HISTORY 17

February 15, 2003

I sent the secondary fleece (neck, belly, legs) off to Cary Smith a while ago, and just heard back from her that the fleeces are essentially uncleanable. There's just too much VM to make it worth the trouble. I kind of expected as much. Our alpacas are dry-lotted all year round, and we aren't as assiduous as we should be about keeping the hay/straw up off the floor and out of the fields. The animals end up rolling in it and getting it stuck in their fleeces - and then there's no way to get it out without picking the fleece apart hair by hair. Cary was going to ship it all back to me, but I told her not to... to just toss it. I told her to send back half the money I sent her, and keep the other half for her efforts. She did manage to save 6.4 ounces of Kimball's fleece, which is nice.. it's all I have left of my favorite alpaca! (He was sold last summer, remember?)

February 22, 2003

Boy, have we had an interesting week or so! Over President's Day weekend (Feb 15-17) we got over 25 inches of snow. Then the temperature stayed low for the next several days, so we didn't get any melt. When the temperatures finally got above freezing, it started raining. Today, right now, the temperature is 28°, it's so foggy we can't see across the field, and about six inches of snow has melted down and is now freezing again.

Rick went to town as usual on Saturday, February 15, even though it had snowed overnight. He had no trouble getting down the mountain, so he went on into town, read his paper, mailed all the orders, decided not to do any shopping, and came back home again. But he couldn't get back up the hill! The truck spun on the ice and ended up in a ditch, so he walked home... about a half mile from where the truck got stranded. Then it snowed some more.

On Sunday it snowed even more. By Monday, we had 25 inches of snow, but it had more or less stopped snowing. We still got the occasional flurry, but no additional accumulation to speak of. But we were snowbound. The folks who usually plow us out couldn't... because last time they did, they lost a bolt on the tractor, and they didn't get it fixed in time for this storm. We ended up hiring people from town to plow us out on Thursday, February 20th. Here are some pictures to give you an idea of what it was like. Click on the thumbnail to see a larger image in a new window.



What's been fun has been tending the animals! There's no way for the pacas or goats to get outside their shelters, so the floors are now covered with poop. There's almost no place for the alpacas to kush anymore! I clean it up every day, but the spot just seems to keep widening. Same with the goats, although because there are only two of them, the situation isn't as bad.

Rick cut a 2' wide swath through the snow so we could get to the barn. Then he tried digging out a swath behind the barn so he could go up to the upper barn to get hay, but only got about 2/3 of the way up before he decided to just wade the rest of the way. Not easy in knee-high snow! Then he just waded down to the goats, and the goats came back up to the gate with him, stomping out a little more pathway. By Thursday, the path to the gate was pretty well defined, although I STILL managed to slip and fall in the snow a couple of times!

We got a little careless about leaving the front door open when we went out to the front porch, and both dogs beat feet to go racing over the mountain. We haven't been able to walk them for a whole week, and they were really getting cabin fever. They got out about 2 pm, when we were going out to bring in the groceries Rick bought when he went to town yesterday (2/21). And they didn't come back! Along about one o'clock this morning, someone called us from almost a mile away, telling us she had Tawny... but no sign of Greta. So Rick got himself up and ready to go, so that he could go get Tawny, and just as he was walking out the door, Greta showed up! It can't have been easy for her to make her way through the snow.. it's still up to her belly, even if it is melting, and she's walking as if her back legs hurt her. The vet said to give her aspirin, so that's what I've been doing, but I can't see that it's helping much.

Today we have high winds - 30-40 mph sustained with gusts up to 50 mph. Wind is out of the west - which is unusual - and unfortunate, since it blows right into the shelters. We so seldom get a west wind (it's usually out of the north) that we built the shelters with the west side being the open side. Oh, well. It can't get too windy inside the shelters, because there's no way for the wind to blow through.

This has been a most unusual winter, with temperatures below normal 99% of the time and below freezing about 75% of the time. I think we've had maybe a week's worth of normal temperatures since last October.

We have to figure out a way to deal with this much snow. Our front porch looks like a hay barn, since we've piled the hay on the front porch as Rick brought it down from the barn. He didn't want to go wading through the snow every day to fetch it from there. The paca poop is piling up outside their enclosure, since we haven't been able to get to the road that takes us to the place we usually dump it. The goats' shelter hasn't been cleaned out since October, when I first started putting hay on the floor to create bedding for them. There's no place to put the used bedding if I do clean it out! Once we can get to the lower road, then we'll be able to cart all the poop and the used hay down there in the truck, but between now and then, it's a real problem. I'm concerned about disease, too.

Sobata seems much thinner than the other 'pacas, even though she's pregnant. Clovelly is by far the biggest, but she's due to criate in May or June. And Sobata's cough isn't getting any better. According to the Ciszewskis, she's had this cough all her life... still, it's sometimes a little frightening.

Sarai slipped her pregnancy again... for the third time. George, from the Double "O" Good farm where she's to be bred to Dark Cloud, called to let us know. We called Donna Matthews, the vet who cares for the Double "O" Good animals, and she suggested trying again in the spring, and giving Sarai progesterone shots to help her keep the fetus. If it doesn't work, we'll have a non-breeding female on our hands, even though we don't have a cria from her. Her first cria was Kipling... the one who died of a urinary tract blockage when he was only a week old.

Seneca is willing to be handled. Rick has been taking carrots to him almost every day, and reaching out to touch him while the little guy was eating his carrots. Sobata and Molly still won't be touched, and Clovelly bolts when she sees us coming. We still don't spend enough time with them, I think. Anyway, now we can run our hands over Seneca's back and neck and he endures it. I sincerely doubt he enjoys it, though. Still, it's a start. Perhaps we'll be able to trim his nails and give him injections without having to fight with him about it!

You know, I just read all the stuff I've written here, and it sure doesn't sound very positive! It's true we're not having much of a good time this winter, but I imagine that every occupation has bad times now and then. We'd still do it again if we had to start over. But we'd wait til we actually had pastures, instead of trying to grow pastures while the 'pacas are trying to graze. We do love this lifestyle, though, and wouldn't trade it for anything!

More later...

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