Hello Friends, Instead of trash talking the weather this week and bringing to you my own personal sense of panic, on what should be a pleasant Sunday for us all, I thought I’d tell you a riveting story about Bob the Llama, our farm mascot and dear friend. This story also involves chickens. One of the most common questions that I get at the farm besides “When are you going to have tomatoes ready?” is “Why is that llama in your front yard?” Granted the front yard is about 3 acres in size but it’s a great question, this is a produce farm after all. Years ago in 2014 I started keeping laying hens on the farm so we could offer eggs to our CSA and farmers market customers. A few people mentioned that a llama can help with guarding them and that llamas are easy to keep. I looked into it and found Bob on craigslist upstate. I drove up to an eclectic little animal farm about 3 hours a way, loaded Bob in the back of the old delivery van and drove back home wondering how he was going to like his new home with his 300 new friends. The pastured chickens have a wagon that serves as a roosting and laying place for them and they are rotated to new pasture every 2 weeks or so after they eat down the grass, bugs, worms etc.. At first Bob seemed annoyed that he was going to be out there with these rowdy girls, especially when a couple would jump on his back, looking for bugs in his coat of long, weedy looking fur. He even reached around with his long neck and plucked them off his back and flung them 10 feet back onto the grass. Occasionally he would chase them around the pasture but then every night he would settle down sometimes sleeping inside the shelters with his ladies. Foxes were loathe to cross Bob as would confront them and any dogs by running up to the fence and glaring them down with his seemingly unblinking and otherworldly eyes and large ears perked forward. He can be intimidating that Bob can be! Although great for scaring dogs and foxes Bob didn’t always catch on that the hawks dive bombing during the day were a real problem. Maybe he couldn’t differentiate between the 2 orders. But Bob, as I have come to understand is a great observer and he must have started to understand something was wrong when he saw me racing out to the pasture, flailing my arms and shouting at the hawks when they swooped in for a a free organic chicken dinner. (Earth Spring should really be nominated for some sort of conservation award as we have donated so many free chicken dinners to the local wildlife over the years.) But one day that summer we saw Bob do something incredible. He came up from his grazing and strained his head to look at the sky, which is odd behavior. But what cam e next was truly shocking. He saw the same hawk that I had and before I could race to the scene, he began running circles around the chicken flock and herding them under the wagon, safe from the circling red tail. I almost fainted. What a friend he has turned out to be, and he has quite the 6th sense ego to back it up. He has on more than one occasion looked over and literally smiled at human friends who have commented on how cool he is in our front yard. Please make time to visit the farm this year or next. Behind the farm store there is a can of feed for Bob and he will gladly eat out of your hand or the scoop provided.
He also loves to snack on scallions, lettuce and poison ivy.
