Busy season

It's the Busy Season.  Fair Season, Christmas Season, Mud Season, Lambing Season, Hay Season... And Busy Season.

The Busy Season is so chock full of work that it has to share its season with Haying.

There's no shortage of work these days, and the heat is becoming sweltering.  Every night feels like the beginnings of a glorious thunderstorm, and yet nothing comes.  Day after day of thermometer-busting heat and oppressive humidity.

Thank God everything is sheared, but there's more than enough work left to keep the critters cool...

Nicholas the alpaca being sheared for the first time EVER

Windows in the barn need to be opened to let the not-so-cool breeze through, and promptly closed again if it plans on raining.  Hay needs to be unloaded and stored, water buckets need to constantly be filled, and even more constantly be scrubbed; even sheared nearly naked the alpacas are hot and have discovered the pleasure of standing in the water.  At least the llamas only dunked their heads!

All our sheep have lambed, and some of the goats we bred early in the season, but we still have more left to pop.  Gray Baby in particular, my sweet old momma goat, is incredibly pregnant.  She mopes around as if the world is going to come to an end if the kids inside her don't give up their hold soon- and with the temperatures nearing 100 it very well might.

Love is both pregnant AND fat. And laying in silly spots to stay shaded. 

The farrier is in, regardless of the heat, and ponies we bought over the winter now have perfect feet so they can be taught what their job actually is.  I do my best to scrounge up friends' kids on days that I manage to be off from any other jobs, but sometimes the ponies are found walking in circles with bags of grain, or secured logs, or wet laundry on their backs to simulate the weight.  Better to throw off a bag of grain after six months of not working than a kid!

The old-hat ponies that don't need any training- or refresher courses- revel in the weekdays they have "off."  On any given day working in the barn it's far from unusual to look out the back of the barn and count half a dozen ponies (if not more!) sprawled out on their sides sleeping in the sunshine.  It's such a normal sight to me that the first time a "horse person" started screaming when they saw it I simply couldn't understand what all the fuss was about.  They're ponies.  Isn't it just what they do?

The ponies aren't the only ones being lazy during the Busy Season- llamas are just as bad, expecting people to do nothing but mist them with the hose, and not taking into account the barn that needs to be mucked out.  Goats flop about whining for extra hay just to make a mess with and lay in.  Sheep bleat constantly, expressing their displeasure in the music choices, it seems, or something else just as absurd.

In the hot weather none of the animals want to behave.  The ponies break through fences, the cows flip upside down in the hoof-trimming chute, and on days when she's supposed to go to work, the camel won't leave the barn.

In this picture, though, she obviously had left the barn

She then makes everyone run late, and not take into account that we're all quite busy enough without her stubborn attitude.