Happy New Year!

It is hard to believe that this is the second New Year's Day we have spent here on the farm! Boy, doesn't time fly by...

Our first goal for today was to offload the 3 1000+ lb round hay bales into the cow pasture. Both Neil and I were a little uncertain how that was going to go but it ended up going better then ever imagined. Neil backed the trailer right into the pasture over the place we wanted the bales to set. He brought our little Kobota tractor in and we looped a single strapping around the bale and attached it to the bucket of the tractor. Then we backed the tractor up and off slid the bale! Then Neil pushed it a bit off to the side so we could pull the other two off. So simple!

And the cows and donkeys were thrilled! I am hoping that with the "all they can eat" hay and the worming I did yesterday that I can get some condition back on Cherry Blossom... she is far too thin right now.

Next project was to assemble the new "temporary" building we picked up at Tractor Supply on Sunday. It is a 12x20 tarped covered shelter that we put into the male alpacas pasture to give them more shelter from the rain. With our new breeding male coming in a few weeks we needed to upgrade our male living quarters.

The building went together like an erector set and I dare say that Neil and I actually had fun doing it. It is really sturdy and looks pretty nice to boot (it is dark forest green so it blends right in to the tree line).

This was our second day with no rain and the pastures had dried out enough that they no longer had standing water in them. I took advantage of this and finally let Noodle and her five day old cria out of the barn for a few hours while we were working in the pasture. The little cria seems to be doing well despite her petite size. The two mingled with the herd until evening chores when I put them back in the catch pen in the barn. The barn is a bit warmer and I didn't want to risk it raining overnight and the cria getting chilled.

Neil wanted to try a new restaurant in town so we all went out for dinner and had Italian.

The hens gave 17 eggs today.