The Alpacas are Here

I know, it's hard for us to believe, too.   But they really and truly are here, safe and sound on our very own land.   Whew!    Here's how it went this last weekend:

On Friday Joel loaded up a friend's horse trailer to his truck and we hitched our largest trailer on my car.   Away we went over the river and thru the woods and down off the Plateau to Tanasi Trace Alpacas.    It was another hot and humid day early and we had decided to haul equipment first and then get the alpacas on Saturday.

It only took us a little over an hour to load hay and feeding troughs into the trailer behind my car.   Inside the car went all their meds, books, files, a microscope and centrifuge.  

It took us a lot longer to decide where to place all this new paraphernalia inside our super clean barn. The wood pallets work really well as a base on which to stack the square bales of hay.   We were just happy to get the hay home nice and dry.   Later on that day the heavens opened up which made us glad to have the hay all stored deep inside our barn where it won't mold.

Early Saturday we arrived at Tanasi once again, ready for the adventure to begin.   We pulled our borrowed horse trailer up to the boys side on the left, while Fred and Carol pulled our newly acquired trailer from them up to the girls side on the right.

Carol and Fred had the animals all corralled in the barn, which made it a whole lot easier to begin loading them onto the trailers.   Sorta......the boys were a whole lot more cooperative than the girls were, but more on that later.

Once the gates were opened, Fred walked behind the boys....shooing them out of their comfort zone.   Carol and her friend, Hannah, had haltered the two "lead" alpacas and they walked them into the trailer and the rest of the boys just followed them inside.   Hmmmm, I started to think this was going to be pretty easy.   Wrong!

I'll send you more in a bit.....my photo program isn't cooperating again.  Aargh!
Deb

Final Construction

 I know, I know.   It seems like it has taken us almost all summer to complete our tasks to get ready for the alpaca, but we are truly ready for them now.  Here's how we finished up the barn.

We removed several boards from this wall to open up the barn allowing more light and air flow into the barn.   Then we attached a hog panel in the open space which will become an easy spot to attach the feeders for the girls.   And just what the heck are hog panels, you ask????

These things leaning against the barn are hog panels........they are 16' long, just over 4' high and are nice and sturdy.   And they are the farmer's friend.   We used them to create our hog pen last year, and they were also my trellises in the huge garden for my tomatoes and cucumbers.   And now they are getting repurposed as room dividers and feeder holders.

See?   We attached hog panels to the wall here to hold the feeders.

And we used one to separate the girls from the boys.    Now they can see and sniff each other without, er, um, shall we say.....interacting on an up close and personal level.   We'll soon see how that works out.

And here on the left side you can see how we closed in the open area of the girls stall with hog panels and a gate.   The barn sure looks a whole lot different than it did 3 weeks ago.  

Our last task was to finish removing the boards leading to the boys side which allowed us to install a gate and short wall of hog panel to fill in the open space on the left of the gate.   Whew!    Almost there!

Not too bad for a bunch of city folks, right?

All we need now are some critters.

That's the next post, folks,
Deb

"Pretty" Barn

Well, the barn looks pretty to me, anyway.   When we moved up here a year and a half ago in the dead of winter, the barn became the dumping ground for the items that we had no idea where to store them.   I guess we were long overdue to organize the mess that it had become.   And what a mess it was!

Piles of gardening supplies mixed in with tools, bags of cement and who knows what else....blech!

After a few days of hard work this is what the barn looks like now.   Ta-da!   Quite a difference, wouldn't you say?   And now we can actually find things.   It's amazing how much easier that makes chores when you don't have to dig around to find one little tool.

I just love having all our tools lined up and at the ready.   And, of course, I had to hang a wreath to "pretty" up the place a little bit.   Just because it's a barn doesn't mean it can't have a little beauty, too. Um, but I may have gone over the top a bit when I asked Joel to hang my huge sea shell in the girls side of the barn.

Yup, I just couldn't resist....besides, what else was I going to do with this monstrosity?  It's huge!

More to come,
Debbie

Looky, Looky

We're so excited.....and happy to show you some of the results of our summer labors.   Like this pasture for the boys....

I'll be able to watch them at this end of the pasture from the windows of my studio.   What a lucky girl I am.

See how nice and straight the fence is?  Joel is really happy that it turned out as well as it did.   I'm sure that we'll have folks slowing down as they drive by and see the newest critter arrivals on our farm since this end of the pasture is up near the road.

If we need more pasture for the boys, we'll probably add one up closer to the studio and the house.    The grass is in really good shape on that part of the farm and works great for pasture.

And if we have to access the boys pasture from the road, we now have this 12' gate so our tractor will fit thru there when mowing is required.   Can you see how far back this pasture goes?    It's a really long way to the back of our property.   They'll have plenty of shade from the hot sun under the trees on the right, too.

Speaking of trees, our 2 large maple trees in the front yard have been dropping leaves for weeks now. None of them have changed color, they're just falling off the tree.   Although I have begun to see color changes this weekend on some of our oak leaves.   Fall is coming, I just know it.   Can't hardly wait for some cooler weather.

This last weekend we labored hard, trying to get the barn work done.   At least it was a little cooler working in the shade.   The concrete is awesome and will make cleaning up after the alpaca so much easier.

 Joel and Jeremy removed all the boards that were in between the boys and girls side of the barn.   Wow!   Those boards were milled years ago by the previous owner's family sawmill and are they ever heavy!    They are true 2" thick boards, not the kind of stuff you get in the big box stores.   We're saving any of the wood we remove inside the barn for future projects.

Removing some of the walls has certainly opened things up inside the barn.   And it's made it a lot lighter inside, too.  Something alpaca like is open spaces.

This partial wall got a total makeover yesterday and I'll show you those pics tomorrow.   We're so close to having this massive renovation completed.......we can hardly wait to finish up so we can relax a few days before we bring the alpaca home this weekend.  Yes!    They get here this weekend!  Oh, my....

I think the "girls" are going to like their side of the barn, too.   Things sure look a lot different around here than they did just a few short weeks ago.    In a day or two I'll show you the finished barn work.....if we can just push thru the pain to complete the last little bit.  Ha!

Shoulda done this 20 years ago,
Debbie

Last Stall

Yup, last post I showed you pics of the cement going into the boy's side of the barn.   And now today I've got pics of the girls' side.

Because the girls' side of the barn is so long, they kept the cement truck up near where they poured the boys side and swung the chute over to the girls side.   Got it?   Yeah, sure you do!

Maybe this pic makes it clearer for you to see what I am talking about.   See the boys side way in the back?   It's perpendicular to the girls side.   They poured the top half of the girls side and then the truck moved around to the other end of the barn to pour the rest of that stall.  Easy-peasy, right?

These guys thought I was a little weird sitting on the edge of the wall taking pictures of them moving cement around.   Oh, well, maybe they don't know anything about blog-land!   And my obsession to document all we do around the farm by taking pictures.   Maybe one day when I'm obligated by old age to sit in my rocking chair on the porch, I'll be really happy to relive these days by looking at all the pictures I'm taking now.

And then the truck shifted around to the front side of the barn to complete the pour.   See what I mean?  Nothing to it.

Getting there.....

.....slow by sure.   Almost done now.

Ta-da!   And boy, does it ever look nice now that it has all set up and we can walk on it.  The cement pour happened a week ago.   Since then we've been working on the inside of the barn, taking down boards, putting up hog panels.....whaaaaaaat?    Yeah, I'll show you that in a day or two.

So, come on back and see how we complete our gargantuan summer project.
Debbie

Making Progress

 I know, I know.  How dare I lead off yet another post with pictures of fencing????  But there's good news from Whispering Oaks.   The fencing is done!    Yes, I know, I can't believe it either.   The rolls of fencing above and the gates are now all neatly and very professionally(I might add) installed.   The angels in heaven sang the Hallelujah chorus as we completed the last piece of fencing a couple of nights ago.   You didn't hear the angels?   Seriously?

And this is what some of the boys pasture looks like now.    I realize the fencing isn't quite done in the pic on the right, but, trust me.   It's done now!   AND, the concrete guy called and said he could come.....would 7am be okay?   Okay!    You betcha, come as early as you want to come.   And so they did.

 This is Brent pulling stone from our ever-present pile in our parking area.    He used the stone to level out some areas in the stalls before setting up the concrete forms.

 And lo and behold, a few short hours later the forms were ready and the concrete truck arrived, full of great, grey slushy stuff.   Yippee.

 The first truck had to back up next to the barn to reach the boys side of the barn.   Um, we now have pretty significant divots along the barn.   Oh, well, time for some top soil and a little pasture seed anyways.  Ha!  What's another little "project" after all we've done this summer?

 THE guys.....ready and waiting for the real work to begin.

 And begin it did.....in earnest.    These guys really hustled to push, pull and jostle the flow into place.

And in less than an hour, we had smooth ready to set-up cement in place.   Whew, one side down, another to go.    It took a couple of hours before the second truck made its way from town to our farm.

More on that later....
Debbie

The Barn Re-Do

Besides working on setting up pasture for the alpaca, we also have some renovating to do inside our barn to make it a little more alpaca friendly.   Alpaca typically don't like going into closed in spaces, especially if they're dark.   One of the ways we are improving our barn is to remove some of the inside walls to open things up a bit.   

Like this area between what will eventually be the girls area and the boys area will be on the right where my guys are working on the ladder.   The long area where the tractor is sitting will eventually be the girls area of the barn.   Joel and Jeremy removed the corrugated metal wall and lots of thick locally milled boards between the tractor area and the foreground area.   Just doing that one wall sure made it seem a lot lighter inside that side of the barn.

Here Jeremy and Joel are removing even more of the corrugated metal in preparation for the concrete guys.   Once the concrete is poured in these areas, the metal would be submerged in concrete and much harder to remove.   Yup, good thing Joel thought of that!   He's pretty smart, you know?

I think Jeremy was having way too much fun using his tools to cut the metal to length.   He sure has been a huge help with this enormous project.

To give you some perspective on the areas of the barn......this is going to be the boys area.   The girls area is to the left in this shot.   My entire contribution on this particular day was to use the leaf blower/sucker-upper thing and I sucked up all the leaves that were cluttering the ground inside both stalls.   Yup, it was a tough gig, but somebody had to do it.

As far as the chickens are concerned life just goes on as usual.   They've been enjoying free ranging all over the farm this summer.   Unfortunately, that will soon come to a halt as we put up their electric poultry netting once again to protect them from a fox who has been hitting the flock lately.   We're "down" a few chickens and the fox got one of Joel's prized roosters, too.   Bummer.   That just means that a couple of the "new" roosters will get to live on another year as they will replace the rooster that we lost.

Making steady progress,

Debbie

Seriously? More Fence Pics???

Yes, groan, I know.   I've got nothing else to show you....sorry.   But that's all we've been doing for what seems like weeks now.  Putting in metal T-posts, pounding gravel around 4x4 posts and hanging 2x4 welded wire fencing.   So, you'll just have to bear with me as I share some more pics of our labors.

 Ta da!  Observe the end of the fence......where it gets stapled onto the 4"x4".   We only pounded our fingers about 20 times as hundreds of these little metal torture staples got hammered onto the posts.  Yeah.   Not my favorite part of fencing.  But, a very necessary part of the process as these staples helped to hold the fencing taut, resulting in a much straighter line of fence.

These green metal posts with the white tops are called t-posts, are 6' long and several in a row at 8 foot intervals get pounded into the ground with this mama.......

......the dreaded post pounder.   Jeremy would groan when he came home from work and we met him at the door announcing we were going out to pound in more t-posts.    You see, it weighs in at a hefty 16 lbs.   And you have to hoist it over your head in order to lift it high enough to slide it down onto the t-post.   Once in place on the t-post (which, by the way, I was holding upright as I squatted down to avoid the pounder), it had to be lifted and "pounded" down on the t-post to drive it into the ground.          Again and again until the t-post was inserted all the way into the ground.

Joel's job was to stand a few yards away and tell us if the t-post was starting to lean in one direction or another.   You can't have a crooked fence!   Oh, heavens, no!   Someone might come along and think we didn't know what we were doing.....horrors!   Gasp!  Um, yeah......anyone watching us during the last few weeks could write a book about family dynamics.   Hey, don't judge until you've walked in my shoes!   Bah-ha-ha-ha....

Ok, I digress.   Sorry.   Must be fencing hallucinations or something like that.   Anyway, after the 4x4 wooden posts are in the ground at 48' intervals, it was my job to run a string line and measure out where the t-posts went so they would be spaced out properly.   Don't ask me why this was my job.   Maybe I was the only one who could still do math at this point.   I don't know.  OH!  I remember now.   It's because I couldn't lift the danged post pounder over my head.

And then we would all call it a day and head inside to lick our wounds and soak our aching muscles.  But the fence was nice and straight.   See?  Not too bad for a bunch of city people whose knowledge of farming comes from books and internet videos secretly watched repeatedly.

'Enuf said,
Debbie