Outside work, animals grazing, quilting

There is nothing that can deflate the creative drive more than digging fence posts. Dennis and I have been doing this since Easter, so I have not been able to attend to my blog like I would like to. Four of the posts took 36 hours to dig, they were up by the road, and we had to keep adding water, then wait and dig out an inch or 2 at a time,this went on all day and a half. Exhausting!!!! The end is in sight however, and we are almost there. We have the goat pasture, sheep pasture, female alpaca enclosure all finished. Now all we have left to do is the male alpaca pasture, and to fence in the garden so we can get that planted.
Here is a picture of the goats, and female alpacas out in the goat pasture grazing. They are sharing grazing space until our land is out of CRP. (set aside acres by the government, for use of the native animals)

Here is Dennis fencing off a cottonwood tree in the sheep enclosure, one of maybe a dozen trees we have on our acreage, so we have to give these trees special treatment and protection, as each one is precious out here on the prairie.

In our sheep enclosure, we found 2 galvanized calf huts for protection from the elements. We have seen a lot of these since we came to Colorado. Never saw any down in Arizona, I suppose due to metal constuction and closed off nature, the animal would be barbecued in the hot desert sun. The company who makes these huts is based in Iowa, so I imagine that they have them up in Minnesota, but I don't ever recall seeing them. We had the plastic calf huts up there. But these galvanized are very sturdy construction, with a flap in the back for air movement in the summer, and you can close these up in the winter. It took me a long time to find these huts. The distributor in Longmont no longer carries them as it costs too much to ship them down here. I even called the manufacturer to check how much it would cost to ship a couple down here to me and he quoted me a price of over $500 just for the shipping!!!! I lucked out that a neighbor of ours is moving and had 2 that she sold me. As you can see in these last pictures that there is a storm brewing in the background. This storm went all around us, with us only getting a few sprinkles, like the Arizona rains that my dad is always talking about. Except ours rain drops were not the size of quarters, this time anyway.



The male alpacas are haltered and walked over to our back yard that is enclosed with chain link fencing, they are grazed there about 2- 3 hours every day. No mowing the lawn for us. The alpaca and goats are so happy to be able to graze on grass! I don't think they miss Arizona at all, except for the 20 below day we had last winter.
Here is a picture of me and the boys. They are such good fellows.


I told Dennis that we have to get a new camera, something is dreadfully wrong with this one, it makes me look fat! This is the new fashion statement, shorts with workboots, you gotta love it.

Alas, with all the outdoor work around here, I have not had much time to do the things that I love the most, quilting, and spinning.
This is a picture of a flannel quilt that I started nearly 2 months ago. It is from my stash, I found 13 yards of flannel, a hoarder for sure I am. I am doing some applique flowers around the edge, to give some pizzazz to this quilt.
I will be able to make 4 quilts from this stash. I already have one done, this is the start of my second one, and I have one cut out for Lily. The first was a bed size quilt, the last 3 will be a little larger than lap quilt size for snuggling up on thses cold winter days in front of the TV or fire, reading a good book. So I am patiently waiting for rain or those 100 degree days that they get here, so I can rest and do some of the girlie things that I so enjoy.


More later.......