Tuesday, April 29, 2008

From then to now

How did we end up where we are now?

After a year of enjoying our beautiful country property we decided it would be a waste of the facilities (barn, pastures etc) to leave them unused. Of course I have always wanted to be a farmer and could not miss my big chance.

With that the hunt began. What do we do with a barn?

We looked into all kinds of livestock from cattle, to sheep, game birds, mink, rabbits, pigs …It became evident that one of us would need to become a full time farmer for many of the options, and for others there was little profit to be made, more daily hands-on work than we could manage and not to mention major renovations to the barn in some cases. In each case we compared the requirements to what we knew about alpacas.

Alpacas: Easy to keep, disease free, manageable size, valuable fleece and both domestic and international markets for breeding stock. Not to mention really cute! Limited (in comparison) renovations to the barn, and of course an upgrade to the rickety fence you have been hearing about.

Best of all a great many alpaca ranchers we spoke with maintained full time off farm jobs. Could this become a love affair with these fuzzy creatures?

Research went on for about a year and a half, visiting too many websites to count, alpaca farm visits, and reading everything we could. We took advantage of Ag Canada programs for assistance with a business plan, which actually made sense. A few last steps to pull it all together and here we are.

Monday, April 28, 2008

Waiting for them to arrive

Talked to the trucking company this morning. The Alpaca's have arrived safely in Paris On. They are now resting and enjoying some warm weather until the next expected departure date of Thursday May 1 with arrival in Nova Scotia on Saturday May 3.

While we are getting impatient for them to arrive we still have lots to do.

The fencers have finished one of the pastures but the main pasture will not be complete until the weekend. The males will have to stay inside for Saturday and part of Sunday until that is done.

We have some more barbwire and a wild raspberry patch (30'x100') to clean up since the fencer went up the wrong side of the old fence.

The pasture also needs to be over seeded and fertilized due to winter kill.

Oh and our expected supplier of mineral mix for the alpacas is out and is not expecting any soon.

Plus we still have to finalize our farm insurance which is an blog waiting to be written.

Oh well 4 evenings to go and we will make it happen.

The reposting

Do to a spelling error in the web address I have reposted the first early posts.


Sunday, April 27, 2008

Building stalls
Well another busy weekend. The body aches all over. But my wife and I got the wall built to separate the males from the rest of the barn and then one stall if needed. On the female side we are using a variation of the barn plan found in The Camelid Companion (Bennett). The only thing different is we removed the office and we have an enclosed stall at the "from the trailer exit".
All we have left is three gates and the platform for the scale to be built.

One thing about working with hammers, nails, tape measures and saws it that profanity seems to be come out of my mouth much more. Something about carpentry I guess.

Posted by wildwolf at 6:32 PM

Friday, April 25, 2008
the alpacas are coming! The alpacas are coming!
Got word last night that our Alpacas have left Sherwood Park AB for the first leg to Thunderbay. Then on to Paris, On. Before heading to the Maritimes and our place in Nova Scotia.

Earliest expected arrival is Thursday.

Posted by wildwolf at 8:51 AM

Monday, April 21, 2008
Oh the pain
The problem with weekends is that there are more hours in the day to overdue the physical work that farming requires compared to a couple of hours after dinner. My wife and I started each day about 9am and worked solidly till 530pm. We cut and collected the last 1000 fence feet of wire, cut and cleared 15 - 20 trees that had to be moved so the new fence can cut through the woods, and took the old wooden fence posts that could be removed from the ground and made a 20 foot stretch of corrugated road.

Besides other smaller tasks that we got done like spraying the apple trees, weeding the garden so I can rototiller this week, etc; I discovered that I did not drain one of my well pumps for winter properly so it cracked and now have to replace it. This is a pain in the wallet.

On a side note the Calgary Flames won game 6 but that just made me more tired this morning as I stayed up to midnight to catch the end.
Posted by wildwolf at 9:34 AM

Friday, April 18, 2008
Fencing Part 2
Yes, admittedly lifting out the fence posts is heavy work but my sweetheart unfortunately does not have the hand strength to pull out the wire staples as we discovered the previous night.That being said my wife who is never afraid of hard work or a challenge, did provide a good chuckle when after pulling out and/or stacking 40 odd posts she saw me approaching and said "Can I be a girl now". For those who know Caroline this is almost like she is admitting defeat although we also know that would never be true either.My wife is a trooper and I love her. So as long as the next three weeks do not physically kill us we will survive this ordeal of replacing the fencing and fixing up the barn. The guys we have hired to install the fence should arrive on Saturday which will ease some of the heavy lifting burden.

Posted by wildwolf at 12:39 PM

"My wife will collect the fence posts"

Thursday, April 17, 2008

He had no idea what he was asking me to do! Not many of the posts were rotten enough to simply collect. Most of the fence posts were 2 1/2 feet into the ground with the bottom foot of the hole still full of water from the spring melt, which created a wonderful suction effect.So, with much fence post shaking, groaning and heaving I have indeed managed to coax the posts out of their holes. Oh, what a work out and how the body hurts tonight.Admittedly this is satisfying work and the field is that much closer to being a new home for the critters.
Posted by Farmgirl

Fencing


Our first alpacas are to arrive the first week of May and we still need to get the property re-fenced. A total of about 6 acres have to be fenced. I took a while to find a fencer who will do the job the way we would like and for a reasonable cost.
To help control the labour my wife and I are removing the old fence that is still partly in place. After going to three places I finally found this magic pair of pliers called a fencing tool. Canadian Tire of all places and got the last one they had. This pair of pliers actually hooks under the inch and half staple the holds barbwire or page wire to a wood fence post, plus has wire cutters on each side and a large eagle claw if you need to dig some wood away.
So far after two evenings we have removed about 400 feet of barb and page wire. About 5 staples per fence post every 10 feet. Hands are hurting today. The page wire we are trying to salvage so we can use it for interior fencing to allow for pasture rotation. Tonight I will start removing then next couple hundred feet of wire while my wife will collect the fence posts, many are rotten as they fell over when the the wire was removed. We will save the fence posts for a corrugated road in a wet area back of the property.

The New Adventure

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Well after 18+ months of research, developing business plans, arranging financing, and hours of decision making my wife and I have finally signed our first contract for the purchase of two alpacas. The main focus of this blog will to discuss the past process and the future trials and tribulations.

We have now started a new adventure together and the fun began in 2006. More on how we reached the decision to go into alpacas to follow at later dates.