Because we have a few hundred to spare if anyone wants them!
Having made it safely home from my trip to England (a day later than expected thanks to a cancelled flight) I was greeted by below freezing temperatures of 15 F and walls of tumbleweeds that blew in en masse on Sunday when the sustained wind speed was 30-40 mph with gusts of 65 mph – lovely!
Tuesday was a little warmer and calmer and I foolishly spent time trying to remove some of the tumbleweeds. I say foolishly as on Thursday the wind blew again and the tumbleweeds returned. In some parts of town the tumbleweeds stacked up past the top of ground floor windows and there are suggestions that this is the worse year ever for tumbleweeds.
At the farm our fences did a wonderful job of collecting tumbleweeds and I had to spend time pulling them away from the pasture gates just to be able to get in to feed the alpacas. You can just about see the alpaca’s faces peering through the wall of tumbleweeds in the picture above.
The alpacas were quite blasé about the new walls to their pastures, nibbling at the offending tumbleweeds and rubbing up against the tumbleweeds that made it into the pasture – I’m hoping they didn’t get too many broken pieces of tumbleweed in their fleeces.
The crias and yearlings enjoyed the windy weather, running around the pasture and spooking at each other and the tumbleweeds that rolled across their path. There was much jumping and turning up in the air and running at full gallop, ending up with a game of “lets see who stops closest to the fence”.
So now for me it is back to work, sorting through the various emails and mail that arrived while I was away, trying to get back on track and perhaps even preparing for Christmas (most men I have spoken to have assured me that five days is more than enough time to prepare!).
For all who sent me messages of sympathy and support following my fathers’ death I thank you for your kind words and wishes. Each and every message I received meant a lot to me and was a comfort at a sad time.
I hope to get back on track with my blog entries now and look forward to posting more entries about life on our farm and reading the comments of visitors to the blog.
(and don’t forget if you need any tumbleweeds we have plenty to spare – an excellent gift for that hard to buy for person in your life!)