This is our original gander, with one of the geese and her three (so far) goslings.

Barry and Larry (the ganders we inherited from some neighbors) have stolen two of the five geese, and one of those geese has another two goslings. The two geese and the two ganders in that group travel in a protective huddle around their two little goslings.

That leaves two more geese still on nests.

Meet Hob and Opa:

Hob is four. His previous owner was hoping he’d be stud material, but he grew up too short.

Opa is sixteen, and was a working stud until four years ago. He came along because he’s best friends with Hob.

Yay ! We have llamas !

Okay, yes, I have been very bad about updating. Let’s see if I can remember some of the fun tidbits from the drive and our last few days in the US.

Two days was not enough time to really explore the back roads of West Virginia. We saw some lovely covered bridges. We accidentally stumbled across the first battlefield of the Civil War (300 confederates vs 2000 union troops, fighting for a ridgetop farm).

We were struck by the lack of sheep. We saw a few small mobs, but all that lovely landscape NOT covered in sheep is a bit weird after living in NZ. But considering how many wandering dogs there are in the area, I can see why people would want to stick with cattle.

The final push down to Knoxville was a bit of a death march. Since we had not covered ground as quickly as planned in WV, the last bit of driving was quite long, and we did not arrive until late. Carol and Joel have a lovely new house. The AC was appreciated, as we had driven out of the unseasonable cool weather in Delaware, and into a southern heat-and-humidity filled “normal” summer. Our poor little antipodean bodies were not ready!

Some highlights of this part of the trip included a trip to the Museum of Appalacia- which is all of 5 minutes from their house. The poverty of the region led to a great deal of ingenuity. The hand-carved rifling-jig in the gun workshop was especially nifty. (as was the specialized “gun anvil”)

We also visited an alpaca farm. While Tam and I had a perfectly reasonable conversation with the retired husband, Carol and Joel were talked at by the seriously crazy wife. You see, she had helped her brother co-author a series of books (The Arc of Millions of Years). Apparently they had “cracked the Mayan callender”, and this led to a revelation about the truth of 2012, the book of revelations, how all the animals fit on the arc, magnetic tetrahedrons, the dead sea scrolls, and a bunch of other stuff. AND she and her borther are apparently the last living people who saw the Roswell crash. Boy-howdy, you meet some interesting people in this world.

One other weird thing we noticed- lots of people in that exurb of Knoxville had what we would call “lifestyle blocks”- a nice house sitting on 3-5 acres of land. In NZ this would be fenced off, and there would be stock grazing it. In the US, there was not a fence to be seen, and the entire vast expanse of lawn was mown. Yee Gods, what a waste of time and money mowing that much grass mechanically. It does explain why the market for pet-alpaca is worse in American than it is in NZ- people with 5-acre blocks are the perfect sales target for selling alpacas. But when they don’t have fences (and don’t even consider having stock!), it makes it more difficult.

Packing for the trip was a bit stressful. Thankfully all the stuff made it through fine. We wre bringing back my kilograms of books and had carefully backed the bags to limit the danger of (a) theft by the TSA, or (b) having the luggage “searched” by the TSA in such a way that ends up damaging most or all of the contents.

The flight across the pacific was going well, and then I fell ill. After the fact I realized this was one of my classic “24 hour bugs” which lays me out flat, and then I am fine the next day. Not surprising I picked up a bug, what with all the travel, eating-out, lots of strangers, etc. Having this bug hit half way across the pacific was not fun. Headache, nausea. Bleach. By the time we reached Auckland I was a serious zombie. I have vague memories of Tam collecting the luggage and keeping things organized. I was lying on the floor, drifitng in and out, most of the time when we were not actively moving from point to point. I must say all the Customs/Biosecurity/Border agents were brilliant. When they saw Tam escorting one of the restless dead, they quickly moved us along. We jumped to the front of lines. This was good.
At biosecurity we had them spray all our shoes. We had been on that alpaca farm three days earlier- and after the owner told me of the dieases they have to test for I wanted to be VERY SURE we were clean. Some of those diseases are on the “OMG- nuke it from orbit” list MAF maintains. In the same category as foot and mouth. Sometimes I forget how lucky we are in terms of many animal diseases down here.

Anyway, just as we finished biosecurity and were free to go- I felt trouble coming. I ran out into the terminal looking for a bathroom. NOTE FOR AUCKLAND AIRPORT- YOU NEED BETTER SIGNS SO DISTRESSED PEOPLE CAN FIND A LOO QUICKLY!!! Knowing I only I had moments, and since no bathroom was in sight, I ran out the front doors– and prompty chundered all over the street. At least that made me feel a bit better.

The flight to Wellington was also a blur, with a bit more chundering. First time I ever used an air-sick bag. The ones provided were well suited to the task. We then retrieved the car from Steve and Jennifer’s place, and drove home.

We returned to find our that the house had no water. Not a drop. Let the fun begin!

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.

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!

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.

We have more agisted girls on “mommy watch” right now, and yesterday one of them (Mahara, a big black girl) dropped her cria- and adorable black Suri boy. She was very lucky with the weather, as it was still, sunny and warm- quite unusual for mid-June! But a check of the forecast showed rain coming, with predicted cold southerlies and rain overnight, so Mahara, her cria, and Angela’s two other girs all got to spend the night in the shed.

Just before going to bed I popped out to check them, and walked into a spooky world. Thick fog had set in, it was perfectly still, and a near-full moon shown directly overhead. The whole world was suffused with a pale blue light. The fog muffled all sound, except for occasional eirie and unusual bird calls in the darkness. Tam and I walked up into Home paddock to visit our girls. You could barely see the big high voltage tower on the other side of the paddock, and weirdly it was harder to see if you looked directly at it, it came through more clearly out of the corner of the eye. Pretty creepy.

It was the sort of night where you expect werewolves, or shambling zombies, or for all the alpaca to turn around with red glowing eyes. It’s too bad that film cameras could not capture the effect, because words really fail to describe it.