Almost Done (Unpacking)!

I promise that I will eventually get the hang of posting here on a regular basis!  But in my defense, things have been quite busy around the farm for the past few weeks.  First was a week-long trip back to Indiana to pick up the llama trailer and (most of) the llama stuff, and since then I've been busy unpacking!

The most important thing to unpack was the stall panels!  The llamas have quickly eaten most of the grass in their pasture, so I wanted to set up the stall panels in some taller grass outside the pasture and let them graze in the afternoons.  I've let them in the pen for the past 4 days, and they seem to love it!  Hopefully it will help the pasture recover too.

The herd enjoying a beautiful fall day.

Also very important to unpack were the hay feeders.  I decided to stick the outside hay feeder in the grass just outside the barn...that way I don't have to shovel too much snow this winter!  We have to do a bit more rearranging before we can put the indoor hay feeder in place in the barn, so for now the llamas are still eating hay out of big buckets.

Hay feeder in place!

The biggest chore though was to unpack all of the little supplies and put them in my newly-cleaned storage room!  I spent several days before our trip cleaning out the dirt and sand in this little room, and cleaning the cabinet so I could paint it.

Feed bins, medical supplies, and heated water buckets in the storage room.

I primed and painted the cabinet this week, and it perfectly dry today and ready to be filled!

My beautiful painted cabinet, as well as a bunch of llama supplies.

I even got to "steal" this nice little vanity cabinet (from my parents' house) to store halters in!  It was installed today, but I still need to screw in the hooks.

Halter cabinet ready for use!

Now for some of the other random things I did today...  First was to fix the gate latch!  I had locked all the animals in the barn this afternoon so I could halter them one by one and collect fecal samples to process tomorrow.  I stepped out of the barn to re-arrange their stall panel pen in the yard and came back to the gate wide open and a broken latch board!  No idea what happened, but luckily it was easily fixed.

Somehow the board got broken right in half!

New board in place with the latch.  This one will be a lot harder to break!

The best thing that happened today...I figured out how to turn the lights on in the barn!  There are a million switches and plugs in this old barn, and somehow I had overlooked the one that turns on the lights!  I'm so glad I will have lights this winter, even if I have to walk half-way into the barn to turn them on!

We have light!!!

And last but not least, my "fecal station" countertops!  I've decided to use an old laundry sink to run fecals, but there isn't any table/counter space to set the centrifuge.  So I bought some plywood at Lowes last week and plan to set the pieces on top of the sink to create a temporary counter top.  They can also be removed when I need to use the sink to wash things after running fecals!  I wanted something that was fairly water-proof and easy to clean, so I primed and painted the plywood pieces (just like the cabinet), and then applied 3 coats of polyurethane.  Hopefully they will be dry tomorrow so I can run fecals!

Painted "countertops" ready for the spray coat.

So that was my day today...and the past few days have looked about the same!  Now that the trailer is unpacked I hope to go get another load of hay next week.  We also have to unload all the rubber mats from the back of the truck (as well as some of the obstacles), and get those in place in the barn!  It will be so nice to have everything done!

The Llamas Are HERE!!

As I started thinking about writing this blog post last night and early this morning, it was with a feeling of pure excitement...now that feeling has turned to pure terror.  The llama/dog introductions did NOT go well this morning, and I learned that I have a lot of work to do on the fence and barn pen, but hopefully we can come up with a way to keep two of the dogs out of the enclosure.

Going back to the beginning...

After receiving a phone call about two weeks ago that the llamas could be coming SOON, I kicked into high gear for the remainder of the fence building and barn cleaning chores.

It took about 4 days to clean out the barn, which consisted of wetting down the hay in the bottom of the barn, shoveling it out, and then hosing down the remaining organic matter.  I also went through and "disinfected" with a strong solution of PineSol and water.  It is such an improvement!  I only cleaned about 60% of the barn, as the other 40% is still going to be filthy as my in-laws kill chickens this fall, but I plan to clean out the rest after they're done harvesting the last batch.

A dark, but clean barn!

We also finished attaching the fence and hung the gate and cattle panels.  Unfortunately, one of the dogs found a way to get under the fence, so I have more work to do reinforcing the bottom of the fence (with dirt or rocks), and possibly running a strand of electric wire along the bottom.

Finished fence!

I also set up a temporary fence to block off a muddy area that I need to dump dirt on and reseed.

Temporary plastic posts and flag tape.

The other big step was building the pens in the barn.  It took another few days, but we got the cattle panels stapled in place, the new support beam installed, and the wood trim screwed in.  It looks pretty good if I say so myself, but apparently the dogs can get through the manure troughs (which they couldn't before the llamas got here!), so we have more work to do...

Building the pens and gates.

Finished (and filled) pens!

And finally, the llamas got in about 11:30 last night!  Unloading was a little rough, since we had to work our way through the maze of a barn, but they managed to get through unscathed.  They settled in nicely though.

This morning was another story...I went out with Abby first thing in the morning.  The llamas were happily grazing in the pasture.  Abby went wild barking for about a minute, but then quieted down.  We then (a bit hastily I will admit) let the other two dogs out an hour or so later.  The Pyr managed to crawl through the manure trough and get into the barn pen, where I luckily caught him and hauled him out.  The Bull Terrior got under the fence somehow, but for some reason didn't go after the animals.  A few minutes later they were both trying to get through the fence into the pasture, and in all the excitement got into a huge fight.  Everyone is okay, but the fence definitely needs some adjustments!

Enjoying the grass.

Comical Ralph!

Beautiful Kara.  She is huge!

My tack "room".

Hay!  Hopefully the llamas like it...its a bit stemmy but should do the trick.

Poisonous Plants!

Not a lot going on at the farm...it has been raining cats and dogs for the past week or so!  The bottom field here is pretty much under water, and the rivers are way over their banks.

To kill time and fill space, I thought I'd touch on poisonous plants.  Unfortunately the new pasture area has a few poisonous plants that we'll have to deal with.

The biggest issue are cherry trees.  Any type of cherry tree is poisonous to llamas (and alpacas, and most livestock).  The bark is poisonous at any time, and the leaves are poisonous when they are wilted (such as when a branch breaks off in a storm).  Surprisingly the leaves that fall naturally in the fall aren't poisonous!  In cherry trees, the poisonous agent is cyanide, which the leaves produce when they are "stressed".  Unfortunately for us, most of the cherry trees adjacent to the pasture are ones that can't be cut, due to various reasons (part are on a neighbor's property, and part are shelter for cultivated bees).  So we are fencing the trees out of the pasture area, and will have to be diligent about fallen branches.

Cherry tree leaves.

Mature cherry tree bark.

Another poisonous plant that I recently found is buttercup.  Luckily, it seems like buttercup is usually avoided by camelids, and it is also much less toxic than many other plants.  So for the time being I'm just going to mow the areas with buttercup, in attempt to kill it off naturally.

Buttercup flower and leaf (leaf is the big one bottom center).

There is also a lot of burdock in the pasture, but the poisonous part of that plant is the seed, which is likely to be avoided by any smart grazing animal!

I have seen a lot of milkweed in other parts of the property, but nothing seems to be growing in the pasture.

So that's a little bit about the poisonous plants that I'll have to deal with here on my New York farm.  If you want a more comprehensive list of poisonous plants for camelids, I suggest this site: http://www.c-r-alpacas.com/Alpaca%20Tips/plants_that_are_poisonous_to_alp.htm.

Fence Progress and Farm Update!

Well I was originally planning to post about all the great fence progress we were making, but the llama transport plans fell through last week (long story...), so the fence building has slowed down.  Still lots of pictures to share though!

The first step in putting up the fence was to measure and stake where posts would go.  I decided to do 2/3 T-posts (steel), and 1/3 wood posts, with wood braced corners.  The corner brace posts are 8ft apart (the brace posts are 8ft long), and the line posts are 16ft apart.

One corner of the pasture, where the gate will be going.

Such beautiful grass!

We also worked on removing the stanchions in the barn.  It is hard to see here, but one section has been un-bolted, and is leaning on the barn supports.  It's going to take more than me to move it, so it is still in this state, waiting for two stronger men to help!

Dirty dirty barn...but slowly making progress!

Speaking of the two stronger men, they along with their handy tractor managed to move one of the lawn rollers that was in the field.  We hauled it off to the scrap yard and got $40 for it!  There's still one more to move...

Loading the lawn roller into the truck bed with the tractor's front loader.

$40 worth of rusted steel!

Then came moving the huge telephone/power line poles that were lying in the pasture!  No idea why they were there, but they were in the way!  The tractor also came in handy for this.

Using the front-loader to roll the poles off the pile for better access.

Dragging poles with the tractor and a chain.

"After" moving all the poles.

Now we can finally bush-hog all that grass!

The new pile of poles!  At least they are out of the way now...

And finally it came time to start digging posts!

Digging the first post hole!

Of course the first one that we dug...we hit electric cable and barely missed the water line!  So that day was shot, spent the rest of it fixing the cable, and the next day burying it.

Look close...there are 4 electric cables in there!

Close-up shot.  We had to dig a lot more to find the second half of the fourth wire...it was buried under the water line somehow!

After we widened the hole to search for the second half of the fourth wire.

Then we started again...  We quickly realized that the 36" auger wasn't going to dig the 42" hole that I originally had planned, but we tried to see how far we could get it in...and broke the shear bolt that connects the auger to the motor!  Luckily that was an easy fix...

Broken shear bolt.

And FINALLY we got the first post completely set!  We're using concrete to anchor the corner posts, so after digging the hole, we stuck the post in, and then poured about 20lbs of dry pre-mix concrete into the hole, added some water, and then repeated for another 20lbs of concrete.  We filled the remaining hole with dirt, and then used a post level to make sure that the post was straight.

Finally a good straight hole!

Our first post!

We now have 1 post completely set, and 3 more dug and in the holes (without concrete).  Now the setback is getting a new drill that is strong enough to drill a hole all the way through a 6-7" post for the brace pins.  Once we get that we'll be back in business!

Never-ending Farm Work

Since the weather has been warming up the past few weeks, we've slowly but surely been starting farm work.  There's a lot to be done, and we've barely made a dent, but at least we've started!

First and fore-most, I spent a gorgeous sunny afternoon clearing burrs from the field where the llamas are going to go.  There's still a big patch of sticker bushes that needs to be cleared though.

Patch of sticker bushes to be cleared.

A few days later we tackled the old barbed wire fence that ran through the middle of the field.  The fence had to be several decades old...most of it was buried under sod, and the posts were rotten.  Unfortunately, under all the fence we found 2 old metal rollers, plus about 6 railroad ties or telephone poles.  Once we fix the tractor we'll drag all that out of the way.

Where the fence line used to be.

The next thing we did was to take out all the window frames that had broken glass.  I got replacement plexiglass from Lowes last week, and once things warm up again I'm going to replace the glass.  The windows are all sanded, but I want to re-paint them, and then replace the glass.  Then they'll be re-installed in the barn, and I'm adding hinges to 3-4 of the windows so that they can open.

The windows on the back side of the barn.

And of course there is still a ton of stuff that needs to be done...  The next big project I want to complete (if we can do it without the assistance of the tractor) is to take out the manure mover thing beside the barn.  Most of the structure itself is wood, so it shouldn't be too hard to take out.  Unfortunately, there is probably 400' of metal "chain" running through the barn (the part that actually moved the manure through the pit), so we may need the tractor for that.

The barn-cleaning device thing that still has to be taken out.

In between doing farm work, I've been doing a lot of gardening.  Mostly weeding and prepping 2 new flower gardens.  When I go home in 2 weeks I'm going to bring back as many flowers as possible to fill in some of the gardens.  I'll try to get pictures of the gardens soon...