Fences

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Heart of Dreams Alpacas

To give everyone reading this site an idea of what we started with - the fence line between the grass the dirt where the llamas are was once completely covered in blackberry brambles. Tim got crazy with the tractor and front-end loader and completely uncovered all of the back yard fences. We couldn't decide which was worse - blackberry brambles as fences or the falling down barbed wire mess that was hiding underneath. Before we decided on raising alpacas for sale we chose to put up vinyl fencing around our two primary turn outs. The llamas hadn't been sheared in a number of years. The first time around we paid a professional to come in and do it - after that Pam decided she could do as bad a job herself and save the money.

This little effort marks the start of our farm upgrades to prepare for the arrival of our breeding herd. We talked, discussed, thought and talked some more about what we were going to do to protect our investment. We have cougars, bear, coyotes and probably worst of all dogs. After considering five feet of no-climb fencing, all the way up to ten feet; livestock guardian dogs even electric fences.

Then Pam had a fortuitous scheduling mistake. She missed a seminar up in Arlington and went the next weekend instead. Obviously no one was there, except the guy putting up some fences. She went over and talked with him about the missed seminar and then about fences. That was how Monte W. Geerdes came to be part of our Farm's development.

Based on our research we called Monte up a few weeks later and scheduled to have him come down to Duvall to give us an estimate for New Zealand fencing.

NZ fencing is a high tension, electric fence. In our case it's seven strand with every other strand hot. It's designed to bounce back if anything pushes on it - including various parts of trees. Our fence has taken a licking - five tree trunks and counting - and it's bounced back each time.

Here's Monte and his nephew, Grady, putting the finishing touches on the final line of fence - hence Monte's big smile. We can't recommend Monte enough - his work is excellent with all types of fencing and he's a genuinely nice guy.

And these are are our two, little helpers. Roman and Edward (aka Edyk). They came from a mostly suburban environment in Russia before we adopted them and brought them to the wilds of Duvall, Washington. We are constantly amazed at how well they've adjusted. They've not only had to adjust to a new language, country and family, but also farm life and everything that entails. Their typical day starts at 6:00am when they go to the barn and scoop the horse and alpaca poop by the barn, help feed, check water and sweep the barn. Then it's breakfast, make lunch and hustle off to day camp or school. When they come home it's time for a quick snack before heading back to the barn for evening poop scooping and feeding. We figure they get more done in the morning than a lot of adults do in a day. We are very proud of them.