Shearing Day

Yesterday our fluffy tough-boys got their annual haircuts. It was shearing day.

7:30 a.m. started with careful, cautious haltering in our half-finished barn

Things progressed rapidly for our boys. They were first on the schedule at Manna Meadows, the alpaca ranch near us that hosted the event. Brent and I started early to get the boys haltered and loaded in the trailer that our friends at the host farm loaned us for the journey. We arrived at Manna Meadows by 8:30.

Shearers are NOT cautious in getting the boys onto the mats so they can do their work.

Next thing the alpacas know, they are being pulled out of the trailer, picked up and plopped down on their side to be stretched with pulleys and ropes tied to their feet. It all happens very quickly.

Me working with Brian Heimes of Manna Meadows to bag Loki's blanket
as Brian of Shear Relief does the shearing.

Two teams worked to bag the fiber. We used 3 different bags to keep the blanket, neck and "3rds" separate. It was a pretty smooth system and the shearers worked very well together, shifting seamlessly between two stations. Each alpaca was sheared in less than 10 minutes.

Here's Loki looking slim and trim after the shearing.

It's an awfully scary process for the animals (and for this alpaca "mom" who moves a lot more slowly and carefully). Similar to a semi-annual teeth-cleaning at the dentist, the quicker the better, I say, for something like this that can't be skipped. And I'm certainly glad it's done only once a year.

Here's a before and after of "Walt" that shows pretty clearly how much fiber these guys grow for protection from the elements over the season.

Walt before shearing.

Walt after shearing (with Ace looking on)

Sharon and Brian at Manna Meadows are simply awesome to host this in their facility near us and to guide us through this somewhat stressful process. At least one other alpaca owner was there with her small group. There was a lot of camaraderie and fun in the day - and pizza for lunch (my favorite food). It was hard to convince these hard-working shearers to stop. But after shearing nearly 50 alpacas and with the arrival of food, they took a break.

Taking a little lunch break before shearing the 20+ remaining alpacas.

In the end, we all made it back home safe and sound and a lot wiser to the shearing process. Some of us came home a lot thinner - and some of us full of pizza and knowledge. All of us were very tired by the end of the day.

These guy missed out on the pizza - obviously.

And now we have seven 30-gallon bags of fiber. Our next step: learn how to skirt the fiber for shipping out to the processing facility.

Bees, bees, bees…and asparagus

A close-up of the bees in their "package"

Well, I'm a beekeeper now. The bees finally arrived on Saturday after a freezing Friday night. The post office called me at 6:18 a.m. and I showed up to get them at 7:15. I had no idea what to expect - except what I had seen on the numerous videos I had watched to learn what the heck I was supposed to do to get them into the hives.

I had taken the day off on Friday because the USPS tracking said my 4 packages (2 for each hive) were expected to arrive that day. So I spent the day making sugar syrups for the new bees to live on until the flowers start blooming. Then I "prepped" the hives by putting beeswax on the top bars and set them up on their benches in the apiary. The post office called Friday at around 3:45 to say they wouldn't be coming until Saturday. And I was a little relieved.

They arrived early in the morning and it was still cold. So I waited until 4:00 p.m. to install them (because the videos said they would be ready to settle down in the late afternoon). But, having watched them for a few days now, I think I should have waited until even later - or installed them in the morning when it was cold.

I didn't do a very good job getting the first batch of bees into their hive. But it helped me learn a lot that was helpful for the second batch. For instance, that can of food, it's hard to get out. You should do that first - to both boxes.

Getting the food can out of the box was incredibly hard.

After the can finally came out, I pulled out the queen cage and saw that she was alive. Her little cage has 2 corks - one in each end. After removing one of those, I placed her cage into the hive. Then it was time to dump in the bees. First, I hit the box on the ground to make bees fall onto the floor of the package. Next, I began shaking them out of the opening, pouring them over the queen cage. And I repeated that a couple of times.

Dumping the bees into their home - and banging the sides to get them to fall.

At that point bees are starting to come out of the box and fly around. It was hard to be focused with all that buzzing. But it seemed like I was about done and I replaced the bars in the top box and started to put the sugar syrup feeder on top. Then I turned and noticed the second box. Darn. So I kinda botched the first install. With all those bees flying out of the hive now, I had to try to get that stubborn can out of the second box. Needless to say, a lot of the first group had to find their own way back into the hive because I didn't get things closed up quickly - at all.

Like I said, I learned a lot. The second hive got a lot more bees into it and I was a lot less nervous. But I did get one bee sting when I installed that second hive. And I learned that with a lot of disoriented bees around, it's smart to stay on your feet. I got stung on my knee when I knelt down and crushed one of the little ladies accidentally.

It's been 3 days now. And, upon checking this evening, it looks like all the bees that were hanging onto the outside of the hive have found their way in. And bees are busily coming and going at the hive entrance - like they work there or something :-)

Whew! that was a big job. My next task is to retrieve that queen cage - maybe on Thursday or Friday.

Asparagus in their cinderblock raised beds.

Meanwhile, Brent spent the day building some super-cool raised beds for the asparagus crowns I bought a couple of weeks ago. He also made 2 trips back to Shawnee to pick up the pulverized topsoil that fills the beds - and shoveled it into the beds. It's really no wonder we are sore and achy on Monday.

The asparagus beds span the entire south side of the house. We planted 50 crowns in over 50 feet of raised beds. It will take a year, but we should have plenty. And the fronds from the spears we don't harvest will make a pretty screen for the ground level windows.

It's all slowly (and sometimes suddenly) coming together…

…and we have BEES!

Taxes, blueberries and apiary prep

Last week we picked up our blueberry bushes and got an area ready for the bees that will come this week.

The blueberry hedge (in the making)

My picture of the blueberry bushes is a little underwhelming. It was a lot of work! Since blueberries don't grow very well here in Kansas, there were some pretty particular instructions for planting - and all of it was hard. Each of the 6 plants required a hole 20" around by 15" deep. That didn't sound like much until I tried digging one and realized I had to do 5 more :-P

Each of those holes needed to be filled with 1.8 cu. ft. of Canadian peat moss. I purchased 3.8 cu. ft. bales which were a little too heavy for me. But I moved them anyway. The peat moss had to be mixed with water until it was the consistency of mud. That was fun, but time-consuming. And, finally, after 2 days' work, the blueberries were in the ground.

It's hard to see in the photo, but they are planted at the top of a retaining wall on the west side of the house. This will allow me to water them easily as it is close to the spigot and the gray water outlet. The placement will also provide good drainage.

Apiary for our new bees.

Yesterday, I spent the entire day clearing an area for our beehives. Our bees will leave their birthplace in North Carolina on Wednesday. We should be ready when they arrive at the post office later this week.

Meanwhile, Brent was fixing a very important fixture that had started leaking - the kitchen faucet. Amazingly, we have already had some equipment failures in our new home. We are chalking it up to the hardness of the water here. The faucet malfunction was a major disruption, but he got it fixed and we have running water in the kitchen again :-)

Saturday, we met with our tax guy Tom. I'm not sure why taxes are so stressful, but they are. Brent and I spent all day on Saturday collecting the papers in preparation for the meeting. Glad to have that in the works. We were a little late getting that process started.

Kick spindle full of fun.

After all that paper organizing, Brent and I each found our own ways to relax. I decided to spend some time spinning yarn in our quiet house. Brent spent some time at the local bar and grill watching the basketball tournament. That was the perfect way to decompress.

Overall, a good and productive week. The upcoming week looks to be an exciting one, too. I will embark on a new hobby - beekeeping!

Another weekend of forming the gardens…and follow me on Instagram

This time we used native perennial seed, compost, pretty gravel/rocks and mulch. Some of the spaces will be filled with transplants and others will wait for plants to sprout from seeds.

These photos show how the areas on the west side of the house turned out.

View from the front porch

View from the parking area

The dry creek bed (drainage ditch/stream)

I could go on and on about what is/will be planted where - and I will. For now, there's only time for this quick glimpse of the progress.

For more frequent glimpses, I've started posting photos on Instagram. There won't be details there. But I have a lot of fun with snapping quick photos of the happenings around the farm. You can find me @gardenrambler or by searching for Patti Ragsdale (I think - it's all pretty new to me!).

Here's a photo from a recent Instagram post about our new neighbor :-)

More gravel and garden sculpting

Add caption

This was the second of three truckloads of gravel that Brent and I spread. We ordered a whopping 45 tons of gravel to finish out the our drive, walkways and a guest parking area. That's on top of the 40 tons that we spread earlier this past winter.

Luckily, without 2 mortgages we can now afford to rent things like this Dingo to help :-)

Amazingly useful Toro Dingo (loved it!)

Before we spread the gravel, I used the Dingo to finalize the layout of our gardens on the west side of the house. The smaller bucket attachment with the teeth was perfect for digging and moving dirt.

Here are some photos of the new lay of the garden space on the west side of the house:

We included a low "bridge" made of limestone slabs.
(There's my favorite landscaping partner posing to give it some scale.)

This view of the "bridge" shows the beginning of the gravel path from the front porch.

Here is the finished path from the guest parking to the front door.
The soft swale that will drain water down the hill is somewhat visible on the left side of this photo.

And this is the finished rock wall. The "bridge" with the drainage "stream" is to the left.
The stream will drain into a water detention depression that is below the rock wall.
The swale mentioned in the previous photo caption also drains to the depression.

With any luck, this work will give us a lot of different habitats for our native and edible plantings. It along with some well-placed and carefully chosen plants, will also mitigate any erosion issues on our rather steep sloped yard. Some of the plantings will start today - in the form of rapid spreading of seeds. It's supposed to rain tomorrow so I need to work fast to get those on the ground!

More to come...

We now have one mortgage - and Spring is here!

Wow. We never could have anticipated all of the difficulties and complications inherent in building a house. It's been a very long process spanning nearly three and a half years from the purchase of the property till closing, and now it's done. And do we love it? Oh, yeah!

Our closing happened on March 5 (last Thursday). It was an email from the bank with a subject "the message you thought would never come." And it was so true. After all that time, the fact that it was finally going to happen was very hard to believe.

The first thing Brent and I did after the closing late on Thursday was buy wine. We were sitting in our banker's office and could see Holyfield Winery right across the street. And it had been a while since we had felt comfortable spending on a luxury like good wine - and it is good. We bought 6 bottles!

It was an awesome day and to top it all off it seemed like Spring started right then! The temperatures have been in the 50's, 60's and 70's ever since.

So, of course, we've spent every spare minute outside - like every other person :-)

The boys got to meet some of the neighbors. 

We started landscaping the front walkway.

And we put up some birdhouses that had been long-buried
in our Shawnee garage. We hope the wrens and bluebirds find our home inviting too!

 It feels like the whole world is celebrating with us. Even our neglected collection of Amaryllis bulbs seem to know it's time to smile.

Brent's giant red Amaryllis with an amazing 3 flower stalks (one isn't open)

I've started posting on Instagram, too. What a fun way to connect. I'm "gardenrambler" and you will see a lot of the same photos I post on the blog - but not so many words :-P

Now we are really home

It's official. Today Happy Apple's Farm is our only home. The Shawnee house has a new owner and all our possessions are here - well, kinda.

We have spent nearly every day for the last month packing, deciding, selling, packing some more and moving an enormous amount of stuff. It is the stuff collected by a family full of children and fun. It is the stuff that makes up a life. And every box and bin, drawer and closet held history. It was hard and slow and seemed as though it would never end.

literally car full after car full of things were donated

Thankfully, there are many places like Goodwill and Savers that welcomed the donation of our extra things. And we visited at least one of those places in Shawnee nearly every time we went to the house to pack - sometimes more than once a day. What a wonderful service they do! And it feels good to know that most of those donations will be used.

And there is our modern version of the classified ad: Craigslist. We sold and gave away a couple of couches, beds, desks, entertainment centers and fish tanks. And we even made a little bit of extra money.

In spite of all that , we still have two rather large storage units of stuff that we aren't sure what to do about. And there are boxes and bags of things all over our new home that have yet to find their spot.

And to top all of that off, the water heater stopped working Monday night - and won't be fixed until Friday. Ugh.

But, today, none of that mattered much. We had a wonderful bottle of wine and pasta at a nearby restaurant. We did it. We no longer live in a suburban neighborhood. We now live at Happy Apple's Farm :-)

And all my plants came with us, too!
Yep, it's really cozy in here.