Happy Earth Day

As I was outside today enjoying Earth Day, I started to think about how far my husband and I have come being green.  When we decided to become Alpaca ranchers and move to the country, we said that we would live a "greener" lifestyle and be good stewards of the land.

Compost Piles

Household Compost

As I took out our household compost to the compost piles, I was noticing everything that we have accomplished in becoming green.  We compost all of the alpaca and goats poo, plus all of the old hay and straw. We then use it in our garden and in our raised beds.

Raised Bed

Garden

As you can see in the pictures that we have lettuce growing in an old claw footed bathtub inside of our greenhouse, along with some cilantro and other seeds that we are starting for our garden. Our greenhouse was made by my husband for ice fishing.  We no longer use it for ice fishing, so we put it to use being a small greenhouse this spring.

Seed starting

Door to greenhouse

Greenhouse

Raising Alpacas is also green. They are good to the land.  They have padded feet, which does not destroy the pastures. They also do not pull the roots up while grazing. They nibble down to the ground and move on.

Alpacas Grazing

We have chickens that free range, eat the bad bugs and spread their natural fertilizer in the pastures. My husband built two chicken coops, one out of straw bales and one from used pallets.  He then covered the pallet building with the blue tarps that they use to store the boats under here in the Great Lakes during the winter. My husband has built a dog house, a tool shed and three goat boxes with old pallets. He used the untreated pallets which are chemical free and safe for the animals.

When we built our house, we installed a corn boiler for heat. We now use a renewable resource (no fossil fuels) for heat and purchase the corn from our farmer neighbors. We also have burned cherry pits and wood pellets.

In the house we purchased new appliances with the high energy efficiency.  I have a washer and dryer, but prefer to use the clothes line for drying the clothes.

We have all CFL light bulbs in the house. We turn off lights as we leave the room. We recycle all of our garbage and take the recyclables to our local transfer station.  We might have one bag of actual garbage per month. That is amazing for us as I remember we use to put out two garbage cans weekly, when we lived in town. Our next project is to run our own bio-diesel fuel in our farm truck.

We do use some solar for our electric fences for the pastures.  We only use head lamps at night when doing chores in the dark. We also have been investigating wind, besides solar power for generating our power.

I also thought about the process that I use to make my handmade Alpaca products.  I spin my yarn on a wheel that I peddle with my feet, knit with my hand knitting needles and weave by hand on floor looms, all of it powered by me!

I really am living a greener lifestyle and enjoy doing it. I want my grandchildren and great grandchildren to be able to enjoy this planet and all of it's natural resources and beauty just as I have.

I'm very proud of how far my husband and I have come in preserving our planet.

Are you helping to preserve our planet?

Spring is in the Air

It is hard to believe that it is spring already.  We have had some wild weather here in northeast Michigan. It is hard for us not to blog and talk about record breaking weather.  I'm a little late in blogging about the winter storm that we experienced on Sat. March 3rd. We had no power for 12 hours during the storm, but was lucky enough to get ours restored compared to others in the area that were without power for days.

Our Road

Pasture

Digging out the next day

As you can see in the above pictures, it was a very wet heavy snow. We had at least 18 inches more on top of what we had gotten on Leap Day.  It took my husband hours to plow us out on his tractor. It was very beautiful outside the day after the storm as you can see in the above picture.

Now we have gone from the beautiful winter scene above to mud season here at the ranch. We have been experiencing some very summer like temps. We are running 30 to 40 degrees above our average temperature for this time of year, breaking all kinds of records.  All of that snow melted in two days.  We live on the Ocqueoc River and the alpacas pastures and our property are a part of that watershed.  This means that the open farm fields 3 miles west of our property melted snow runs through our property down to the river.

Water in pastures

Driveway to barnyard

Girls Pen

Other signs that spring is here are the return of all of the song birds, predator birds and of course the Turkey Vultures. I happened to get a picture of one sitting on this old homestead.

Turkey Vulture

Of course spring also means BABIES here on the ranch. Eva our dairy goat is the first one due any day. Look at the girth on this gal. I'm thinking she is going to have triplets again.

Eva

I also wanted to share one more picture for this post. I happened to get a good picture of the moon during the day. It was not quite full, but it sure was big and beautiful.

Moon in the daylight!

I will be posting more pictures on our facebook page. Make sure to like us if you haven't already.
Happy Spring everyone!

Leap Day Snow & Ice Storm

I know we have had a mild winter here in North East Michigan, but I think Mother Nature is now trying to play "catch up".  We had snow and freezing rain here yesterday. We now have to "dig out" the alpaca pens so they will be able to walk  and pronk. We have some hard pack snow drifts as you can see in this picture by one of the chicken coops.

Snow Drift

The alpacas do not mind snow, they just don't like deep snow as it is hard for them to walk in.

A few of the girls

 Guys

As you can see they will cush in the snow and chew their cud. These guys are very content.

Our Maremma guard dogs fair very well in the snow. Meadow loves to sit on top of the snow piles to better watch the barnyard during the day. We have to tie her up in the daytime, as she will not let the mail person drive down our private road to deliver our mail. She will actually sit in the middle of the road and bark at the cars to stop them. We have tried and tried to get her to stop doing this, but she thinks it's part of her job to protect the alpacas, goats and our property.

Meadow

Pan doesn't mind the snow either. Here is a picture of him being the "gate guardian".

Pan

I'm not complaining though as my heart goes out to all of those people who live in the south, where they had those terrible tornadoes yesterday.

Mother nature can paint a beautiful picture.

Well the good news about all of this, is that we should not have another leap year storm for at least 4 more years!  :)

Is there a rehab for an Alpaca?

We have an alpaca at the ranch who is quite the clown. His name is Thing. He can be very entertaining.

Thing the chicken grain addict

He loves chicken feed so much, that when I walk into the Alpaca's pen to feed the chickens, I have to have my husband fend off Thing. He will follow me and try to get his head into the bucket to eat all of the chicken grain.

Thing with his head in the bucket of grain!

Gary removing the bucket.

If Thing can't get his head into the bucket then he tries plan B. He gets his head into the chicken coop thru the opening that the chickens use  to come and go outside.

Things rear

There is nothing more funny than for me to be in the chicken coop feeding the chickens and collecting the eggs to see this!

Thing looking for chicken grain.

Once he gets his fix for the day, then he just wanders off to eat hay with the rest of the guys. He may be a pain to us at chore time, but we still love him.

Wintertime is here

Winter did finally arrive here in Northern MI. It has been a very strange winter. Above average temps and little snow. Gary & I were enjoying it as far as working outside and doing the chores. But it finally turned into winter with a big bang. We had a snowstorm a couple of days ago that dumped on us here locally about 14 inches and now it has been snowing every day since the storm. We also have been experiencing very cold temps, with wind chills below 0 at times. It is a good thing the Alpacas have their nice warm fleece to keep them warm.

Qtip

I do so much love their soft and silky fiber.  You might be interested in some facts about Alpaca fiber based on a study by the Alpaca Owners & Breeders Association:

 1. Alpaca is flame resistant, meeting the standards of the US Consumer Product Safety Commission's rigid testing specifications as a Class 1 fiber for use in clothing and furnishings.

2. Alpaca is resistant to external water penetration like wool, but can slowly wick away perspiration because of its unique ability to act like cotton in moisture regain. These factors are what makes alpaca feel lighter than wool, but warmer than cotton in cool, damp conditions.

3. Alpaca is water resistant, making spills easy to clean up before water saturates the fiber allowing stains to develop. It is also adsorbent to oils, meaning that the oils do not penetrate the fibers, but merely cling to the fiber for easy cleaning without harsh chemicals.

4. Alpaca is free of lanolin, and thus can be processed without the need for high temperatures or harsh chemicals in washing.

5. Alpaca is a natural renewable fiber with a wide range of applications.

There are of course many more wonderful facts about Alpaca's fiber. You can read more here at Wikipedia about Alpaca Fiber and it's wonderful benefits.

Thumper with snow on his nose.

White Cria is Snowflake

 The girl alpacas staying nice & warm.  The standing white alpaca is our spring cria Snowflake. Baby Alpaca Fiber is the ultimate softest fiber. I just love it.  Enjoy the winter and stay warm.

A dogfight at the ranch

Well now that the holidays are behind us and it is a New Year, one of my resolutions is to post more on the blog. My personal life became very busy last year and I just didn't have the time to post like I wanted. So here is the first post for 2012.

You remember the rescue dog Chloe that we adopted last February? 

Chloe

She has been growing like a weed. She has gained 19 lbs since she has been here. She now weighs 98 lbs. She is very loveable with my husband and myself.  Her job here at the ranch is to guard our goats and  the house.  She takes her job seriously and loves it.  The only problem we have is that she does not like our other dogs. Of all the dogs that we have, she only likes Pan. (I don't blame her as he is a good looking boy). 

Pan

Well just the other day, Meadow our other female Maremma was here at the house.

Meadow

We were outside doing the chores and  Meadow and Pan came to visit and walk to the barnyard with us. Meadow was just sitting and paying no attention to Chloe. All of sudden I look over just as Chloe leaps onto Meadow and grabs her in the back of the neck. Chloe had broken her lead that we had her on.  She decided to defend her territory from Meadow.  Chloe didn't care about Pan, just Meadow.  We were fortunate to be outside and to be able to break them up by pulling on their tails. It causes them to release the grip that they have on each other.  But dog fights are scary as they make a lot of noise and there was some yelping going on. I do not like dog fights. After separating them and putting them on leashes, we examined each dog. Meadow had a little blood from her ear, but not a puncture wound.  We did not find anything on Chloe.  I treated Meadow's ear for a few days, cleaning it and putting some antibiotic cream on it. It healed up nicely.  Tuesday morning when we went outside to do the chores, we noticed that Chloe had some blood stains on her side. We examined her and found a large abscess under her fur that she had been licking. So a call to the vet and an appointment was made. When we took her in to the vet, we placed a muzzle on her, as she does not like our vet or any other male strangers in the vet's office.  Our vet examined her and yes he did find a very small puncture wound above the abscess.  Dogs mouths are full of bacteria so a puncture wound should always be treated with antibiotics.The other problem was Chloe licking it and not allowing it to heal.  Our vet suggested that we place a t-shirt on her to keep her from licking. He gave us antibiotics for Chloe and we wash the abscess daily and place some other medicated cream on it. Then we put her t-shirt on and duck tape it to her back. This way she can't lick the abscess.  It is working and starting to heal.  Below is a picture of Chloe wearing her shirt. I think she looks cute in the color Fushia. She even smiled for the camera.

Chloe dressed in pink.

Happy Holidays from all of us

Chloe, Molly, Pan, Bailey, Meadow, & Furio

Amanda & the Alpacas

Goats & Chickens