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In my busy life, dealing with alpaca fleece always ends up taking a back seat to a myriad of other priorities - not from lack of interest, just lack of time and it seems like everything else is more pressing.  It takes something specific to suddenly bring fleece to the top of the to-do list, and that happened about 2 weeks ago. 

Well, it's been a few weeks, and I've thought of a number of things to mention, but nothing worthy of an entire post, so this'll be a catch-all post, rounding up the random goings-on of the last few weeks, in no particular order...

Oh boy, y'all are going to think I'm crazy, but... A friend had some extra barn cats, and Caleb said that after losing 4 of our 6 cats in a matter of months we could actually use a few more, and the boys would probably enjoy some kittens.  I said, "if we're getting kittens for the boys to enjoy, shouldn't we get the mama with newborns, that would be way more fun!"  What was I thinking?!  So, we did.

The theme this week is habaneros - we planted 2 habanero plants in the hoophouse this spring, and I forgot just how prolific they are.  We are harvesting at least 15 peppers every two days, and that really piles up!  I canned over 3 dozen jars early this week, and another 1.5 dozen this week.  We'll easily have a year or two's-worth of hot sauce :)  I don't actually like really hot food, but habaneros are just so beautiful, I love growing them simply for the color!  I only do it every few years...

Our newest arrival is here, a big welcome to little Tanya (continuing our classic country music artists, obviously named for Tanya Tucker). 

This post is a bit late - but it's the thought that counts, better late than never, and any number of other platitudes :). 

Monday morning we had an exciting start to the day.  When Caleb moved the big cow/goat/alpaca/sheep herd at 6 am, he realized our cow Bridget was in the middle of having a calf.  There were two little feet sticking out, the right ones even (front), but after a while we decided things were not progressing as they should, and maybe the calf's head was back.

A few weeks ago, on our anniversary (12 years!! June 25) we took a really lovely family trip (with our new-found abundance of family time since Caleb's home almost all the time now) to the farm of some friends, down in Lost Cove on the side of the mountain. They have been telling us to come visit, bring the kids and see the animals for months now, because they've had a small herd of buffalo for about a year!  We finally got our ducks in a row, packed up a picnic brunch, and did it!  

So many aspects of farm life are all about new beginnings, and creation - yet death and endings are an inseparable part of that.  I've had several conversations with Liam about the yin and yang of life (usually centered around the fact that you can't just read all day, there's work to be done so that we all have food, clean clothes, and a happy family!).  

Our big news for this last week is that, as of last Saturday (or whenever after that the bank actually got the check), we are debt-free!  We decided to go ahead and pay off the rest of our farm mortgage, we were scheduled to finish by the end of the year anyway, but it will be awfully nice not to have that payment going out every month.  We paid for the house as we built it, and Caleb's school loans were paid off by the government years ago since he works in an underserved area, so we don't owe anyone anything!  In the nicest sense, of course :)