Winter Meanderings
- It sure has been a strange winter here in Vermont so far. While alpaca friends of ours as far south as Maryland had 3 feet of snow fall in a single event a couple of weeks back — I still feel that the Weather Channel’s insistence on naming winter storms, mostly so that they can gin-up the sense of drama, really needs to be called out for the cynical and hyperbolic BS that it is, hence you will find no reference here to the any given storm’s “name” — but as I write this, I am staring at pastures out my office window that were, until last night, completely bare. It was mild enough throughout the month of January in fact, that out of an abundance of caution, we dewormed the entire herd with Ivermectin late last week. There might have been one or two other years in our farm’s 19 year history where that was necessary? For my part though, I for one am sure (sure!) that the fact that 2014 and 2015 were the hottest years recorded in modern history was nothing more than a fanciful coincidence. What could all those Nobel-laureates really know anyway? Stooopid scientists and their preponderance of the overwhelming evidence. Oh…yeah. Facts. Bummer. Though they say that the regional weather pattern has changed and that more winter-like temperatures are here to stay again for weeks ahead, last week we had 50 degree weather and 12+ hours of soaking rain. At least we can say the Lutz family dodged a financial bullet when we chose not to invest in new ski equipment for our still-growing high school freshman last fall. If for some reason the great blizzard of 2016 does choose to come this far north, we’ll just rent him some skis and boots. In the meantime, while folks that are invested in the local tourism business have really been taking it on the chin since before the holidays, at least it would seem that the same El Niño effect that’s caused all of this weirdness, has also brought possible drought-breaking rainfall to many parts of California and in the big picture, that is way, way more important.
- Prior to October, I don’t think any of us could have told you what or where the scaphoid bones were in our hands. Oh, how we all wish we had remained blissfully ignorant. Then late that month, one of our young staff members slipped and broke the scaphoid in his right hand while trying to get the farm’s hay elevator back into the loft at the Main Barn. It certainly could have been far worse but 3 months, one orthopedic surgery, and hours of occupational therapy later, the poor guy is finally getting the use of his hand back. Gah.
- Breeding season may have come to an end back in November but yours truly has been running an occasional winter instructional league of sorts for some of our younger, unproven Herdsires. MFI’s & KVR’s Mint Mo Money, in particular, though more than capable of strutting his stuff when dealing with his fellow Herdsires at the stud barn (he’s been pushing 5 and 6 year olds around since he first showed up there as a yearling), never quite figured out his breeding mechanics before last year’s season came to a close. In his defense, he did just barely turn 2 in September, and in spite of being plenty aggressive in terms of getting females to cush for him, suffice it so say that certain parts of the anatomy were not getting to where they needed to be in order to facilitate the procreation of new baby alpacas. Since some of his off-season practice sessions though, we are quietly confident that Mo, whom we co own with our friends Wayne and Sue Robinson at Emelise Alpacas, will be getting the job done by the time we are asking him to work for real in mid June. Assuming all is well, he certainly will get ample opportunities in 2016 to prove himself out. Should be interesting!
- As we have started to wean the members of the 2015 birth class, new animals — in particular females — have started to appear on our online sales listings. There will still be several more as the younger crias born in late summer and early fall leave their moms at the Arena and come down the hill to join their buddies who are now all being housed at the Main Barn again.
- Of course, the reason the male and female weaners are again being housed on one side of the Main Barn (for those that don’t know, that’s the MB above in the blog’s banner graphic, circa 1998, before it had it’s shed roofs put on), is because when we had the two groups of weaners temporarily housed down at the smaller Stud Barn, two of our nicer white boys, Teodoro and Moonshine, decided they’d take turns trying to quite literally knock out their front teeth. We’re not exactly sure how it happened in any case — we have our suspicions it involved chewing on the rails of the small-gauge panels we have down there and then getting bumped from behind — but Moonshine, apparently jealous that his best bud was now missing all but one of his front teeth, decided to up the ante some 2 weeks later (and just days after coming back down with his friend from sickbay in the Arena’s warm room no less) by actually fracturing his lower jaw. “Ha! Take that!” They were both contenders for our spring show rosters, so we’ll have to see how things are looking once the poor buggers are healed up.
- Though we won’t be announcing them officially until lot #s are assigned, we do in fact already know who the animals are that we will be consigning to both the Futurity Sale in April as well as the Parade of Champions in early June. We will offer one tease of note: CCNF Elixir’s kids will be represented this time around for the first time at both auctions though in the case of the PoC, perhaps not in the color you might be expecting. Rumor has it those Elixir/Majesty crosses kind of, sort of worked. 🙂 More on that in the weeks ahead though, please stay tuned!
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