Spring is near!

Ahhh! I LOVE the beginning of Spring! Hearing all the frogs, you can practically sit and watch the pastures turn greener each day.  The smell in the air, the daffodils, tulips, iris, and peonies peeking through the ground! We have been busy doing lots of spring cleaning outside. We have been raking leaves out of the flower beds, burning off the pastures, picking up lots of sticks that have fallen through the winter, and getting ready to get our garden started. I always think about my dad and my grandpa the most around this time of the year. They loved to garden too and I learned everything I know about gardening from them. And while I didn't always like working out in the garden when I was a kid, I am so thankful for what they taught me in my life, about the rewards of growing something and giving it away to people that love it or cooking a beautiful home grown meal for your family and friends. When I smell the freshly tilled dirt and hear those frogs singing, it takes me back when things were simpler. This weekend, the weather isn't cooperating very well for tilling my garden. I had hoped to get a few things planted. I was already a little late. Grandpa always would say to plant your taters around St. Patrick's Day! Cold temperatures are back and it was sleeting this evening! Snow is in the forecast also. I have our seed potatoes and peas to plant when the weather gets drier.

We have soooo many eggs right now! My girls have really stepped up their laying since they have been out of their chicken house more, scratching all around the place, searching for any kind of bug morsel they can find under the leaves! Our geese have also started laying. They have layed about 10 eggs in the last 2 weeks. I was hoping that they would sit on them and hatch some baby geese, since they are making nests all over the place! But, I'm not sure yet if they are both females or if I have one of each? They will be 1 year old in April. 

I have been taking care of a kitten this winter that was abandoned by her mother around the first of the year.  She was only about 2 weeks old and I had to bottle feed her. Needless to say, I got very attached to her. I'm her mommy and she follows me around a lot. But, she is starting to get very ornery! She is black and white and very cute!

The MOPACA Invitational Alpaca Show is this weekend, March 25-27th, at Hale Arena in Kansas City. We will be there. Sarah has entered a few of her needle felted items she made in the Fiber Arts Competition. Hope she does well. 

All our alpacas are doing good. I just got our hay tested with very good results. It will be time to shear them soon. We didn't shear them last year, so we will have a lot of fiber to harvest from them.

That's about all for now. Just when I was really getting things done outside, the weather has to get bad. Hope it doesn't hang around long! 

Lara 

New Year, New Beginning?

Hi Everyone!
I want to start out by thanking everyone who made our needle felted snowmen a great success! It has been quite awhile since I've posted anything on here. We recently had some devastating set backs on our farm. I will talk about that a little later. 
I first want to talk about the wonderful success we had last fall starting with our participation at the UCM Holiday Market my daughter and I attended on December 1st. It was our first time displaying and selling our needle felted snowmen and ornaments, alpaca fiber, and jewelry. 
Everyone LOVED what we had displayed!

UCM Holiday Market 2010

 

We had a great time! While there, we were approached by someone from the Warrenburg Chamber of Commerce, asking us if we would like to be a part of the city's " Dickens Christmas - Living Windows Event", that following weekend. She said we were perfect for it, and she had to have us there! And, even though it was short notice, they would make room for us. We were very excited about the invitation. She explained that the event would replicate Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, and that we would set up our display and sit in one of the windows at the Java Junction business in downtown Warrensburg and create our needle felted items. It was pretty neat and we were proud to be a part of it.  There were carolers walking around singing Christmas music, and horse drawn carriage rides around the downtown area, and in the Java Junction, they were serving a special latte for the day: an Eggnog Latte. (Which was one of our alpacas names!) Lol! We felt we belonged there! We had so many people come to our table and comment on what we were making and would just watch us work with our fiber. They always had lots of questions about our alpacas. Then, we were interviewed and photographed for the Warrensburg newspaper, "The Daily Star-Journal"!

http://dailystarjournal.com/main.asp?Search=1&ArticleID=12848&SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1&S=1

A Dickens Christmas- Living Windows 2010, Java Junction

View outside our window at Java Junction

With our incredible happiness and success we had with our felting and the events we had just participated in, came unexpected sadness and devastation with some of our alpacas. We lost both of our beautiful girls after giving them an injection of Lutalyse from our veterinarian. This is what has kept me from updating this blog, due to my unbearable heart- filled grief I have had since this happened. I have totally lost all confidence in the veterinarians around me here. And I have so much guilt, wishing I could go back and never have given it to them, or, that I shouldn't have trusted that my vet would have and should have known that Lutalyse has caused deaths in alpacas. Something I did not know until I researched it the day after I had lost Cafe. It has been a very hard lesson. And it is something that I don't ever want to go through again. In the 9 years that we have owned our alpacas, never once have we had to call the vet out for anything except to check out a newborn cria (baby alpaca) and the mother. We have always done vaccinations, deworming, toenail and teeth trims, etc., ourselves. Something most everyone does in the alpaca industry. We have always had happy, healthy alpacas. This loss was a total shock to us and has brought our breeding program to a stand still. It has left us not knowing what the future will bring. We have had to just sit back and give ourselves time to think and to mourn. It has been difficult to get up every morning to do chores and see their empty pen and suddenly realizing that it's not a nightmare, it is real. All of our male alpacas are happy and healthy. 

Deep inside of me, my mind is telling me to keep going. This has been a tremendous set back, but I believe that what we did last fall with our fiber was meant to happen. It wasn't just a coincidence. It was a blessing. Like I have said before, we have had many set backs in our life. And it was such a happy time for our farm, and for me, working with my daughter who is an exceptional artist. We have 8 years worth of fiber stored and we will have more fiber to add to that come shearing time this spring. I love these animals and can't imagine not having them. Though it's still hard, time is flying by. It is March already, Spring is near and it will get very busy here, repairing fence, getting our gardens ready for planting, lots of yard work, shearing the alpacas and so on. I know I need to get busy washing, carding, and dying more of our fiber for our creations. It's hard to do when it makes you so overwhelmed with emotion. I know there is always going to be some sad things that come with raising animals. It's not easy on your emotions at times. I pray that something great will happen and we will get through this difficult time. Everything that has happened these last few months has made me appreciate and be more grateful for what I do have in my life that God has blessed us with: My family- beautiful and healthy, our farm, our animals. (we still have all our beautiful alpaca boys!) With Spring comes new life, a new beginning.

I don't know what God's plan is for us, but I will put my trust in Him to guide us through this storm and with His blessings, continue on.