Yin-Yang

Sorry to have been off of the radar screen recently. Though I try to post something new here at least once every week, end of the summer craziness combined with a virus that laid the resident blogger low for almost 10 days all conspired together.  In any case, with our kiddos having returned to school yesterday for the first time, the world is settling down a bit again even if it does also mean the addition of twice daily commutes.

Those of you that have followed this blog for the past couple of years, as well as the newsletter that preceded it, will know that yours truly has a bit of a superstitious streak. While not superstitious in terms of walking around throwing salt over my shoulder or constantly knocking on wood (just some times), there is however one thing that I’ve come to feel is true: that the bad and the good in this world seem to find a way to balance each other out. Perhaps it all harkens back to my being raised as a fan of the Boston Red Sox (BTW, who did they piss off this year?) during the years when the team would find new and excruciating ways to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory? Whenever things get going along with a series of really positive results, I inevitably find myself looking over my shoulder just out of habit. It doesn’t mean that we have to have extremes such as a lunar landing and the sinking of the Titanic to balance each other out, rather just that I’ve found over time that especially with life here on the farm that we have accept the positives with the negatives alike. Granted, during the less exciting times that might mean just taking the the somewhat okay with the slightly lame. You get the idea.

Sometimes the extremes do come out to play though as was the case over the past couple of weeks. To lead things off, several of our due females birthed out with really exciting new crias just over a week ago. These weren’t just any old females either: taken together Pristine (her little boy was already written about in the previous post here), Chalice, and Johanna represent a pretty important percentage of our foundation herd. The latter two, white and light brown respectively, also gave birth to dynamic colored crias, though unlike Pristine’s theirs were both females. It was pretty hard not get pumped! In the case of Chalice, we feel like we may have finally figured out how to breed her correctly (her 2011 daughter, Jesusa, was and is an automatic member of our 2012 show string) after what was — hindsight being 20/20 — a good idea gone bad when we tried unsuccessfully to line breed her with her grandsire her first two years in production. In Johanna’s case, we are frankly just spoiled. Having sold her 2nd cria, Eva Rose, earlier this season, this most famous daughter of the incomparable Magdalena has now given us her third little girl in as many years. Though to put icing on the cake, this is the first one that is the same color as mom or even a shade darker (Eva and her big sister Alex were beige and white respectively). So while we were thrilled with the results from those three females, my superstitions self sensed that the piper would need to be paid sooner or later. That started Sunday…

Upon entering the Stud Barn that morning to grab Elite Legend and head up for some breeding action at the Arena, I saw that Golden Sovereign had contrived to rip open the lower eye lid on his right side. Best educated guess looking at the wound was that he somehow got too close to one of the various bungee cord hooks that are all over the place. While we’ve since taken down any extra bungees at that barn that aren’t absolutely necessary, it’s frankly a pretty freak injury. Sovereign, who now has stitches and the grooviest head wrap (see photo) of any alpaca east of the Mississippi, was to his credit still full of piss and vinegar — gaping head wound and all, wanting to get a piece of EL as I took him out of the barn. Sov is expected to have to wear his bandage for a week or so in order to keep him from reopening the wound. Good stuff.

The rebalancing of the universe continued when hauling what was to be the final 2012 wagonload of hay up to the Main Barn with our tractor. Just as Jen and Kim emerged from the Stud Barn where they had been attending to Sov’s eye, the cotter pin that helps secure the hay wagon onto the tractor failed and as several of us watched in slow motion horror, the hay wagon went rolling free down the hill, off the road, and smashed into the woods. On the plus side, at least it didn’t take out the fencing by the Stud Barn which it could have just as easily had it swung to the other side of the road. We were also really lucky that our staff member, Eric, who normally follows the tractor fairly closely in one of our utility vehicles, had yet to make the U-turn from the road leading down from the Arena and was thus out of the line of fire. While egos were perhaps bruised, they heal with time and hay wagons can be mended.

That was two strikeds but we’re all familiar with the superstition that bad things come in threes, right? As soon as the wagon situation was dealt with — several runs with our truck brought the 100+ bales up the Main Barn in the end — Jen looked at the members of our staff and only half in jest forbid anyone from working with power tools for the rest of that day. No need to tempt fate after all. As it turned out crisis #3 would come the next day when our female, Jasmine, decided to deliver a little girl (yeah!) and then prolapse her uterus (boo!). Not such a huge deal except for the fact that Jen and Kim discovered this at a time when everyone else, including yours truly, was away from the barn and unreachable (note to self: leaving cell phone in car when it’s the only way you can be contacted is bad for the marriage in such situations). To complicate matters further, Jasmine had also delivered her baby out in the corral of her feed group’s pen, so that the inside-out uterus was covered with sand. Very sanitary. Thankfully Jen and Kim were able to get Jassy inside, get the uterus mostly washed off, and stabilize the situation until our super-vet, Susan Johnson, arrived to help get everything back in its proper place. Fun and games. The little girl, who by necessity was pretty much ignored for the first hour+ of her life, was thankfully quite strong and was able to adjust fine once her momma was able to pay proper attention to her. The baby, BTW, is also quite nice. There can be no darkness without light? It’s all good. We often have to stop and remind ourselves how fortunate we are to be pursuing this life which we love, even on days when it gets a little grim. Some times we just have to roll with the punches, knowing that it will all seemingly work itself out in the end.