The Faces of Friends

Every morning and evening, I'm greeted by the most beautiful and eager of faces. I have to say, I'm the highlight of their day. I bring the treats and provide most of the excitement that they experience in each 24 hour period. Their huge dark eyes fix on me while they wait, just out of reach, for their grain.

Alpacas are so stoic that you can't tell something is wrong until it's nearly too late, but just give them the hope of a treat or the promise of a good spraying down on their legs, and the poker faces disappear. They're all eagerness and self-forgetfulness when the good stuff comes out.

Baby face, you've got the cutest little baby face...






















Look Mommy! The alpaca is smiling!!

A Mother's Day Tribute

Well, we're back!! After what seems like ages, we're finally catching up on the spring work (more on that later) and have time for sharing once again. So how are all of you? I've missed reading blogs and staying in the loop of everyone's lives and interests. I hope this finds everyone healthy, happy and eager to meet tomorrow.

Today is Mother's Day and I want to share my mother with you. She passed away on November 22, 2006 after a 5 year battle with ovarian cancer.

Phyllis Hoecher was born to dry land farmers in northern Colorado in 1933. She was the youngest of 6 children and a product of the Great Depression, which molded her character and outlook for the rest of her life. When we were growing up, she told us such stories of hard times and making the best of what they had. My grandpa was an Austrian immigrant who came to America at the age of 9. After marrying my grandma, he lost his first farm for $17 tax money and his second farm for $49 tax. To feed his children, he operated a still during Prohibition, making and selling moonshine on a small farm just one mile across the section from where we live now. When the revenuers came to raid his place, he buried the still and forgot where he put it. It's buried somewhere on that farm yet today.

My grandpa walked 8 miles every night to the nearby settlement of Cornish to play poker to bring in money during the Depression. He played at the saloon--yes the saloon--just like in the cowboy movies, although it wasn't glamorous in the least. He would play poker until the wee hours of the morning, walk the 8 miles home and go to work in the fields during the day. The family was lucky not to have starved. The stories of eating baking powder biscuits with small bits of sorghum and boiled turnips for days on end are still fresh in my mind.

She attended schools right near where we live now and met and married my father in this area as well. The Depression was probably the single most influential era in my mother's life. The scarcity of money, food, clothing, housing, jobs, and everything else necessary for daily living took its toll. She emerged, as so many did, wary of government and bankers, distrusting of everyone, including some of her own family, and tight fisted with her money. Her father told her, "Don't you EVER trust ANYONE," and she pretty much never did. She never threw anything away, but saved it all because "everything has a use and you'll be sorry if you don't have it later." This is a picture of the students in Mama's one room school on the Colorado prairie near Pierce, Colorado in 1939. She's in the front row on the right end.

After marrying my father, they farmed various farms as tenants and then finally bought the home place, right here, in 1964. It was a miracle for them to get it, with no money down and small annual payments. They bought it for $22,500.00, less than an average new car costs today. I've lived here my whole life and hope I never leave. My mother hoped the same, and God was merciful to her in that she was able to live here until she went on to heaven. This is my mom and dad's wedding picture with my grandparents, Gustav and Mildred Hoecher.

My mother was a registered nurse for 50 years. She worked at the local hospital at night and farmed with Papa during the day. They struggled. They had four girls within the first 7 years of marriage, dealt with health problems, fought to make the farm payment every year, faced weather and falling prices, and wrangled with marital issues. Throughout every challenge, Mama always reminded us that she was blessed because she always had more than she ever had as a child. I believed her--most of the time. She always told us that being happy is a choice you make, not an experience that happens. I believed her. This is one of my favorite pictures of all of us girls. I'm the one in the front with the fat belly. My sister Kathleen, of A Bag of Olives, is holding our baby sister.

Mama was a strong willed woman with a bigger than life personality. Standing only 5'4" at her peak, she wielded great influence. She was opinionated and passionate about the things that were important to her--her family, her land and home, her nursing career, her community. I remember her standing toe to toe more than once with the ditch rider arguing about why he wouldn't give us our full measure of water for irrigation. I remember her getting in a doctor's face about his lack of compassion towards an ailing patient. I remember her fighting for my opportunity to audition for a sports scholarship at the local university, even thought I wasn't on "the list". (I got the scholarship, by the way, to Mama's everlasting satisfaction.) She was competent, confident, intelligent, well researched, fearless and prepared to do battle. How do you stand up to that? Very few could.

I always felt overwhelmed by Mama's personality. She was more than I could ever imagine being. In a way, I was afraid of her--afraid of her disapproval and anger, afraid of falling short of her expectations. I rarely said "No" to her, even as an adult, due to that fear. She had a wicked and sharp tongue when riled and her sarcasm cut deeply. It would hurt her to know that.

But as we both grew older, we became friends. She was no longer the rescuer and the teacher to me. She relaxed and seemed to enjoy my company and thus, I was able to relax. We spent weekends camping with the grandchildren. We took road trips to out of the way places like Mesa Verde for exploring, Red Mountain Pass for the amazing beauty, South Fork for fishing, and Pawnee Buttes for the ever changing prairie. We canned vegetables, butchered chickens, learned to work her very first video camera and communicate by email. We talked about life, love, the future, ideals, hopes and dreams. Mama revealed more of herself to me during that period than I ever thought possible. She didn't try to make a point. She just seemed to want to share herself with someone that she finally felt she could trust. I was glad to be the keeper of her secrets.

No one was more shocked than I was when she came home from the doctor crying. The woman who had always been physically, emotionally and mentally strong was broken. The doctor didn't make a diagnosis, but she knew she had cancer. She knew the signs and symptoms and read it all. She fought for 5 long years and during that time, my girls grew from primary schoolers into young women and my boys into adults. Despite all my rantings about chemotherapy and the incompetence of doctors, they gave us 5 precious years that we wouldn't have had otherwise.

Mama passed away the day before Thanksgiving and we thanked God for her life and her passing. It was a relief and a release to let her go, even though I miss her terribly. She is now walking the streets of glory with her Savior and reaping the rewards of a life well lived.

Thanks for letting me share her with you. There are loads of details that I could include, but those will come up in due time as life continues on.










Mama and her brother in 1945.


















Mama and her family in 1945.












Papa and Mama with my Abby in 2000.

Dash

This is Dash. He's seven months old, just weaning age, and he went into kidney failure last week. We rushed him to the vet when we noticed him laying down, listless and acting too friendly for an alpaca. Blood tests showed that he had a pretty severe infection--what and where we don't really know--and that his kidneys were shutting down. How can this happen so fast? The day before, Dash was running around the pen with the rest of the herd and eating and drinking.

Happily, Dash is recovering nicely and his body seems to have healed from the infection, thanks to a brilliant vet, some stout antibiotics, 500 units of I.V. fluids a day, and very dedicated intensive care nurse--me.

He's got some ground to make up with putting some weight back on, but he's been out of his warm little sick room and out with the herd in the barn. It's pounding snow outside, so the barn doors will be closed to keep him inside. It's amazing to me how quickly an animal will perk up when he sees his herd. Dash was barely moving around, scooting from place to place because he was too weak to get up on his own, wetting himself for the same reason, and when I took him outside with me while I fed the animals in the barn, he saw his mama and started wobbling around on his feet. Now, three days later, he's getting around so well that I can't catch him, he's eating everything he can get to, and pushing to get to the water. He's not 100% yet, but very nearly. The turning point was getting him back out with his herd mates.

So, 10 days after the initial crisis, Dash is up and seems to be healthy, albeit more than a bit thin for the experience. He hates me now. I think he keeps waiting for me to grab him and poke him with needle or force something down his throat, just like I have for the last 10 days. I'm sure he thinks I caused it all, and who's to say I didn't? I'm responsible for the well being of my herd and if I dropped the ball, I guess he has every right to hate me. He'll be my reminder to remain vigilant and on guard for parasites, infections, and disease. It's my job after all and I'm so thankful that Dash has come through it alive and well. Tragedy averted.

Alf

Alf, our guard cat. A brilliant mouser, he looks like a million other cats, but his personality is what makes him special. You can tell by the condition of his ears that he's had a fight or two in his lifetime. Alf hangs out with the dogs and comes when you call his name. He rides the hay when we stack it in the truck and jumps in the back of the empty truck to ride with the dogs. He's the first to greet in the morning and the last to say good night. Quite a character, is he. I'm not really a lover of house cats, but if I were to ever move away from the farm, Alf would have to go with me.

Blue skies and old barns

What a glorious day it is today! We had our first hard freeze over the weekend and our first snow on Sunday, thankfully doing away with nearly all of the flies. Today, the sun is back in it's full glory and it will soon be 70 degrees F. Tonight it will be down to 25 degrees or less. Indian summer we call this and it's my favorite time of year.

The third cutting of hay is in windrows, ready to bale. There's not much of it this year. We tried to put in grass alongside the alfalfa and we're not sure how successful we really were. It's always been alfalfa for us so we don't really know what a successful crop of grass hay looks like. We've actually had a pretty good year for rainfall. The last few years were drought years, with less than 8 inches of rain in a year, but this year we had intermittent, but heavy rain and at opportune times.

The old barn still looks somewhat picturesque surrounded by the aging trees and the fading fences. One day it really will blow over and I'll be sad. Until then, I can complain about how shabby it looks and how ugly it is, compared to the barns others in our area have. It sits not 30 steps from my back door and perhaps that's the real problem. Rustic, encroaching on an attempt at civilized living, makes the whole works look messy and old. Ah well, it does it's job and does it well. And the price was right, since it didn't cost us a penny to build and put to work.

I was struck by how utterly clear and blue the sky is this morning. That's not unusual for us, but somehow this morning, it just bowled me over. Have I said before how much I love the life I lead?

Matchmaker, matchmaker make me a match

Time for breeding to begin. We've actually been breeding alpacas for several weeks, but some of them are just now starting to show signs of being interested. With alpacas, it's fairly easy to tell if a female is in cycle because she'll lay down (cush) for the male if she is. If she's not in cycle, she'll spit him off and if she's pregnant, she'll really spit at him. The signs of a successful breeding is that a female will flirt, breed and then turn into a witch, when she's around a male, that is. Not really that different from humans, I think. As with most breeding males, they're not at all conscious of what the female wants or doesn't want. They're completely, 100%, absolutely single minded! Did I mention that it's not all that different from humans?

We have several young females that have never been bred before and it's taking them a little time to understand what exactly is going on. We also have two young males that have never bred before and they're so clueless, it's absurd. I'm just not the kind of breeder who will actually
physically involve myself with the details of male and female contact. (Did I say that delicately enough?) I figure that if they don't know how, they're not ready yet.

These are some of our pairings for this year. Both of these pairs have produced beautiful gray offspring and we hope to repeat that. Rose is shown with Roxy, her baby from last year out of Black Knight. We liked the results so much we're repeating that breeding. Solace is our leading black female and we're breeding her again this year to our light rose gray male, Gandalf. They produced a lovely silver gray female born this past spring. Of all my males, Gandalf is the sweetest gentleman. He's kinder and gentler with my females than most of the others. I like him for that. And for the fact that he's just plain handsome.

Rose is a "special" animal. I purchased her from a farm in Spokane, WA and found out after the fact that she suffers with seizures--petit mal and an occasional grand mal. She had never been handled when I got her; born, raised and bred in a large pasture. We've worked with her until she's pretty tolerant of us and actually fairly friendly as long as our interactions are on her terms. We're careful with her feed and her stress levels. We give a year off from breeding about every two or three years and use rescue remedy when we have to shear her or do any shots or foot care. I'll never be able to sell her. Like the lovely grandma goat, Pansy, whose face graces my front page, she'll live out her life here until she dies. Not a bad life for her all in all. She serves her purpose and gives me a pretty baby every year or so and provides the most beautiful rose gray fleece to work with and in return, she lives a stress free life. Sweaters and shawls made from her wool sell for our highest prices. Even if they didn't, I'd keep making them, if only for myself. It's a strange relationship we have, Rose and I, but it works for us. I'm so glad I have her.

As far as goats go, it's Mr. Hermes all the way. He holds the honor of being the one and only proven buck on the farm and has a great track record. He'll only get three of the six females, though. I'm giving one of my older females the year off and sending two out to be bred elsewhere. I'm not telling Hermes anything about that yet. I'm hoping to be able to use his son, Sawyer, in a couple of years with some of the upcoming kids from the outside buck. Don't they just look like "Me and Mini Me"?

Work, work, work...or is it?

This is where I work, at least this is my indoor work space. We created this space by covering the west side of our outside porch. The wind in the winter drives at us from the north west, so covering the porch also served the purpose of protecting the west side and preserving our heating fuel. We installed a wood stove and the place is quite cozy in the winter, although pretty hot in the late afternoon during the summer.

The other reason we created this space was so that my husband could sit down in the evening without sitting on yet another project and without sitting on...stepping in...tripping over knitting needles and paraphernalia.

I usually spin on a Lendrum wheel, but it seems that my daughter prefers my wheel over hers, so I've taken to spinning on my mother's wheel. My mother, who was a hard worker and a farm woman from the ground up, passed away in November 2006 and I think it's fitting that her wheel be put to good use. She had an Ashford wheel and it works just fine for me. It's nice to be able carry on with something that my mother put so much time and effort into.

The first pair of socks are finished and blocking on the counter. I hope the lady likes them, otherwise, I guess I'll have to sell them elsewhere or send them to my sister in New York for Christmas. She adores hand knit alpaca socks when they have six feet of snow on the ground in the winter.

The first three skeins of my daughter's "Bethy" yarn, as we call it, are done. It's a little too loose for my taste but we'll see how it knits up.

I couldn't resist adding a picture of one of our black beauties. She's a 4 month old cria and her name is Onyx. Doesn't she make you want to hug her?

Rain, Goats and Yarn

Another cloudy, rainy day today. That's two in a row and it's wonderful. We're used to lots of sun, a lot of wind, browns and greens. With the rain, everything looks so green. The weather is cooling off quickly and just in time to chase away the flies and bugs. The corn fields are bare and brown, so the green is refreshing.

Even our old barn looks tolerable surrounded by green. We've been hoping this barn would blow over for years now, but even though it looks like it's fixing to fall over, it's probably the strongest building on our place. Such an ugly barn, but it serves its purpose. So much of our place is made up of old wood, "jerry rigged" fencing and old outbuildings, but you know, they just keep on doing their jobs. I suppose there are worse things than old buildings and fences.......like no buildings or fences, I guess!

His Royal Hugeness Hermes is standing out in the rain, seeming to enjoy it. He's in his prime and at his stinkiest this time of year. He can't wait for the girls to arrive in his pen the first of December. I think he uses way too much aftershave for my taste, but his girls just swoon over him and think he's beeeautiful! He does do his job, however and seems to enjoy being the sole breeding male on the place.

My daughter is spinning a bumpy novelty yarn from Mr. Hermes' fleece (extra well washed, of course) blended with a black alpaca from our black beauty, Solace. The combination creates a lovely dark charcoal color that we're plying with a silver thread. I think it's going to be great. It amounts to three skeins of about 200 yards each, so not quite enough for a sweater. She's got her work ahead of her to get enough done, but she's only about half way through the batch of rovings.