Huarizo

Huarizo
Leonardo
Showing posts with label re-homing llamas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label re-homing llamas. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

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.