Alpacas!!

Suzie opens her gigantic trailer to reveal…Cuteness!!

And here they are.  The newest resident of Thistle Dew Farm.  Dee, Daisy, Chanelle, Steve (Leroy) and Vegas.  No we didn’t get to name any of them – although the boys’ names have changed.

I obviously already have a million and three pictures of them.  I’ll try not to include them all on this one post.

---

This is a funny story I have to share and hope my husband won’t mind too much if I do.  If you know him, you know he is a thinker.  Not a detail is left to chance.  So here we are fencing in a rougher bit of the property to have a compost lane of sorts (life in the shat lane?  poop row?…)  Anyway, he is swiftly slinging fence into place, and, when needed, doing flying leaps over the roll of downed fencing like an Olympic hurdler.  We just set the fence post today, so this poop row has to be temporarily cut across the middle of the yard instead of all the way across  - so the cement can set before we hook to the fence post.  I ask (repeatedly) shouldn’t we put a gate leading to this, honey?  No, because it will have a gate once it goes to the fence post.  But shouldn’t we put one in now? temporarily?  Nope.  Okie dokie.

Hmm, but then how do you get out once you extend the fence the whole way?  Scale the cliff and try not to fall in the ditch :)

The “dew dew” bucket.

And lastly for now, the best egg collector we have on the payroll.

As promised, barn raising & mummies

do you know what this is?  if you guessed a mummified muskrat, then go get yourself a lollipop, because you are absolutely correct!

Remember when Brandon blew in on a breeze of improved chi?  Well he stayed a couple nights and boy was he a big help!  We’ve got a barn to raise (modify) after-all!  We only wish he would live here  and be our full-time ranch hand.

So, onto more mummies.  That's right, more.  You thought one person can only have so much luck, right?  Well, after the muskrat discovery we discovered a cat (actually a few cats).  Cody thinks this is all pretty gross but I think it is fascinating.  So do the kids.  Seriously, how often do you find a mummified animal?  Increasingly more often around these parts.  (PS those aren’t leaves in its eye sockets, trust me.  They don’t come out – insert dry heave here…)

This picture makes me laugh.  Brandon took it.  To him it looked like I was kind of holding it like, “here, kitty, kitty.  Nice Kitty!”  Also Brandon can make the exact face the cat is making in this picture.  It’s uncanny.

PS don’t you like my outfit?  I am nothing if not fashionable at all times.  It’s always been my downfall in life.  Fashion first.  Yep, that’s me.

Look what else we found in the barn (shed). This is an electric fence charger.  Someone could get the wrong kind of idea about the previous owners, what with the voltage box and mummies in the shed.  We found a bucket of oxidizer in there and Cody was afraid it would have some human remains in there. 

 

Our first load of hay.

Look at these boys working hard.  We are so lucky we had so much help to get this stuff done!

Hey look, I got a cowboy hat!

We figured we better say some prayers and burn some sage.  That way we don’t have to call our farm, “the Cave of Trapped Souls” Farm. 
So we got fencing around the garden, fenced in a corner, divided the shed into two sides with separate entrances, and lots of other things I’m forgetting that we did.  And all this to get ready for…

and so on and so forth…

As is per usual this time of year, I have a lot of blogging to catch up on.  So let’s take a crack at it shall we?

Zoo:

Boat Ride:

my arm really isn’t long enough for family portraits, I guess.

 

that’s better.

---

next up barn raising and mummies!

musical chair

I took a multi-vitamin on Saturday.  Must've been some vitamin.  It was one of those days that you just keep getting things done and there always seems to be more time.  Or it could have been the music.  I just seem to be able to keep going when I'm listening to music.

So, while the kids built couch-forts, and just played happily, I house-cleaned the camper, then I decided to improve the feng shui of my entrance, so I raked it out, spray-painted the bird bath and set it up, then I decided to re-upholster Darby's chair.  It was a free barber's chair I got off the side of the road that I meant to re-cover but Darby had claimed it.  So, I finally put some of those feed bags to use and re-upholstered it and put it on my front porch.  (PS forgive the misalignment of all of my pictures, I don't know why they won't go where I put them, but I don't have time to figure it out right now)

i can't decide if I'll keep it this way or get different vinyl to reupholster it again, but it's fun for the moment

Then I sat there on it for a while, listening to music and watching the hummingbirds sword fight at the feeder.  Then,  I added some more fencing to the perimeter so the dog wouldn't escape, and helped Cody prime a pump to flood the field from the ditch. 

our flooded fields

oh, and speaking of feng shui, I love how right after I finished improving the flow of chi to my front door, our good friend Brandon (whom we haven't seen in over a year) breezed in, as a surprise.  Yay for improving your chi!

then we played a little badminton

the last time we played badminton together, Finn's 1st birthday party

Anyway, I've decided my funny chair is musical.  I want you to remember that music is important.  Sometimes I forget.  I've been blessed to have many music-lovers in my life.  The first of which was my dad.  A talented guy, musically, is he.  And for all of my life, even when I'm not lucky enough to hear it in person, I will hear him singing songs in my head.  I will also hear my mom sing, though always a beat behind :)  I'm like my mom in that if I like a song or album, I will listen to it over and over to the exclusion of everything else.  (lately, the Shins, and the album "The King is Dead" by the Decemberists).  I just can't get enough.  I think Cody and I kind of forgot about music for almost 7 years.  We've both recently become reacquainted.  When you have a new baby who does nothing but scream, babies you are trying to listen to in the backseat, someone who comes and says, "Mom?" every 2 minutes, it's just feels kind of pointless to try to enjoy music.  But it's not pointless.  It's important.

Most of the people I've had the best relationships with, I have been connected to somehow through music. 

There's a farmer girl I know (well, I don't know her, I read her blog) and she was recently disgusted with a post-apocolyptic book in which there was no music.  No survivors playing instruments, or singing.  I hadn't thought about it that way, but yeah.  Music is so primitive and so emotional I would think no matter what (and let's hope so) it will always remain with us.

As for now, I will sit in my chair, look out over all I have accomplished and listen to some music.