The blockhead in winter

We’re grateful to those of you who often come up to me or Jen and mention how much you enjoy reading this blog. I have to say that I’m always amused by the small percentage of people who can’t imagine that I’m the one sitting behind the keyboard on this little enterprise of ours. Don’t worry, I don’t blame you. I think I look like a bit of a dunderhead too!

When at it’s best, CCNFChronicles can be at once both entertaining, informative, and educational. Or at least that’s my ideal fantasy.  To be totally honest though, some times the ability to write something that is any of the above doesn’t come easily. There are days when it just flows. Then there are days like the past few weeks where it has frankly felt like pulling teeth. See, I hit a bit of a milestone with the previous blog entry.  That last one was the 400th post since the blog replaced the hardcopy newsletter of the same name back in 2010, and quite frankly I think the significance of that may have messed with my head just a little bit. At least that’s the story I’m going with. We’re working through it though. I mean that literally. In any case, you can rest assured that the lack of blog entries of late is certainly not because of a lack of activity here on the farm or in the lives of the family that own and run it!

Since we last spoke we have in no particular order: celebrated Thanksgiving with both wings of our extended family, helped cook for and run the cafe at the Upper Valley Waldorf School’s Winter Fair for our younger son’s class, and had two of our beautiful females accepted into the upcoming Priority Auction in Las Vegas. We have also written and started posting countless other write-ups for animals joining our regular sales listings for the first time, done the super-fast version of herd health day (about 6 hours start to finish on 250+ alpacas, albeit without toe nail trimming this month), picked up a young new Herdsire that we are very excited about (more on him in a later post though), and we made another long alpaca haul north/south (again, more later).

As if all of that weren’t enough, we already have the spring show season staring us down in the form of the AOBA Nationals in March and my better half just emailed me a spreadsheet of 2013 crias, all of whom are in need of names before they can be registered and potentially signed up. Of course it goes without saying that while we focus on some of the minutiae of the operation and business here from marketing, to fleece sorting, to invoicing customers, to simply paying our bills and keeping up with the steady stream of paperwork that comes with managing an alpaca farm this size, etc…the daily physical beat here on the farm goes on. Amongst the many things that we have to be thankful for here at CCNF are our incredible staff who allow us, through the excellent and hard work they do day to day, to keep our proverbial heads up, knowing that the ongoing daily upkeep of the farm is covered. Yes we are both — but more so Jennifer this time of year — there and hands on with our animals on a daily basis whenever it is called for. However, knowing that the basics of feeding, bedding, and cleaning up after the herd is taken care of with little or no fanfare, gives us each the physical and mental space to do what we must in order to make CCNF what it is. For my better half, that means her days right now are split between tending to any critters that need special medical care — and on a farm this size there is almost always somebody needing some TLC — and working out of her office as the farm’s day-to-day business manager. Ascension continues to hold court in the Arena’s warm room as the last female due with a 2013 (2014 if she holds out too long) cria, but that pales compared to the 70+ crias that Jen and Kim were expected to help deliver and take care of back at the start of the birthing season in June. With breeding season on hiatus until next summer, for my part I’ve put my breeding manager hat away for now and am really just concentrating on general marketing, updating all of our sales and Herdsire listings, and just keeping in touch with any new or existing clients whenever a question comes up. One would think (channeling my maternal grandmother here) that that would leave enough time to post at least the odd nugget more often. I’m working on it Gram.

Did I mention that we woke up this morning to 1’+ of white fluffy snow? According to Max, the official measurer, we received some 3/4s of a whiffle ball bat’s worth. Put that in your pipe and smoke it NOAA!  It was bound to come eventually and that loud whooshing sound you hear in southern Vermont is the managers of all of the local ski mountains breathing a huge sigh of relief. Though the snow guns have been running for more than a month around this area, there was also a lot more rain and mild weather over the past several weeks than any of them would have liked, I’m sure. Though we had had the odd inch or two lately, we were essentially down to bare ground here when the storm first rolled in last night. “I’m dreaming of a brown Christmas” would definitely be less romantic sounding and it certainly looks a heck of a lot nicer out there right now than it did yesterday at this time. I guess we’ll see if my enthusiasm gets tempered once I pick up my snow shovel? Ok, writer’s block officially dealt with. More to come soon…

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