Here is the disclaimer- pay attention- this is not my animal- he ajists here. Which means he lives here and I get to love him and his owner gets to visit and cart off his fleece. I soooo have the better end of the deal- except the poop thing.

It's Orcas Moon's Sargent Pepper...Or is it Pepper Pots?...or is it Reilly's Red Pepper? It's it's...

Don't be fooled and taken in by his sweet face and gentle demeanor. He is a devil at heart. No not really, he just takes after his mother a little that's all. (Doesn't the mother always get blamed?)


Look here he is innocently nursing away with his mother Mickey.
The Red Devil (fine, so it is not his real name- but let's call a spade a spade- and chicks love a bad boy with a tender heart) He is the king of pasture escape through the gate or under the gate it doesn't matter- this boy has talent.

Devy is, all kidding aside, nothing short of amazing. He is super sweet he just likes to stir the pot a little. Look at this picture,


This is the same day he was born! He is a full month younger than the other three in the picture. What a funny little boy. Bossy too.

R.D. was born while I was away at work on Shaw Island. I left farmer Jeff to watch Mickey, the mom. The first day I came home from work, Jeff told me, no worries, no baby yet. I watched them allllll day. See for yourself. This all sounds great doesn't it? Except that he was watching the breeding males- funny they didn't go into labor.

I left for work the next day after moving the girls so that Jeff could see them from his desk. (duhhhh) confident that all would go well.

It DID!!!!

My farm man called me at work- which he never does- to tell me we had a new beautiful girl. Nope not a typo. I said girl. Long story short which I don't do often. Farmer Jeff was demoted to money making Jeff after labeling the manly man, Red Devil, a girl, which for a week we called Pepper Pots, from Iron Man- who is totally hot and is a red head like him.

Yearly we send in fleece from each animal for testing. The lab lets us know all of its characteristics from fineness and crimp to length etc. Well...the finest (softest) fleece on the farm award goes to

Move over Penny...it's



Here he is in a few photos teaching his pasture mates the fine art of dancing or is that martial arts?



I am throwing these just for fun. Notice the color of his mother Mickey's spot above her eye is the same color of her cria. Her last cria had the same thing except Minnie's spot is on her chin.

Actually what I am really saying is that after I tell you all about the 'little boys' I am going to start to draw randomly from a hat to decide which animal to showcase. I really don't have a favorite therefore I don't want to have to leave anyone until last. It will be random.

Okay that's it.

Oh my goodness it has come to this. I am using Christmas Carols.

The next three days I will be dedicating to what we here on the farm call 'the little boys'. This name was given when they were indeed little. These boys are from last year (2009) when we had three boys and a girl. I am puzzled as to where to begin. We always talk about them as a group but when you meet them individually they are obviously nothing alike- except anatomically well almost. Mysterious huh?

The game is afoot! (Too much Sherlock Holmes)

Here is the biggest of the 'little boys'...(drum roll)

Weighing in at 21 pounds at birth..fawn and cimpy I am pleased to present

Buddy is from the year of herbal names so his 'real' name is Orcas Moon's Sage Prince- why such a big name? he was huge, and has only gotten bigger. Buddy was born on the day that the movie Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was released. Let me clarify, he was born while we were in Friday Harbor watching the release of the Movie.

Don't you just hate it when you miss the cool stuff. The movie wasn't really great, loved the book- however, there isn't anything better than watching a smooth birth.

We came home and well there he was. He gets his giant stature from mostly his giant (not freakishly so) mother, Ember. Ember is a fantastic Mom. You don't want to get close to her cria- she is a little protective (understatement).

Shortly after farmer Jeff took this photo we all had to run- Ember was getting a little defensive.
Buddy is a gentle giant with beautiful, lustrous, apricot colored fleece. He went to four shows last year and our boy took home a pair of ribbons from the two biggest ones. I am taking him to show again this year which is a big decision. It is challenging in my trailer to load a yearling male with all of my babies from this year male and female.

I will try, no really I will, to get a couple of more current, photos of him to share. I so wish everyone could visit with Buddy- he leads well, and is sweet, sweet, sweet. (I do not say this about all of my animals, just wait till you read about some of our less angelic camilids)

I finished yesterdays blog by letting you know that Brooklyn and Pippi are never apart. It only seemed right to talk about Brooklyn, Pippi's mom next.

Brooklyn was one of the first alpacas I trained. Okay let's admit it, I was trained to train with my girlfriend Brooklyn and her equally good looking girl friend Manhattan. I spent a bitter cold March week with Janet Franklin (master of 'pac training) being taught how to teach Brooklyn and Manhattan to walk on a lead. This was done in preparation for my first show- Alpacapalooza! I will never attempt to train two alpacas in a week. Now I usually start in February and give it plenty of time.

Janet got me trained and I helped her to train the girls. Brooklyn, Manhattan and I left Janet on the farm and were lucky enough to hitch a ride with my not yet good friends Kris and Albert Olson from San Juan Island. Off we went to Puyallup, Washington (Do not attempt to say this word you WILL say it wrong. It is pronounced Pea-y'all-up).

I was only able to stay for the first two days of the show, and then had to get back to Chicago for work. I showed Manhattan and we got the gate (I have of course, a story about that). Before taking the girls back to the islands Albert did me the kind favor of showing Brooklyn. She took a fourth.

It was unreal to be called in the middle of Seatac airport by someone who you never knew was going to be such a great friend, and to be told that an animal, that up until two weeks ago you didn't know, and that wasn't able to walk on a lead, won a ribbon at a show with over 900 animals. I was actually smiling and jumping up and down (only a little jumping).



Tune in tomorrow!

Yesterday I told you about or oldest alpaca, today it's our youngest. It's any ones guess who is tomorrow! Feel free to leave feedback here all you folks that have visited us or lurk this fine blog.

Thanks Mom for your extreme vote of confidence. I can tell you are behind me all the way.

I have puzzled over what order to talk about all of my fabulous fleeced friends with you, but really haven't come up with a plan. (Don't worry I didn't hurt myself with all of that thinking.) I really don't have a favorite but there are days that some are more entertaining than others.

So...totally almost at random...


Number 126

My gift to you is, no not hand knit alpaca sweaters or socks. Starting tomorrow and going through Christmas it is...

I can almost hear you now- cheap gift not even any wrapping paper. Keep your hats on, as much as I would like to give you all a really big expensive alpaca gift, well alpacas haven't been selling like hotcakes. Besides it is the thought that counts and believe me I will have lots of thinking to do. I can not believe that I am saying in public, world wide even, (hello people in Russia and Australia) I will be blogging every day for the next twenty-four days! (It is pretty darn cool that I have 24 alpacas huh?)

So see you tomorrow!

We pulled the boat out of the water today for the winter. Having docked it at our friends the Nutts of Warm Valley Orchard, the boat was used heavily...by sea otters! Man they must have thought they won the lottery. You can see just where the otters decided to spend the afternoon sunning themselves and eating crabs...you know...on my boat! It was kinda too bad we never ran into them I bet they were CUTE.

On the way home from West Sound Marina where the boat will get winterized before it spends the season on the farm we stopped by the West Sound Dock for the seasonal stop of the Alaskan fishing boat. What a smooth operation run by a really nice family. We bought a bunch of super fresh fish and prawns to last us quite a while. You WILL want to check out their web site! TrollerPoint.com You can think of us enjoying all that halibut!

Last week we piled in the boat and went off in search of the male Steller Sealions that come up our way this time of year. Stellers are the largest of all sea lions. These giant pinnipeds hunt fish, squid, octopus and, rarely, smaller seals. They are found off northern Pacific coasts from Japan to California. We were lucky to catch a sighting of a few not as impressive as last year but still a great afternoon on the water.

I think they look kinda like pugs!

Yesterday was a picture perfect fall day. We warmed up to about 68 degrees and the sun was shining. Sounds like a great day for a run, most days do to me anyway.

As I was running around Mountain Lake in Moran State Park I got to thinking about the donkey girls. Here are a few of my thoughts:

• Why don't they smile more? They look like their heads are really weighing them down.
• Why are they always hungry? They seem to have a little extra around the middle they could live off of.
• They don't hurry...ever...one speed and one speed only.

• How can they poop so much? Two donkeys can make as much poop as all of the alpaca combined in a day. Who knew?
• What do they do all day? When the alpaca are standing around they chew their cud. Donkeys don't have a cud. Maybe gum is in order.
• Why don't they he-haw more? It is one of the best sounds in the world.
  

I had this vision (don't worry it was only a vision no voices or anything) of making a really cool cria and mom matching game. No such luck. By the time I was able to find the pictures and sort them all out, re-size them etc. I knew you were never going to play a matching game on my blog. Enjoy the pictures if you want to play a game well find one somewhere else.

We were so lucky to have four beautiful cria this year. We had two girls and two boys.

Our new dishwasher came today! Did you know that you need to hire someone to put it in? I am not doing THAT. Okay so I am counting my lucky stars that I have myself a new dishwasher...what I really wanted was a Stihl weed-wacker but...Anyway a girl can dream.

I actually thought I could just sweet talk the delivery guy to install it. NOT. Apparently they don't do that. Who knew? Something about having to hard wire or something.

Well you have seen me take the spurs off a rooster, what should be scary about a little electricity and plumbing? Thank you YouTube!

The dishwasher is in- thank you very much. It does have a little leak on the hot water line that I will fix tomorrow with a plumbers tape. I just don't seem to have any around.

I would come put yours in but well you can't afford me! The hourly rate would break you.

Did I mention they were Donkeys?

Scared you didn't I?
Welcome Pink Lady and Marika!!!
Thank you Lum Family!

Anyone familiar with Jeff, my farm man, and I know that we have been discussing adoption for almost a year. We have researched, visited and interviewed. Well it all came together on Sunday, a little sooner than we both thought.

We are both thrilled with our new girls. The boys are over the moon especially Luke. All he wants to do is take check on them, take care of them and love them. The girls were living with a family here on the island but were both born in Canada. I'll get some pictures up tomorrow. If I get them taken.

It is all very exciting!

You know it is fall when I have to get up earlier than Frank the rooster to get my kids to crew practice. I love when I get to wake up the rooster- payback!

Visit the Orcas Island Rowing Association.

Just passing along a few photos we took during shearing this year. It was one of the few half-way dry days we have had in a while. Enjoy!

It has been raining nonstop here on the farm. I think as a summer project I might build an ark. On the upside the grass is growing right before my eyes. On the down side the garden is still too wet to plant in many areas. What a change from last years scorching June!