No alarm, no shower, no cup of coffee, jolts a person awake like peering out the window at 5:00am (long before you actually need to get out of bed) and realizing that a herd of 100 alpacas is escaping out of the pasture onto the property at the Big Farm, and you are the only person awake on the farm who knows this is happening.

With some help, an hour later, they were all contained again, in one pasture or another.  Not necessarily the right pasture, but a pasture nonetheless.  Luckily, no males escaped, and no unchaperoned hanky-panky occurred, that we know of anyway.

A few days earlier, as I was getting ready to leave for a property-viewing appointment, I noticed a cow grazing alongside the driveway.  A cow that should have been safely tucked into the pasture behind the house.

It is heartening to know, for a newbie like myself, that even on a big farm, sometimes unexpected things happen.  Sometimes lessons are learned the hard way, still, even after 20-odd years of farming.

Lessons such as, Blitzer, the electric fence charger, is a marvelous invention, making the whole process of multi-species, rotational grazing even possible... but it doesn't work if it's not turned on.

I'm sure there's a joke in there somewhere, but I will leave that up to you readers.

What's charging you up this weekend?

I am searching for home.

Ever since we moved from our 120-year old home in Duluth, MN to the Minneapolis area in 2005, I have been wondering and dreaming about where our next home would be.

I have rented some amazing places - the townhouse in Burnsville with the deck I filled with potted gardens; the gargantuan, glass-windowed-country-house in Lindstrom where I was surrounded by oak trees and only 5 miles from the farm where my alpaca lived; and lastly, to our tiny, 2-acre rented farmette in Mayer where I am finally experiencing "real" country life - complete with 3 crazy cats, 3 of my five (almost 6!) alpacas and 15 16 chickens.

My friends at the Big Farm have been putting me up (or rather, putting up with me) in their bunk house for almost two months as I traipse all over Monroe and Vernon counties following one property lead after another. That's a lot of traipsing. And that doesn't even include the years we spent "window-shopping" on our travels to Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana and Colorado.

I'm quite sure my friends here think I have lost my mind. How difficult is it, anyway, to find one property amid a market filled with recession-priced-homes?

Well, it's complicated. Or maybe I'm just too picky. You decide.

I don't feel like I am asking for a lot. Just 5-10 acres (well, 40 if I could swing it...), some nice pasture grass, some trees, a southwesterly-southerly exposure and a view of the sunset.

Park it on a ridge top and sign me up.

Oh, and I want to pay cash for the land.

Most of the properties I have found that offer the right exposure are large enough to be out of our price range. The rest have been on the wrong side of the hill, been ugly, or just haven't "felt right." (Is that a valid criteria to use when searching for a home?)

So. I'm not sure when, or where, I will find our next home.

I'm starting to think it's like being adopted by a stray cat. When we moved to Lindstrom, we had 1 cat. When we moved away from Lindstrom, we had 3. And we didn't go looking for the other two. They found us.

I have a feeling our next home is just going to find us. And when it does, it will be obvious. And easy.

I may, however, need to rent a room somewhere for awhile, lest my friends here think I am never going to leave their bunkhouse.

As I've heard somewhere before, house guests, like laundry, both stink after two weeks.  And I've been here a whole lot longer than that!

This is not a happy post full of frolicking chickens, cat antics or pronking alpacas. As every farmer knows, not every day on the farm is a happy one, although a good many usually are.

I watched a cria dying today. It was the first time I've seen one that close to death. I've seen a few dead crias, but never one still in the process of leaving.

It was a male, a multi-colored white and brown. The soft, curly fleece on its sides heaved with every rasping breath. The sound he made sounded almost like a human cry - it was difficult to listen to.

Of the two crias born last weekend, he was the bigger and stronger of the two, the other one being a little bit premature and therefore smaller and still struggling to figure out the nursing process. This little guy seemed to have it mostly figured out but his dam lacked a good milk supply, so we were supplementing him with a bottle twice a day.

This morning I held him between my knees as I gave him his bottle. It was easier than yesterday, he seemed more eager to take the milk. He seemed quite strong. The other cria seemed to be getting stronger, too. There was hope for both of them.

Shortly thereafter, a new baby was born, and attention was set to making sure the dam and cria were doing well. When we went to check on the little multi-colored male and his smaller pen-mate a bit later, we found him down on his side, rasping for breath.

My friend, the cria's owner, with twenty years of camelid raising experience under his belt, and I, the newbie, watched the struggling cria, both of us puzzled by his sudden down-turn. We took his temperature, it was normal. We were at a loss. It was clear he would not last long.

When I checked on him a bit later, he was still alive, barely, his cries coming weaker now. I would like to say I stayed there in the barn with him, that I held him as he took his last breaths.

I did not.

My presence in the stall would not be a comfort, to him or his dam. It was her place to be, not mine.

When I checked on him for the last time, he was quiet and still, appearing as if he had simply fallen asleep, never to wake up again.

A baby is born, a baby dies. The circle of life, and death, continues.

 

Amen.

I'm trying something brave and new today.

I've been inspired by Jess from The Old Nichols Farm. She always has these cool links in her posts that take the curious reader to other cool photo websites offering photo challenges, like Beth's site at I Should Be Folding Laundry (what a great blog name, eh?).  Beth posts a photo challenge every Wednesday called You Capture in which she gives participants a theme for the week and invites readers to post links to their own photos (or blog posts) highlighting pictures of her suggested theme.

Clear as mud?

What this means is when I went to Beth's site this week I found out the theme is Summertime.  The one caveat for this assignment is you cannot look through your existing photos to find those that fit the theme - they have to be taken after the participant reads the week's theme.

So last night as Papa Bear flipped burgers on his parents' grill, I wandered around their picturesque back yard and tried capturing a little bit of the fleeting evening summer light that lingered in spots here and there.

Jazmyn and Belle accompanied me around the yard - well, mostly Belle, the Exuberant One - and provided an interesting backdrop for some of the shots.

I hope you are all enjoying your own version of Summer fun.  Drop by Beth's site and see who else has participated in this week's theme shots!

You Capture - Summertime

And I'm only half-joking.

I have not had a garden, not even a potted once, since before moving to Lindstrom in the fall of 2008. The first year we lived in Lindstrom, I discovered just how shady it is in the midst of an oak grove.

The second summer we lived there, I was offered a garden spot at our friends' farm where we boarded Brigid.  I poured through seed catalogues, mapped out garden spaces, bought seeds and planned to start my garden under lights - one of my greatest joys of gardening. 

Then I was sent to CO for work for two weeks and, three months later and still in CO, had missed my opportunity to start any seeds at all.  Additionally, we moved at the end of that summer to the Little Farm.

So I had BIG hopes for my garden this summer.  It started off well, with four new Square Foot gardens, a new shelf for my lights, garden diagrams and planting schedules that encompassed seed-starting tasks once/week for about six weeks, ending right at the optimum time to put everything into the ground (and into pots) the end of May. 

I stuck to the plan for about five straight weeks. Sprouts were popping up like crazy, I had over 400 plants growing under lights!

What I failed to take into consideration when planning my gardening season were the following obstacles...

a. We'd be spending most weekends this spring traveling.  Some weekends we spent at alpaca-related events like shows and seminars, some weekends we were traveling to WI to look at land, and some weekends we were off visiting family in other parts of the state. I think we were gone about 75% of all weekends between March and May.

b. Sprouts under lights do the very best when Mama (or whoever the primary gardener is in the family) is there every day to care for them. As much as I appreciate my family's help in keeping them (mostly) watered, sprouts are tender things and they just need extra attention that is hard to generate out of substitute gardeners.

c. Just when my extraneous travel schedule quieted down, I took on the crazy idea that I should split my time every week between the Big Farm and the Little Farm, which resulted in my being gone from home 4 days/week, every week.  Needless to say, once again, the seedlings, still under lights, suffered a bit.  They needed to get in the ground in May. Most of them did not get in the ground until late June/early July.

By that time, some of them were so lanky and sickly looking I did not even bother, they just ended up in the compost pile. The few that remained I worked on shoving in the ground for several weeks in a row every (hot/muggy/buggy) Sunday afternoon as I was desperately trying to get all my stuff together to get on the road for my 4-hour journey to WI.

You know your garden is awful when your {very nice} neighbor {with her picture perfect garden} asks, and not sarcasticlly, while looking right at your plots, if you are going to put your garden in this year?

ahem.

Like anything in life, that which doesn't get the primary focus suffers.  Except weeds, they seem to really love my extended absences.

What's happening in your garden this week?

I really wish I had a picture of me moving the cows. 

Then again, maybe I'm glad I don't.

When Justin showed me the first week I was out at the Big Farm, he made it look like a piece of cake.  The horses ignored him and his bucket of grain, and the cows followed him slowly but surely as he tempted them with the bucket until they crossed into the new section of pasture.

Today, when I took the bucket of grain up the hill, both of the horses perked up their ears and came running down the hill towards me.

A thousand pound horse running at you is a whole 'nother ballgame than a 50-150 pound alpaca.  You suddenly realize just how small and helpless you are, if the horses accidentally bump you or step on you in their eagerness.

Luckily Oakey and Shelby are nice, good-natured horses, but they were totally obsessed with my bucket, which was actually for the cows.  They pretty much made me a Miss V sandwich all the way back down the hill, across the next pasture and over to the corner where I put down some of the grain for them. 

This is the part where I'm glad I don't actually have a picture, or, even worse, a video.  The whole bob & weave scenario of me ducking out from the middle of these horses, followed by them circling around to cut off my route over and over and over again was not something I had planned on. 

After this slightly unnerving experience, I then had to truck all the way back up the hill again to retrieve the cows.  Mama cow (who is due to birth any day now) is starting to catch on to what the "bucket" means.  I held it out to her and she stuck her nose in, then pushed the bucket down nearly all the way to the ground.  She is one strong mama cow!  I went a few steps and she followed me, and I thought, "Wow, this is great!"

Then she stopped.  So I brought the bucket over to her again.  Repeat scene 4-5 times.

Then suddenly, she decided to frolic across the hill, kicking up her cow-heels and doing a little jig.

If I thought having two well-mannered, halter-broke horses running down the hill on either side of me was unnerving, picture this full-grown mama cow and two almost-full-grown yearlings romping at full speed down the hill beside me.

{Insert thoughts of injury scenarios involving being accidentally trampled by three cows.}

Once mama cow got to the section of electric fence that we had taken down, a light seemed to click on in her brain and she seemed to realize, greener pastures just over there!  And then she hustled right on over to the new section of pasture, a polyculture buffet of greenery goodness just waiting for her to dive in.

The yearlings hesitated at the fence line a few moments, then ambled over as well.

I laid down a line of grain, the remaining bits in my bucket, watching mama cow digging in, then smiled as I walked back over to the fence line where Justin was already putting the electric fence back into position.

I moved the cows. 

Yee-haw!

Brigid, my very first alpaca, the reason we got into the business four years ago, arrived here at the Big Farm this week.  Until now, she has been living on the farm where she was born since we purchased her three years ago. This week, she moved to WI.

I have not seen a whole lot of Brigid since we moved to the Little Farm last August. Before that, for the two years we were living in Lindstrom, she was only 5 miles away, and I saw her almost every day of the week. I have missed her so much.

This week she has been greeting everybody, even the brand new babies. I love how friendly she is, even when pregnant.

I can walk up to her and touch her, even put my hands on her sides and feel her baby moving.  Not many dams will let you do that. (Or humans for that matter! Not that I'd ever try.)

And she's such a calm and patient mama, too.  Grace had a bit of a struggle when she was born last year, but Brigid was a trooper throughout. Brigid is due this month, so I am hoping she will have her baby on one of the days I am here.

I am so very happy she is here now, along with Grace. 

{Happy Dance!}

My girls are all here! And my boys are all at the Little Farm.  There are little peeps at the Big Farm, and big peeps at the Little Farm. Everywhere I go, whether MN or WI, there is something beautiful to care for.

Life is full, and I am so very, very blessed.

Have a great weekend everyone!