Hermit on the Homestead

I'm looking forward to making a decent photo of these yaks. But I'm still nervous, will they freak out if I bring my camera and get down low, crouching like a predator? I doubt it...but am I willing to bet on it? This is the best I can do so far. Am I ridiculous for wanting to get them fun ear tags ? How would I even put them on even if I got them.  Meanwhile, my yaks sure have a lot of flies around them. Why? Apparently this is a complex issue. There are Horn flies, Face flies, Leg flies, Horse flies, and more. I realize they don't have very many compared to the problematic images on the internet, but they still have more than I would prefer and it must bother them. Cattle and horses are plagued by nasty flies, I have learned. Face flies like to sit—you'll never guess. They like to eat all the secretions from their faces like snot and spit and eye boogers. It bothers them and transfers bacteria and they can get pink eye and things of that nature. Leg flies also are apt...

Yay! After much sleepless nights, hand wringing, and brow furrowing, we changed the yaks halters! They were getting so tight they were digging into their noses, and making furless indentations on the back of their necks. I knew they must have been very uncomfortable, but The halters I bought were too big. We had to drill more holes in the strap and even then I wasn't sure if they would fit. We brainstormed how we should do it. Should we tie the yaks up some how? Should we build a make-shift squeeze chute? We had no idea, but we knew we couldn't traumatize poor Rocky again.  I had an idea. Clip them up with the leads to their existing halters like we always do every morning. I thought, let's put the sweet grain they love in a bucket. Then make the nose hole on the halter really big and place it around the sides of the bucket. When they reach in the bucket for the goodies, lift up the halter and then it would be around the nose, all is left is buck the back strap. Then switch...

Dad finished building transitional home number 3 for the not-so-baby chickens. It's a make-shift cage inside of the chicken coup. I reached inside the box to grab the chickens in order to move them and they run so fast. I had a hard time grabbing them even when they were confined in the box. Finally I grabbed one, they feel weird, like bones wearing fluff. I put them in an empty diaper box and then carried the box to the coup and put them inside the new cage. They immediately started kicking and shaping the hay into a little nest. It was kind of cute. Meanwhile, I had to fix the screen on our sliding door in our bedroom, it had an enormous hole ripped into it, and we just happened to have some leftovers of a roll of screen material, so I got on it. First you take out the gasket and throw away the old screen. While I was doing this I broke the gasket, so I had the main piece and another piece about a foot long. I figured it didn't matter I'll just use the pieces. It was extr...

June 5, 2022 I don’t know why I’m such a wimp. They are just baby yaks after all, not even a year old. They are so fuzzy and adorable, I really want to hug them, and I totally would, just ask Ganesh. But they are pretty big, and they have horns, and they are surprisingly fast and agile. When something is big and scary, you don’t want them to be also fast and agile—this is a very disconcerting combination. Their backs are about at my belly button height. When something is big and scary, you want it to be slow like a sloth, or a tortoise, so you know you can easily evade it if necessary. If you touch them funny or even get too close, Dusty swings her horned head at me. I was so confident until the day I had the light brush with the horn. But why can’t I just toughen-up-soldier and do it anyway?   And we’ve really come a long way. Dusty doesn’t bluff me…too much, Rocky is just getting more and more friendly. When I reach through the coral, I can scratch him and pet him. Rocky loves th...

April 29, 2022 After nearly a decade of loving yaks from afar, they are on their way, closer and closer every minute. They will be delivered and step off their trailer onto their new forever-home. I was working on grading and then Ganesh came out of the office and said, “Your yaks are here.” I looked out the window and sure enough the pickup truck with a horse trailer attached was stopped at the front gate. I looked at my phone and I was getting a call from Ruth, the lady that works at the Smiling Buddha Yaks. Yaks arrive! Dusty and Rocky The trailer with their wonderful logo on the side pulled up the long driveway. It was so exciting. My baby yakies on that trailer! I waved my arm for her to drive the truck around the back of the house. I opened the fence, and she drove up to the coral that we built. She opened their door and they didn’t come out right away, they were nervous, which is to be expected. I feel a little sad for them, they are separated from all their buddies, their paren...

March 3, 2022 The impossible dream has always been for me to have yaks. Most people only google-know what a yak even looks like, let alone seeing one in real life. It’s a whole other level to actually own them. I always thought of it as an impossibility since we lived at sea level elevation and yaks need at least 3,000 ft elevation, prefer the high desert and really don’t care much for hot weather. I opined—I will never live in a place that is right for yaks. Oh well, in the spirit world I can have yaks. I did have a dream though that I was walking a yak on a leader rope and I lead it into the house and it was so big it barely fit through the door. Little did I know I would indeed move to a high desert, perfect climate for yaks, and have enough land for them and everything. Even when we moved here, I thought someday we might have yaks, but with a twist of fate we found out that our house is registered to the greenbelt. What is the greenbelt, you ask? We asked that too, it means if you ...