Fiberguild

Alpacas and covered bridges can peacfully co-exist.

Check out alpaca-tour.com.  A 60 mile trip across rolling farm land and the foothills of Oregon’s Cascade Mountains that crosses 6 covered bridges and visits three alpaca farms.

Kind of like a wine tour on steroids - and without the buzz or hangover (unless you BYOB).  

This has to be one of the most scenic parts of the Willamette Valley, and still largely maintains its rural character.  Covered bridges have a certain romance to them as well.

The site gives some pretty interesting historical facts.

Good stuff!!

Protecting the livestock can be a real problem, but is a basic responsibility of the farm owner

Good farm fences are the first line of defense.

But, they aren’t perfect. Thus, I have struggled with the issue of firearms. We have neighbors within about 300 yards, so the choice of weapon was a bit of a struggle. After studying ballistics, and considering the most likely predators (dogs, coyotes, and a rare possibility of a cougar) I finally made the choice.

Here are some basic ballistics of common choices:

Considering the predators, the ranges in question, and the fact that my wife could well be using the weapon, the choices were fairly easy.

We are using a Ruger 10/22 and a Marlin .357 magnum lever action carbine (with 158 grain solid points).  The Marlin should be sufficient to bring down any predator we will see out to 150 yards or so.  Neither weapon will carry to the neighbors under normal circumstances.

The side benefit of the Marlin is being able to use the same ammunition in a Ruger GP100 revolver.

Project Honey Pot is a collaborative effort to stop spam.  From their website:

Project Honey Pot is the first and only distributed system for identifying spammers and the spambots they use to scrape addresses from your website. Using the Project Honey Pot system you can install addresses that are custom-tagged to the time and IP address of a visitor to your site. If one of these addresses begins receiving email we not only can tell that the messages are spam, but also the exact moment when the address was harvested and the IP address that gathered it.

Many folks don’t know that there are malicious programs that do nothing but traverse the Internet “harvesting” email addresses.  Project Honey Pot allows site owners to easily set up a trap to identify these.  I highly recommend all site owners to join the effort.

Does it work?  Yep!  Today I received the following email:

Regardless of how the rest of your day goes, here’s something to be happy about — today a honey pot you installed successfully identified a previously unknown email harvester (IP: 190.19.79.146). The harvester was caught by your honey pot installed at:

www.gatewayalpacas.com

You can find information about your newly identified harvester here:

http://www.projecthoneypot.org/i_51efbe818834aa71c797e2354418b925

Info on all the harvesters that have been spotted by this honey pot is also available here:

http://www.projecthoneypot.org/t_51319.1dd0a

Don’t forget to tell your friends you made the Internet a little better today….

Thanks from the entire Project Honey Pot team and, we’re sure if they knew, from the Internet community as a whole.

It is nice to help make the world a little bit better…

I was privileged to have been invited to Kinney Valley Alpacas in Ontario, WI to talk about the alpaca fiber industry here in the US. Just got home late last night (Gawd, all joy has been taken out of flying anymore. Take the train whenever possible!!)

It was a great group of folks in attendance, involved, attentive and with hard hitting questions.

A couple of things really stood out to me.

First, I sense real motivation for the transition of alpacas from a speculative “rare breed” industry into main stream agriculture. This was evident on many levels, not the least of which was open discussion of the development of a consumption and hide market.

Secondly, there were a few members of the Alpaca Fiber Cooperative of North America present. There is (and it is probably cultural, as much as anything) a real lack of “ownership” of the co-op. Folks consistently talked about “the” co-op.

I suggested that a simple change in language could bring a huge change in attitude and performance. Instead of referring to “the” co-op, far better to talk about “our” co-op. It is, after all, our business, totally owned and operated by alpaca fiber producers.

I want to thank the Radloff family for inviting me to speak at their farm event. It was a great time and a wonderful opportunity.

We have been raising alpacas for over a decade now.  These are by far the easiest livestock we have dealt with.

Two steers run last summer and turned into locker beef in the fall did more damage to fences and buildings that 20 alpacas have in a decade!

The downturn in the economy has had a major impact on the prices of alpacas.  I suspect that much of the market was being financed with home equity, and that tap is pretty dry these days with property values working their ways back down to something approaching reason.

It will be interested to see how the market holds once the economy does begin improving.  While I secretly hope that we can gradually move into a production, rather than speculative, market model, the specualtive market is far more lucrative (if not as sustainable).

CNN reports that consumers are becoming suspicious of the “Organic” label:

The percentage of consumers who believe organic products are good for them is down to 45%, while those who believe they’re good for the environment has fallen to 48%, according to the latest survey from consulting firm WSL Strategic Retail. Both measures stood at a 54% approval rating two years ago.

All I can say is it is about time. In The Omnivore’s Dilemma A Natural History of Four Meals Michael Poulan did a masterful job of illustrating how corporate America has taken over the organic movement, corrupting government policy and regulation, and turning a healthy alternative into yet another way to create profit.

We have toyed with the idea of getting “organic certification” but so far have rejected it.  There are multiple reasons for this.

1. Cost
2. Unnecessary restrictions
3. Animal health and welfare

Some of the requirements for certification are simply over the top.  Banning use of antibiotics and/or parsiticides can compromise herd health for little gain.  Frankly, if an animal gets sick and needs veterinary intervention, we are going to provide that intervention.  This is far different than routine use of medications!

Some requirements make little sense.  Pressure treated posts are fine if they are installed at the time of certification, but no new one’s can be used after certification.  Huh??

So, we have billed ourselves as “natural” and “free range” because that is what we are.  We have not applied any chemicals on our property in almost 5 years.  Our local eco-system is healthy and getting healthier, evidenced by the increase in bird and mammal species observed.

Now, if we can only figure out how to get rid of the knot weed on the corner of the property without resorting to poisons we will be OK…

I am not a real picture guy, but this is one worth keeping record of.

april-snow

April 20, 2008 - This is the latest, most significant snowfall I have seen in over 35 years in the Wllamette Valley. April often has unsettled weather, and freezes are not uncommon, but these kind of conditions are very unusual!

One week later…

april-sun

Exactly one week later, on April 27, 2008. This is much more like a normal spring.

One of the side effects of the odd weather this year is that the grass has remained dormant for a full month longer than usual. This is not a good thing for the hay bill.

Hopefully we will see the grass begin to grow now that the ground is warming up…

Better than half way through the month of April, and it is snowing in the Willamette Valley!

NWS says to expect “unseasonably cold” weather patterns. Well, I’d have to agree. About 1 PM we started getting dime sized hail and lightening. This transitioned into sleet, then snow, and we ended up with about 2 1/2 inches of the stuff on the ground, and a passing pickup in the ditch out on the highway.

Animals all were smart enough to head to the barn…

No telling what this will do for the fruit growers around these parts. Our apple and pear trees are in bloom, so a hard freeze will hardly be a good thing.

Luckily, no produce has been planted yet. Starts are still indoors under lights. I have seen snow in April once in the past 30 years, but not quite this late in the month.

An interesting weather year this has been.

Boy, I feel like I am beating a dead horse. BBC reports:

“US President George W Bush has ordered the release of $200m in emergency aid to alleviate food shortages in Africa and other parts of the world.”

Meanwhile, the farm bill languishes in Congress and is facing a Presidential veto.

Congress wants to include tax cuts for

• Biofuels
• Timber Companies
• Race Horses

Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga, defended the latter, saying, “Horse racing is a huge agricultural industry.”

Now, I’m confused. We need to contribute $200 million to relieve world hunger while we give major domestic tax breaks to those growing fuel, paper and Christmas trees, and race horses!

What are we going to eat here in this country? I guess that doesn’t matter, since we will be able to drive to the race track where we can have paper race forms helping us decide which horse to put our money on.

“Let them eat cake,” were words famously spoken when the French populace was starving. Seems just as applicable now…

I have just watched (for about the third time now) the movie “Sicko”.

Not sure why I do this to myself, given how angry I get every time I watch it.

In my mind it is downright criminal that this country, the most prosperous in history, does not have universal health care.  Perhaps this is because I have seen firsthand the impact that the lack of UHC has on real people.  In the past 5 years I have seen our health care system (often called the best in the world) ignore several people in my near or distant family to the point that they died.

Our health care system is set up to deny treatment, since paying for treatment is detrimental to the bottom line of HMO’s and insurance companies.

We may have the best health care system, but it is inaccessible to many.  And, to many more it is a source of bondage, chaining them to jobs that they dare not leave.

What does health care have to do with a farm blog?

It really is all part of an unsustainable system - the same system that supports a food supply controlled by a handful of multi-national corporations.  It is part of a system that teaches and reinforces a “me first” and “right now” culture of acquisition, consumption and ultimately exploitation of our environment and our fellow man.

When “we” can think in terms of “us” we will empower ourselves. When we act to further our collective long term interests, we will see change.