Glacial melt

The Arena, which houses our female production herd at the top of the farm, has been in a state of relative lockdown since last week’s big rains. The downside of having beautiful  20′ wide shed roofs running down both sides of that 200′ long building is that in a winter like 2010/2011 those sheds become collection points for thousands of pounds of snow. It was bad enough that we already had to keep the animals on both the south and north (facing uphill) sides of the building locked in under the sheds, with no access to the bigger dry lots we have up there during the wintertime. We didn’t after all want anyone to get buried by snow and ice coming off of those roofs during the oncoming thaw. Then the rains came and it got really nasty. Not unlike what happened down the hill at the smaller Main Barn last week as well, there was so much water coming off of the roof between the rain and the melting snow that it really had only one place to go on the north side: into the corrals underneath the shed. There it pooled for a day or two and then promptly froze into a nice, solid 200′ x 20′ long ice sheet. Our old friends and co-conspirators Dave, Mike, and Pat had joked several years ago that we could one day use the Arena to house a minor league hockey team (one was going to be the coach/GM, one the Zamboni driver, and Patrick was probably going to sell beer), provisionally named the Ascutney Archangels, if and when we tired of the alpaca world. That time is not yet here though! Plus, I can’t think of any league that would approve of piles of alpaca beans in the face-off circles.

Not wanting to risk any ice-related injuries at the Arena, all of the the females on that north side have been confined for almost six days now to their indoor pens. Of course this was all just exacerbated by the ice storm and loss of power last week, as the generator at that barn is configured to run only the automatic waterers and the smaller spot lights, not the electricity sucking dry mercury lights that hang from the ceiling. Locked in and dark: it doesn’t get much better than that, right? Thankfully even the indoor spaces at the Arena are pretty roomy by alpaca farm standards though, so everyone has held up ok. Many of our north-side girls (who, yes, like south-side boys) just have that “look what the cat dragged in” look going on. Frumpy. For anyone that ever saw the episode of Seinfeld where the showers broke and they all had to take baths instead, you know of what I speak.

This morning though after several days of temperatures above freezing — and even a shot of sunshine — I am happy to report that the ice is pulling back and going away. With a little luck the Arena’s north siders may even get their corrals back by the middle of the week. It’s one of the advantages of living on the side of a mountain: the ice/snow/water will eventually just go downhill. Physics is a beautiful thing.