Year: 2022

Staycation 70% complete

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Well the weekend is over and I did get some stuff done. It feels like I am not getting anything done sometimes but that really isn’t the case and I do know that. There is so much to do! I took it pretty easy on Saturday. I stained the upstairs bathroom door. I do need to get that done! This was the single reason for taking some time off, so it does need to get completed. I transplanted some of my house plants I had rooted from starts and they were ready for the soil. I hit the $1 store, now $1.25 store, and cleaned out their four inch pots. So I now have 24 new pots for houseplants. I like to give the plants out at Christmas as gifts to my staff but it takes me all year to get the plants ready. I am going to start African Violets next. I want to get about ten more plants going. I have several of the crawling cactus plants growing. I may even try a Christmas cactus replication. I have never tried to get a start going from one before.

Sarah had posted the old WW2 dog tag maker we had for sale online. Our only taker was a gentleman from the Air Museum in Pendleton. They want to recondition it and use it at their museum to make dog tags for kids. After they left I talked with Annmarie and we just donated it to the museum. On Sunday two old guys came out to pick it up. I had sworn I would not move it after wrestling it up to the second story many years ago. It was easier to get down than up and I used the tractor to lift it into the back of their pickup. So it now has a new home and the bedroom has some unused wall space!

I went out Saturday and started working on filling in the culvert in field #4b. I was able to get one side of the culvert done enough I could drive up to the top and dump soil over to the other side. As I was was stealing soil it dawned on me that I should turn this flat spot into a hay storage area! The cows will be fed up here and the hay is easier to feed if it is right there. So we will be working on this also. It just needs a simple fence to keep the cows away from the hay.

I had my lifelong dreams crushed over the weekend. I have wanted peacocks for ever since we moved out to the farm. The reason we have not gotten them is the noise but I was hopeful that I could eventually overcome this obstacle. When I went to get the alpaca there were a bunch of peacocks. I spotted 8 males and they were amazing! The alpaca owners lived right next to this spot. I happen to mention how amazing they were. It turns out they are feral and have been loose for over 50 years. They are incredibly destructive! I had no idea. After hearing many horror stories I will not be getting peacocks. A lifelong goal dropped.

On Sunday, I spent even more time on the tractor moving dirt. I even went up the road to pick rocks and dump off soil. There is one spot in the dirt road that slants severely to the downhill side and this winter when it was wet the tractor almost slid off the road several times. I took dirt down to try and level off the road some. I was able to move it a few more inches level than it was but I need about another ten inches to truly make it safe! This meant I had to load rocks into the bucket to take back to the culvert. I need to line the entrance and exit with rocks to help harden it and to keep the dirt in place. I managed to get about 20% completed and will need to keep dragging rocks back. I need a little more dirt on the far side but it can now be driven over by a vehicle and trailer. Once it all settles down I will sprinkle it with some gravel in late summer.

I did go inside and measure the bathroom closet openings and now have dimensions for the frames. I have one frame all cut and sanded. I just need to assemble it now. We are going to cover the frames with tapestry a good friend of ours left to us. The quail all over the farm now! We see them multiple times a day in our front yard and back yard. They are starting to break up into smaller groups so hopefully they will start laying eggs soon.

Staycation 47% completed

Steve HardinLeave a comment

I keep thinking I am not getting things done but the blog helps keep me on track, if nothing else I can see that things are actually getting done. First thing Thursday morning I hung the corner shelf I made earlier in the week. The brackets came with a cute little 4” level to make sure you hung the shelf correctly. That afternoon the new cables and cable protectors arrived and Sarah and I put the router up onto the shelf. The 90 degree data cable ends really helped the cable stay next to the wall. I had to put an extension cord up to the shelf and plug in the two things behind the router. I was afraid you could tell but it is fairly invisible. This also gives us a better wifi signal throughout the house as the transmitter is higher up on the wall. There was only a small amount of disagreement. We basically agreed to disagree as neither one of us was listening or communicating effectively. This summer when the child and foreign child are home I am going to be spending a lot of time outside. I believe this is the wife’s number one complaint! Our old foreign exchange student, Monica is going to spend the entire summer with us. She is out of college for the summer and will be getting some experience on our farm with various animals. She also wants to learn how to drive a stick shift car. I offered to teach her how to drive the tractors but she was not as impressed by that as she had spent last year driving a skidsteer in a dairy setting. She has been working out so I see a lot of rock wall work getting done this summer.

When I went out to let everyone out of the barn I spent an hour digging straw and making sure we could open various gates. I used our new lightweight panels and built a run that would funnel the sheep to the back of the barn, so we could then run them through the chute and sort them. It was nice to be able to just put the panels on top of the straw and not have to dig down 18” to make the panels fit. Sarah and I were going to come out and sort off the female lambs so the new ram could not get them pregnant. The problem with this is no one likes being separated from their mother and they throw a continuously loud fit for several days over it. But it needs to happen as the sheep can technically get pregnant at 3 months old. We have never had any under 6 months old get pregnant but after 6 months all bets are off. We needed to count lambs also so we know how many we can sell.

I had spaghetti sauce on the stovetop. I use the melting burner to keep a really low heat on the pot. The problem with this is the sauce was not cooking down very fast and since Sarah and I were headed out to sort sheep at 1500 I figured I could turn up the burner and when we were done in an hour it would be ready for the final adjustment before dinner at 1700. I should have known better. It took us 135 minutes to get the sheep sorted! Annmarie came home around 1700 and found out that the sauce had just started to burn on the bottom of the pan. She was able to transfer it to a new pot, add a cup of water and finish it off. It tasted very good.

Sarah and I counted 42 lambs. It was supposed to be 20 boys, 22 girls, instead we had 21/21. I had to look at the online birth record and we tagged one of the girls with a boy tag because we ran out of tags, two of the boy lambs had managed to rip out their ear tags. One of the calmer ewes had a big bubble on the left side of her face. Sarah had sent me a picture so I brought a scalpel out to the barn. It is most likely an abscess and will need to be lanced and cleaned. The baby girls were crazy and kept ramming into the sorting chute and almost managed to jump back into the pen with the herd several times. We had to put up a second wall to keep them away. We pinned the face bulging ewe into the chute and it was an abscess, I cut about a 1.5” long horizontal incision and then squeezed out all the pus. It was really thick and would not have been easy for her body to get rid of it. I then cleaned it out and put some blue skin treatment on it. Unfortunately the skin treatment stains everything it touches and the ewe had started to swing her head around by this time and get it all over Sarah and I. Sarah got it the worst. We went inside to crow about our success and the first thing Annmarie asks us is why we did not sort off the boy lambs also? This way the ewes would get a break from making milk and burning so many calories and could maybe put on some weight. As there was no logical reason for us not doing this Sarah and I were kind of dumbstruck. Annmarie and I will be sorting them again next week.

On Thursday I was given the contact information for some people in the Hermiston area that were trying to sell their three alpaca who are only one year old. So I called them Friday morning and after morning chores I hooked up the stock trailer and went to Hermiston. I got all three intact boys, brothers, for $280. We now have 12 alpaca and will not be buying any more for years! They live 20 years and we will lose several in the next 1-2 years as they are just old.

The custom wood mill called Friday afternoon and said they wanted to cut the black walnut we had dropped off. I hooked up to the flat bed trailer, picked up Mr Professional and went to the custom cut mill. We talked about the pieces and how wide to cut them. The mill can only cut 24” piece but by the time you clear the edges we ended up with a solid 20” piece. The wood has so many colors! I was surprised at the variety of colors in it. In two hours they were only able to cut 1/3 pieces. On Monday I will go and get the other two pieces cut. We came out to the farm, cleared a spot in the old chicken coop, cleaned off all the sawdust and then unloaded it. Those nine foot pieces 3” thick weigh almost 200#. Once it was stacked we banded it together. It took a while to get the hang of the bander. I had never used one before. I did find a way to use the OSB sheets we have stacked out in the machine shed. We are going to put up black plastic to keep out moisture and light and hold it pinned up against the chicken wire to keep the rain out of the building. The building is about 1/3 full of wood. The OSB was $5/sheet as it was scrap so its perfect. I will keep each end open so the wind can still move through for circulation.

Staycation 29% completed

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Well the Staycation is going well. I am getting stuff done but as always it seems to take forever. This is why men don’t like to finish stuff. The last 10% of a job takes up about 30% of the total time so it feels like you are just not getting stuff done! Take the door stripping for instance. I had to set up a work area where it is a temperature controlled environment. I had to then apply the first coat of stripper, wait about 16 hours then scrape it clean. I then had to reapply the stripper, wait for another 18 hours and then scrape it off, scrape all of the paint off with plastic scraper, brass brush and pickup all the goop off of the door. A pocket knife was required to clean the rounded edges and corners. I also had poor removal on the edges of the door so a pocket knife was utilized liberally to clean it up. I then used paper towels to get all of the gunk off the door then used mineral spirits to do the final cleanup on the door, wait another day for door to dry out. Now it is ready for some light stain and a coat of sealant. I have been staring at the door frame which of course has paint on it also. I am thinking about just taping and plastic and rags on ground then applying paint stripper. I have a paste so it should hold well but it is going to smell and be messy. Using the breeze porch I have windows open and we have the upstairs bathroom fan on for any little smell that gets inside the house. If I do the doorway it is going to smell, I do use the citrus based stuff and that has the least offensive smell. This requires a plan consult with the wife to see what she wants to do and what she will tolerate to get it. All of this takes time, I bet we have about $50 in supplies and about 7 hours into it. The problem is the doors are original to the farm so they are not getting replaced and they are solid wood five panel doors, with the current price of wood, building materials and old style door knobs I would bet all of it combined would cost about $1k/door. So I will be taking down each door one at a time and stripping them. I am not buying six new doors. Those doors will have no character! Annmarie will be making a plaque of the weird instructions that were written on the back of the door. We still don’t know what they are for or the exact location. I think it is for the septic tank location but the directions are pretty convoluted for something that is just off the front porch. Once I have the door reinstalled we will mount the handwritten instructions that she burns onto a wood plaque in the same location they were prior to the door reclamation.

I have been looking at the stuff that needs done outside but it just keeps raining every 2-3 days. We have had 42/100” of rain the last seven days and have had 1.2” for the month of March so far. So it never quite dries out enough to do anything. I did manage to drag the driveway yesterday for about 90 minutes. I was looking at it today, after multiple cars have driven on it and I will need to drag it again for about 120 minutes and I need to tear up the first 2-3” of it to really work the pot holes out and to get it so it will be smooth. What I really need is a roller! I laugh every time I say that, there is always something I don’t have but honestly, I have exactly what is minimally necessary to do everything I could want on the farm, the rest would be extraneous but helpful. The last big purchase was the snow plow. I realize it may seem extravagant but getting trapped in by the snow is no fun. Using the blade I could just make a run up and down the driveway 1-3 times during the storm and would not have to mess with huge mounds of snow at the end of the storm.

We have been working on a plan to find a home for the chest I bought. I violated the ”must have a spot first” rule we have on furniture buying. So we decided on moving out the TV stand/cabinet that we never really use except for the horizontal surface. To do that we needed a high shelf to put the router/wireless transmitter on. We decided that higher was better to increase our wireless signal inside the house. I have been working on a live edge shelf for that for two days. I am using the maple we have and of course it has a bow in the wood and it’s maple. I would rather work with black walnut. I of course do not have a planer set up and now I am going to convert the shop area into an office and not a wood shop so I have a 240V 16” planer and 8” 240V edger for sale. Neither of which have ever been ran because I never wired up a 240V plug. But that is a longer story and ends with ”I needed it”, all wives will understand. This caused me to use a hand sander, for a long time. I would have used my big hand belt sander but alas, I could not find it. I should probably add clean up the old house to my list of chores while on staycation but I need to get things done inside the house first. Again, anything is possible with 40 grit sandpaper and lots of time. I got so tired of sanding I actually removed the rust from a large hand planer and sharped the blade on a stone and used it to cut down some of the material. It was faster than the sander. The sanding took me about 4-5 hours to make one small shelf and my hand grip was so shot that I had a hard time holding a pen afterwards. Again, I am on staycation so time is an easy commodity to spend and fairly cheap at this point. Once the old TV stand is moved out to the old house, which really needs cleaned out now, then there will be a spot for the new trunk I just bought!!

I have yet to take a nap. I do feel that at least one nap is necessary for this to truly be called a staycation but I have not figured out how to squeeze it in yet. The dogs are annoying me as they keep running around the side of the house and eating the cat food. I need that fence installed in the side yard to stop them. But since the area is not yet finished I need to install a six foot gate so I can still drive the tractor through. The faucet near the tree we cut down has a leak so that means digging a 3×4 foot hole four feet deep and it will make a mess. I am waiting on warmer weather for that endeavor. I have seen some nice hammocks for sale on the internet and they do look very appealing. In five years you will be able to tie onto the power pole and the tree in our front yard, although as I type that out it doesn’t sound like that great of an idea.

We are down to 28 chickens, I just counted yesterday. I have had a few die so I do a recount every few months to make sure I can enter the correct numbers into my chicken spreadsheet. I will be doing the 2021 numbers soon. I need them for tax purposes. I am still selling eggs for $4/doz but the price of feed has not jumped yet. Once it jumps I will have to go to $5/doz to cover feed expenses. If I actually wanted to make any real money other than free eggs I would need to sell them for about $8/dozen, at that price I might make $1000/year.

I have been doing a few things, I mowed the lawn with the sheep! Our old alpaca got in on the action also, he wanted out a couple of hours later. The bunny is back or most likely is now active enough I can see him almost every day. So far the owls have not managed to eat it. We have a bald eagle that now flies by the house every few days. I have seen it repeatedly, it is no longer a one off. We get them occasionally as they are passing through but this one is staying somewhere. I have even started seeing the rock chucks out on the hillside. They have not been consistent enough to start trying to shoot them yet but as it warms up they will start spending more time outside. They are tearing up my rock cribs by digging underneath them so they need to go. The quail will hopefully multiply, they are running around everywhere and I think we managed to get at least 80 though the winter so hopefully that means we can have a few hundred this fall!

Staycation started

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Well it’s official, I am on vacation at home for the next 17 days. I had to take the first batch of cows in on Friday morning. Unfortunately, Annmarie and I had a dinner to attend Thursday evening. So I was outside in the dark trying to move animals. We have it set up now so you can push animals through the orchard then through our front yard into the corral. This is infinitely more preferable to just letting them out into the area surrounding our houses. They can run all over and with the buildings and piles of stuff all around it makes herding them very difficult.

The two new alpaca were still in the orchard so I ”let” them out. This sounds easy but they did not want to go out the gate and kept running past the open gate. I did this several times then went out the open gate and tried to drive two of our main herd alpacas into the orchard. This was another abysmal failure. I had a head lamp on and I had a bright flash light that I would shine on the gate opening. I went back into the orchard muttering to the alpaca that they needed to comply or else I was going to have to go get the border collie, Mouse. They have not been exposed to the dogs except through the fence and I did want the conditions to be better before relationships get established. Eventually, with running back and forth I managed to get them to go through the gate, then latched it. I went down to pasture #5a which borders the orchard, latched the gate that goes out into the main grazing area and opened the gate into the orchard. The cows usually come in at night and hang out near my mother-in-law’s house and they were so I did not have to go all the way down to the school house and try and run them back. Again, the cows did not want to go through the gate. The green tag cow kept breaking and running behind me. This reminded me of why we are getting rid of her, she is so painful to deal with on multiple levels. After much effort on my part I was able to get the cows into the orchard. There was no way I was going to get them through the four foot gate, into our front yard then into the corral alone. I opted to go get some help that is used to my working animals language. Mouse, came out with me! It is hard to see a black and white border collie in the dark so we have some collar hanging bobs that strobe white. We used to use them when letting the dogs out to potty at night. They would pretend they could not hear us because we could not see them. The lights stopped that nonsense. I found one that still worked and put it on Mouse. This way I could see where the dog was and only had to worry about finding the cows with the flashlight. It was rough going initially. Mouse still thinks a problem should be dealt with head on hence his propensity for straight lines. Eventually with enough yelling and trial and error we established an effective communication method that allowed us both to kinda get what we wanted. Once we had the cows into the corral area they ran back behind the barn. Unfortunately, all of our cows happened to be in the barn lot and everyone started raising a ruckus and I was afraid the four would go through the fence to join the herd. Mouse and I managed to dissuade this desire and got them locked into the corral area. Now when I came out in the morning and backed the trailer up to the corral the cows can just be encouraged to load up.

The plan worked! I had no trouble getting the cows loaded and taken in to the abbotoir. That was the first four, I will take the last three in for their final destination in a couple of weeks. This is good because yesterday morning I went to pull the pickup over to the flat bed trailer and the pickup would not start, totally dead! Even though I had all the spare parts and tools with me on our Salem trip in case we got stranded this would have been bad. The last time I was stranded with Annmarie in the vehicle we bought a new pickup. She doesn’t like hanging out on the roadside. The pickup just needs some TLC which it will get as soon as I drop off the last three. Mr Professional got the new battery connection installed, unfortunately the old one was glued on and it took some extra tools to get it off the battery terminal without injuring the battery. I drove right over and we hooked up the flatbed trailer. While he worked on the battery I worked to clean up the seeder/fertilizer thrower. I used wire brush grinder to remove and smooth out all of the rust. I had to clean and adjust the window doors and scrape off the old caked on grease. I ended up breaking off one of the grease zerks trying to tighten it and had to use an easy out tool to remove it. Mr Professional put it on the tractor and greased it all up while I was off buying farm supplies.

We had a long discussion about needed supplies and since the price of fuel, spray, fertilizer and seed has jumped dramatically this last three weeks we felt it was best to get it all now. I have to say that I had plans to hold off on some of these items as I was going to purchase them over the entire year. I went to Pendleton and bought railroad ties (entire bundle)- they should be out of them by the end of this week. I bought the very last roll of smooth wire in the store. I bought some woven wire, I only needed one roll but bought two more just in case. I bought enough T posts to redo the fence down by four corners. The gate price had jumped over 20% already so I bought that also. We looked at chemicals to spray on the farm and I picked up the rest I would need for the whole year. I got the tighteners needed for the new fence on four corners. Today I just gave up and bought the ballast box I need for the kubota when using the forks. I also bought another quick hitch category 1 hitch for the Kubota. I bought a chain holder for the tractor also and some bushings for the category one hitch that lets me get away from the pins. I got a speed handle for the Kubota also, they are super nice and the one on the Mistress has been amazing. I just ordered all the lights for the machine shed. Luckily, I already ordered the parts for the baler and now just need to install them.

Unfortunately, this dramatic rise in price of everything means we will be doing a bunch of maintenance on all the equipment. We are going to rewire the flat bed trailer and the horse trailer. I purchased those supplies this weekend also. The fuel tank has been emptied so now I can get it filled with diesel, if only I had done it three weeks ago…

Mr Professional went out and spread about 35# of grass seed onto a few thin spots on field #1. We had a nice light rain last night 8/100” so the seed should be wet and now we just need some warm weather. I need about 5-7 days with no rain and I can plant the last 2 acre field with grass seed and the planting will be done until fall.

I have all the stuff to strip and stain the upstairs doors. But I need to empty off the breeze porch first, tomorrow the child and I will be going through the entire house and removing the giveaway. We may even add to the giveaway pile! My goal is to thin everything pretty hard. I went through two kitchen cupboards today and removed a pile of stuff.

Annmarie found the plans for our future outdoor dining area. We just need to find a used grain bin for sale to tear down and use the components. We also looked at my retirement projects using a welder and a lot of horse shoes! Currently, I think I may be able to make the chicken.

Alpaca addition

Steve HardinLeave a comment

We had a thought a couple of weeks ago about adding some more alpaca to our herd. This does require us to be a little selective as we only want males and preferably only unneutered males. This is not because we like or need stud animals, they must merely have the hormones necessary to survive and maintain a spot in the all male testosterone laden fight club. On the plus side they are cheap to buy as they tend to cause problems. So our fiscal requirements match our survival needs and everyone wins. I had reached out to an alpaca farm and gotten a reply and unbeknownst to me, Annmarie had reached out. I got sick last week and gave up on my lead, Annmarie kept after hers as she was going to Salem on Friday already for an event so figured she would be in the area. She found two young alpaca, 3 & 5 years old two hours south of Salem. I merely needed to go with her, drive the pickup, pull the four horse trailer and then drive four hours first thing Saturday morning to go pickup the alpaca in question.

This is where things get a little complicated. What she did not know was that the pickup is dirty, its a farm rig, I had recently taken all of the trash out and emptied it out mostly, but it is not very clean. It is still has straw in the cab from last years haying season. I have had a few issues with the pickup and had been hinting that it may need some work on it. My hints meant that the ABS light is on all of the time now. I am pretty sure its activated all of the time also, one must be careful when using the brakes. The turn signals keep blowing a fuse. The fuse problem seems to only be an issue when a trailer is plugged into the pickup. There is something going on with the transmission. It slips randomly when shifting gears. Luckily, it doesn’t slip once the gear has been engaged but it can take several tries to get it in gear. As an added bonus it is very easy to calculate how many miles to the gallon the pickup gets, its 10 MPG, no matter what, loaded,unloaded, or pulling a trailer it is always 10 MPG. Now this is a bonus as the fuel gage doesn’t work properly. You cannot tell when the last 1/4 tank is getting used up. To further complicate things the positive battery terminal connection keeps getting corroded. This is causing the pickup to not want to start, it feels like the vehicle will not start. The act of turning the key is accompanied by a small prayer and some constant verbal encouragement to get the vehicle to start. The trailer has non working lights, non working brakes and the spare tire has a flat. All in all, pretty standard farm equipment.

I decided that I should try and moderate some of the issues so I cleaned out the passenger side of pickup and back seat. I filled the pickup fuel tank before we left. I had the spare tire on the trailer repaired, stem valve had a leak, and I purchased that metallic reflector tape and placed it all over the horse trailer, on the back and both sides. I also made sure to buy a tire iron as I forgot one when I left the house. I also made sure that I had the new battery terminal part and two crescent wrenches and a standard screwdriver in case I had to tear it apart and replace it because the pickup would not start. I had enough time to fix it in the parking lot while I was waiting for Annmarie to finish teaching but I was unsure what would happen if I disconnected power to everything. I knew what the problems going into the trip were so I did not want to add in any unknowns, this sounded like a totally logical statement at the time.

Once we headed out and got on the freeway it occurred to me that I should have put 2/3 yard of gravel in the pickup bed. Since it gets 10 MPG no matter what the gravel would have helped stabilize the back end of the pickup. The trailer does pull well but hitting rough patches of road is not super fun. I kept it around 65 MPH the entire trip. I also used the cruise control sparingly. I didn’t like the way it towed when I did not have my foot on the gas. Besides, the cruise control failed to set 30 miles from Pendleton when I finally tried to use it on the way home. This is a new thing so I am unsure why this is occurring and it could have just been a one off problem because some times the cruise control buttons can be very finicky.

After the first stop for fuel and the strained sound of a starter barely getting enough juice to turn over I tried very hard not to shut the engine off until we made it to the hotel in Salem. Luckily, they had a very nice large parking area in the rear of the hotel for large vehicles. Now mind you I had to take everything out of the pickup that I did not want stolen as the key does not fit the locks. If the doors get locked I cannot get into the pickup. I overcome this small obstacle by leaving the rear sliding windows unlatched so if needed I can pry them apart with a knife and crawl inside and unlock the doors. Oh and the passenger window can only be lowered and raised by the controls on the passenger door. The ones on the driver door no longer work to control the passenger side. I left some food and water in the pickup in case any homeless explored the vehicle at night. Nothing was taken or removed during our stay in the hotel. I dropped off Annmarie at her event and headed two hours south to get the new alpaca. At the rest stop I barely got the pickup started. So when I had to stop for fuel I bought two bottles of Coke. The pickup battery and I split one. I popped the hood and started to pour small amounts of Coke on the battery terminals in the hope that I could eat up some of the corrosion and the connection would improve. I am unsure if this is the reason that the ”GEN” light kept popping up intermittently as I was driving down the highway. I did this twice on the drive back to pickup Annmarie and when we stopped for fuel in Salem before heading home the pickup started up like there had never been any problem. Thank you Coca Cola!

We discussed the option of buying a new pickup on the drive home. Honestly, I am not real enthusiastic at the proposal. I want to take our current pickup in and get a quote on fixing the ABS, GEN, transmission issue and then seeing if I can get another 60k miles out of it. We only have 161K miles on it and got it around 90K. I am putting less than 10K miles on it annually. We are going to see what the final repair quote is going to be before we make a final determination.

We made it home with out a ticket or a breakdown! Go Farm truck!

The two new alpaca are named Padre and Mad Max. Mad Max is the light colored one and every time you touch him he makes disparaging noises at you. It sounds like he is grumbling nonstop. The Padre is very relaxed and easy going. We let them loose in the orchard field so that they would have a fence separating them from the other alpaca. This morning when we looked out everyone was gathered at the fence line talking to each other. We figure we will let them stay in the pen for a week with just the two of them then we will introduce 2-3 of our old herd and then let them all stay together for another week then we will let them all hang out. The previous owners gave us a book on alpaca’s that Annmarie skimmed on the drive home. Live and let live is our motto and high plains desert living is what they are used to and what they are going to get at our house. They are super soft compared to our animals so we are excited to see what the fiber will be like.