Winter, actually.

Amazing what a difference in one’s perception 3″ to 4″ of snow can make, no? After coming home from our family trip on the 8th to find the landscape here completely brown and grey, the recent cold and the back to back mini storms of late last week have now put things back, visually at least, closer to their historic norms. None too soon either. Since locking the animals at the Main Barn off of pasture over two months ago, we had been waiting for the ground to freeze before letting them back out again. Normally that would have happened by early December at the absolute latest. Not this year though.

While snow cover is preferable, there really is no issue with the alpacas walking or “grazing” (most of the grass is a 1/4″ and brown) on top of the frozen compost that we spread out there back in early November but we didn’t want them trashing the fields when it was still muddy…in late December. We did get plenty of precipitation over the course of December and early January but the fact remains that 40 degrees and rain wasn’t what we — to say nothing of the local ski area managers who must have been on the edge of nervous breakdowns every time the weathermen delivered them yet another disappointing forecast  —  were looking for. Thankfully the weather pattern over the last couple of weeks has finally started to take on a more familiar form. As we completed herd health at the Main Barn last Thursday morning we were able to open up all of the corral gates and put hay back out into the outdoor hay feeders so that the weaners and yearlings at that barn could get out into their respective paddocks and get some real running room. Can you imagine telling a bunch of 12 to 18 year old kids that they had to stay in the house for 2.5 months? All the joys of Jr. High in a pressure cooker with no way to blow off steam. What a lovely hormonal cocktail that was.

In a normal year, our animals are taken off of pasture both at the Arena and the Main Barn sometime in late October or early November. The difference though being that at the Arena we have always set up a large dry lot area around three sides of the building so that the alpacas there — and most importantly the relatively young crias — still have plenty of room to get out and play in the sun. Those of you that have ever seen or read about young alpacas with rickets may be familiar with the term “barn baby.” While we do greatly counteract the lack of natural vitamin D production (for which you need sunlight and UV rays hitting the animals’ skin) in our crias through regular supplementation with ADE paste, we still like to get them out underneath the blue sky as much as possible. Not that living here in Vermont, say versus southern California, always aids that cause.

For my part I had definitely been softened up and lulled into a false sense of security by the milder temperatures of early winter (10 days in the Caribbean probably didn’t help either). When I got a call from my parents yesterday afternoon to come and pick them up after their car had rather unceremoniously croaked on the side of I-89, I foolishly grabbed a jacket but not a hat or gloves. Unfortunately I didn’t fully grasp my error until I was standing on the side of the highway with traffic whizzing by us in the 2 degree cold. It’s not as if I grew up around here or something. Oh. The alpacas meanwhile are as happy as could be with the recent turn of events. With three to five inches of insulating fleece, 10 to 20 degrees is like alpaca heaven! I guess it’s finally time to go skiing.