Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Alpacas and caulking guns

What, you may wonder, does one do when an alpaca needs medicine? Is it EASY to give them medicine? Well, I guess that depends on your definition of 'easy'.

This past month there were two pens of animals that needed medicine, so out came the caulking gun!

That's right, they use a caulking gun to shoot the meds down the animal's throat. As you can imagine, the alpacas aren't all jumping into line for this experience. It worked out well with four people, though. You get all the animals into the pen, with the false promise of grain, and then catch and 'caulk'.

One or two hold the animal
One holds caulking gun
One has the paper with list of animals and number of 'clicks' it should get of medicine

Sadly I have no photos because there really was no practical way to take pictures as a participant.

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

A cria is born at White Violet Farm Alpacas


This was added a few weeks ago to the YouTube channel. This little guy is one of the ones we moved to the "Little Boys" pen in late May. I won't be here for any births, but they have two crias (baby alpacas) due in the fall. :)

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Day 65. 14 days left: I work in the garden and forget I'm a redhead

One of the garden volunteers wanted to work with the alpacas today, so I switched with her and got to work in the Garden!! So while I did NOT rake poo today, I DID get to do the following:

1. Help make 9 rows of 11 mounds of dirt, in which to plant pumpkins.
2. Weed the onions
3. Weed the onions some more.
4. Harvest things for the Farmer's Market (some squash, tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant and peppers)
5. Weed the onions again
6. Help pick up compost from the bins around the property

In the course of the day, I had many gnats fly into my ears/nose/mouth. Almost as many as during alpaca duty! Ack! I also got compost juice on my shirt, which is ultra-sexy. And smelly.

AND I got to see the worms rotated from the 'old' compost bin, to their new digs, in a new bin. I was very happy. I love worms.

However, somewhere in there it seems I FORGOT I am fair-skinned. I wiped my face off with a wet towel before lunch, in order to get the anti-bug stuff off me. It really wasn't working on the gnats, since I had so many in my ears and up my nose.  After lunch I merrily went out to pick and weed things, completely forgetting to REAPPLY the sunscreen.

Why? Why does this happen at least once a year? You would think that by now I would remember. I dutifully slather every area of exposed skin every morning before leaving the house.

Here's the thing: I think there is still some inner core of my being that refuses to recognize that I am a redhead and burn. That same core insists I should be able to work outside in the sun for 8 hours, and not get sunsick. Perhaps that core is the 1/36th (or whatever) amount of Native American blood in me, insisting the fair-skinned redhead can DO THAT.

Now, since I was wearing a hat, and a long sleeved shirt, I now have a weird sunburn on 1/2 of my face and some of my collarbone/chest area. Oy. Seriously, I have to just roll my eyes at myself. I should know better by now. Oh well. Aloe is a good friend of mine. You should buy stock in that aloe company.