Llama Spit and Other Images


Before I leave for my annual weeklong writing retreat, I thought I'd take the opportunity to share some images from this last week as I did chores. Also, since the Farmer is very busy with an 8-week short-term job with Uncle Sam and won't have time to read this blog, I'm going to 'out' one of her hobbies, then slip away into the night so she can't yell at me. Now and then she'll say, "You aren't going to blog about this, are you?" When she asks that, then I can't. When she doesn't, well.... We bloggers live dangerous lives, with big fat lines running through them. Sometimes it's kind of fun to cross over those lines....

The Farmer is strong and tough. She drives a Farmall 706 row tractor, a big son-of-a-gun. She has a chain saw, a wood splitter, a four-wheeler. She has a weed whacker that can fell small trees. Yet what does she do when she comes inside? She fusses over pretty little flowers.

I'm not at all into fussing over flowers, and barely remember to water them. I just want them to look nice without any work. But thanks to the Farmer, there's lots of blooming going on here:





She knows what sort of orchids these are, but I don't care about that---I just like looking them as I walk by.

Other images from this week...

The puppy pretending she has a broken leg.





Pumpkin looking pensive....





Helen, the last duck remaining. (The other two? The puppy got one, and a predatory bird got the other. Damn.)




Chachi eating his treat in a private dining room, with Tucker the jerk standing there trying to intimidate Chachi into leaving the treat for him. All three llamas are in the same pen this winter, and it's just like a junior high school in there.





This hen gives new meaning to the phrase 'beady-eyed.' What she's really saying with those baby blacks is, "Steal my egg one more time and I'll peck your eyes out and stuff them down your throat." Sadly, I stole all the eggs she was sitting on.





A lovely snow morning...



Nearly every single person who meets our llamas wants to know if they spit. "Yes," I say, "but not at us." We would never stand for it. The llamas, however, do spit at each other now and then, and have been known to spit at lambs that might have been bugging them. Melissa had a close call when she accidentally got between two llamas about to attack each other with wet, green glops. Their ears were back, their glares were fierce, but she yelled and waved her hands. "Break it up!" Their ears went back up, and they wisely swallowed their slimy projectiles.

I saw this the other day. Had to stop and stare. What the heck? Oh, llama spit.






I don't know who did the spitting, but his aim was WAY off. I should go out there with a bucket of soapy water and make all three llamas clean off the barn. How else will they learn?

I Make The List

I just learned that some guy in Gouverneur, NY made a list of 30 outstanding farm blogs for the Gouverneur Times. Hey. That's cool. Here's what he had to say: "She writes, she farms, and writes about farming everything that goes wrong and some things that go right. This blogger is an inkslinger (a gunslinger with a pen instead of a gun). Her articles are vivid and you can absolutely picture everything she is talking about. This is one farm blog that you will want to follow."

Wow. Thanks, Tim.

Unfortunately, now that I've made Tim's list, I may find it hard to stay on it. That's because this winter has been boring.... blissfully boring. Nothing has died. (Ooops. Not true. Our peacock Ben died, but I'll write about that later.) Nothing has gotten out of a pen or into a bin of feed (knock on wood). I haven't fallen on the ice and broken anything (knock on wood.) I only got the car stuck once, and that was in the neighbor's driveway so I had lots of help getting unstuck.

I've been writing like a crazy woman (thanks to two spring deadlines...not the best situation, but a schedule of my own making.) Melissa's been spending lots of time inside because this winter has been cold. She just finished repairing a retractable extension cord that burned out ten years ago and has been hanging in the shed, useless, for all that time. Nothing makes the Farmer happier than to fix something she's been unable to use for ten years. I even helped, holding the dangerous steel spring in place so it wouldn't leap out and slice off one of Melissa's fingers. (When she'd first opened the case, the 30-foot spring had leapt out like a Jack in the Box, startling even our brave Farmer.)

In addition to such fascinating repairs, we've been taking photos. I took some the other day, uploaded them, and found Melissa had taken the exact same shot, only in different light. So here's what winter looks like out our bedroom window:




And again,



And again.



Every winter I worry about our two barn cats. Will they be warm enough? Could we ignore our allergies and let them into the house, hoping they learn to use the litterbox and avoid the three dogs? No, not practical. So every winter I build a few cozy spots up in the haymow, making little cubby holes by stacking bales, then lining them with wool. I still worry, but when I touch them, their fur might be cold, but their skin is warm.

During the day they are even warmer. In fact, this year they have decided that we purchased huge, 700-pound bales of hay just for their use. They are cats, after all, so everything is about them. Here are Maisie and Pumpkin lolling about on their 700-pound beds. Ahh, the life of a barn cat...