find a new home for llama grove

What?

You heard me. Well, we needed to re-home the groovy grove, so, step one completed. Completed-ish.

I can’t say that there will be llamas. But there is a barn. See at the right? That’s a barn, yo! Sure, it needs work, but we can probably live in it instead of the house if we ever need to. And who knows, we might need to. The house has issues that we can discuss later.

Step two. Yes, let’s move on to step two:

move in llamas ?? I can’t answer to that at the moment. There might be llamas. Isn’t that a really bad

book? We can promise chickens, and maybe a dog. The little man didn’t do so well with Walter, our neighbor’s dog, but he loves dogs. It took him a while to warm up to horses, so we might get a dog. A ratter for the barn?

But definitely chickens. Orpingtons are a must. They are very protective of their areas, they lay at least one egg a day for more of the year than most chickens, and they are bright and affectionate. At least ours have been. Maybe a luxury bird like a silkie again? tiny little egg layers are cute and this farm is smaller than the last two, so maybe mini-chickens are the answer.

The farm house is more farm house than any Llama Grove farm house before it. It’s quaint and has barn siding inside. It’s awesome and scary. Let the remod begin! We can do this! Make it awesome! Any inspirational music out there? We could use it.

Let’s rething step two. Step two will be a garden this time. Let’s get some box planters and make an area for a green house to help the lack of CSA this year. Don’t worry. If you build it, they will come. The animals, silly.

Brody, the horse is staying at Gaston Irish Sporthorses. He will remain there and be trained by the extremely competent trainer until someone comes to take him to another home, or until we build a dry barn. Whichever comes first. He’s such a big love that we know he’ll be in good hands either way.

On the up side, we’re in the middle of winter and getting 6 to 8 eggs a day from the chickens! This is great news. The weather has been rainy, but nice and warm for the time of year. The big question is without llamas and alpacas, what will we do for large-ish scale garden composting?

Cinnamon, our juvenile milk cow, has found a new home where we hope she will be very happy. She is a sweetie who loves having her cheeks scratched and really only has one motivation in life: a little treat.

Leif the guard llama is auditioning for a 4-H family this weekend. We expect that he will probably find a new home Saturday.

Brody the horse is looking for a new home as well. He’s going to go stay with our friends and horse trainer to be keep company with other horses for a while. We’ll bring him back when we are able to do so or he will find some family looking for a wonderful Georgian Grande pinto who also have time to train him.

The chicken stall is still dry, so they will be able to stay safe and dry. What’s  a life without our chickens?

The really sad thing about this is that our barn flooded again! Horses and cows are too heavy for french drains.

Because of this and our lack of time, we gave up our beef cow. He’ll have a gret time with the cows in the new pasture he’s going to live in, well, for a while. He is a Jersey Angus cross steer, so he’s not really slated for a long life.

That and a few minor barn changes got us a far way to ready for winter. It looks like all that’s left is stall bedding material purchases and we’ll be ready for the snow.

In addition to all this work, Ray worked on the horses hooves and pulled out the chainsaw to take care of branches that were overhanging driveways and fences.  There was a fence post shorting out the electric fence, allowing the llama and one of the cows to repeatedly escape that needed fixed as well. The entire outer perimeter was walked just to check for shorts as well.

Everyone was womred, since we had frost a few day s last week. Today was over 100, though. What’s up with that?

Back in the kitchen we did a pre-winter cleaning and made gallons and gallons of no-fry re-fried beans. That’ll keep us from getting too lazy and eating in town. Also, there were 7 jars of dill pickles (we always give so many away) and some really great pure made.

Work must go on, though. Today is the day we’d been dreading: cleaning day. Sure it happens all the time, but the drainage is sucking the wheelbarrow into the earth. Help, help!

Things are looking good. There are fewer runny noses and more sunlight. Let’s hear it for Spring! And we’re back on track to make the outdoors our own again.

We’ll miss the black gold the alpacas and llamas provided, but there is just as much manuer on the pile as there ever wa.

Cinnamon the cow has taken very well to her llama overloards. The llama ladies have shown a maternal side that had previously only been glimpsed when Mariah was indulgent towards alpaca cria. Now even tomboy pack llama Ursula is allowing the calf to try to suckle and none of the camelids spit at her. The horse is still routinely covered in spit, but he seems to ask for it. He’s indulgent in his own way, too. Yuri the Suri was spotted standing on his hind legs to eat from the horse’s feed dish, sharing breakfast.

Project for the weekend: Set up a chick area in the milk stall, maybe get the cupboards up in the feed area. Take time off if the weather is terrible. Get the fir trees trimmed back from stairs and garden areas if the weather is fine. Oh, and teach the darn horse some manners. He’s too smart for his own good.

2.5×1.5×1 hay feeder

 Also, the not-so-barn-cat found a home. thanks!