dust, dust and more dust

Monsoon finally kicked in with a vengeance. Friday night brought us our first dust storm of the season. This one was a bit unusual in that the winds kept up for hours. Normally a dust storm will have a “face”, the initial wall of dust and wind that passes pretty quick. Then if you happen to be in the actual path of the storm generating the winds, you may get rain. We didn’t get a drop. We did get some pretty hard wind, however, and we lost a power pole. We were without power for about six hours, which when it’s over 100 degrees out, can be fairly uncomfortable.
Saturday we got the second dust storm. This one behaved more typically with the initial burst of wind passing rather quickly. It stuck around longer enough to take down four more power poles (SRP is not happy) and scattered some yarn that I was dying, across the yard. I’m still trying to untangle that mess! This time we got a little bit of rain, but not much.
Sunday night’s dust storm stayed mostly to the east of us and we just got a little bit of dust.
I’m ready for the dust storms to stop now!

Lazy days of Summer

The heat is on. I always know when Summer is officially here because the girls move their poo pile to the breezeway between the barns. With their food there and the cooled water from the swamp cooler, they now never have to leave the shade at any point of the day. So for the next eight weeks or so, we all, animal and human alike, hunker down and try to minimize the amount of time we have to spend doing any kind of activity during the heat of the day. The people get up early and try to do all the heavy lifting in the early morning hours. You’d be amazed how much you can get done between the hours of six and nine.

Jacko figured out this weekend that the fences around the trees are really just suggestions, rather than commands. He got himself into one of the tree wells and started snacking on the grass growing at the base of the tree. .

When I found him, he was kushed into the cool dirt (I had just watered a few days before) enjoying the shade and a snack. For good measure, he got a nice long roll in before he got back out and ran back to the barn where everybody else was.

We also learned over the Fourth of July weekend, that alpacas enjoy water melon and the girls got to enjoy a sweet, cool treat