Let There Be Light!

Our project this past weekend was putting up lighting in the store. Luckily we have an electrician in the family who has been incredibly generous with his time! Not only did Jason spend the day lighting up the store, but he has also spent many hours re-wiring our kitchen as well - but that's another story, for another time! We started by adding some inexpensive track lighting to illuminate the walls in the store. Track lighting gives you a lot of bang for your buck - three lights for the price of one! You can't beat them for versatility either. Each light can be directed wherever it is needed in the room. In our case, we needed the walls and corners of the room lite up, so our products could be viewed easier. Since we try to be energy conscious whenever possible, I was happy to find out that the halogen bulbs in track lighting are quite efficient and shouldn't have to be replaced very often. A center light, with two energy efficient fluorescent bulbs, adds to the lighting in the entire space. What a difference! Many thanks to Jason for all his hard work lighting up the farm! A big thank you to Patrick as well, who also pitched in on the project.

The Last Homecoming

It's official! Everyone is finally here! After an all day drive in torrential rains, our breeding female China Doll, and her new male cria, Zeppelin (Zeppy for short) are being escorted into the paddock. As you can see, they have quite a welcoming crew looking on! No one was more excited to great the newcomers than Bon Jovi (other than us of coarse!). He is thrilled to have a new friend that is just his size to get into mischief with. After several hours of 'who's who' sniffing and jumping, and yes - some spitting, they all settled in for a good nights sleep. Jovi's zealous ways have earned him quite a bit of scolding from "Aunt China Doll", who is less than impressed with his rambunctious behavior! But it didn't take long for the newness to where off, and for Jovi to learn his place and boundaries. Now they are all acting like one big happy herd! It's so beautiful to see all the different colors of our alpacas out in the pasture. Especially with the gorgeous foliage on the mountain as a back drop!

Up Goes the Shelter for our Alpacas

We put up the shelter for the alpacas recently. This was quite an experience! We settled on a clearspan livestock shelter from Farmtek. It arrived via 18 wheeler. Yes, I know, Blake is a a builder, why didn't we build a traditional barn, like we did at our last farm? There are several reasons. The biggest being time, and our lack of it these days! We have so many projects going right now (trying to get both the kitchen and the store up and running to name the biggest two), we needed something fast and cost effective. The other major reason was the fact that these structures are completely movable. We haven't worked this land long enough to know exactly where we want to place things the most conveniencwe in day to day operations. This way we can try out different placements until we find just the right spot. Once we find the right spot, we can build a traditional barn there and move the shelter to another spot for another use - possibly a second barn to seperate boys and girls or maybe even a wood shed. The flexability of this type of shelter made sense. It went up in the good part of 2 days, with just Blake and I working on it. We did need the help of our daugher to pull the cover up over the peak. We are fairly happy with the outcome. You can see the additional wood boards inside Blake installed on the back end to make a place to store hay, feed and tack. Soon there will be a divider down the center going front to back to create two separate paddocks. It's almost time to wean the 2 male crias we had this year! Mommy's on one side and boys on the other in a few short weeks. The alpacas have been enjoying their new shelter, especially during rain storms. They also seem happy to have their hay box back, now that the pasture is giving it's last few blade of grass for the season. Tomorrow we go pick up the last two alpacas, who were boarded at Chase Tavern Farm while we moved. China Doll and her new son, Zeppelin. China is confirmed pregnant and ready to come to her new home and get settled for the winter. We can't wait for Zeppelin to meet his new buddy Bon Jovi. Jovi has been driving the 'adults' he lives with crazy, trying to get them to run around and play with him. They have been less than thrilled with his antics! Jovi and Zeppy will certainly provide us with much entertainment as they race around the pasture and play 'alpaca games' together!