Friday’s Farm Fotos

Here we are, another Friday, and it’s been a BUSY week as usual! With school, work, farm and household chores, who has time for photography?

Okay, I confess, I just about always carry my camera with me when I go out to do morning chores. So here’s a few of this week’s snapshots from the farm.

I’d never seen such red wasps until I moved to the south. I think they blend in better with all the red soil, ha! (As opposed to Iowa or Canada, which both have some of the blackest soil I’ve ever seen!)

This is our male llama, Samson, before getting up in the morning. He has a couple of hitchhikers…

It’s bad enough they think the llama is their own personal roosting place, but then the rooster has just got to crow about it…

At least one of the sheep thinks he’s really baaaaad.

Later that afternoon he figured a nice fluffy sheep in the shade made a good roosting place.

Our female llama doesn’t care how many chickens sit on Samson or the sheep, as long as she gets her afternoon session in the sprinkler.

To really get the full effect of that picture, be sure to click on it so it enlarges and you can see the drops of water more clearly!

We have some new guinea babies running around the farm.

I’m not sure why it takes half a dozen adult guineas to take care of four little keets! Last year they were having 12-14 keets hatching at a time.

And lastly, I just know you’ve been wondering what I did with all the scrap wool I skirted off all those fleeces. Well, here’s your answer:

Bet you didn’t know we grow wool in our flowerbeds here in the south!

And there you have it, a glimpse of life this past week on the farm.

Llamas, Together at Last (Sort of)

It all started last night when The Farmer and I went out of do chores. We have a routine, and things get done just fine as long as we stay with the routine. When it gets interrupted… no guarantees what happens!

We have much more fun off playing by ourselves than always following after Mama!When the older goats ran in last night, only one little kid followed, but we could hear the other one bawling loudly somewhere. When we finally located him, we saw he’d gotten himself into a real predicament.

He’d obviously been playing on The Farmer’s lawnmower. Little goat kids LOVE to climb and play on anything they can find. The only trouble is when he jumped down, he managed to catch his foot and was stuck fast.

I must say, it took real talent, because as you can see in the picture to the right, he had to jump down at just the right angle for his foot to go in there. The only trouble is that once he was down, his leg was at the wrong angle and he couldn’t get it back out.

But then, neither could we!

The Farmer finally had to get a pair of pliers and pull back the metal far enough to get the little rascal’s foot loose.

Needless to say, our usual routine got lost in the rescue operations. That’s probably why when I went out to do chores this morning, this is what I saw:
Uh-oh! Two llamas in ONE pen!

Well, surprise, surprise! I guess I forgot to walk over and shut the gate to Samson’s pen last night after putting his feed bucket in place. Instead, I was homing in on the distress call from the little goat kid, and my routine came unglued.

The good news is they don’t seem to be fighting. The bad news is I don’t know if they’ve gotten romantic either, and I feel a little guilty not being there to keep check on them the first time they were both in the same pen.

If I were a betting woman, I’d guess Samson is still looking for love, cause Keira keeps her distance. Whenever he gets within a few feet of her, she skitters off in another direction. She’s still not sure what to make of this new furball who thinks he wants to get up close and personal!

It’s still a game of hide and seek – Keira hides, and Samson keeps seeking!

Lovelorn Llama

It’s soap opera time on the farm with a tale of unrequited love, raging hormones and cold-hearted indifference.

Flash back to last Thursday night, when a new llama arrived on the farm. We’ve been thinking about getting some company for our single llama lady for a long time, and happened to see an ad for this guy. Isn’t he handsome?
However, I guess we should have placed an ad with eHarmony.com, because we seem to have a compatibility problem here. After a brief bout of curiousity, and touching of noses, Keira has since refused to acknowledge there is another llama on the farm.
Yes, it would seem the lady rejects her would-be sweetheart. In fact, she refuses to admit his existence most of the time. It’s the cold shoulder treatment for poor Samson, with Keira turning her back to him and ignoring his presence in the pasture next door.

See Samson in the background?
And there’s Keira, as usual, giving him the cold shoulder treatment.

Every morning when I let the critters out, Samson rushes to the fence to see where Keira went. He hums and groans, sounding very much like he’s trying to start his engine, desperately trying to get her attention.

It doesn’t work. She continues to thoroughly ignore him.

Will Samson ever get the attention of his would-be lover? Will Keira ever accept him as a suitor? Stay tuned for the continuing soap opera of “The Lovelorn Llamas!”

Stay tuned!

I have pictures of our new llama, but have been unable to upload any pictures to Blogger for a couple of days. Hopefully, they will resolve the matter SOON. Maybe I need a new venue…

Llama vs. Goats

My little llama girl likes to hang out with the goats. She usually ignores the sheep, and sometimes just does her own thing, but mostly, she’s with the goats. It will be interesting to see what happens when Samson, our soon-to-be-delivered male llama arrives.

However, at present, it’s Kiera and the goats. As much as she likes the goats, she has one pet peeve. She does NOT want to share any feed with them.

I’ve told you and told you, leave MY feed alone!!!

If they persist in trying to eat her food, she finally lets them know in no uncertain llama terms, “That’s it!”

I spit in your general direction!

Ahhh, llamas, they know how to get their point across!