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

What’s better than getting up bright and early and heading out for a day of back-breaking work on the farm ?
Doing it while fighting off a migrane !
The Bright Side: Hard labor *sometimes* makes Stephen’s migranes go away.

What’s better than having a burning hunk of gorse roll down out of your burn-pile into the standing bush, setting off a mini-brushfire which you have to spend an hour stamping out in the blowing ash and smoke (still with your migrane) ?
Having it reignite after you’ve come down off the hill for your lunch-break, and the neighbors call the fire department, and you have to go back up and stomp it all back out again !
The Bright Side: The firies said Stephen was doing everything right — burning uphill and downwind on a still day — didn’t reckon the fire was a hazard, and because Stephen has correctly called beforehand to let them know he was doing a burn, didn’t charge us for the callout. They just asked him to make sure it was out before dark, so they didn’t get another call that night.

What’s better than having the same ^&%$ fire re-start again, AFTER you’ve had a shower and gotten all clean, so you can go up and stomp it out a third time ?
Doing it all in the dark, because the sun’s gone down while you’re still finding little smoking patches and glowing embers.
The Bright Side: Your sweetie is home to help, and it’s easier to see embers in the dark.

What’s better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick ?
A poke in the eye with a charred gorse stick, which deposits a big wad of ash smack into your contact lens, which drops out, never to be seen again.
The Bright Side: Losing a lens is better than losing an eye, and hey, a pile of smoking ash is at *least* as good a place to lose a contact lens as the catwalk over the bottomless crevasse in that cavern in Tennessee, or wherever it was I lost the *first* one, lo these many years ago. (Remember that, Mom ? I’d only had them, what, three weeks at that point ?)

What’s better than picking your way down off a hill in the dark, over uneven ground full of foot-high gorse stumps, sudden drop-offs and slippery patches of baked-smooth clay ?
Doing it with no depth perception !
The Bright Side: A shovel makes an adequate walking stick, and we did manage to get down without either of us twisting, breaking or spraining anything.

Oy vey, what a day ! As Sean noted later, at the game night which we had a good excuse to be late to, “Ah yes, the peaceful farming life.”

It was a good weekend.

It started well on Friday night when I picked up Tam from the airport. Yah! Sweetie is home! I discovered the best way to cruise the airport without paying for parking. If you are there less than 5 miutes it is free, and I discovered they have a special exit lane where there is no booth, just stick in your ticket, and so long as you are within 5 minutes, out you go. I discovered this after getting stuck with a $2 charge because I was stuck in queue behind people paying at the booth, and ran over 5 minutes.

Saturday bright and early Steve dropped off Jennifer, so that we could drive up to Thief of Hearts (aka “alpacas unlimited”) in Palmerston North for a field-day. This particular one was about “showing”, that is, getting your animals ready for a show. This involves clipping and tipping the animal to make it look oh-so-fluffy, and the whole process made me just that much more cynical about the whole show system. After lunch Eric did a bit of halter-training demonstration work. The style we had been tought before (The T-Team approach of Marty McGee) is a slow-and-steady process of winning the animals trust. Eric goes for a rough-and-tumble breaking of the animals will. That being said, there are merits to his style. It involves slapping on a halter and lead, and then lead-chasing the bucking animals around the field. But we watched animals doing this for the first time calm remarkably within 15 to 20 minutes. Apparently you can completely halter train most animals in 3 or 4 15-minute sessions. Now, this is a style that you can use on small animals, but not large ones. It is good to remember that Marty works mainly with Llamas (150-250 kg), where as Eric works with young alpaca (40-75 kg). Trying to wrestle a bucking llama would probably result in injury, definitely for you and possibly for the llama.

After the field day we looked at Gladiator, one of the studs we are considering for our girls. It was convenient as there were 15 or 20 Gladiator cria present, so we could see what sort of offspring he produces. Quite interesting, but we still havn’t decided which stud we will use. After the field day we drove to the end of Scotts road, an exploration we had left half-finished from the last time we were up there. Turned out we had pretty much made it to the end last time. It was still fun exploring up in the hills. We then drove back to Wellington, had a lovely dinner with Steve and Jennifer, then popped back up to Porirua to drop in on Shellys birth day party to say “hi!”. Then some much-needed sleep.

Sunday was all about playing with our alpaca. We brought them all down into the shed/yards after breakfast. Jennifer came back over, and we started halter-training using Erics style. We worked with both cria (Hankyo and Hyouki), and their mothers (Galadriel and Concetta). We also did some halter work with Oak, and left him tied to the fence for about 20 minutes, which he seemed fine with. We did a bit of slow-and-steady pen-work with Victoria and Cariboo, as they are both too big and strong to try the Eric-way. The most amusing aspect was pooor Pointer. He was trying to use the midden to have a pee, but bucking-running animals on halter and lead kept careening into him, interrupting his potty break. So 5 minutes later he would try again, and again get rammed into by some other ‘paca. All quite amusing, in a toilet-humor kind of way.

We then haltered up Oak, POinter and Jim and took them all for a walk down the valley. It was the first time off-farm for the two alpaca wethers, but having Big Jim in the lead probably helped calm their nerves. We took them about a km down, and then back, dropping in briefly to say hi to Stuart. They did really well, not even being too badly freaked by traffic. I look forward to building a transport box on the back of the Ute so we can try taking them to the beach some time. That would be fun.

After Jennifer left Tam and I climbed the back hill to do one of our periodic photo-shoots of the property. We do this to maintain records to the place, so in years to come we can see how our work changed it, and how it changes with the seasons.

And then we rested, because after all that we were good and tired!