets up and takes Stella for a walk around the outside of the fencing.She is always excited for this, and trots along checking everything out, sometimes darting off into the woods.Not that first morning!!She wouldn’t go anywhere near the fence.Dan had to actually put the leash on her and pull her along till she finally started to walk on her own.She would hardly look at me either when I put down her morning crunchers.As dog lovers (and lovers of all animals) we personally are just crushed!!We’re sure she’ll come around soon, but until then, we’ll just feel terrible.

Hmm, I guess this means we’ll just have to shower our wonderful little dog with even more and more attention, which we’ve been doing. More walks and frisbee tossing, scratches and pats, sometimes hand feeding her, and always more snacks.Thank goodness she likes veggies, tofu, and rice.

The other morning I was at the fence line taking pictures and Stella woofed at me jealously from the yard.She happily came over to me when I called her, wagging all over, but stood with her butt to the fence, refusing to look at the alpacas.Dan has gotten her to willingly walk around the fence line with him, but she just will not look into the pasture.

But she is coming around; it’s just going to take a little longer than we had hoped. Such personalities our dog friends have!

I got up bright and early yesterday 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 were at it again yesterday 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 wass to swing over 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 Thursday, so we  ran to the feed store later on in the 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!

We’ve finally had another stretch of hot, sunny days so it feels like summer. I’ve actually had to water the vegetable garden for the first time since I planted it. Our mid-summer flower gardens are blooming with many brightly-colored hybrid daylilies, purple coneflowers, black-eyed susans, liatris, and hostas.All the nearby fields are filled with bloomers too, goldenrod and queen’s anne lace, wild black-eyed susans, ragweed, and many others of which I haven’t got a clue.In the late-day summer sun, our yard and pastures are teeming with hundreds of beautiful dragonflies.Walking by the nearby fields there are clouds of them, hovering and swooping, their presence so magical and uplifting.Sometimes one will land on us while we’re floating in the canoe or in the gardens.We love to sit and admire them close up, such a fascinating little bug.

We love to see the dragonflies and have planted many of the flowers that attract them.Dragonflies are harmless to people and animals, and because they eat so many mosquitoes it only makes sense to have plantings that attract them.These same plants also attract many insect-eating birds too, another bonus.And when it comes to eating mosquitoes, we don’t argue with the bats that show up at night either!Attracting dragonflies and birds (and bats), not having standing water, and fans in the barn are our top choices for keeping mosquitoes, flies, and other disease-spreading insects away from the alpacas.We know there will always be some bugs, and plenty of them, in our humid climate, so every little bit helps.

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 piece 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.

We are first and foremost an alpaca farm, and we are always excited when we can blog about the alpacas.Yesterday we drove up to Longwoods Alpacas in Maine to welcome our newest cria, Sweet Harmony’s Henry, whom we will call Hank.On our farm we love ‘the boys’ and little Hank is no exception.

Hank is our second cria from our beautiful girl, Longwood’s Caitlin’s Alana.He was sired by the Upper Farm’s stunning Milo Rawhide.Hank weighed in at a sturdy 17.5 pounds, very straight legs and bite, and perfect conformation.His fleece is shiny and soft, dark brown in color with black points, with a teeny white spot on his front fetlock.He appears to have both his parent’s density.Just lovely!We are so thrilled with what this match has produced that we shall be breeding them again for a 2010 cria.

Pam went out to her back pasture about noontime and saw this wonderful surprise pronking around gleefully, nursing easily, and happily playing with her other crias born recently.Such a happy and well adjusted little fellow, and we can’t wait to have him pronking around here in our pastures.

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!

Last week I went out to check the garden, after all those days of rain.My transplants looked fine, seeds were sprouting, and then I noticed that the tops of most of the bean plants were gone!A few sunflower tops were missing too.I looked around for tell-tale signs of a wood chuck and instead found deer tracks!The deer never bothered the garden last year so I just assumed that all would be well again this year.I decided to leave well enough alone.

Today is another day of an entire week with beautiful sunshine.No signs of another deer attack.In fact, the green beans all have green leaves again, and the sunflowers seem to have new leaves sprouting again too.How odd, yet isn’t Mother Nature wonderful?I spent quite a while weeding, and weeding, and enjoying all the plants that have managed to sprout up.I’m going to have to re-seed spinach and Swiss chard and carrots.The rain must have washed most of the seeds away but at least there are sprouts here and there.The teeny oregano plant from last year is a huge bush now, about to flower.And the tomatoes!Lots and lots of green tomatoes are growing, with dark green leaves on the plants, and I even was able to eat a red cherry tomato.In July!How fantastic.I staked them all up with bamboo poles.The zucchini plants have really bushed out and have plenty of flowers but no zucchini yet that I could see.The chives have blossomed and are falling over; I’ll have to stake it too.My lone eggplant is not looking happy.There are lots of tomatoes and lettuce that have re-seeded from last year up and about too.Looks like it will be a good garden year after all.

The ground was actually dry.I’m going to have water the garden for the first time since I planted everything .......................

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.

Here in New Hampshire we have only a short season for fresh off-the-vine tomatoes.As the plants grow we impatiently wait to harvest them.In the meantime, please enjoy our quick, pantry-style spicy tomato soup.

Ingredients:

Olive oil
A couple cups or so of the usual soup veggies, chopped:onion, celery, bell    pepper
1large can 28 oz fire-roasted diced tomatoes
17 oz jar tomato paste
112 oz jar salsa
4cups chicken-style broth
Large bay leaf or a few small ones
Parsley, freshly chopped or dried
Chopped scallions for garnish
Salt and pepper to taste, if needed

 Saute onions, celery, and bell pepper until somewhat softened, about 5-7 minutes.Add can of fire roasted tomatoes and tomato paste.Stir well until tomato paste is blended in.Add salsa, broth, bay leaf, and parsley and stir well again.Cook over low-medium heat stirring occasionally, until heated through.Add chopped scallions when serving.

 Great with grilled cheese!

***Once the tomatoes and other veggies ripen (!) you can substitute fresh ones for the canned, as well as freshly made salsa.If you don’t have your own garden, remember your neighbors at the local farmers’ markets!

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 bird manual 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 are amazed to watch them fly and soar.BUT, we get protective over the little bird nests!We just have to stand nearby and the hawks will fly away once they notice 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!

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.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.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 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 grateful for that.And soon the alpacas will be here, grazing and pronking....................

Welcome to Sweet Harmony Farm’s first blog entry.

As I sit here typing it is yet another cloudy, rainy day, after a week of cloudy, rainy days.I am looking out the windows at beautiful green grass on our back lawn, filled with many clumps of blooming white clover and yellow dandelions.We even have clumps of what looks to be red dandelions.They are so cute, and Dan always mows around them.Both our lawnmowers and the weed wacker need repair so the grass is getting long and seems to have gone to seed.We’re thinking that’s a good thing!It should help fill in the patches of bare ground.

Last week I planted seeds and transplants in our little garden so the rain has been welcome.Last years’ oregano and chive plants are huge and spreading. The tomato, zucchini, eggplant, and basil transplants that I planted with them, the ‘Ratatouille Bin,’ are doing wonderfully and so far no little critters have dug them up.(Note to self: pick up large container of cayenne pepper to sprinkle around the plants!)Something from the year before always sprouts up in the current year on its own, and this year it’s tomatoes again, and surprisingly a few lettuce plants.I’m still waiting for the veggie seeds to sprout:green beans, carrots, beets, kale, and swiss chard, and a whole of bin of sunflowers.We have 4 bins, all made with 4 x 8 pine boards and filled with compost, a total of 128 square feet, so it’s not that big, but plenty to keep us busy.