So, we are back, safe and sound, from our US trip. Over the next few days we hope to put up a series of posts detailing the many adventures we had (including a few unexpected adventures after we returned home).

The start- Wednesday August 20th.

It was a long, long Wednesday. We had a 6:40AM international flight from Wellington. Which meant being there 2 hours early. Which meant getting up at 3:30. Ugh. We then flew to… Sydney- yes, kinda going backwards there- for a 5 hours layover. As we don’t have NZ passports yet and had not arranged visas we were not allowed out of the airport. We went over to Customs and asked if we could just get out for a few hours to get some non-airport food. Now, to their great credit, they seriously considered letting us out, but we only had 3 hours until the next check-in. That is not much time to escape an airport and eat. I am pretty sure if we had been looking at an 8-hour layover they would have probably let us through. I do respect officials who are willing to be flexible and helpful!

After that was the long-haul to SanFran. The United 747 flet rather old and dingy. No in-seat entertainment, there were only ceiling-mounted flickering CRT televisions to watch- if you paid for the headsets. Thankfully we managed some sleep. I must give credit to all the various federal employees in SanFran, they were uniformly polite, friendly, and efficient. We got through all he border procedures without difficulty, and made our way to the US Air terminal for the final leg. Once again, a full flight (every plane the whole trip was packed). This was also our first exerience at “now you buy your food and drink.” Thankfully we managed to get soem snack-boxes before they ran out, and they contained enough nutrients to prevent any unfortunate cannibalism incidents. We made it to Philly, met my parents, and got driven to their place for much-needed sleep.

Time of transit- 32 hours. Uggh. Long trip. And due to the magic of the international date line that was all on Wednesday.

Thursday the 21st and Friday the 22nd-

A bit of rest, recovery, and shopping. The Delaware weather was very un-August-like, we were getting lovely cool non-humid weather. Walks were taken along rivers and in local parks. We went to BJs Price Club for some shopping (and we regret not bringing the camera, properly explaining the horror of a 20L tub of pork rinds to really requires photo evidence). These relaxing days really helped us get over the jet-lag quickly, and prepare for the main event on Friday- my grandmothers 88th birthday!

Jake doesn’t let his missing leg slow him down much:

Although down is a bit trickier:

In a similar vein, this is Blaze:

It’s not as obvious in that photo, but Blaze, who is 16 (getting on for an alpaca), has collapsed hocks — her ankles are nearly on the ground, leading to that bent-kneed look in the front. She’s not so good on the hills, and not very spry or active — when the rest of the herd is running around the paddock, she tends to find a hill to stand on and just watch. So we were thoroughly startled yesterday when she sprang gracefully over the door of the chute when we tried to weigh her. Granted, the door is only about a meter high, but she did it from a standing start and cleared it with several inches to spare.

…and their parents too. Why? Just look at the weather. By my reconing this makes the 7th consequtive weekend with a major winter storm. We were awaken by the hail this morning. If your kid plays  an outdoor sport (soccer, rugby) just forget about it,  most of the sports fields have truned to goo and been closed. So you are stuck with bored kids indoors- again.

For now we are going off to see a movie. Then this evening we are going to a “sweet-off”, a desert making competition. My pancreas quivers in anticipatory delight.

Yes, we have been slack about updating the blog lately. So what have we been doing lately?

We have been wet. Often. It has rained every day for the last 20 days, with a total accumulation of about 210 mm (8 inches). Thankfully the rain has never been too instense for too long, but even so everything has gotten very soggy. (And my plans for building a few new fences are on hold until the ground dries out a bit.) The sun does peek out on occasion. If it would stay out for a few days running the grass would start growing, and everyone (well, all the farmers at least) would be happier.

This last weekend we flew down to Christchurch for a party. This was the 9th (?) annual “Winter Weekend”, where a group of people (amny of whom we know from SCA events) head out to the My Hutt Retreat, and commence 4 days of lazing about which involved sitting in a spa pool, watching movies and playing board games. This was my first time off the farm (except an alpaca-related trip to Auckland back in May) in 8 months. It took me a few days just to relax a bit and stop fretting about the ‘paca.

Did you know that a llama appears in Conan the Barbarian? I didn’t, ’till I rewatched it Friday night.

It is also amazing what people will sit and listen to. One of the many games on hand was a set of steel balls and many magnet-ended plastic tubes of various lengths and curvatures. These could be used to assemble a wide variety of 3-dimensional shapes. It also turns out that they make fairly effective teching tools for organic chemistry. Yes, I spent about 45 minutes before breakfast Friday morning giving an impromptu lesson on basic O-chem/Biochem (focusing on the role of sterics and electrostatics in binding site recognition) to a half dozen people. At the end of it more than one person stated (clearly in amazement) how interesting that all was. I guess any subject can be made fun with a sufficiently spaztic lecturer.

On Saturday we did some hiking in the morning, trying to get up to the snow line. The ridge we were hiking along was not quite high enough, we could see snow only about 50 meters up on the adjacent ridge, but we had largely run out of “up” when we decided to turn around.

We tried fossiking in some of the streams near the farm where Zane grew up for agate and petrified wood, but without success (heading out with a geologist with local knowledge ensures you look in the streams that have potential for good finds). It was distressing to see how the nutrient runoff from all the dairy farms they are putting in had affected the streams. What should have been clear-channeled gravel-bedded streams where now choked with growth due to the excessive nitrates. Bleah.

Zane also took us down to his family farm, which is an experience in itself with all the old vehicles, tractors, and bren-gun carriers scattered among the paddocks. We hiked up the old tram way at the back of the farm towards the abandoned coal mines (dating from the 1880’s). Amazingly the wooden rails of the old tram were still there, barely rotted even though they had been sitting on the floor of a rain forest for 130 years. Australian hard wood- nothing in NZ eats it! Zane did fine one nice chunk of petrified wood for Tam in the stream up near the coal mines.

Zane had also brought along a nifty .58 caliber black-powder muzzle-loading rifle on the trek, in case we came across any deer. We saw lots of deer-sign, but the living deer remained hidden. I am kind of glad for that, as otherwise we would have had to carry the carcass out of that rather challenging terrain. He ended up discharging the weapon into a clay bank (can’t unlaod a muzzle-loader!), and the report was quite impressive. A powerful low roar, very different from modern rifles. We may do a black-powder day some time up at our farm, that should make the neighbors curious!

On the way out we visited Z’s brothers place, which also had an impressive (if somewhat smaller) collection of vehicles. The collection included an operational 77mm field gun! (Which every farm needs, clearly.) I have to see when we can get one for our farm!

Not a typo, but the MV Doulos, currently berthed at Queen’s Wharf. It’s an interesting ship — built in 1914 as a steam cargo ship in Providence, RI, its first run was carrying onions from New York to Galveston, TX. After shipping along the east coast for a while, it did some time ferrying pilgrims to Rome, and then immigrants from Italy to Australia. Then came a stint as a luxury passenger liner. Currently, it’s a traveling missionary bookshop, with volunteers from all over the world.

I normally avoid Christian missionaries (or any other flavor, for that matter) like a plague of boils, but I couldn’t resist the lure of a book shop.

It has, as you might expect, racks upon racks of what I suppose I would describe as modern vanilla Protestant fiction and non-fiction. Lots of self-help-ish life affirmingness. Plenty of bibles, mostly the New International Version, in various sizes, bindings, translations (they must shift their stock around by port, because I saw a Tongan bible, but not, say, a German one), and spins (bibles “for men”, bibles “for women”, lots of bibles and bible excerpts for kids, daily message bibles, gardening bibles, whatever). I admit I was tempted by the Manga Bible. (On the cover, Manga Jesus: “Does he come to save the world — or destroy it?“)

Half the shop is childrens books, and not just churchy ones — all kinds, including some “name brands” like Disney, Dora the Explorer, etc. Lots of Narnia stuff, as you might imagine, and classics like Winnie the Pooh (all the Milne stuff, not just the Disney version). There were fairy tale collections, the Hardy Boys books… I spotted two copies of the Hildebrandt illustrated Robin Hood on special (the dust jackets were badly munged) for NZ$8.

They also have educational stuff — the NCEA standard textbooks, atlases, dictionaries, some language learning books and CDs, Hawking’s On the Shoulders of Giants (illustrated !). There were books on, say, dinosaurs (including childrens books) that did NOT insist they were put in the rock by God as a test of faith. (The “defense of Creationism” books were over in the “Bible Reference” section, with the concordances and the interpretive stuff). I went ahead and picked up a concordance, because I didn’t actually have one (Cruden’s, because it was cheap. I may have to get me a Young’s Analytical at some point…).

The balance is quite a lot of the inoffensive subset of the sort books you’d see on the sales tables at Whitcouls or Borders — heaps of cookbooks, gardening books, books on trains, horses, pets, quote-a-day, Sudoku, blank books, notecards, etc.

The prices are actually quite reasonable. All the books are tagged in “Dolous units”, so that when they reach a port, they can just post up charts showing how to convert Dolous units to whatever the local currency is — and since the prices are all rounded to the nearest 100, it’s pretty straightforward. 100 units = NZ$4.00. Most of the books looked to be under $20, and there were quite a lot that were 100 or 200 units.

I took my book over to the checkout, which was being run by a young Mongolian woman named Oogi (pronouned roughly “Oggie”). I correctly guessed from her name (most of which showed on the register screen) that she was Mongolian, and asked her to pronounce it for me. It was, alas, a tangle of consonants and not-quite-schwas that would have taken me a bit more time to get right than I had in the checkout line. She smiled at me a little wistfully and said that since no one can say it, she just goes by Oogi.

Ah well. I may go back today for another look at a coffee table book on the Sahara, and to see if they dredged up anything interesting in the nightly restock from the hold.

Saturday, Tim and I went to the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary, which is especially cool, in that it’s right smack in Wellington — well, on the edge of one of the big suburbs, anyway. They came up with a special predator-and-vermin-proof fence to keep out all the rats and possums and stoats and stuff, so they have super rare birds and tuatara and weta and things you’d only otherwise get to see on one of the off-shore islands. The treat for me this time around were the saddlebacks. I’d never seen one before, and we saw heaps of them, quite close. Like a lot of New Zealand’s rare birds, they are not it the least bit shy (part of how they got to be so rare).

Sunday, we had a billion people over (okay, well, fifteen or so) to watch Mulan, eat stir fry, and play Mah Jong. Although due to an eBay special a few years back, I own no less than three Mah Jong sets (although not one of the vintage bone-and-bamboo ones I really covet), I yet embarrassed myself by not actually remembering how to play. I found some super simplified rules at Sloperama, the online home of everything you ever wanted to know about Mah Jong (and also, incidentally, hanafuda, which other former Back Smokerites may also remember fondly), and we muddled through. I’ve since found a more thorough, and yet still quite straightforward set of rules at Masters Games, and have printed these out to use next time.

This weekend we finally got to play with the stock scales we purchased back in March, and it explained a lot. Our impressions about the “right” size of an alpaca were badly distorted by the first ones we bought, lo these many years ago. The official weight range for alpaca (from Eric Hoffmans “The Complete Alpaca Book”) is 45-84 kg. Many of ours our bigger. Much bigger.
Oak is 108.5. Boo is 107. Sure, both of them are also fat, but even so that is huge for an alpaca! Girls are also supposed to be smaller than boys, yet we have many non-fat girls that are really big (Blaze at 88kg, Victoria at 87.5kg, Tessa  at 85.5kg).  Even Galadriel, who we figured was an “average” 70kg or so, came in at 80.

So yes, we do in fact have big monsterous ‘paca. I am glad most of them are nice, as if they decided to get mean and nasty, I don’t know what we could do to stop them!

The weekend, a chance to get away. This can be very important for me, as working on the farm day-in, day-out, can get a bit tiring. (There is no “time off”, as work projects are literally all around me.)

So Saturday we decided to go to the Karori wildlife sancutary, as it was “gold coin” entry this weekend (only $1 or $2 per person). Before we left I quickly popped up into the main paddock to give the girls a check, as we had one animal left on “mommy watch.” Harmony. Fat, fat harmony. She is 5, and has never had a cria (two “false pregnancies- “retained corpus leuteums”- previously). We had become quite convinced she was not pregnant, based on her immense obesity, and the fact that she was not showing at all.

The moment I came over the ridge, I could tell something was up by her body language. A few meters closer and I could see the nose just starting to come out. Here we go! 20 minutes later, we still had just a nose, and it was looking mightly tight. She could not get the head out. Calls were made. Julia, the vet, could not make it for at least 45 minutes. The transport box was not assembled (which takes 10-20 minutes), which meant if we wanted to get her to the vet quickly, it was going to be in the back of the Vitz.

We were just lining up to go in and make one last attempt to pull the baby out by hand, when Angela arrived. Yay! Having the owner there always takes the stress off when things are not going smoothly. Angela also had the smallest hands, and more experience with dystocias like this. She pushed the head back in, got a hand in and and pulled the front legs out, then used them to pull the whole head out. (It really helps to have something to grip onto, you can use the eye-sockets for a skull grip if you need to, but that obviously is not the first choice!) We let Harmony rest for 15 minutes, then pulled the baby the rest of the way out. A baby girl! Angela was very pleased.

An hour or so later the placenta was out, and Angela took them both home. Yay! Less for us to worry about. And the next thing we have to worry about is the storm racing northwards, with heavy rain and wind gusts up to 140 kph predicted. That should be fun. I will be cramming the girls and cria into the shed before I go to bed tonight, so that we can sleep well knowing they are all warm and dry.

Saturday was the solstice, so we had our midwinter party. I won’t say “our usual midwinter party”, because there were some differences. For one, it wasn’t pouring down rain, like it has been every other year. We had archery out in the Gallop paddock, and we set up the ger. A lot of the Usual Suspects were out of town (or on the way out of town, or on the way back into town), and conversely there were a bunch of new people along, so it was a slightly different mix of people. Finally, because we wanted to have stuff happen (like archery and alpaca viewing) that required daylight, but we also didn’t want to have everything wind up at 8, we tried a new two-party format.

The Day Party featured the aforementioned archery. It also featured some alpaca drama (because it had been four weeks, and we were due).

I’d fired all of maybe six arrows when Stephen came over the rise to tell me Tessa is unwell. We chivvied her down to the yards, where she presented with colic. Great. Just like all the other ones that have keeled over. We rang Julia. For better or worse, we’ve gotten to see enough alpacas with gut pain to tell that she’s not actually in as bad a shape as some we’ve seen, and indeed, the diagnosis was “spasmodic colic” — basically, stomach cramps, sort of like indigestion. We gave her some baking soda, upon which she let out a tremendous gurgling belch. Julia gave her a shot of painkillers, and ten minutes later she’s up and eating and back to her old self. whew. Julia hung out at the party for a bit — she had to miss a cat-fancier’s dinner for the call-out, so we plied her with drinks and snacks. I have to say it was a nice change to have one turn out alright. I’m sorry to all the folks who came to the day party that I didn’t get to spend time with, though.

In between the Day Party and the Night Party we had dinner: starting with a lovely light garden vegetable soup from Melanie, and transitioning to a delicious shoulder of venison from Zane, accompanied by roast veggies, potatoes, and an apple-cabbage salad from Helen. There was also a loaf of really yummy home-baked bread from Aidan, but we didn’t actually find it (in plain sight on the counter next to the fridge) until Sunday morning, so we got to eat that all ourselves. (oh, darn)

We got the ger set up for the Night Party:

…with carpets down and the brazier going in the middle. The problem was we wanted the door open so it would be easy to transition between the living room and the ger, but that had the effect of drawing more smoke out the door than through the smoke hole in the roof. Result: very smoky ger. Still, there was hanging out in there. Need to get furniture that lets you sit on the floor, and yet still provides back support. Hmmm…

Tim came down from New Plymouth again, and was an absolute legend. Before the party, while Stephen and I were cleaning and organizing, he vacuumed the house to within an inch of its life. He spent a good chunk of the evening playing Mull-Meister in the kitchen, and then helped me clean up after everyone had left and Stephen had pumpkined. *smooch* Thanks, Tim! The mulled wine was the recipe he served to his theater buddies in Qatar, and it was, indeed, scrummy.

Note: This is about the best photo I managed to get of Tim, and note that that’s actually Traveler on the left there — Tim’s the one on the right:

Overall, everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. I’m not sure how I feel about the two-part format, myself. It was nice to get to do stuff in daylight, and it was definitely worth it to get to see people who just couldn’t have made it otherwise, but on the other hand, the sort of continual smear of arrivals and departures meant that there were a bunch of people who came to the party, but all missed each other. Dunno. Will have to get more feedback. If you came, what did you think ?

PS: I tried again on Sunday to get photographic documentation of Tim, and this is about the best of those, in part because Tim is constitutionally incapable of smiling for the camera, and in part because my camera is constitutionally incapable of taking an in-focus photo indoors. Additional note for those who keep track of such things: the cats approve of Tim, even if he doesn’t let them have his biltong:

So, the nasty weather arrived about 8-12 hours later than predicted, and yesterday morning the fun began. Gale force southerly winds and sleeting rain. (Thankfully the rain was never that intense, but our weather station was recording 100kph gusts.) I was glad to have the shed to put Angela’s girls (including the day-old cria) in. You don’t want a new baby outside on a day like that!

So, at 10 AM I went to check on them- only to find head-and-legs sticking out of Cadence! What a day to have a cria! After 25 minutes of watching there had been no progress, and I had no idea how long she had been head-and-legs out (last check had been 2 hours previous), time to lend a hand! With a bit of gentle pulling whenever she had a contraction, we got the baby out over the next 5 minutes- a beautiful little black Suri girl! Needless to say Angela was very excited when I told her.

So the baby got toweled off and had a warm cover put on her. Later in the day, when she was no quick to stand, I decided to bottle feed her some colostrum to make sure she had the energy to get going. All seems to have gone well. She was up and about the morning, and mothers and cria were all happy to be released from their shed-prison back into the paddock. Watching day-old cria trying to figure out how “up” and “down” work on a hillside is comedy gold.