Life Returns to Normal

Almost. Guess after the past week, there's a new normal. I keep looking over my shoulder, watching WeatherBug, double checking. Ready to turn the AC on full blast. The farm looks like a desert; all we need is sand. Had to resort to feeding hay in the summer in an orchard grass pasture. The new new.

The new girls are great sharers with each other, yet able to make decisions independently. They're growing into their new home.

SP scrounging for scraps, even though there's a plenty in the field.

For the record, I do not leave the red bucket in the field.

My dog gets to go on the watering plants run, out and about again. Life returning to normal.

Romancing The Farm?

Lest I be guilty of romanticizing life on the farm (ok, I do), here's the post that reminds romance readers of all texts that reality does set in on a daily basis. Each season comes with its own particular problems. Today is a classic spring day. Our farmer plowed under the orchard grass in the pasture by our new barn. He was definitely told NOT to do that, but he did anyway. So, he's replanting grass one month behind schedule, and it may not take. The dirt blow back is almost unliveable; everything is covered with more than a thin veneer of good old-fashioned topsoil. Definitely not happy. Definitely not a farm romance.

Combine that with mowing the grass. I have, without a doubt, the BEST HELP! But between the plowing and the mowing, even indoors my allergies kicked into high gear. The silver lining: I do not have to cut the grass.

Spring ushers in a different kind of llama care. The girls need shearing, and I am having huge problems with the person scheduled to shear them. I may need to learn how to clip them myself. Not so terrible, just a huge learning curve. They are not clipped the same way my horses were. Still, I'm not a novice at clipping.

Then there's the constant shift of weather, hot and cold. My biggest concern is always the fans; when to put them on, and worrying while they run. There's also a different kind of clean up; I sweep more often, and am going to invest in an industrial wet/dry vacuum sometime this week. I do love a clean barn. Finally, I do need to groom the girls before they are clipped. And do I gamble that this summer will be better, with time to learn to wash their harvested fiber, spin and use it. Time will tell.

Is a farm work? Absolutely. Constant work, and even with a team of two to four every other week, there is still much to be done to maintain the beauty and romance of the place. I used to be the primary worker; now, even with a team, I still put in 8 hours yesterday and today. Not a complaint; you could not drag me off the farm. As long as a looker-on visualizes the hours of maintenance behind the beauty, it's okay to romance the farm.

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The Farm
Llamas
Farming
Agriculture
Plowing

Greener Grass

Is it just that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence (no grass on either side but does that matter) or that llamas are inherently curious creatures. Or are they capable of attachment and want to be with you, wherever you go. If you are an owner longer than I, you might have the answer. I choose to believe that one of the llamas who owns me would like to be at my side, given the choice. The second is food-driven, a girl who loves playing in the pasture, cavorting. The third is independent, a guard llama and great aunt to the core. It's in her gene pool.

I am slowly learning llama language, the posturing of bodies, stances, and sounds that communicate among them who is alpha from beta or beyond. If there is anything I adore about being a llama mamma, it is sharing the sense of caprice that seems to run in the breed, the way they cavort and telegraph a sense of fun, the joy of daily living, encapsulated in these graceful, agile (well, most of the time) creatures.

When I started to film the girls, a capture-the-moment-very-quickly impulse, I thought of the BrainyFlix - YouTube SAT Video Contest. Just couldn't capitalize quickly enough to follow the contest format. Here's another version of cavort.



365 Days
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cavort
Turbo Tagger