My Cassie

Mac, Mary, Kathy, Berta, I'm fine. Have been crazy busy and know that I haven't blogged for two weeks. I do have lots of pictures from the two weeks and will try to get some up later.
Today Beth and I are taking a Birthday Road Trip to the Pontiac area to visit her new, won't be home for a few weeks, Golden Retriever puppy.
Oh, and go here to see what really cheered me up yesterday - well, actually it made me cry, but they were good tears.
The comments are what did me in.

Alpaca Obstacle Training

Beth and John came out yesterday to work on alpaca training. These alpacas are white Snickers and brown JR, both born last September, making them 10 months old. They will probably both be neutered this fall to become fiber boys. Although I don't know, Snickers looks pretty proud in that picture above.
Next month Snickers will go to the Alma Fair as Amelia's 4-H project, and John will take his black girl, Chin.

This is John teaching JR to walk across a bridge. All of JR's fans should be cheering to see that he appears healthy. He runs and plays and Snickers is his best friend. I think he is going to remain a small guy - definitely 4-H material because he's so people friendly.

Backing between poles

John is teaching JR to go over a jump and you can see Beth and Snickers behind them going over the tippy bridge

The final picture is Beth teaching Snickers to give his foot. Alpacas don't like to be unbalanced so this is quite the trick - and valuable when it comes time for us to have to lift each leg and snip those toenails.

Celeste is Pregnant

EEEHAW! Yesterday Russ Vet was here to ultrasound 3 of the girls who we hoped were pregnant. Celeste ↑ is at 35 days!
And this is the handsome stud,
Polaris. We are especially pleased
because both of these alpacas were
born here....and Polaris's first
confirmed pregnancy. What a stud!!

Now the long, long 11 month wait and hope that the pregnancy holds.

The other two girls didn't look pregnant with the ultrasound so Russ drew blood and will do a Progesterone check.

Good morning, World

...My reward for getting up at 5:30 to clean up Cassie's doggy barf ☺
I'm really frustrated about the way little pop ups appear on some words in my post below and I don't know how to get rid of them....

Thank you, Kelly

Probably one of the hardest jobs in the lives of all of us animal lovers is to have to put down our dear friends. Our responsibility to them is to not let them suffer. Yesterday, Russ, our dear vet came out to help us say good by to Kelly.

These top two pictures were taken on Monday and if you look closely, you can see that she was blind and was losing weight. Her arthritis was very bad and sometimes if she laid down, I had to help her get up. This last week, she sometimes would get disoriented, especially when the wind was blowing. My guts and conferring with Beth told me it was time.
Beth (critter lover who comments here occasionally) owned Kelly before me and her nearly grown up kids learned to ride on her so Beth had lots of love invested in our dear little pony mare, and came to help say good bye.
Once again I am so grateful to friends and family who gather around in stressful times and offer their support. I'm so thankful to Matt who took time from his crazy, busy farm work to bring his back hoe over and bury Kelly in the woods, and to Russ, our dear vet, who gives supportive hugs.
I would like to tell you what a loving, kind pony Kelly was. She was gentle and even after going blind, trusted humans to help her out. Like this spring, when she was down and got caught under the bottom rail of her fence. Even though she was terrified at being trapped, she stayed still while I talked to her and knocked the boards out so that I could help her up.
She patiently helped many youngsters learn how to ride back in my riding instructor days. She even made it to a few horse shows. Below is a picture of my now 10 year old grand daughter taking first place in a lead line class at a local show.
So, Thank You, Kelly, for the lessons in patience, kindness, trust, and love that you have given to so many of us.

With love, there is also great loss and suffering....

Yarn, Thistles, and Candles

Happy Fourth of July, to my American friends!!!...and a good old Happy Day to the rest of you folks. Hope you are having the kind of day that you enjoy most.

I've been doing some dyeing ↑ of that 65 skeins of white alpaca/merino. Six are finished and I have six more soaking while I decide what colors to use.
I spent a couple hours this morning digging up thistles in the girls' pasture. The plants are starting to produce their seeds, those really nasty round burrs that stick to everything. This has become a twice a year job for me. Can you imagine what the burrs would do to alpaca fiber? A few years back, we got some hay that had a few in and ended up having to shave everyone's top notch off. Bald looking alpacas.

Daughter Terre has started an Etsy shop with her candles. They are really, really nice soy candles. Terre brought me one a couple days ago and it seems like it is going to burn forever......and so yummy. While the kids were growing up, I wore YouthDew perfume, and that's what T scented the candle with.

I hope that you have time to go look at her shop http://terreizzy.etsy.com/ While you are there, click on items and give her a ♥ if you have an Etsy account.

BirdBath

These pictures totally disappeared from my post below and I wanted to be sure that you could see what I was talking about. Danette → had a mound of sand (she's making a bird bath), covered with a layer of plastic, then the leaf is veins up, and she is patting wet cement over the top.
When dry, the cement is lifted, turned over, and behold - a birdbath.
Danette is the daughter of my friend, Billie, who lives across the street. The other lovely is my daughter, Terre, who lives in Ithaca.

Spinning, Bird Baths, and Stepping Stones

What a wonderful weekend! full of friends and creative "stuff". On Saturday several of us met for a day of fibery fun at Cary's lovely place, SerenityFarm. Donna ← taught a spindle class in the morning. She wrote about it on her blog Here and this is her Etsy Store.
Pam, looking over her shoulder below, blogs also and has an Etsy store.
It's so inspiring and heart warming to hang out with good women.

On Sunday five of us got together to play in cement. We made either birdbaths or stepping stones. A brief description of what we did. First of all, we cut several rhubarb and burdock leaves and built a mound of damp sand the shape of our chosen leaf. A sheet of plastic covered the mold and then the leaf was placed on top with the heavy vein side up.
We mixed a bag of cement in a wheel barrow and working from there, scooped wet cement to cover our leaves about an inch thick.
This ↓isn't finished, but it's one of my stepping stones. I stained it with reddish paint and sealed it.