Joy popped out another boy today. Like her last two, he’s big, fully done, and ready to go. Tearing around the paddock already at a hour old. Here is Max, Yvonne’s 1/4 Clydie, welcoming the newcomer:

No, Max is not wearing a muzzle to keep him from eating the cria. It actually has a mesh in the front of it, and keeps him from eating too much grass.

This last week we have gone out and helped the SPCA in their annual street-appeals. Last Saturday we met up with Grahame, Sue, and their youngest daughter Rochelle in Upper Hutt- we brought Zahir, Zafar, and Hob. (In a few weeks they will be the new owners of Z&Z, and were very happy to get to take them out and play with them!) I took Hob off in one direction, while the four of them went off in another with the alpacas.

We raised a good deal of money for the SPCA during our 90 minutes on the street. My best was getting $5 from a Nun. The most touching story came from one woman who had lost her dog of 18 years the night before. Hugging Zafar made her feel better, and in gratitude she put $20 in the collection bucket. A great example fo the healing power of animals, I guess.

Yesterday I took Hob and Nazani to Coham Court in Porirua for the Wellington SPCA street appeal. We did pretty well again, though it was a bit tough wrangling them two by myself. Lots of cell-phone cameras in action. Nazani was the star, standing there while being cuddled from all directions by a half-dozen people. Hob was in a “don’t touch me” mood, and would neatly side-step most attempts to pet him- while maintaining proper llama manners and decorum, of course!

Missed a good party Friday night, but we reckon we had an okay excuse:

Persil finally dropped a little black girl, in between a southerly hail storm and a sharp frost. Persil is now the reigning champion for “most protective mother”. If she thinks you’re too close to the baby, she screams and bites ! Bit of a maintenance headache, that. She’s calming down with time, though.

Last night we dropped off Rikaku, Opinicus, Alphyn and Bagwyn at their new home on Paekakariki Hill Road.

It’s weird. They are no long my alpaca.

Buy hey, previously when my alpaca “went away” I had to dig a grave for them, so this is a much happier outcome! Grant and Deb are thrilled at their new pets, and I expect the ‘paca will have a grand time on those steep hills.

While they do have two dogs (German Shepards from the look) they seem very on top of the whole “proper control and training of dogs.” Barring a really unlucky accident, everything should be fine.

I will miss Rikaku and Opinicus the most, as they both had personality. I never got to know Alphyn or Bagwyn very well. And Opinicus may well be a super-star, he has his mothers intelligence, but is much less suspicious. With proper training he could be a “go anywhere” alpaca.

We should be delivering the rest of the boys we sold in early-mid December. *sniff*

So, we are back from our little Australia jaunt.

Last Tuesday we flew out. The flight was…early. I think they schedule them all so early so that you arrive in time for the work day, and in time for them to use that plane for the morning air-commuter rush. We had a six hour layover in Brisbane, which gave us time to take the train into the city. Thankfully it wasn’t too hot, and downtown Brisbane is okay. The blooming Jaquerandas were certainly pretty. The train system is into town brilliant- clean, quite, and fast. The one big downside is that the train is the only way (without a bus or cab) to get between domestic and international terminals, and with trains only every 30 minutes this could really mess up a connection if time was short.

We arrived in Adelaide about 5PM, but it was closer to 6:30 before we got to the hostel. I have memories of devouring a nice organic pizza, but I was so hungry at the time they could have fed me cardboard and I would have probably eaten it.

Tuesday was spent walking around Adelaide. The botanic gardens are nice, but we were there so early most of the building-based exhibits had not even opened yet! Next up was the natural history museum. Worst. Taxidermy. Ever. Really. Wow. The guanaco was a frightening beast, which really looked nothing like a guanaco. The aboriginal collection was quite good, but I must admit after time lots of wood and stone tools start to look very same of the same. The pacific collection upstairs had more variety, and some very wacky carded hats from New Ireland (?).

The fossils were cool. Opalized fossils! Who knew that could happen? Also fossils from the pre-Camrian period when we had “animals without predators”, which were discovered in the Flinders Range north of Adelaide. Very simple jelly-like animals, but with no offensive or defensive abilities.

Thursday we picked up the (enormous!) rental car, and headed out of town. We dropped by the Cleland wildlife park first. This is one of those places where you can walk around inside enclosures with the non-dangerous animals (Emus, Kangaroos and Wallabies), and look into other enclosures with the more bite-y species (Dingos, Wombats, Tasmanian Devils). We got to pet a Koala Bear! We saw a Tasmanian Devil! It was a fun couple of hours.

To the south and west is the scenic Fleurieu Peninsula. The weather patterns give this area a bit more rain, so we enjoyed a bit of green. (The winter/spring rains were largely stopping elsewhere, and South Australia was rapidly browning off.) Among other things we visited a wind farm near the cape, and after some trial and error found the dirt road that lead right out to the turbines. In a howling gale, less than 100 m from the 100 meter-high turbine, you could definitely hear it. But the noise was no worse that wind through our high voltage towers, or even high wind through pine trees.

I also need to comment on just how friendly the people were. In Brisbane a woman in the train station helped us find our way out of the station, and directed us on fun things to do in her  5-minute-tour of the downtown area. Again and again people stopped to help or provide advice, including an Adelaide bus driver one night who took us across town one night (we were shattered from a long day of walking) for the price of one bus ticket, as it was all the cash we had. Snaps to the friendly citizens!

Friday morning we visited some local attractions and parks, including the abandoned Talisker Mine. Mmmmmm, mining a lead-arsenic-silver load without safety equipment. I don’t want to think about how those poor miners fared in the long term.

Then it was out to Currency Creek (which is about 1 hour SE of Adelaide) to stay with Susan, and look at lots of alpaca. On Saturday we went up to Glenns place (an hour north) to look at the two boys we are considering buying. Right now they are still tied. Ceasar (sic) is a bit bigger, and has a better head. Sinbad has slightly better fiber. We will wait for the next fleece results, which will be in a few weeks, to make the final decision.

But we got to meet Lancelot, Hyouki’s Sire. They look very alike, and share the laid-back personality. We also got to meet Brutus, Concetta’s sire, and she got her attitude from him! Jane, who bred Concetta, commented after looking at her photos on our blog that “she looked happy.” It was very heart-warming to see that a person who has bred hundreds (thousands?) of alpacas, and was until recently on a farm with 650 of them, can still love them each individually!

And while we were gone, Persil stubbornly refused to give birth! Yvonne and Kerry were apparently hoping she would drop while we were away, so they could “have one of their own.” She is now 3 weeks past her due date. Hopefully soon. A nice easy birth. That would be a good start to the year.

We attended the “Focus on Fiber” day up in Hastings this weekend, and I must say it was rather encouraging. While the people doing small-scale “home craft” style production was nice, I was more interested in the growing attempts at commercialization. Apparently a couple of high-country Merino stations are now starting to add groups of alpaca wethers in with the merino, with the goal of providing a mixed wool/alpaca fiber product.

Even more exciting was an R&D project to produce a 60 meter bolt of Suri fabric (done in 5 meter sections with different processing techniques) which is to be sent to Italy for the high-end suit producers to examine. This project has relied on government seed money for the R&D, and as the speaker said, if we have a change in government, we lose that. I hope the audience of farmers understood that. National, the “party of the farmers”, will cut all the agricultural R&D money. (But we know that “conservative” parties have really lost any touch with reality in their ideologically-driven need to hand out tax cuts to rich people).

The drive back had one exciting moment. As we came over the crest of the Rimutaka Hill we hit rather heavy rain. Then we realized that the rain had a high snow/slush percentage. Yikes. I am glad I was taking the road slowly, as on one corner we lost traction and started sliding. Turn into the slide! After a few harrowing seconds fishtailing back and forth, we got the car back under control. Just second before on the other side of the crest we had passed a fresh hole in the fence where a car had gone through the night before (they had not yet removed said car from the tree it was wedged in). The Rimutaka Hill can be an exciting place when the weather is bad.

With dogs and cats, it is easy to observe them all day and night, and as they tend to trust you and let their gaurd down, you get to see all sorts of cute dreaming behavior.

This is more difficult with alpaca. They are never all asleep, as some remain on gaurd duty. Those that are awake will react to your presence, and the sleepers usually awaken in response to this activity.

I just had a fun opportunity with A1. She is completely deaf, and was fast asleep. I kneeled down next to her, and watcher her dream. He little lips were twitching, and her facial muscles were quite active. And she was humming. As she is deaf, I know this was not due to external stimuli.

I wonder what alpaca dream about?

While we have been in the alpaca “business” for nearly 5 years now, this is the first time we have started a serious Sales and Marketing exercise (primarily because we did not have much to sell previously). As you know, fate gave us lots of boys (a 2:1 ratio) over the years. The inn was now officially full, and we had to look into selling some boys before this year’s crop of cria dropped.

We decided on a 2-pronged approach. We printed up 500 A5 promotional flyers and started mailbox-dropping the rural valleys in the area. We also put up a classified add on TradeMe. While the mailbox drops generated a bit of interest (which is good considering how much time it took to drop all those off!), the online add unleashed a torrent of calls and emails.

And let us all thank photogenic, grey Enfield for being our poster-child. Almost every enquiry started with “is the grey one available?” Wow, but the power of cute can be rather overwhelming!

So far we have sold 9 boys. A group of 5 (Zahir, Zafar, Enfield, Brocket, Basilisk) is going to a couple in Mangaroa (Upper Hutt), and just last night we agreed to sell a group of 4 (Rikaku, Opinicus, Alphyn, Bagwyn) to a couple at the top of Paekakariki Hill road. Both couples are enthusiastic, and very keen to learn and do well by their new charges. We are very happy with them.

We won’t sell our alpaca to people we get a bad vibe from. Had one couple drop by the farm last week, and I knew within minutes that I was not going to sell any animals to them.

Today a person is dropping by in the morning (though she may be a tire-kicker). Thursday or Friday someone is coming by to check out Jasper, Pharoh and Pepito. The last 2 are wethers we agist for someone else. Yes, we have run out of our own and are selling other peoples ‘paca now! If she likes those 3, we will be delivering them immediately (this Friday). The group of 4 will be delivered the first week of November, and the group of 5 will go out in December (they need a bit more time to prepare their block for stock).

I will be a bit sad to see them go. Zahir and Zafar and wonderful- who can’t love smoochy Zahir! Rikaku is a great “uncle” to the young ones, and while he is not terribly people-oriented, I really like him. And of course Enfield was the bottle baby I nursed along as Latte slowly died from Lymphoma. But they are going out in big enough groups, so they will be happy. And they are close enough that we can go and visit occasionally (the advantage of offering a “support package” to new breeders is the excuse to check up on our babies). And it has given us the opportunity to meet more fun/interesting people in the region.

It is always hard to tell what long-term effects childhood experiences have. I was a Boy Scout, and an Eagle-scout in the end. The Boy Scout motto is “be prepared”, and I wonder how deeply that motto sunk into my brain.

It is not very surprising then that I got roped into Civil Defence, and now I find myself the manager of our local CDC. Yikes!

Two weeks ago they screened a locally produced made-for-TV movie “Aftershock.” This follows the events after a 8.2 earthquake hits the Wellington region (they centered the quake on the Wairarapa fault in cook straight, about 20 km from Wellington). Tam, Kerrey and I all watched it on her lovely large TV. (And she can pick up TV 3, which we can’t always do. I wonder if I would have a different impression of local TV offerings if we got more than two and a half channels.)

It contained no surprises for any of us, but it may have come as a bit of a shock for other viewers. No happy Hollywood ending here. Mass casualties abounded. The office workers trapped in their building? All but one died in the end. All those people trapped in their cars on the motorway after the quake? They didn’t do so well when the 6 meter tsunami came rolling in. The fires? Burned down most of old Wellington.

We liked that they covered some bits that are often missed in these scenarios- psychological casualties among the people working in the emergency management center, the fact that they had very few fire trucks, most of the roads were ruined, and there was no water to fight the fires anyway.

On Thursday they screened a “are you ready” program that took a family through a “simulated earthquake” to see how well they could survive for a few days after everything fell over.

Apparently it was a bit of a shock/wakeup call for many people. Good.

This past Saturday there was a Community Safety meeting in the Tawa town center. There were talks by the community constable, the local fire brigade, and civil defence. Kerry and I were both there to represent our various agencies. It was well attended by the public, which was nice to see. Afterwards, as everyone was leaving, one middle-aged woman collapsed in the doorway and started having seizures. The race was on! An emergency management person and the police officer made it there first, so seeing it was all under control the firemen just shrugged and walked away. I just played crowd control to get people out the back door. Glad to see that a room full of emergency responders was ready for action!

Now I need to get off my tail and get our local CDC more organized. I have not really picked up the ball properly since Chris (the former manager of the CDC) died. Grenada north is a very interesting/challenging area from a Civil Defence perspective. We cover a large area, extending 5 km up the Takapu valley. We have a very diverse mix of people and properties, with a small suburban area (Grenada North) with about 450 people, a Light Industrial park that has up to about 2000 people in it during working hours, and a group of rural/lifestyle properties with about 150-200 people. This makes planning much more exciting, as depending when something happens (day, night, weekend) we have a completely different population distribution. Plus the light industrial area has many food warehouses which would be vital after a major earthquake. Whee!

This is our original gander, with one of the geese and her three (so far) goslings.

Barry and Larry (the ganders we inherited from some neighbors) have stolen two of the five geese, and one of those geese has another two goslings. The two geese and the two ganders in that group travel in a protective huddle around their two little goslings.

That leaves two more geese still on nests.