October Comes in Like a ________(Fill in the blank)

Some days I feel like this, but don't have quite as much energy as this little guy!

Wow, October came in on a bad note, but I'll get to that.  September ended well, with beautiful weather and lots of color coming into the woods.  I took so many photos this past week that I can't possibly post them all here.  Well I could, but I won't.

Saturday I had to go feed some horses that are owned by a man who is in the hospital and whose neighbors were tired of doing it.  They called the sheriff's dept who called the dog warden.  She called me.  I agreed to do it Saturday and Sunday and then it was back in her hands. I have not heard how things are going.  I'm not sure if that is bad or good.

CCNF Electric Mayhem

So Saturday afternoon another of our awaited crias arrived.  This one is from our female, Miracle, who was bred to this nice looking male, CCNF Electric Mayhem, to whom I purchased the breeding in a silent auction at the Ohio Alapaca Breeder's Association show 2 years ago.  He is a beautiful rose grey color and I was hoping for a rose grey cria.  But I am happy with the spunky little female who arrived around 1:30 pm and was up nursing before she was even dry.

She is doing very well and is keeping Miracle on her toes.

Sunday I attended the Soakum Festival to do spinning demos with my guild as I have done the last many years.  I wrote about it last year in this post http://www.straightforkfarm.blogspot.com/2011/10/its-fall.html   
It was a beautiful day even though rain had been in the forecast.

Then on Monday, one of our last 2 pregnant alpacas was in labor, which I noticed around 10 am after finishing chores. Truffel has had 3 crias before and the first was very difficult, to the point where she refused to have anything to do with the cria once she was born and she became a bottle baby.  However, Truffel was much better with her 2 following crias and no intervention was needed.  This time, things did not go well.  At all.  There comes a time when I am watching a laboring dam when I decide how much longer I will wait before it becomes necessary to go in and "see" what is going on in there.  This is after the second stage of labor, which is the expulsion stage (the stage when the mother actively pushes the cria out) starts.  Once the dam starts to push, I want to see something coming out within 1/2 an hour.  Tops.  This did not happen. So I did what I hate to do and put on the shoulder sleeve and got out the lubricant and did an exploratory.  It was the worst case scenario, in my mind, a full breech with the hocks (heels) and tail in the birth canal.  A call to the vet who was nowhere nearby but told me how to manipulate the legs (which MUST come out first), followed by 5 minutes or so of awkward pushing and pulling and I pulled a beautiful little female cria ass-end first into the world.  She was quite dead.  In thinking about it afterwards, I am sure I must have broken the umbilical cord while I was trying to pull those long legs out from under that cria's belly.   This was our first and hopefully last breech birth here.  Truffel is doing well. She will not be re-bred until spring at the earliest.  So only 1 is left to deliver, my old girl, Peg.  Any day now, Peg.....

Otherwise, I am STILL working on my continuing ed courses online.  I am down to about 7 hours now, though.  I started a garter stitch scarf using some of my hand dyed alpaca yarn and I can knit on it while I go through the classes, so that helps.  Last week I finally finished up a pair of hand-spun hand-dyed mittens that I made for a friend.  I figured it would be good to give them to her before it got cold.

As I said, I took lots of photos this past week and here are a few to share.

'shrooms in the woods

honeybee