Things That Never End

I’ve just come in from weeding the pasture. My husband is reframing the door to the barn after extensive rewiring work. The mice ate through one of the wires that brought power from the house to the barn so now we’re down to one plastic coated strand for all the barn needs. On the east side of our property, our very generous neighbor is scraping away scrub oak with his bobcat. Next year I plan to seed a new pasture there along with a new shelter for visiting dams and additional paddocks.

As I rush into the house to prepare lunch, I see my dams contentedly chewing their cud, watching the goings on of man and machine. They have no idea how much time and effort is expended on their behalf, or how many priorities have been reshuffled to improve their habitat.  And it’s day in and day out, week after week. I’ve come to terms that there are certain things involved with alpacas and life here that never actually end.

Whether you agree or not, find it humorous or tragic, here are things that you too , may come to know as the Laws of Ad Infinitum:

Law Number One: No matter the size of your property, you will never have enough fencing.

Law Number Two:  Regardless of how many weeds you kill each year, this number will always be exceeded by the number that spring up the following.

Law Number Three: Your barn will never be absolutely finished.

Law Number Four: There will always be more mice.

Law Number Five: Replace “mice” with flies, mosquitoes, or moths in Law Number Four.

Law Number Six: The search for good hay will never end.

Law Number Seven: Laws Number One through Six will never change.

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Cria Watch Pound Cake

Last month I wrote a post Is Breeding Like Baking?. Trapped at home for over three weeks during a cria watch that eventually resulted in the birth of Thisbe (See Exhaustion Redux, The Story of Thisbe, and Thisbe at Two), I turned to comfort baking and one of my favorites: Old-Fashioned Poundcake. I received a note the other day from someone here in Colorado who wanted to know if it worked well in our high-altitude and if so, would I publish the recipe?

The answer is Yes and Yes! This is my favorite old-fashioned poundcake and it makes a tender, short crumb that rises perfectly cooked in a bundt or tube pan, even here at 7,000 feet. I’ve had this recipe since junior high school.

McCall’s Perfect Poundcake

8 egg whites (1 cup)
3 c sifted all-purpose flour
1 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
2 c sugar
8 egg yolks
2 c unsalted butter at room temperature
1 T grated orange peel
2 T grated lemon peel
2 T lemon juice
2 T water

Glaze: (optional)

1 T butter
1 pkg (1 lb) confectioner’s sugar
1 t grated lemon peel
1/3 c lemon juice

Separate eggs, turning yolks into one large bowl and whites into another. Let whites warm to room temp, about 1 hour. Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease and flour a 10″ bundt or tube pan.

Whisk sifted flour, baking powder, and 1/4 t salt together and set aside. Grate lemon and orange peel, measure and set aside. Juice the lemons, measure and set aside.

Beat egg whites with 1/4 t salt until foamy. Slowly add in 1 c sugar while beating until soft peaks form. Set aside.

Cream butter with remaining 1 c sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in yolks, then peels and lemon juice plus 2 T water until smooth. At low speed, add in flour mixture a third at a time just until combined. Then fold in egg whites just until blended. Don’t overmix.

Turn batter into pan and bake about 60 minutes in middle of oven until a cake tester inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. Cool on rack 15 minutes and turn out.

To glaze: Blend butter, sugar, lemon juice and peel until smooth. Brush over entire surface of warm cake.

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The Perfect Summer of Alpacas

Pilar and Laci enjoy summer pasture

I’m dreaming of a perfect summer here in Colorado.

In my dream, spring lasts for months instead of weeks and we enjoy cool days and gentle rainy afternoons.

The weather forecast is right for once and a week of rain is accurately predicted in early May, with temps in the high 60’s. I spread all my grass seed out the day before the rains arrive and a week later have 100% germination.

My pastures are dense and lush by end of May with nary a weed or scrub oak bud in sight.

Summer arrives the day after shearing and my animals are free of heat and cold stress.

Birthing season begins and the babies arrive without problem and within two days of their due date.

They are all fabulous girls in exactly the colors I was aiming for and they gain weight steadily.

In May, the miller moths pass by our little property and we can read with our lights on without having a swarm descend.

In July, the mosquito dunks I put out in the winter runoff actually make a difference this year and you can walk outside without taking a bath in Off!

The fly predator program I’ve diligently applied for the past two years kicks into effect and I’m fly-free in the barn, in the paddocks, in the pasture and around the poop piles.

My cats turn from dedicated couch potatoes into ferocious mousers.

The extra moisture has kept the dust down to a minimum and all summer, there’s barely any dust settling into every nook and cranny in the barn.

All my rebreedings are done locally and none of my dams or crias have to be transported. The pregnancies take on the first breeding.

We continue to get gentle rains all through Summer and into Fall, but all my fecals continue to be negative.

My pregnant dams swear off spitting at each other or decide only to do it when there are no humans around.

Crias pronk with joy when they see me approaching and run circles around me like celebrants around a maypole.

Aaaah, life is good.

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Survivor: Alpaca Edition

May is a busy month- besides the final spring shows, ending with Nationals end of May/early June, there is shearing in our part of the country and this year, something new.

For consecutive weekends in May, there have been three different open houses/marketing events south of Denver alone. All of them for the first time. All of them held by several small breeders working together. And breeders are working together in new ways. They are offering package discounts together, a choice of herdsires across all participants regardless of which dam you purchase, in addition to the usual free seminars. Some of this cross-breeder cooperation is specific to the event itself, but some breeders are working together to make these permanent options. The message is: “if you buy from one of us, you buy from all of us with all the benefits”.

I really admire creative ideas and when breeders take the initiative to drive their businesses forward…especially when someone comes up with something that makes me think, “Darn, why didn’t I think of that?”  It’s especially brave to entangle your sales with another’s, but these are tough times and it calls for extra effort.  It really reminds me of Survivor in some ways and I mean that without any derogatory tone at all. After all, the winner of Survivor achieves that distinction through careful choices and one of those choices is the nature of their alliances – who, what, and when.

Nobody gets into the alpaca business to be part of a co op or a complicated set of business relationships that require a team of attorneys. It’s reality that moves us into partnerships and co-sales. We do , however, join the community of alpaca breeders gladly and cherish the friends we make. The alpaca business, more than many other industries, is intensely relationship driven. These are not transactional sales, after all. So alliances in this industry are less about contractual obligations than where your trust lies.

So what do I think about this trend? I think it’s inevitable and promising. Especially if these efforts extend into joint efforts for hay buying, marketing, and fiber products.  For all that breeders have clamored for action from the national association (AOBA), it seems that change in this industry has always been driven from the bottom up, from a consensus of effort from multiple small breeders.

I’m not sure where I fit in this. I recognize that I have a tendency to the quiet and in an increasingly competitive market, it pays to be louder.  Will I drag myself, stumbling and protesting, out of my comfort zone or stick to what I’d prefer it to be and let it stand or fall on those tenets? No answer to that yet. Luckily, unlike Survivor, there can be more than one winner.

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The Five Phases of Cria Watch

I am on cria watch. The expectant dam is a first time mom named Aria. I purchased Aria when she was just three months old. Now, over two years later, she is finally due with her first baby. Although the years have flown by, they feel now in memory like an eternity. During cria watch, time stretches out to agonizing slowness.

I think each time I go through this for first timers, especially for the highly anticipated births, there is a set emotional pattern that occurs that takes me from emotional highs to tragic lows. I always think about Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s Five Phases of Grieving because the end phase is the same though applied to the opposite extremes of the life cycle. Here we are talking about awaiting a new life versus mourning the end of one.

You have to view the span of emotions with some humor.  To me, cria watch is the ultimate lesson that teaches us how our wills are nothing in the face of one lazy, fat cow of a dam. When it comes, it comes.

1. Anticipation

The due date is arriving. In my mind, I envision the cria in reality just as I’ve imagined it for the past eleven months. Longer even, because that image first formed in my mind when I decided on the breeding. I’ve had almost a year to refine the details and sharpen the picture, even think of names. I call the baby by name when I see it move, just to see how it feels.  I scan the mom for any sign of discomfort. Are you humming? Did the baby turn? I try to see if she is bagging with milk. This goes on for days. I clear my calendar so I can be at home until late afternoon every day.

2. Bargaining

The due date has come and past. The dam still shows no signs of discomfort. I can see the baby moving but then it settles again. She is chewing her cud like she doesn’t have a care in the world.  I tell her that when she has the baby, I’ll let her out into pasture again, where lusciously tender blades await her. She’ll get as much alfalfa as she wants to fuel her milk production. I start to contemplate the possibility that the baby may not be as I wished – if it’s a boy vs a girl. If it’s white vs. a fawn. Considering that, I start to juggle what the other expectant dams should have to compensate. As if I can rebalance the scales before they’ve even been tipped.

3. Denial

She is over a week due. I can’t believe it.  Was the breeding date accurate? Am I sure she is pregnant? If she isn’t, she has a large tumor attached to her belly and is grossly obese.  My mind flies back to if I remembered a time when she was uncomfortable from the baby turning. How long ago was that? The baby should be here.

4. Anger

I am way tired of being trapped in this house every morning and running up there every hour or so only to have my hopes dashed.  She is bagged but still no baby. I don’t believe it! Why won’t she just pop the dang thing out? I want to just yank it out or pop out from behind hay feeders to scare her into labor. Drop the baby, drop the baby! I scream at her.  My patience is at an end and I’m raging. Raging over the loss of something that I have yet to have.

5. Acceptance

It’s now two weeks past the due date. I am worn out from ranting.  I mosey up to the barn every couple of hours without expectation. I’ll be ready when it comes. I’ll try to be here. I hope only that the baby will be healthy and the delivery easy.  Maybe I’ll run some errands while I have a few free hours. What are the odds the baby will arrive while I am gone? I’ll be back in time, no big deal.

When it comes, it comes.

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How $5 Equals $15,000 in the Alpaca Business

When I was a teenager, I had an allowance of $5 a week. We weren’t allowed to work part time jobs because my parents wanted to be sure we were focused on our schoolwork.  That $5 covered buying gum, candy, ice cream, and going out weekends with friends. That $5 paid for independence and freedom of choice. I would call that a good deal.

In college, I spent a year abroad in Germany on a scholarship. I received my scholarship money of $120 once a month – it seemed like a lot of money, more than enough to meet all my needs for four weeks. But in my first month on my own, I was down to just about the equivalent of $6 in DM with one week to go and wondering how I would eat the last half of the week. Luckily, I was able to get an advance on my next month but it was a shocking reality check.

Once I graduated, I moved into my first ever apartment. The rent was $291/month. The first time I wrote a check for it, I had to include a security deposit so the total was $582. $582! My hand shook when I wrote that first check. It seemed an impossible amount.  I budgeted myself to $40/week in discretionary spending money.  What I had done with $5 a week now cost eight times that amount.

After I got married, my husband and I bought our first house. Suddenly, our single expenditures were all over three digits. It seemed that nothing cost under $100 anymore. As time passed and we moved to houses we liked better and finally to property, those expenditures expanded to 4 digits just to take care of renovations and property maintenance. My monthly credit card charges expanded to almost equal that of the mortgage.

Life seemed to get more expensive as it got more complicated – or was it the other way around?

Nothing, however, makes me think more about that $5 allowance than the transactions that are part of being an alpaca breeder. Even as we bemoan the drop in alpaca prices with the economy, we must realize we are still talking about thousands of dollars. At an auction, these amounts are spent at the drop of a hat or to be more accurate, the raising of one little finger detected under the laser vision of an auctioneer spotter.  Is it crazy for me to think it would be a huge coup to purchase an animal I want at a mere $15,000 this week and then feel crippled the following week by having to pay $3,000 for a new well pump? How did water I need today become less worthy of my hard-earned dollars than an animal that only has a promise of return tomorrow? Why do I grumble over my increased grocery bills but gladly fork over top dollar for beautiful second cutting orchard hay? At what point did the needs of my alpacas supersede my own?

Even though it was thirty odd years ago, I still remember the feeling of receiving that crisp new $5 bill every week. Each bill represented a week of endless possibilities. My puny $5 to be spent purely on things I wanted, free of mandate. Perhaps that’s the unquantifiable value in the transactions that are routine in the alpaca business. We want an animal, we want to provide them with the best, we want to produce the best animals out there, we want to dabble in creation and succeed, we want to declare ourselves as entrepreneurs and subject to no one. I have to have a water pump, I have to buy groceries. Mandated, not desired.

When does $5 equal $15,000? When it gives me the same feeling as buying my own candy bars did years past, with that first toothsome bite of freedom and empowerment. And though I may long for the simplicity of long ago, as an adult I realize the challenges have to come with greater risk and cost to reap the rewards that will yield the same satisfaction as that measly bar of chocolate. After some consideration – it’s still a good deal.

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