Ugh – spitwad to the face!

On By stefrobrtsIn farmLeave a comment

I went out to feed the alpacas this evening and the white one pushed to the front and spit right in my face – NASTY! This morning when I separated them to feed them he gurgled at me and I was firm with him to knock it off, then as I set down his food and walked away he aimed a kick at me, missing by a hair. I tell you, whenever I give these llamas (and now alpacas) a chance they always prove themselves to be foul tempered, nasty animals. I really don’t get what people see in them. Having an animal that will unload a stomach of green goo in your face is just FOUL. So much for rescues being grateful for what you do for them. These guys were fine the first week, but now that their bellies are full they are back to their nasty selves. I’m glad they’ll just be temporary fosters.

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The exercise bike and the weight loss project

On By stefrobrtsIn weight loss4 Comments

Dave scored a free exercise bike from someone. Strangely enough it is exactly like a bike we had a few years ago, which I gave away for free on Freecycle because I didn’t use it, and now I was wishing I had an exercise bike, and we get this one for free – that must be Karma. (I had already started taking it apart in this picture)

We just brought it in this afternoon, and the resistance knob didn’t seem to do much. So I looked up on the net for info about it, and saw several people complaining that it goes through resistance bands and they are expensive to replace. So I was thinking, great, that explains why it was free. So after Dave left for rehearsal I had nothing else to do this evening, so I pulled the cover off to have a look.

Pretty simple. The pedals turn a big flywheel that has a drive belt going to the side of a smaller, heavier flywheel in front. That one has a nylon strap around it. The strap is tightened by turning the resistance knob using a basic bicycle-style brake cable. Except the spring between the strap and the cable was broken.

So I took the spring out and went out to the garage and started digging in my workbench. I quickly found a couple springs that might do the job. One felt about right, but was too long. So I snipped off what I needed and re-bent a loop into the end.

I came back in and put it all back together and tah-dah – it seems to work just fine now! I’m so happy that I was not only able to figure out the issue, but to find just the right doo-dad out in the garage to make a fix with. I guess I’m to that age where I’ve done enough projects that the leftover pieces occasionally are useful for something without yet another trip to the hardware store!

As far as the weight loss project is going, I have not lost any more weight, but I have hampered myself by overdoing it and hurting myself, which causes me to have to take a couple days off of exercising. Even though I have not seen the scale go down, I am feeling so much better than I ever expected, and I have more energy for doing stuff in general – like taking care of alpacas and cleaning up the garden, and today we cleaned up the shop and I carried many boxes of toys up to the second floor. And when I am exercising, turns out I love to run (or jog, in my case). It feels great, and I get such a rush from pushing myself!

I have also learned a lot about what I eat through journalling – and I can’t believe how many calories are in some of the things that I used to enjoy. I can still enjoy some of those things, but now I need to find ways to lighten them up, or plan around them. So if I want to go burn 700 calories on a burrito bowl at Chipotle (one of my favorite things) I can still do that, but I need to make sure I also don’t have a 700 calorie dinner! Really though, my problem was soda pop, mindless snacking (especially while sitting at work), and portion control – because you can have too much of even a good thing. Never again will I eat Chex Mix, with its high salt content and calories completely devoid of nutritional value – I don’t even have the urge to! I’d rather eat a banana or an orange or some dried fruit or nuts, or a big spinach salad – turns out I love fresh spinach with tomatoes and cucumbers and a little Italian Dressing! Who knew?!Or a tortilla wrap with tomato, cucumber, turkey deli meat and cream cheese – yum!

So I’m happy with the project, even if my weight isn’t showing it. I have no doubt it will soon, and that the new habits I’m learning, and the exercise I’m doing, is going to start paying off. I don’t mind if it happens slowly. It took a while to put it on, and I think if I take it off slowly, it will stay gone, which is fine by me!

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This morning

On By stefrobrtsIn farmLeave a comment

It was 28 degrees this morning, and I had to get right up and go out and break ice off the water troughs, separate the alpacas and feed them each their individual breakfasts (without getting spit on because they get excited when they see the bowls), scold the dogs for barking at them the whole time, freshen up their hay, send them out to play in the pasture, and clean up all the poo in the shelter area. 

Ok, so adding 3 packys is a LITTLE extra work. I’m sure all my farm friends are doing the same thing and more 😀

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The 3 Amigos go exploring

On By stefrobrtsIn farmLeave a comment

I let the boys out to check out their new pasture today. Do you think we have room for three alpacas around here?

Yeah, it’s a pretty big pasture (and that’s just half of it).

The girls from our 4H club named them. Sebastian is the leader, and he headed out to explore the limits of his new kingdom.

While Red and Fredrico headed down to do some grazing by the trees. 

After he’d checked out the whole place Sebastian came back and got the other two, and took them on a tour of what he’d found, and they all wandered all over the pasture (with Navi barking at them from the house the whole way). When it started getting dark I went out and called them in with a grain bucket, and gave them some treats once they were back in the paddock. I locked them in for the night so they would be safe and dry.

Super nice Alpacas!

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Alpaca Headshots

On By stefrobrtsIn farm1 Comment

I went out this morning to give them some more hay, and a bit of grain to help start putting some weight back on them. They came right up to me and wanted to sniff noses, and don’t mind being touched at all, so I gave them scratches on the neck. It’s hard to get through all that dirty wool, and the wool is full of blackberry thorns. But they are very friendly, obviously they had a lot of attention before their last home fell apart. They didn’t even fight and spit over the grain, which would be typical, they just took turns gobbling it up.

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‘Packys

On By stefrobrtsIn 4H, farm2 Comments
Trent, Jamie, and Sharon helping the alpacas settle in to their new digs.

Well, the alpacas have arrived. They are actually very nice. They need some time to rest and recover. They badly need to be sheared but that can’t happen until spring, so they’ll just have to tough it out. Right now they have shelter, hay, fresh water, and we’ll get them started on some food to put the pounds back on. They were easy to catch and handle, and allowed quite a bit of body handling. I’m certain these guys will find themselves in good 4H homes before too long.

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Around the yard – new visitors coming

On By stefrobrtsIn farm, llamas2 Comments

First off, the latest on the neighbor’s farm. It was up for sale earlier this winter, and closed in early December for $158k, which was a lot less than they were asking (I think they started at $215). It has 11 acres, a destroyed mobile home (literally just a heap of rubbish), an old mobile home people were living in, and a big old completely un-charming, falling-apart barn. Also beautiful pastures (or will be if they are cared for), and tall trees.

 I don’t envy the folks who took this project on. The barn was full of garbage when we walked through it when it first went up for sale, and is in sad shape inside. But the folks who bought it have been working on it, hauling away trailer loads of debris. You can see where there are piles of stuff outside the barn now. I don’t know if they are cleaning it up to try and save what’s still good, or just slowly taking it apart. The other day I saw a backhoe show up and thought that was the end of the barn but the backhoe went away and the barn is still there. I am hoping they are going to keep it as a horse property, but if it gets split up and developed that’s ok too. The minimum lot size out here is 5 acres (ours is 3, but they’ve changed the rules since then), so the worst we would have is two new neighbors on that side.

My garden looks like a mess, but I can see things actually getting more organized. I’m going to hoe the weeds under and clean the coop this weekend and put the chicken poo on the beds, so it has time to ‘cool off’ before planting time. Then I’ll lay straw on top of that, and I have all the old straw out of the shelter area where the sheep and pig was last year, which should be good compost too as it breaks down. I also have lots of shredded bark to re-do the paths. I see a lot of shoveling in my future!

The shelter has been reconfigured yet again to separate it from the garden, because a friend called me up and asked if I could take three alpacas. She organizes llama rescue, and got a call that three ‘packys had been abandoned when their house was foreclosed on. Since she’s full up, but I have two acres and no animals, I couldn’t say no. So one of the other 4H families came over and helped me remodel the shelter (moving around boards that were already there) and we have a shelter and paddock ready for livestock again. This morning I spread clean straw, and hung a hay feeder. Someone else brought hay, and another 4H family has a trailer and will go help pick them up. 4H people are the best – they hear about animals in need and they just say ‘how can I help’!

(It’s built on hill, which is why it has that ‘everything is askew’ look –  it’s actually all quite plumb)

This should be a nice cozy retreat from the weather. They should be in their new home this afternoon.

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Navi goes for a ride!

On By stefrobrtsIn barclay, navi, pets2 Comments

Navi hates riding in the car, for reasons I don’t understand because every other dog I’ve ever had will camp out in the car at every opportunity in the hopes they will get to go somewhere fun. She sits in the car, miserable, drooling, and looking ill the whole way. So I’ve done a lot of desensitizing to get her used to the motion of the car, and now she doesn’t look sick, but she looks like she suspects she might get sick, and so she is very anxious about the whole thing.

On top of that, she associates the harness with going in the car, so the battle actually begins well before we even get out the door, as I try to get her harnessed up. The only time I took her for a walk without a harness, she slipped her collar and ran amok at the park campground!

Last night I was planning to take them to a friend’s house to play with Sake and Sitka, their eskimo friends. But first I had to get her harnessed up. I harnessed Barclay, so she could see him calmly handling it. Then, using lots of treats, I showed her the harness and click and treated her for looking at it, for sniffing it (we’ve done all this many times before), etc, until I was ready to actually put it on her. She would run up to me, then run away, but she kept coming back, she wanted so badly to do what I was asking, and she kept trying, and I kept rewarding her for it. She really made the effort. She even submissively peed on the floor, she was so nervous! But I can’t let that stop her from getting out, or she’ll be housebound forever. Finally, with lots of treats and praise, I got the harness on, and leashed them up and took them out to the van.

At the van I opened the side door and Barclay jumped in and got on his seat, but Navi was sniffing around. Sniffing, sniffing, sniffing. And it wasn’t because there was anything that interesting to smell, it was because she was nervous, and sniffing is a displacement activity. Since I knew that, I just let her sniff, and when she finally got up the courage to look at the van, she got a click and a treat. She sniffed around some more, but not for as long before she looked at the van again, another click and treat. We kept this up until she got up the guts to go right up and look in the door (at Barclay who was sitting right inside) and finally she put her paws up on the step, and I boosted her in and gave her more treats and lots of praise. Then we drove to our friend’s house and she had a great time playing with her eskimo friends and stealing their toys, and we even took her and Sitka over to Lowes for a little practice walking around and seeing strangers (though she barked a lot and was too excited to take treats when offered, which means she was over-threshold – too stimulated for training) so we took them back home after a short walk-around.

 Sitka and Navi, barely sitting still long enough for a picture at Lowes

I am so proud of her because she does all this for me, she wants to please me and do what I want, and it’s so hard for her. She’s got such a great little heart, and a lot of ‘try’!  I hope after a while she’ll forget about being a car-sick little puppy and learn to relax and enjoy traveling. We love to travel, and to take our Airstream camping, and she’s going to need to relax and enjoy it to come along with us. And of course there’s so much for her to see and do, and it’s all a short car-ride away.

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Stickin’ to the plan

On By stefrobrtsIn weight loss1 Comment

I am sticking with my weight loss plan, and actually enjoying using the SparkPeople website to track my food and exercise. I get good feedback from it everyday, and it really makes me think about what I’m eating. If I’m thinking of having a snack, I can look at my page and see how I’ve done so far, and if I have the calories to spend, and I really think about if I want to spend them that way.

I’m also working out walking on the treadmill nearly every evening, and doing strength training every other day. I’m trying to work in other exercise too. Yesterday Dave and I went to the park and he jogged while I rode my bike alongside. The bike was going faster than him though, so eventually I parked it and just walked fast while he jogged the loop. I love riding my bike, I can’t wait to get it out again. When I was a kid my bike was always a substitute for having a horse – blasting along with the wind in my hair. I love that feeling – and it’s darned good exercise for the legs!

This still feels different from previous attempts to lose weight which were half-hearted at best. I feel very devoted to this, and I feel encouraged and optimistic that it is going to work. I lost 5lb the first two weeks. I stalled last week though when I hurt my back – skipping! I felt so good I went skipping down the hall just to see if I could and pulled something in my back! That’ll curb your enthusiasm quick! I’ll leave skipping to te children from now on! After a couple days rest I am back to my workout routine and hopeful I’ll see some more progress on the scale next Monday.

A friend who is also on this journey asked if I’d like to join her for a 5K walk, so I said yes.So in March I’ll be doing my first 5K walk – it’s only 3 miles, I walk half that on the treadmill every night. Should be interesting.

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