Sat May 16th... The Alpacas Go to Isabelle’s for Shearing Tomorrow...

We went out early this morning to check on the boys since we kept them in all last night so their fiber would be good and dry. Isabelle emailed to say we should close them in because there was a threat of rain during the evening and that would make it hard for shearing with wet fiber, so we kept them closed in. They did well, and we fed them this morning and I put their harness’ on so they are ready when Isabelle comes for them this afternoon, today. She likes to transport them to her farm alpacas-4-pets the day before shearing, so they can relax overnight, which makes shearing a lot easier for the shearer. Whoa... Isabelle just pulled in for the boys..... Vicki just called from the barn to say she showed up early. Good thing we harnessed them so they would be ready for her.
The boys just left with Isabelle, headed for Coxsackie and her farm. We’ll be in attendance tomorrow morning at around 8:00 to join in on shearing day. Isabelle said they would start off with coffee and doughnuts. That’s a cool way to start such an undertaking. We’re excited to go and meet the other alpaca owners.
NEWS FLASH... ... ... ... We have newly hatched chicks in the big barn!
We were working on the Bunny Brothel roof yesterday. Vicki was cutting lumber to the sizes I called out and I was nailing then into place in preparation of installing the metal roofing, when she mentioned that she heard baby chicken squeaking. She then shut off the radio and low and behold, there was a bloodied little newborn chick outside the barn. It had hatched out in the nest and fallen out of the nest. All the other adult chickens pecked and pecked at it until we found it and Vicki placed it into the incubator in the brooding house, where it seemed to revive with time. After about four hours in there, it was as good as new, so we thought we should insert it back under the sitting her (it’s mother) since there was another little black one under her too. This morning, I found the little yellow one we re-introduced to the mother, under her... flat as could be. Obviously, Mom sat on her and crushed or suffocated it. (It could have also been the pecking by the other birds too) We have at least six different boxes with setting hens perking clutches of eggs. It’s hard to tell how many chicks we’ll end up with and we have Araucanas from our Agway store and an assortment from another mail order hatchery coming, so we’ll have plenty of chicks this summer....... and on into fall.
We got the roof on the bunny Brothel yesterday, so it will be dry in there even if it rains. Now we will cut the new inside door in so we can place the bunnies in there until Reggie and Keren get these. We need to cut and install the soffit all the way around and a fascia trim board and then the wall battens still need installed and the outside work will then be done. After the outside work, we’ll install some lighting, a few receptacles and a grooming table. We need to build several new pens to suspend from the walls with catch pans.
I sure hope we have some summer left when we finish the Bunny Brothel, the Hospice Gift Shop and the rear deck porch roof.
Take a look at all the photos we snapped yesterday while working out at the barn. Do you know... the geese let us within ten feet of their babies, but won’t let another goose within twenty feet or better... We got beautiful shots of the little ones and Mom!




This is the whole durned family...





Really nice picture of the farm complex




This is our farm house

Surprise photo of Builder Bob...

Now I know she's shooting me...

Picture of the little fat boy... me!

Now, here's a close-up...

Better YET!!

Happy to be off the roof and done. My knees kill me on the ladder now-a-days...

Now this is how close they let us get!!!

One of the entire family.... Mom, Dad and all seven little guys...

The Boys... Harnessed and ready to go to Isabelle's for shearing.

Look closely in the little garden pond and what do you see?

Friday May 15th... "The Italian Kiss of Death" Spell Broken...

Since Ms Donald has turned up unscathed and healthy, it has finally broken the seemingly legitimate belief which Vicki has been complaining about. She felt she was somehow inflicted with the old “Italian Kiss of Death curse.” I was actually beginning to believe she might have a point, because I started thinking back to Percy, the little pigeon sized Bantam that came to her call like a puppy. Then after that, was a long line of chickens that she took special interest in and I then actually had to admit, that they had all met with some queer fate of becoming extinct in one manner or another. I was overjoyed when we opened the door to the little barn and Ms Donald came walking out of the tunnel into the barn. (The tunnel joins the outside chicken run to the inside of the chicken barn, and runs along the inside wall of the duck room, creating a tunnel. The ducks nest or sit on the tunnel in their room, enjoying the rise above the floor for roosting at night.) Anyway, we were ecstatic that she is ok!
First thing today, we’ll unload the door we picked up from The Door Jamb in Shokan, yesterday and we will house it in the garage with the windows until we get the Hospice Gift Shop framed out and ready for them. We should be able to actively build on the cement pad by Monday I’d think. We are going to work at that at our leisure and enjoy the donation of the cost of building the gift shop, rather than look at it as a job. We are certainly hoping that an open house when finished and possibly being able to erect a nice sign at the end of our road by route 32 will help to make this fund raising endeavor a success for years to come for the Columbia/Greene County Hospice organization.
Today, we will finish up the Bunny Brothel, (I hope) because Claudia will be supplying us with four, huge, Angora bunnies as soon as they are big enough to leave their Mommy. We will have plenty of time before the bunnies arrive, but we need to build an inside door entrance, move the other bunnies in, build four new hanging crates with catch pans and install electric receptacles for their shearing, along with a nice grooming table so they can be brushed weekly. This will not be a large amount of work, but we do still have the gift shop and rear deck roof to build. It turns out that Vicki and I will be building it ourselves, because everyone else up here says they will and never show up, so we are our own best, reliable builders.

Thurs Eve May 14th... Still suffering... Don’t We All? Almost Daily???

We had a day worth forgetting basically. First we had a visit by the Culligan salesman who tap danced for us, just as the repair man said he would..... “And after he tap dances for awhile, he’ll give you the lowest price his boss will allow.....which he knows when he arrives.” That is exactly what happened. We are getting our reverse osmosis filter system back again and later a new chlorine additive system to remove sulfur when it comes back to haunt us. We will get all this for a really nice price of a couple of grand..... Jeese, I hate dealing with people that keep feeding us candied dung.

After he left us, we got into the truck and headed for Shokan, to pick up the door for the hospice Gift shop which the Door Jamb set up for us. When we got the door loaded, we kept on heading up route 28 to Shandaken, where we jumped unto route 42, heading for Lexington, to visit with Vick’s family. We had a bite to eat with them and enjoyed coffee and a nice visit. While there, we unpacked and set-up her Mom’s new Topsy-Turvy tomato growing system, which we got her for mother’s Day. It is a free standing three unit style, unlike the singles we have in service on the rear deck. Vick bought one for her Mom and one for us, so we have to set ours up and get the plants in it soon too.

Did I mention that we thought the hawk got Donald, the trump... chicken? Vicki was heartbroken and not very happy about losing her, (originally we thought she was a rooster...thus, the Donald) especially to a lousy hawk, which we know has been picking our chickens off one at a time. Donald started coming to her, every time he saw her out in the yard.... He would come to her, let her pick her up and she would coo to her while Vick held her. Well... tonight we returned from her parents and when we went to feed the animals and gather eggs, we saw “the Donald” in the little barn. She is alive and well. Obviously, she had gone under the hen house, in the outside run area and holed up, out of sight, because Vicki looked everywhere last night and when she couldn’t find her...... was simply heartbroken. This evening, she has recovered 100%!!
We read that if we suspended old CD’s from fishing line, high in the trees in the back yard, it would help deter the hawk from hunting in the back yard, because the flashing CD’s confuse the hawk when he is hunting and the flashing light hurts their eyes. That, coupled with music, will discourage hawks from hanging around. We can’t stand to loose chickens on a regular basis and Vick seems to think we have been feeding this hawk for about a year, based on the chicken loss we have had. I don’t know.... she very easily could be correct, because we’ve lost a slew of chickens in the last year.

Tomorrow, we are going to install the purlins on the bunny house, and then the steel roofing. We already have a little inside entrance door to install, which will give us entry from inside the barn. We’ll have to install lights, receptacles and a grooming table in the center to groom the Angoras. We were informed by Claudia, that the doe had four bunnies for us. One was born dead or we would have had five, but we’re happy with the four. We will be getting them as soon as they can leave the mother, so we need to finish up the bunny house.

Any part of this day not mentioned here, was engulfed in fighting with my computer, trying to get it to operate properly. It was changing the settings at random, all by itself, reverting from 32 bit color to 8 bit and the processor sounded like it was in a road race to somewhere, all the time. It finally has settled down, on 32 bit color and working ok.
I’ll refrain from doing another complete hard drive reload as long as it works like it is right now, but if the settings change again....... it’s re-boot from hard disc time again. We’ll see.

Wed. May 13th... The Forms are Stripped & the Roof is Here... WOW!!!

Things are beginning to happen quickly again...... Jeff showed up this morning with his crew and cleaned up the framing lumber, pins and other stuff lying around the Hospice Gift Shop foundation, so now it is ours again. We will allow the concrete to cure the rest of this week, and begin construction next week.

In the mean time, we will concentrate on the roof for the “Bunny Brothel” and getting the inside door installed and the bunnies in there. We must go to GNH Lumber and pick up the metal roofing, the flashing and screws this morning, and meet Herman here at noon to look over the rear deck project. I picked up 2x8’s for the ridge beam in my haste, when we were picking up the materials for the project, so I will have to return the lumber for that and pick up the correct 2x12”s and then Vick and I can construct the 20 foot main ridge beam so it is glued, clamped, nailed and screwed together when Herman and his brother-in-law is ready to start. We’ll return the wrong stuff and pick up the right ones when we pick up the roofing.
Well, I gotta go let the animals out so they can peck around all day and be happy. Busy, Busy, Busy.....

Phillip has left the farm for good it seems! I’d guess that if he didn’t meet his doom at the talons of mister hawk, fox or coyote last Saturday evening after that thunderstorm, he left the area and is strutting around somewhere else. We miss him, but both Vicki and I agreed that keeping an animal in a cage or pen it’s entire life is not what is natural, nor what we want to do... with the exception of the alpacas, which wouldn’t run off, but just simply graze off the property and mosey along, carefree, until they were gone. We do have to pen the bunnies, because they have no defense against the many predators both day and night, (rabbits are pretty low in the old food chain) so we provide them with a closed room where they are penned, so we can place them on grooming tables once a week to brush them out so they don’t become matted. We will allow them to run freely in that room as we groom them weekly.

We are really enjoying the Canadian Geese as they raise their brood of ducklings in our back yard. There are two separate families of them now... one with 7 little ones and another family with only 2 little ones. All are constantly picking bugs and seeds. At least once a day we get to see how they take to the water, to teach them to dive here and pop up there, as a diversionary tactic, in case of an assault from the air by a predator. There are several pairs out there without young, so we believe they may be from last years brood, returning with Mom and Dad, but haven't had young yet. How we love to co-exist among the wildlife and we are very surprised that they allow us be so near their young, when they chase other of their own kind away. Sometimes they honk and bob their heads as they parade the little guys toward us, as if to present or introduce their young to us, asking our opinion or approval. How busy our days can be, just watching the life around us. We love it and appreciate all our blessings as we live our lives and meet new friends. If you're ever in the area, come visit us... we love when friends stop by.

Tues. Eve ... Well We’re Back from the Twelve Tribes and Full...

We had our dinner at the Twelve Tribes “Oak Hill Kitchen” and really enjoyed it. We didn’t start out with the intentions of going there, because we were planning to go to Frank’s Green Hill Café in Norton Hill. When we approached the café, we noticed that the light at the street was off indicating he was closed. It was only 9:30, so we were really surprised that he was closed. We decided to go to the Wayside Inn in Oak Hill, which is a nice little tavern/restaurant type place we eat in ocassionally. They were closed too!! At that juncture... we had little choice but to to to the Oak Hill Kitchen which is run by the Twelve Tribes Commune. The food is excellent, but a little pricey, so we don’t frequent it very often. We both had soup, a sandwich and a rootbeer and our bill came to $27.00......... $32.00 with the tip. You can see why we don’t go there often.
We found a recorded call on the answering machine this afternoon when we got home, which was from GNH Lumber, telling us our metal roofing was in. We found it too late in the evening to go and pick it up for today, but we will get it tomorrow and place the purlins on and then the roof. Once done, we can cut the inside door and move the bunnies into the new room.
Herman and his brother-in-law are supposed to come tomorrow to look at the deck roof. I need to return the 2x8’s and pick up 2x12’s for the ridge beam. We’ll do that when we get the roofing. Herman might be here and then again he might not. THAT... seems to be his MO...... at least that’s what I’ve seen in the past. We’ll see.
Well, here is the pictures of Bucky Beaver and a little video of him being annoyed with us. (as you can see by the tail slapping)

Tues. May 12th… Here We Went All Over Again… SORRY..

As happens from time to time when you are using the internet as much as we are… I got a virus again! Not a malicious virus injected into my computer like it sounds, but a bunch of registry mistakes, lingering threads of old deleted files … fragmented , as they call them. That is bad enough and happens over a long period, but then couple that with all the spyware, addware, registry cleaners and virus protection we maintain on the computer… all working together and you can see how every 9 months to a year, you have a non-functional computer. Mine was to the point of giving me stupid error messages that you couldn’t get rid of or cure. I learned my lesson about going to the “specialists” who charge you hundreds of dollars only to have you reload windows later, when nothing really works. They don’t mind telling you it must be a nasty virus, so just install your recovery disc. Now… I just download all the necessary files and documents, dump the hard drive and reload it and start from scratch. I can do it now in about 12 hours, if all goes well or within 24 hours with trouble. Anyway you look at it, The problem is solved. I started at 10:00 PM last evening and was done by 11:00 this morning.
After that, we went to Two Kids Bakery for a lunch of Vegitarian stew with home made bread. We chatted with Keren and Reggie a little, then took off for Hilltown Agway for our Chicken starter mash. We talked to Paul about the alpaca food we were buying for $21.00 and why Dean’s Mills in Coxsackie was selling alpaca feed for $12.69? We rode down and purchased a bag of his and returned to Hilltown to compare tags and found that we can buy a sweet mix, 50 lb. bag of feed for $9.50 a bag and very comparable.
We are going for dinner right now at 8:41 and when we return, I’ll post the beaver movie. See ya then.

Monday May 11th… Got a Real Early Start on the Hospice House…

They were here this morning at 10:30 to start on the foundation, knowing that the cement truck would be here at 11:00. Jeff said Saturday afternoon when he left, that he ordered the cement for this morning first off, but someone changed their mind and we were scheduled for the second delivery. It was just as well, because Bob and Ricky weren’t finished with the rebar placement in the haunch when the truck arrived anyway. The truck operator started dumping immediately after the re-bar was tied in and Jeff arrived. It looks pretty good, but I think we will dig down after the forms are off and install a footer drain all the way around and feed it into the drain pile that runs through the foundation from the back yard. That should almost guarantee the pad will not heave in the frost this winter.

Tomorrow, the steel roofing for the bunny brothel should arrive per GNH Lumber and if so, we will install it immediately upon retrieval to the farm from the store. After the roof an all is on, we can cut the inside door to the main barn, remove the bunnies to the bunny house until ready to go to Reggie and Keren’s house. Once the bunnies are in the new room, we can have the door and make the alpacas stall bigger too.
We (actually, “I” is the correct word here) got the wrong size main beams for the rear porch, so we will have to return the 2x8’s and pick up 2x12’s in their place. Once that is accomplished, we can put them all together, glued and clamped then nailed and screwed with the plywood in the center. We’ll make up a twenty one foot beam to be used on the rear deck roof project. Herman and his brother-in-law will be here tomorrow to look the job over and see the material we have for it. After talking to them, we’ll take the lumber back and get the right stuff... then build it. We got some regular pictures that might interest you, showing our progress on the farm, and then we have some excellent interest pictures and a little video of a beaver. Check everything out and enjoy. Don’t forget to leave any comments you care to make….good or bad… Let us know how we’re doing.

With all these pictures, maybe we'll hold the beaver video for tomorrow. Stay tuned then for the further adventure of Bucky Beaver.