Christmas passed in its usual flurry of last minute activity, highlighted by a wonderfull relaxed visit with our family. We hope everyone was able to enjoy their friends and families both near and far as we shared the celebration of the birth of Christ.

Our very cold and snowy December forbode a long and dreaded winter. But by Christmas, the snow had melted and the weather was unseasonably warm. We had a brief snowfall on Christmas day, just enough to be dubbed a white Christmas, without inflicting too much hardship on travelers. Within a couple a days that snow was gone, and we had a vet farm visit with welcome temperatures in the 50’s. By New Years we had record temperatures in the 60’s and thunderstorms!

January so far has been similar: warm and wet. Three inches of snow fell yesterday, but today’s 50 degree temperatures should melt that. The only complaint is the mud; more like March than the typical frozen ground of winter. Still we have been able to keep up with more winter chores than usual, without having to fight the brutal temperatures that we often see this time of year. We all hope the jet stream does not move and give us a long, wet, cold spring!

I have been spending my time filling an order for handspun yarn, although the almost-springlike afternoons keep pulling me outside rather than keeping me inside where the spinning wheel beckons. Yarn sales have been steady, with many new people discovering the beauty of luxurious llama yarn. I still have most of last year’s stash of fleece to process, and it won’t be long before shearing season is here again! We have posted several of our best fiber animals on our sales page, which I have very mixed emotions about. Besides parting with friends and wonderful personalities that we have raised here on the farm, I also will hate to loose their exquisite fiber. Only the antipation of new babies keeps me looking to what the future will bring.

I think I have the garden planned out, and ready to order seeds. This usually occupies a snowy January weekend, but a cold rainy night will have to suffice. Our schedules have been very busy lately and this month is flying by. We have enjoyed keeping in email contact with our friends, and we are looking forward to having many of you visit our farm in the near future. We are looking forward as well to seeing other friends and llama owners at the upcoming spring shows. They will be here before we know it!

In my recent reading, I came across the following noteworthy quote, by Simon Cameron. He said, “An honest politian is one who, once he is bought, stays bought.”

Winter is rapidly approaching. Last Thursday the temperature dipped into the teens. Unfortunately we have been procrastinating getting the farm ready for winter. We had both created TO-DO lists of things that must be done to prepare the farm the winter.

The cold weather finally gave Laura and I a wakeup call. We could procrastinate no longer! Therefore we have spent the last two weekends working through our TO-DO lists.

We started by coming up with a solution to prevailing west winds that blow into the boys barn stalls on bitter cold days. These winds can be quite chilling on sub-zero winter days.

We came up with a unique solution: install vinyl doors over the stall door openings. Above is a photo op Pablo Cruz trying out his new door.

Another big job this time of year is raking up the leaves which have been falling like heavy snow the past two weeks. The leaves did not hit high peeks of color this fall. They just seemed to turn yellow then brown and fell off. Normally we can expect at least two weekends of beautiful fall color. I am not sure why they did this, but I know that they were late to turn this year. probably because we had an abnormally warm fall. The temperatures seemed to drop all at once and so did the leaves.

We don’t actually rake the leaves. Instead we mulch them with our tractor and vacuum the chopped leaves with our AgriVac. This sounds easy, but it still takes a lot of time. It is amazing how quickly the AgriVac fills when the leaves are a foot deep! At least Got My Vote was helping out by picking up a few choice leaves outside the fence!