August

I realize I'm alittle backwards with this. It's nearly October and here I am just now telling you about our month of August! Anyway, August was a fantastic month! I'm calling it our 'August of additions.' On August 6th we welcomed our first 2009 alpaca baby. I almost named him Lancelot but once I took a good look at him I just thought he was magical, so we named him Merlin. Thats in keeping with our Camelot theme. He weighed in at 17lbs. and hasn't stopped running since. This boy is wired! The next birth is my great niece Alexis Joy, or Lexie for short. I don't have pictures of her yet, they're still on my phone. She came 3 weeks early and weighed in at around 5 1/2 lbs. She is perfect and beautiful. I was able to have layovers in the area she lives in so I was able to see her 4 times. She changed alot each time. The next birth was 11 Moscovy ducklings! All 11 eggs hatched. It was alot of fun to watch and it took no time at all for them to be up and walking all over the farm. They're much bigger now of course. Another fun event in the same month was the visit of a couple from Sweden who wanted to visit some NH alpaca farms and we were lucky enough to be one of them. They were very nice and alot of fun. The picture shows them holding Merlin. September has had 1 birth and I'll tell you about that in my next entry. TTFN.

Quiet or just Noise?

This past weekend was the National Alpaca Farm Days event. We participated in it and had some wonderful and varied visitors. I spent more time this weekend up in the barn with my alpacas than I would normally. What I noticed, in between visitors, is that the alpacas thrive in the quiet. When it gets noisy with people you can just tell that they're 'on guard.' They don't worry about the world and whats happening where. They don't care about television, newspapers, and other media. They don't see themselves as too fat, or too poor. They just are. The events they are concerned with are 'where's my baby?', 'let's go eat some grass', 'I need to stretch my legs', 'woohoo it's naptime.' Their quiet is not the quiet of alot of people. These people actually hear the noise of quiet. Alpacas actually enjoy it. This is something I'm having to learn to enjoy. I admit that I love having television on for background noise. At first the quiet this weekend was alittle unnerving. Now it's becoming soothing. This is a no caffeine permitted kind of quiet. At least until Mikey, my cranky yankee alpaca, starts picking on someone and they start screeching.

Mothering

I have this small 'herd' of moscovy ducks. 2 beautiful gray ones and the more traditional black and white. One of my gray ones, Gracie, had babies this past August. More on the month of August in another post. So I'm watching her be a first time mother to her cute little ducklings. She really is amazing. She's also mean and protective. Mean in a mama bear kind of way. She'll hang on to the wing feathers of one of the other ducks, they'll run away and she still hangs on! She'll snap and bite at anyone or anything that comes close to her babies. I've also noticed that she's not just a 'do as I do' mother. I have seen her take her babies to 4 out of 5 of our pastures just to show them around the farm. Just a little duck stroll. I've also seen her introduce them to our big, loud, dogs! She only brought them to within sight range of our dogs, but it was enough for them to run for the hills and for our dogs to want to play catch with them. Thankfully they didn't meet each other. It's funny that even though they can get their chick feed anytime they go inside the barn, they always come in when I'm feeding the alpacas. So now that I've bored you with my duck news I'll get off here and check facebook. Enjoy the fall!

Peace

So I'm on a layover reading some women's mags. I read the cooking stuff, the decorating stuff, and I feel okay. A little anxious actually. Like there's no way my house will ever live up to the magazine's ideal or even though I rip out recipes I know they'll get lost in the pile. Then I pick up an alpaca magazine and peace descends on me. There is just something right about what I'm doing with my life. My life that is not my job. My other life. Even though every trip to the barn is uphill (in the winter this is so much fun!), as soon as I'm inside I can't help but smile. I'm striving to do the best I can with my animals but all they really expect is some grain and hay. Honestly I wish humans were this easy to please! My husband says I spoil them. Yes, I probably do, but they are my kids you know! Anyway, back to peaceful, when I get home from work feeling just a bit drained by lots and lots of human contact, I just head uphill to the barn where it's okay if it's alittle messy, and feed my 'kids' some grain(this involoves just pouring pellets in a bowl) and we have achieved nirvana, heaven, peace.