Time To Work On Calendars!

Today I’m starting work on calendars for 2010.  Every year I design three:

1. Ellie’s wall calendar
2. Ellie’s desk calendar
3. Farm calendar

The big wall calendar is just that, BIG!  It’s 13.5″ wide x 19″ long, which means the pictures are about 13.5″ side x 9.5″ vertically.  We sell some of those, most mostly it’s a calendar for family.  Mainly because it’s so crazy expensive!

But you can get such great pictures on it, like the one for October 2009:

Isn’t she cute? (Yeah, I know, I’m biased. but she IS.)

The desk calendars are pretty neat.  They’re kind of a tri-fold deal, and I keep a couple on top of my computer monitor – one of Ellie, and one with farm pictures.

Of course, there are lots of cute pictures on the Ellie desk calendar too, like this one from February 2009:

And I always have a hard time picking out which pictures to use for all the calendars, because there seem to be so many I like.

Here’s one I used for March 2009 on the farm calendar.

Well, I need to quit looking at past calendars and get to working on the ones for this coming year!  I need to get them done sooner this year so maybe we’ll sell more.  Ellie is at Shriner’s Hospital this week for a check-up, and is likely to have spinal surgery in January, followed by at least two months of extensive therapy daily.

If this all works out, it will mean a trip to Vancouver, B.C.,  for the surgery, and then probably a couple of months in Orlando, Florida, for the therapy.

Wow.  I’d better get busy.  Now which pictures should I use. . .

Loose Lipped Llama

It seems the critters around here are bent on misbehaving lately.  First our African Gray Parrot was bent on eating things she shouldn’t, and now our llama lady decided to do the same.

Note the chicken in the background on the left?  Well, see that little gateway in front of the chicken between the tree and fencepost?  That’s where our silly llama squeezed through to get into the backyard.

She loosely lips the leaves off the rosebushes without getting close enough to the stem for the thorns to get her.

Pretty smart actually. 

But kind of hard on my rosebushes.

Llama At Rest

Here’s our Lady Llama, Keira, taking a rest in the shade during the afternoon heat.

She seems fully recovered from her hard delivery and loss of her cria.  And for now, she’s mostly back to her old sweet self.

Our male llama, Samson, however, is still moaning and humming every morning when we let Keira out, and he still doesn’t get to be out with her.

Patience buddy.  You’ll get to be back with your sweetheart in a couple of months.

Shearing Llamas

All spring I was dreading the thought of shearing day for the llamas.  Last year at shearing time our lady llama was pregnant, which changed her whole personality.  Where in previous years, she stood nice and quiet and let us shear her without any problem whatsoever, last year was entirely different.

Yes, she was a screaming, kicking, spitting demon!  I put a little video of her misbehaving online, but it just doesn’t do justice to the continual fits she had while we tried to shear her.  If you’ve never had a llama spit the contents of their stomach on you, well, you just can’t truly appreciate what a stinking, nasty  mess it is.

Fortunately, this year she was no longer pregnant and was back to her normal, sweet self.  Moral of the story?  Do NOT, absolutely do NOT shear her again while she’s pregnant!

The Farmer did the most of the shearing.

Keira stool patiently while he worked away.  It sure made things a lot easier, and most of the time Geek and I were just superfluous.

Samson was a little less than thrilled to be sheared, but for the most part he stood still.  At least until we tried to shear his belly and hind legs.  I think he figured we were getting too near his male equipment for comfort, ha!

Still, we got the job done.  The worst part was trimming their toenails.  Neither one of them liked that.  Can’t say that I blame them, as we have yet to come up with a good method of doing it.

Here’s Samson after the deed was done.  He’s a little ragged around the edges, but you can’t see it very well since he’s kushed down.

Llady Llama Keira turned out pretty well, however.  Since we did her first, thinking to get the worst over with, she got to go out in the back pasture for the first time since she had her baby, while Samson had to stay penned up.

I plan on waiting a while before letting the two llamas back together.  I want to be sure Kiera has recuperated completely from having the stillborn cria, and besides, it’s better for a cria not be born in the heat of summer.

So Samson must continue to moan and groan about his bachelorhood for now.

So for now, the shearing is done for the year. But there’s one haircut left – Neffie. She won’t let anyone touch her but me, so some nice day we’re going to have get the job done.

THEN when I can say positively ALL the creatures are shorn for the year, ahhhh, that will be shear bliss.

The Odd Couple

In-between some of the not-so-fun things that happened this past week, there was still room for smiles over new chicks and other critter antics.   As it so happens, I happened to capture one of the funnier moments this week on a short video. 

Remember me mentioning we no longer have any buck goats on the farm?  But here it’s spring, and our poor little tubby pygmy/cashmere-cross doe goat is feeling, well, amorous.   So what’s she going to do, but make a pass at the only intact 4-legged male on the place?

I present to you, “The Odd Couple” – – –

Poor little girl, her chosen beau just isn’t paying any attention to her no matter how much she flirts and flits her little tail!  I’m afraid he only has eyes for our lovely lady llama, and can’t be bothered with this little shrimp making a play for him!

Oh, and did you notice the cute little chicks with the Mama Hen? They were newly out of the nest and running around.

Romance and cute chicks – this could be a box office success!