'Pacas

Oof! It's been busy. Sorry for the long silence. I've been accumulating photos and happenings, but have been low on time for updating you... "Why so busy?" you ask? Well, stuff at work has picked up a bit, which is good because it was starting to get pretty boring and unmotivating. And our garden harvest has been in full swing. And as foreshadowed in the last blog post, we did in fact adopt two (old-lady) alpacas (see above!). And then with Mike's change of jobs (which has been great, by the way), the CSA where he had worked the past two years was feeling the loss, given one month of vegetable-box-creating-and-packing left yet to the season... so I started volunteering to help pack boxes on Wednesdays. And through a long and complicated set of circumstances and logistics (of course), I also ended up coordinating their annual fundraising dinner (see pictures from the dinn two years ago). This is all nice, but it has meant that my day-off-a-week plan has still involved a day off from work, but one filled with vegetable boxes and dinner logistics rather than garden work and blog posts at home. But this week was the last week of CSA packing and next weekend is the fundraiser, so hopefully I'll be back in the swing of it soon.

So... where to start? First of all, this is the picture I've been trying to get for you, of baby goats jumping on top of our heads and shoulders. They seem to have phased out the practice somewhat, with their increasing size. But this is Ernie, nicely perched where he landed on top of Mike.



The other news of course is alpacas. Last I posted we were about to drive to Yakima (2 hours to the south) to a really large alpaca ranch whose owners had recently passed away, and whose children were trying to sell some of the animals. Alpacas tend to be pretty pricey, but these folks had a few animals who were too old to sell and instead they wanted to give them away. So we decided, after checking them out, to bring a couple to the newly established Olalla Canyon alpaca-retirement-complex.

We had borrowed a truck and were set to rent a horse trailer in Ellensburg on the way (there were none to be borrowed or rented in Wenatchee, it seemed), but when we went to pick up the trailer, it turned out they couldn't rent it to us because there was no brake controller on the truck (they had told me this was necessary ahead of time, but I misunderstood and thought it was something else they needed...). So no dice. Called the alpaca lady and asked her opinion on just carrying alpacas in the back of the pickup (we had heard stories about transporting alpacas in the back of a minivan, and that got us thinking). She said, maybe, but not without a rack or sides to keep them from jumping out. So we found a hardware store in Ellensburg to buy some plywood to make a rack for the borrowed truck. While there, she called us back saying that she actually had two old abandoned camper tops for pickup trucks at the farm and we could have one if we wanted. We bought the wood just in case (we had wanted some plywood for a hay storage area at home anyway) and went on ahead.

Turned out, one of the camper tops actually fit... well, after a whole bunch of lifting and hitting and banging and finagling...



And we ended up picking out two alpacas: Moppy, a white suri variety (i.e. grows dreadlock-style-wool) and Loli, a brown huacaya variety (i.e. growers puffy sheep-style-wool) whose full name is Little Lolita, which seems sort of funny. We got them up into the now-covered back of the truck (with much help) and went on our way.

Upon arrival at the Olalla retirement complex, however, these two alpacas had no interest in getting out of the truck. So it took a bit of cajoling and the use of food and of their desire to always be near each other to get them into the pen.



We kept them separate from the goats for a day or two and then put them all together to see what would happen. Now, the alpacas are way bigger than the goats (thank goodness we didn't get llamas, or the size difference would have been ridiculous), but they are way more scared and spookable it seems. And somehow, that nervousness makes them aggressive and territorial, rather than shy. So they spent a lot of time at first chasing the goats away from food... which didn't seem to bode well for future barnyard harmony. We figured, though, that if they didn't shape up after a while and all learn to get along, we would just have to look for a new retirement home for them.



The whole picking-up-the-alpacas episode, interestingly, made me think a lot about South America. Not just because it was alpacas, but mainly in the way that nothing worked out like it was supposed to, despite my best intentions to figure it out beforehand, and yet it all worked out well, probably better than it would have according to plan. Sometimes I miss that about being in the U.S. Maybe it's that when you understand the system decently well, it's harder to find occasions where you just misunderstand the basic rules of the game or find yourself lost in ways that open up new opportunities. And somehow, those unexpected situations of figuring things out with unexpected help and unexpected hindrances is fun or adventurey-feeling or something. Of course sometimes things like that can turn out badly, but really nice versions of similar episodes had seemed to make themselves a mainstay of my lives in Peru and Brazil, and so I really enjoyed the little twinge of it in Yakima.

In any case, I do have to report that the alpacas are doing better now. Still really spookable (especially by chickens) and nervous (around us) and sometimes a little aggressive (towards goats), but much much better. Apparently too they have steel-trap memories, and so the unfortunately traumatic incident of taking their harnesses off (which, yes, did involve a little spitting) has meant that we have to do a lot more legwork to gain their trust. Oh well. A couple weeks ago I got mad at them for eating so much via goat-oppression-and-fear, and really considered trying to find them new homes, but they've shaped up a bit since then. And they are pretty cute... and sometimes do stuff like this, which is always endearing.



And if we can make it work til spring or summer, we can shear them and start spinning and knitting, or give the wool to friends or sell it to pay for feed, etc. So for now we'll see how it goes.

Meanwhile, it has started to get cold. Leaves are changing and frosts are common now. We harvested 8 boxes of green tomatoes, and are plotting a canning party for green-tomato-salsa.



Donated about 40 pounds of chard to the food bank because we couldn't keep up (despite liberal use of the freezer).



Corn, onions, beets, leeks, strawberries, carrots, 35-40 pumpkins (pie? soup?), eggplants, peppers, black beans (turns out they're surprisingly easy to grow, at least the ones your chickens don't dig up and eat) and on and on. Kind of exciting.















So we're in veggie processing mode -- storing boxes under the porch (root cellar style), freezing, drying, canning... we'll see how far through the winter it gets us.


Drying out corn stalks as decorations for previously-mentioned fundraising dinner.

When we had harvested everything above ground, we let the animals into the garden area to finish off the plants and weeds. And boy did they. Very excited. So excited in fact that they ate all the leaves and then chewed off the tops of the beets and carrots before we could get them all out of the ground. I'll have to get you some before and after pictures, but for now, here are the "during" pictures.









The plan is to plant some rye/peas as a cover crop for winter (to keep soil in place and replenish nutrients) and then lay it all to bed.

Fall has also meant mushroom hunting, and it was a good year for it, accompanied by mushroom taste-tests (pre-verified of course by a well-experienced poisonous-mushroom-knowledgeable friend).





And a friend's annual birthday/cider pressing party,




This is what happens if you leave some room in the top of the jug but not enough when you freeze cider.

as well as a visit from Seattle friends for more apple picking and cider pressing (nics pics courtesy of Nile and Matt).









We also went to a Jack Johnson concert at the outdoor Gorge amphitheater near here (for a birthday treat). I had not been to the Gorge before, nor ever really been to a "big" type concert like that before. Overlooking the Columbia River, it was really pretty -- the photo is a bit too dark, but... the concert was fun (see the little lit-up stage down there?).



And to a quilt show (which was actually really cool).





Other than that, not much news. I helped a friend who's now a prof in Utah teach one of her classes through video chat (crazy, technology), and that was kind of a nice change-of-pace from research stuff. Sometimes I like prepping classes, and I liked this (graduate) class a bit more than I had liked the undergrad classes I taught in Minnesota (of course that's why professors are annoying, because so many would rather teach (the often more interactive and engaged) grad students than undergrads, but still...). Anyway, don't know if I'd really like it longer-term or if I'd be any good at it, but I figure I shouldn't totally rule it out as possible future work if it seems to make sense down the line... In more immediate work news, though, I may have an opportunity to lead a research/education project with folks from the University of Washington (in Seattle) on farm worker health issues, which I might like more than some of what I do now. Will depend on grant funding applications, etc., of course, but might be an interesting option.

And I think that that is about it from the home front for today. Moppy and Loli, and the chickens and the goats, all send their regards.