I Kissed a Llama and I Liked It...


Well, okay, I didn't actually kiss Zipper. But he was close enough I could have, unusual because our llamas aren't cuddly. They don't like being touched anywhere, and certainly not a kiss on the face.


Zipper makes feeding a challenge. It's like having to separate five-year-olds so they don't steal each others' cookies.


Tucker the llama is with the sheep, so he comes up and eats outside the pen that holds the steers and other llamas. Chachi the llama gets his own area because he's too timid to defend his food. (That's Tucker in the background.)

And Zipper must be locked up most of all, since he's the one who will steal everyone else's food.

Once the llamas are in their pens, I feed the steers. Imagine four massive necks stuck through a feeder panel, happily munching on corn. Here's what that looks like:

While I'm waiting for them to finish eating their corn, which they do with huge tongues that sweep the corn into their wide mouths, I'm standing in Zipper's pen. Only when the steers are finished can I let him out.


How does an old llama steal from four 500-pound steers? He comes barreling out his pen and aims for those four necks. He plows right into the necks with such force each steer jumps back, alarmed. This leaves Zipper with total access to the corn left in the feed trough.


So I lock up Zipper and feed him separately.


The other morning I'm standing in his pen watching the steer eat when suddenly there is a soft hum in my ear... I mean right in my ear.


I turn my head slightly and Zipper is practically laying his head on my shoulder. All I'd have to do is pooch out my lips a bit, and I could kiss a llama.


He keeps humming. He sees the corn fast disappearing in those big slobbery mouths and it distresses him. He wants it. He hums louder, as if this will convince me to let him out.


Only when there are about 25 kernels left in the bin do I let Zipper out. He blasts from the pen, bashes into the thick steer necks, and then gobbles down those 25 kernels.

I'm not all that interested in kissing a llama---don't get me started on the hay breath---but if Katy Perry needs a new title for a song, she's welcome to use this blog's title.

The Very Happy Monkey

Sheep make wool. Wool becomes yarn. And sometimes shepherds knit the yarn made from their sheep's wool.


It's weird, but I've become one of those shepherds....and I've become hooked on socks. Nothing fancy. Just plain socks.


But the other day I thought I should perhaps try something a little more challenging, so I found a sock pattern called the Monkey, designed by a woman named Cookie. You put the stitches on four needles, and then use a fifth needle to knit the stitches. Go all the way around the four needles and you've completed a row. This pattern has 11 rows, each different. When you've finished these 11 rows, then you repeat the pattern again (and again and again...)

This takes WAY more concentration than you'd think, so the sock has languished in its little bin. Knitting 11 rows in one sitting seemed like too much work. (I didn't want to stop midway and get confused about where I was in the pattern.)


But I want to make these socks because I'm using our yarn, this lovely turquoise.  (Sadly, my camera hates turquoise. I don't know why.)

A few nights ago I had a great idea. Start a fire in the wood stove. Pour myself a glass of wine. Knit one row. Take a sip of wine. Knit another row, etc. etc. This should help me get through 11 rows every night.


So I did this. It was working! But, oddly enough, by only Row 6, I was feeling pretty fine. Alarmingly fine for just 6 sips of wine. And the glass was emptier than it should have been.


That's when I figured out I was taking a sip of wine after every needle, not every row. That's 24 sips of wine, not 6.


Lest anyone worry, I was still able to manipulate the needles without harming myself, so things weren't too bad. And my ploy worked, for in five nights I finished that part of the sock....

But I think I should rename the pattern the Very Happy Monkey...or maybe the Almost-Drunken-Monkey.

A Farmer's Walker

Farmers like to trick out their equipment. Melissa's four-wheeler has a front basket loaded with holders for clippers, a hammer, screwdrivers, and alligator clips for the electric fence. She has rolls of marking tape and a bottle of water and a spot for her chain saw.

So when she came home from the hospital Thanksgiving Day, the proud new owner of a walker, I knew it'd wouldn't be long.

Sure enough, she spent the first two weeks trickin' out the walker. I kept telling her she'd be done using it before she got it all set up just the way she wanted it---basket for papers and books, holder for markers, pens, a small scissors, and a magnifying glass for studying the fossils she finds in the creek, trash bag, her cell phone/headset, a cup holder, and her MP3 player. It's like a rolling office.

But she wasn't done. Next were the flames and cartoons:

At first she just used the walker in the house, but as cabin fever set in, she used it to walk the dogs down to the mailbox.
 

 

She just had her six-week checkup, and all looks great. The screws and cables holding her three vertebrae in place are still aligned correctly and the bone grafts are looking great. She's supposed to start taking the neck brace off a few hours a day to start conditioning her neck muscles---they haven't had to hold up her head for quite some time. Then comes physical therapy, and then comes me transitioning from Head Farmer to my proper place as Back-Up Farmer. 

Won't happen for another month, but that's okay. The animals and I have our routine down now, and things go pretty smoothly. As the cattle and llamas are eating their grain, I stand in the sun, waiting for the water trough to fill, and think, "Hey, look at me. I'm a farmer."

Happy 2011!