Posted in alpacas, farming on 03/15/2008 08:44 pm by Stephen
So, the animals belonging to Bruce that we have been caring for since December have started to drop their cria.
On Tuesday I got a call while down in the hospital visiting Wesley- Yvonne had come up to work with the horses and noticed a cria on the ground! We were not expecting the first for another few weeks. As the cria was healthy and doing well there was no panic or rush, and when I got home I discovered that Bruce was first-time lucky, Sugar had dropped a lovely fawn girl for him.
This afternoon we brought our girls down for matings and other maintenance (including the rodeo-action of washing Holly’s back). When I went to get the girls at 6 I looked over the fecne and one of Bruce’s other girls was acting a bit odd. By 7:30 the reasons were clear- Carmen had dropped another little fawn girl! Two times lucky!
Posted in Life in NZ on 03/15/2008 08:38 pm by Stephen
The twists of fate can be odd.
On Friday we drove up to Feilding (and that is the correct spelling) for the Central Districts Field Days- a giant farming-related toy-fest. We left bright and early, as it is a two hour drive. In the dim pre-dawn light we saw a hitch-hiker along SH1 just north of the Plimmerton roundabout. A young woman, in her pyjamas, in her bare feet. We stopped and picked her up.
And thus we met Julie, a young rather drunk woman from Porirua. She decided at some point over the night (possibly after a fight with her partner? The story was a bit incoherent at times) to make her way to Hawera where her daughter lives. We heard her tale of her ex-partner and father of her daughter who is in jail, and her current partner who occasionally beats her, but she can’s leave because she “loves him.”
We dropped her off in Sanson, where the road splits. (As she was an adult and had largely sobered up we didn’t feel we could force her to do anything, so we dropped her off where she wanted.) We then drove to the Feilding police station (which was closest), and reported what was going on. This poor woman had nothing with her, and might as well have hung a “victim” sign around her neck. The police were very happy we had told them, and rushed off to get a car over to check and make sure she was okay.
You meet the most interesting people when you pick up hitch-hikers.