Monday, May 28, 2012

Rewards

With a farm comes lots of work, but there are also benefits, rewards.  J and I love attending alpaca shows and we love when new cria are born. I love working with the alpaca's fiber. Those things make up for the hard work along the way.

The last few weeks our children have helped out with some of the harder chores at the farm.  Last weekend they helped with shearing 21.5 alpacas, when the weekend before they had helped with the shearing of 5.5.  This weekend (Saturday) we got the kids to help us do a big spring cleaning of the boys' barn.  This included digging out all the old hay that they used as bedding over the winter.  With the four of us working hard on this, it still took us 3.5 hours.  I told the kids it was building character :)

With all this hard work we decided there needed to be a benefit for the kids too.  A couple weeks ago the kids had been tempted by some kittens at their aunt/uncle's home.   We said no, because we have had barn cats and opted not to do that again.  But we knew how much the kids wanted them and the kittens are cute.  I felt the kids had proven their ability to work hard, and would take good care of the cats.

So, here are the brothers:



Emma picked out and named Buddy:


Zack picked out and named Phantom:


2 comments:

Ertman-Trowbridge Family said...

I hope they enjoy their adorable new kittens!

Norma from Misty Haven Alpacas said...

I am raising a farm kid too. Like yours, she's learned what hard work and responsibility to the welfare of the animals is. She thinks hay time is fun, cause we make it fun.
I think those rewards are well earned and those kittens will be valued by your children who earned that reward.
Norma

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