s e v e n i s a j o u r n e y

Hard to believe, but today marks one year here on the farm. Much has happened.

We had visits from my parents, Tamara’s mother and Joel, our friends Doug and Debbie from Phialdelphia, and Smiity and Clare from London. We hosted about half-dozen Bellydance parties, with mucho dancing and live music. We hosted about half a dozen SCA mini-events, with fighting, archery, singing and crafts. Nothing like keeping the social-events callendar full!

Around the farm we installed a new 22,500 l water tank for the house, and later a 750 l “header tank” to provide water to new troughs in the paddocks. (no more old rusty bathtubs! yay!) About 225 meters of new fence line was built, and multiple Ute-loads of debris and garbage were hauled out of the paddocks and away to the tip.

We began making serious progress against the gorse and broom. Most of it is now gone on the front half of the property, and a big chunk has been taking about of the massive patch on the back hill.

We purchased our first stock. Oak and Chris arrived in December, then Pointer came in January. Chris died in August (very sad). Jim the Llama came in October, and then Victora and Cariboo, our first female alpaca, arrived in November.

What do we look forward to in the next year?
-the arrival of our first cria (baby alpaca), probably in March or April
-the arrival of two more female alpaca
-tearing down the old nasty kennels and putting up a nice 3-sided kitset shed
-building about 500-1000 meters of new fence-line
-building stock-shelters in most of the paddocks
-planting fruit and nut trees around the house to make a proper garden
-planting some shelter-belts to help break the wind (shelter for house and stock)
-re-doing the bathrooms to make 2 full baths from 3 weird half-baths
-removing the rest of the gorse and broom (cut, drag, burn, whee!)
-hosting lots of fun dancer/SCA parties
-getting other friends from the States or Europe to come and visit!

Well, the Elmwood Farm SCA Flophouse [TM] had its first official guests this past weekend. The weekend before was Crown Tourney up in Auckland (you’ll recall we took the better part of valor and went to an A&P show instead), and there was a contingent of Aussies over for the festivities. They spent the intervening week touring, but returned to Wellington and crashed with us for the last couple days.

Saturday, we had another Day O’ Fun, with about 20 or so people engaged in SCA heavy list fighting, live steel fighting, fencing, archery, embroidery, spinning, beading, etc., finishing up in the ger, which we set up in the side yard off the living room. We’d got a little brazier from the Warehouse( AKA the “Wuddy Fuddy”, AKA “The Red Shed”) and had a fire and everything. Definitely need to sort out the seating — get some carpets and cushions and stuff. We had fantastic weather for it (thank you again, Tawhiri !).

Sunday we said goodbye to our visitors and scooted up to the Pauatahanui plant sale, where we picked up a bunch of flaxes for a dollar each. Score ! Plus some of the sweet little native irises — the leaves are this amazing stripey orange all year, and then in Spring they pop out these pretty little flat white iris flowers. And mucho thanks to Yvonne for putting us onto it. We then rather optimistically set out to find the old magazines on the Waitangirua farm at the top of the valley, but I pooped out less than half the way to Round Knob. This bronchitis has really knocked me back. Grrrr. I’ve got no stamina at all.

Monday, Sharon came over and we watched Laputa. Sharon brought us some kiddie books back from the Miyazaki museum ! (She went to Japan right as we were coming back from the States.) They were all from short film they only show at the museum, including one about little Mei from Totoro and the adventure she has with the Kitten Bus (!), going to the Nekobus Convention. Double-decker cat buses ! Cat trains ! And the Big, Old, Very Intimidating Grandmother Cat Bus, who apparently has a soft spot for little girls who bring her caramels. Awwwww !!!!

We have girls !

Princess Cariboo and her Queen Mum arrived, none too pleased, on a horse transport this morning. The truck couldn’t get over the bridge, so the second thing Stephen had to do (after helping the driver *carry* the kushed Victoria out of the truck) was track down a neighbor with plywood to put over the cattle grid on the bridge (getting the girls to cross the stream was Not Going to Happen).

This was followed by a merry chase up and down the driveway and around the sideyard by the kennels, in an attempt to shoo them into the dog run. (Soon, oh, soon, we will jackhammer down those wretched kennels, and assemble in their place a proper shed and yards.) They ended up with Victoria in the dog run, and Cariboo outside the fence, confined into a small area in front of the gate by a bit of electric tape (not electrified. If I ever say “electric tape” in a description of our place, you can assume it’s not actually hooked up to any electricity, unless I indicate otherwise. The white tape is very visible, however, and most critters who’ve ever encountered the stuff live tend to respect it even if it’s not).

That’s where they stayed until I got home, many hours later. There was much sniffing carried out between the girls and the boys over and through the various barriers, but none of the clucking and posturing we saw when Jim arrived. Cariboo and Victoria show all the signs of never having been separated in their lives, keeping close to each other on each side of the dog fence (Stephen tried to get Cariboo in there with her mother, but it never came off).

When I got home, I changed into farm clothes, and then spent the next hour trying to get the halter off Victoria. Stephen had got in *on* her while she was kushed in the truck, but it proved more hindrance than help, and she’d apparently been trained to respond to a tug on the lead rope by jerking it out of your hands and taking off in the opposite direction. Poor Jake Webb got a rope burn trying to hang onto her.

We had her in the dog run, and I got hold of the rope, which was long enough that if she made a break for it, she ran out of pen before she ran out of rope. We’d decided to go the patience route, instead of the pair of us just wrestling her down, and I feel we made the right decision. She’s actually much calmer about being handled than our boys are, ironically. She had no problem with me stroking her neck, massaging her sides, draping a arm across her shoulders. It took a good while and a lot of repetition before she’d let me up by her head, and then she’d move away again when I touched the halter itself (which had become all skewed sideways by this point, which can’t have been helping). Finally, though, we got it off her, with really a minimum of trauma.

Once that was taken care of, we could let them all in to meet each other for real at last. We waited until Yvonne and Joanne left, so there’d be a minimum of distractions (apart from the ever-present Rasputin, anyway), and opened the gate. The boys at first just ran out, thinking we’d be taking them on another adventure down the driveway, but once they figured out that wasn’t the case, the whole mob shifted back into the paddock. I gently shooed Victoria out of the dog run, so she could reunite with her daughter at last.

All together, there was much sniffing of butts (“Oooh! Girls!“), but not much in the way of dominance behavior yet. Unless you count Cariboo getting tetchy about Pointer sticking his nose in her tail one too many times. I think the funniest was Jim, who kept looking at me. After a day of hanging out by the fence, waiting for the other shoe to drop, they seemed happy to just tuck into the long grass and stuff their faces a bit.

Once again we managed to pack our weekend with enough activities such that waking up this morning was quite a task.

Most of our SCA-friends were off at Crown Tourney up in Auckland this weekend. We had decided not to attend as we had consumed all our vacation-time an travel-money in various trips over the last 3 months (back to the States and alpaca hunting). I was also not keen on fighting in crown due to the unacceptable risk of winning. Not because I am any great fighter, but because I fight with wacky-weapons. A good sword-and-shield wielder can defeat me without much problem- once they learn my style. But my first few swings can be surprising, and in a tourney where you only need a single kill in each round, that novelty raises the risk of doing well. I was very glad to hear that Sir Ulf, our local knight, did quite well making it into the final-4.

Friday night we got together with Geoff, Beth and Mikhail to watch another disk of Rah Xephon. Once again the evening ended with a mighty “huh?” With 4 disks to go, we maintain the (possibly vain) hope that it will all eventually make sense.

Saturday we drove up to Palmerston North (about 2 hours north in the Manawatu) to hit the A&P show. We chatted with many friends among the alpaca people, and once again ran into the blacksmith and his wife who travel the country in their house truck. Really nice and fun people, now if we could only rememebr their names! We should be seeing them in January again (Jousting event), if not sooner. Guess we will have to ask, and then write down the answers! We have been meeting so many people over the last 12 months that names tend to get lost in the shuffle.

When we got home that evening it was still light (yah lengthening days!), so we decided to use that time wisely. I would continue to chainsaw-up some particularly big gorse plants while Tam worked with halter-training Jim. We released the camelids from their paddock, and they went galloping up the driveway- to the cats total dismay as they had followed us down the driveway and had to go rocketing back up to get away from the horrible demons chasing them! After training we brought them back down, but they were still really worked up. Jim ducked under the tape into the small side-paddock that had the horses. No surprise, moments later he was being chased by the horses. When he made it back into the paddock with Oak and Pointer they were all on a big adrenaline rush. Pointer, in a fit of stupid exuberance, gave Jim a little chest-butt. Jim would not let this challenge to his dominance stand, and for the next 10 minutes a madcap chase around the paddock ensued. Those critters are both nimble and fast, and by the end all three had passed their cardiovascular stress-test!

Sunday we decided to make our way up to Staglands, a little wildlife park about 45 minutes north of here. It is located along the Akaterawa road, which connects Upper Hutt and the Kapiti Coast. This is a 30 km long little winding 1-lane mountain road. We ended up coming in from the long (22 km) Kapiti Coast side. The four of us (we had dragged along Helene and Dayna) had a good fright when a big silver SUV came whipping around a blind corner at speed. There was a long second of screaming/cursing/gasping as the SUV locked its brakes and came right at us. Thankfully the Echo is small, and we could just barely fit in the gap between the SUV and the cliff-edge. Good way to get the heart going! I can hope that the SUV driver SLOWED DOWN after the incident, but that would be excessive optimism on my part.

And this morning I got news that our two girls in Cantebury (Victoria and Princess Cariboo) are being loaded on a transporter tonight. They should arrive at our place some time mid-day tomorrow. Very exciting!

So I went into Dymock’s today, in search of the How To Grow Stuff In Places Where There’s Often A Lot Of Wind book that I saw in (I think) Christchurch, (did they have it? No.) and I see this sign that says “Please purchase book before queueing.” And I think to myself, “Ehn? Don’t you queue in order to buy the books?”

And then I see Terry Pratchett sitting at a table, signing books.

Did it occur to me to buy something (say, Terry Pratchett’s new book) for any of my friends whom I know are Terry Pratchett fans? Yes. Did I forget my wallet at home today, making this impossible? Also, sadly, yes.

Anyway, all you Pratchett fans, I thought of you fondly today, for all the good that does you.

Wow, nothing like a few cute critters in the front to help us meet the neighbors. A number of neighbors we had not talked to since our housewarming party last year have stopped us on the road to chat. (One nice thing about our little rural road is that if you see someone you want to talk to while driving, you just stop and roll down your window. Often you can chat for 15+ minutes before another car comes along and makes you move.)

And in the “cutest moment ever” department- earlier this week I was walking down the driveway to get the mail. A family sedan was driving down the valley, and a little girl (age 8?) stuck her head out the back window and shouted “HELLO LLAMA!” The cute-rays were a bit overwhelming. :)