Into Summer…

Wow, the last few weeks feel like they took place at double speed and one result of that, is that this space has been conspicuously neglected. We went from putting the final touches on our new farm cookbook (read: immersed in proofreading and the annoying minutiae until we really didn’t feel like looking at it ever again), to shearing, then prepping for the Parade of Champions auction, and then last but not least: coming home and celebrating our son Max’s graduation from the Upper Valley Waldorf School — an institution that nurtured both of our boys since they were just nursery age, some 10 years for each of them — this past weekend. We’re used to living a pretty tumultuous life this time of year but even by our standards, the past month or so has been a little nutty.

Meanwhile, the first crias of the 2015 birth class (remember us?!) have arrived and the due females (there are 70+ of them again this year) have started to stack up in the maternity pens at the Arena. All of which means that dull moments are apt to be fewer and farther between over the next several months. After a May that was predominantly dry enough that open fires were forbidden throughout most of the region, we did finally get some moisture that last week of the month, and the pastures consequently exploded into growth after being rather stunted throughout most of the early springtime.

As such, the grazing season is well and truly upon us. Earlier this week, Jen and Kimmy were busy trimming up the heads of all of our juvenile males, in preparation for most of them getting tossed out onto the outer paddocks of the farm where they will live the vast majority of the summer and even early fall beneath the sun and stars with only a water tub, a mineral feeder, and the trees for shelter. In fact, for the next month or so, the majority of the herd will be living outside, rotating through the various paddocks in a futile attempt to keep the grass down. The only animals held back in barns (or with regular 24/7 access to inside pens) will be the new moms and crias, the expectant females as they get within a month or so of their due dates, and our working Herdsires. The rest of the fuzzy bunch are tasked with being four-legged lawnmowers: graze suckers, graze!

The middle of June is also the arbitrary time when we begin to actively breed our own females. While many folks, even those just 90 minutes south of us, tend to shy away from June/July/August birthing, it is those very months where we tend to concentrate easily 2/3rds of our births. I’m hopeful that I can pull my better half away from her monstrous fleece skirting project at the Arena just long enough to finish going over the prospective breeding list. It’s always a fun exercise we go through at the start of each summer. If one were a fly on the wall, you could definitely hear some interesting stuff too, as it’s also the time when we do some of our most coldly objective evaluations of where we think we are and what we think we can do (or try to do) with a given alpaca. June though, is always the month of infinite possibility, as everyone after all is in first place on opening day!

More to come very soon, as yours truly is going to try instilling some blogging discipline here in the summer of 2015, even if that means that it occasionally lacks any measure profundity. Yeah, I know: I’ll be the first to admit that that’s never really been a problem here. Later…

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