Seasons of Change
Hello again, out there in alpacadom! When last we spoke, it was mid-July, and somehow my brilliant wife had just survived the tightrope walk of skirting her 50+ fleeces for the National Fleece Show while simultaneously running the gauntlet of the heart of our birthing season as the head midwife here at CCNF.
It was all frankly a slog, and we went through significant periods in June and July where it was the norm to expect anywhere from 1 to 3 births a day. Not a problem, of course, when the delivery goes well, mom loves her new baby and has good milk, and said baby is healthy and vigorous. It’s when things go sideways (I’m looking at YOU, Nymeria) that one can quickly start to feel stretched a little thin. It just doesn’t take much to eat up those hours of the day in such a scenario and requires everyone to be both on their toes, pulling their weight, and hitting their marks.
Now, as we sit here in late September, the crazy of the early summer seems comfortably in the rearview mirror. In the final math, we had 69 live crias born here (the girls winning the battle by 5). Barring a few touch and go moments (i.e., Supreme Champion female literally screaming and spinning in circles, trying to kill her newborn daughter), we got through our birthing season, which had been condensed to 10 weeks total, with our sanity intact and with all moms and babies accounted for. There were assorted uterine torsions that needed fixing (the fringe benefit of being a hill farm) and a dystocia here and there, including one full-on breech presentation and birth, but nothing that we hadn’t seen before. Sure there are still the odd ongoing management hassles, in the forms of some slow-growing preemies or poor doers, but that’s frankly just livestock farming/ranching, nothing out of the ordinary.
On a more personal note, we got to celebrate my father’s 80th birthday earlier this month on Cape Cod, with all four of his grandchildren present, no less. It was quite a small, intimate gathering but special nonetheless. Dad is not one to enjoy too much pomp and circumstance (which, given the recent turn of events in his professional life as a scholar, is hysterical), and the party reflected that. Getting all of the grand-babies there took some doing, too, given that they are spread out a bit more geographically nowadays, and university classes had started up again for the two of them who are still thankfully able to attend bricks and mortar schools in these lovely, Covidy times. A huge thank you to our dear friend, Sue Monat, for her willingness to cover the farm for us in our short-handed state, allowing Jen the chance to sneak down and be present as well for such a big occasion at the last second. Having my parents visit us here at the farm a week or so later, for the first time in almost 12 months, before then putting them on a plane back home to Guatemala, where they live nowadays most of the year, was a lovely bonus that hearkened back to an admittedly more innocent time. We count our blessings and try to take nothing for granted, that’s for sure.
In far more mundane news, we aim to attend an alpaca show later next month for the first time in almost two years. After all of the time away from the halter show circuit, it admittedly feels a little weird to be spinning up again with all of the associated preparations. Along with our beloved friends (the aforementioned and dreamy) Sue Monat and Dave Serino — always good to recruit our favorite native Syracusian when headed thereabouts — I’ve even convinced our first-born child into coming out of show-retirement to have a go again! It’s frankly all a selfish excuse to hang with our kid for a few days. So sue me.
And speaking of showing: did you know that Ian Lutz knows how to halter train alpacas? I’ll admit that I was pleasantly surprised myself after so long a time had passed. In recent years, I’ve more often been the handler that proved a given animal was show-ready and relatively bomb-proof at the end of the process, not the first face our juvis or yearlings were dealing with in that context. Basically, it was presumed (fairly or not) that if I could walk one of them, they would have likewise led and shown well for the Tasmanian Devil. Now I don’t train our alpacas as well as my bride, obviously — like, duh — but it turns out that over the 20+ years since I last tried my hand at round pen work (the idea being desensitization, so that one can touch one’s animals without them freaking out) and initial halter training, that some of my more reactionary (read: stupid, hot-headed, and in such cases, decidedly unhelpful and counterproductive) instincts have been blunted. Of course, the most significant difference between the current alpaca trainer before you at age 50 and the previous one at age 25 is the presence in my life of those two amazing 20-something-year-old boys of ours who no doubt — along with their super level-headed mother — imparted some lessons over the years that I can’t even fully quantify. Guess we all grew up together? In any case, I will be the first to admit that taking a raw, untrained yearling alpaca from an animal that initially spits in your face (repeatedly) in the round pen out of fear, to one that trusts you enough to follow on a slack lead, is an undeniable rush. It just requires some deep breathing at certain key moments.
Many exciting things are afoot here over the coming 6 or 7 weeks, but more on all of that in a later post. For now, we hope everyone is well and staying safe. And remember: football is life. See you soon!
Follow me on Twitter at @CCNFAlpacas and on Instagram at ccnfalpacas. You can find also find and follow Cas-Cad-Nac Farm Alpacas on Facebook here.
