Friday, April 24, 2009

my sweet job!

here's some pictures from the farm! This is Larry's house (the farm owner) with cows in front. The ones further back are Dexter cattle. They are only about 4 feet tall. The ones closer and to the left are miniature zebu cattle. They're originally from India. See the hump on the back of the black one? All zebus have that hump.



a new baby!! There are two more on the way. She's almost a week old.these are miniature horses. They were far away, so sorry about the bad picture. And unfortunately, you can't see it, but there's a full-sized goat that lives with them, and it's unnerving to see that the goat is the same size as these!
Here's some more dexter cattle and miniature donkeys behind them.
a better miniature donkey picture. There's a baby with them! That fence behind them is probably 3.5 feet or 4 feet high. All the fences are the same height - if that helps with perspective in any other pictures.
these goats (full-sized) were sniffing my fingers. There's a baby in there!
that baby horse again. She'll grow up to be 2000 pounds at least. These are the only full-sized animals on the farm (I guess except the chickens, which I don't have a picture of. Guinea fowl too). They are draft horses - which means they're bigger than any other horse I've ever seen.
some more baby goats. Springtime means babies all over the place
a mommy goat! She's friendly
2 young rams. They are called babydoll southdown sheep. Which means miniature. We just moved these guys into this stall today and the black one sat on my lap. He was the size of a toddler and so cute!
an emu! There's 2 emus on the farm. They've been there 2 years and between them, they've laid one egg. Which they accidentally crushed immediately.

a new addition to the farm! There's only 3 chickens, but soon there will be more!

all of the sheep on the farm were sheared last week, but Larry doesn't do anything with the wool, so I volunteered to take it. I have 12 fleeces. Yesterday I tried to dry them all out. It didn't work perfectly, but it helped. Soon I'll wash them all. That'll be a big task. I'll take more pictures as I do stuff with the wool.as for climbing, I've only been 3 times so far in the last two weeks. I'm always too tired after getting home from work to climb, but I'm still having a great time. I'm sure I'll get in more climbing days soon.
See you all later!
-Stella

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Alpacas!

Hey everyone! We're at the New. At home, I threw my winter mittens into the closet and pulled out the intertube.

When we got here it was snowing.

But it was warm today! I went to a farm near Charleston for an alpaca shearing! I didn't take any pictures, but I made a friend who's a knitter (and a Grandma). She taught me how to knit and e-mailed me the pictures she took immediately! Here they are:



I watched the lady above (I forgot her name already! That's f-ed up) spin some wool. She also taught me how to card wool (it's really hard! I suck at it!). The others are alpacas: the one with its fore-legs up on the fence, just leaning there. A baby alpaca, and a sheared alpaca. Their necks are so scrawny it's amazing they hold up their heads!

I also got a parttime job on a local farm here. I'll get some pictures soon. It's amazing!

bye for now,
-Stella