A Star is born

Patty finally dropped her cria sometime early this morning. I have my suspicions it might have been around 6am when the dogs started barking like crazy in their kennels in the sun room. Of course it was still dark and we couldn't see anything out there. When the light came, Richard saw an extra set of baby ears out there, so we ran out with towels to investigate. Sure enough, a little llama was already following mama llama around. We found the afterbirth frozen, so it must have been a little while since the actual birth.

New Baby, still covered in gunk.

Patty's little girl.

Star in the sunshine.

We pulled a lot of the dried gunk off of her...the dried up birth sack, but she was still wet and I was worried that the tips of her ears had been frost bitten. So Richard gave the girls some hay to distract them and we took the new baby inside to let her dry in the warm house.

Star in the sun room, inside the house.

The kids had a lot of fun hugging and petting the little cria. You can do that with girl babies (at least, that is my hope). Boy babies will go nuts when they get older if you cuddle them.

Star with a jacket on, getting ready to go back out to Mama.

She's pretty darn cute. 19 pounds. She's actually bigger than Leonardo was when he was born, but she sure seems tiny next to him now.

Leo has gotten so big in the month he's been around. And, he's kind of a brat, always trying to get out of the yard. Just yesterday he climbed through the electric wire, again, and was running around on the boys' side of the pasture. They didn't know quite what to make of the pint sized llama. I chased him back through and Richard put up more wire. He's is certainly testing his boundaries.

So, on this cold, fine Fall morning, we welcomed little Star to our farmstead. She is the second huarizo born here. Thankfully she has the thick fur of her Alpaca daddy, which will help keep her warm these cold nights and mornings.

She's okay. Her ears are fine. Richard washed them off and found it was just dried fluid on the tips, not frostbite. She was completely dry when we took her back out. We left the jacket on her to give her a little added insulation from the cold. Hopefully it will warm up fast this morning.

She's really cute and we are all in love with her already.

Settling in to Alamosa

So we are about a month into the new rental now. The llamas are all here with us as is Chloe, the pot belly pig. We sold one turkey and the rest went into the freezer. The same for the chickens who haven't laid for months.

Chloe

Then we had to buy store eggs. I didn't mind paying the cost for the  organic eggs, it's what we charge when we sell eggs. But one day no one in town had any, and this last time, I just decided that the "organic" eggs are not living up to my expectations. So I began the search for laying hens. Found some too. I hope they are only one year old as the woman we got them from believed them to be. I traded a box of children's board and picture books for a bunch of chickens. We got three roosters in the mix. Mostly they are Houdans, which is not a breed I am familiar with, so we will see if and how they lay eggs through the winter. So far, they aren't laying at all.

Houdans

We cleaned out the shed on the rental property. Then Richard fixed it up a little and now we have a working chicken coop for the new birds.

shed turned coop

Patty still has not dropped her cria. Leo the haurizo, Taylor's cria is doing great, testing the boundaries of his freedom in the big field that is now his home, along with all of the female llamas. Leo runs circles around his mom, jumping and kicking and having a grand time, I think I even saw him trying to spit, posturing to mom, trying again and again. It sure seems like she was encouraging him...a lesson in llama spitting perhaps.

Llama girls

We have been considering re-homing some of the llamas. And downsizing many things. Richard's new salary is starting to catch up to us and we are not fairing so well financially. I have listed the camper, and both parcels of land for sale. I don't want to give up the dream, but I'm not sure how else we can pay the bills off that we can no longer afford. I'm trying to find like-minded people to perhaps buy into either piece of land and help us form sustainable communities, but interest and funding seems to be lacking.

Llama boys

We did get our first recycle customer this past week, but at $2 a month for his pickup, that will not go far. I hope more people sign up and we can get this thing going. It seems like a good idea for us, for others and for the planet.

We are still trying to sort and clean up our lives in boxes. Some of our stuff we have not seen for years. It's been packed up and stored away. As a result we are purging everything we don't really need or have outgrown. It's a process. It seems I just finish emptying boxes, sorting and cleaning up and a new batch of boxes shows up. On the positive, our storage rental in town is almost empty and we will be done with that at the end of the month.

We have managed to raise a few dollars by selling off some of these bigger items, which has helped a lot.

I passed my first level shaman course and Richard just got his Permaculture Certification. We are always continuing to educate ourselves as the funding allows. It may be a while before we can start anything new.

I have acquired two clients in my healing business, and I expect that will grow over time.

Leonardo the baby llama

We just had a baby llama/alpaca...huarizo cria. A mix between an alpaca and a llama is a haurizo.

New cria

Taylor our black female llama had her baby this morning, or about noon. He just showed up in the field. No problems, no stress. Llamas give birth so easily. It took him about an hour or so to get to his feet.

Baby llama/alpaca born in the sand

He's so cute!

Nursing

We relocated Taylor and baby to a separate pen and put Patty in there with them, expecting her to give birth any day now. I think they are early though. 350 day gestation. I think we got Alonso last October, but I suppose we are within a couple of weeks of due date.

Staying close to Mom.

In any case, here he is...Leonardo, the newest addition to the farmstead. 26 pounds of legs and fluff.

Leonardo

Adding llamas to the farmstead

This week has been about llamas. Getting more llamas. Having them delivered. Setting up more fence, and thinking about what to do next.

We have been in the process of acquiring four female llamas. There were seven available, but I decided if we were going to have to buy feed, it should be for the younger ones who are at reproductive age. We settled on three young girls under a year and one mama to one of the crias who is seven months old.

Richard built a hay feeder out of pallets that will hold a bale of hay.

pallet hay feeder

And, while we waited for the girls to arrive, he put a new trailer hitch on the van that also showed up via UPS. We ordered the hitch online, and it came just in time for us to get a load of water before our cisterns run dry. We have not had any moisture in this desert land, ironically, while we watch the northeast United States recover from Hurricane Sandy and the over abundance of moisture they have received. I would not want that kind of flooding, nor that kind of damage to deal with. I am glad we chose to stay in the Rocky Mountains when we decided to move. I wish everyone the best of luck in recovering.

hitch on van

The new llama ladies arrived in a big fancy horse trailer. I could see it ambling across the dusty road, heading towards our place, and I yelled at Richard, "The llamas are coming!"  The kids and I could hardly contain our excitement. It is always so much fun to have new animals come to the farm.

Arrival of new llamas.

It was quite a challenge to get the llama girls out of the trailer and into their new yard. They had never been in a trailer, and weren't real fond of the harnesses, which unfortunately didn't fit real well. We only have large harnesses here on our little farm, and no access to a store with llama gear. But, we got the harnesses (adjusted as small as they would go) and leads on and proceeded to pull and push the frightened critters into their new yard, taking breaks now and them to let them (and us) adjust and relax for a minute.

Meet and greet.

The boys were very curious about the new ladies, and all came running to introduce themselves over the fence that now separates them. After the girls were released, they quickly found the hay bucket and got to eating. There wasn't too much nervous humming that went on, and overall, I think everyone handled the arrival pretty well. We've got our work cut out, with training these girls to lead and load into the trailer, not to mention just get used to human handling so we can brush them and trim their nails, and one day milk them.

Llama girls.

Paddie the cria.

So today, I find myself researching how to clean and card llama wool. This past week I also found a set of carders on Craigslist for really cheap, and a friend picked them up in Santa Fe on her monthly shopping trip to the "big" city. (Thank you Susan!)

Hand carders.

I am almost ready to get out the bags of stored wool I have been hauling around, and deal with it. And, I'm not so afraid of it, having watched countless videos on You tube on how to clean the wool and card it. So happy for the internet.

Bags of llama wool.

I am so looking forward to the day when we can be on our own land, with a barn for the animals and places to do all of the things we want to do.

Haven't had much interest from other parents about helping out with the cost of the "llama dairy." I guess we will proceed ahead by ourselves and hope at some point other people will want to join in. In any case, our kids will benefit from this little experiment, I hope. I am eager to get these girls bred and get on with it, but we can't really breed them until Spring, when the weather is warm enough to support baby llamas. The girls will be in gestation for one year, and all of them will be at a healthy breeding age come Spring. That also gives up time to find an intact male to breed them with.

One step at a time. One day at a time. It is taking shape.