Alpacapalooza! And, now we DO know how to build a fence!

This is the song I referred to in my last post… this is one of my all-time favorite bands and probably my favorite song right now.  It IS our life!

Aaaaaaaand it happened!  We not only learned how to build a fence, but we actually built it!

ALPACAPALOOZA (our work party to finish the fencing for the alpacas!) happened on Sunday!  We had a bunch of helpers and we’re so grateful.  It’s amazing to us, still, that people will come miles and miles, give up their weekend days, to help us with our dreams and plans and goals.  They WANT to do hard labor to improve our property and just be with us!

Our awesome neighbors Jim and Randi helped along with our friend Rich, who lives down the block, our very good friends who are like family, Lacey and Kelly came and even brought a friend we’d never met who WANTED to help, and my brother “Uncle Tiny” (my baby brother, who is anything but tiny!), plus Carson and me and the kids all pitched in.

Carson and I (mostly Carson) had put all of the posts (wood in the corners and t-posts in between) in the ground, and installed the gates

The plan was that we would get the 700 feet of five-foot, nonclimb horse fence stretched, hammered to the wood posts, and clipped to the t-posts.

Carson and I were outside getting ready starting around 8 am.  Others started to arrive around 9:30.

There’s ‘Ol Blue getting all warmed up!  Ol’ Blue was pivotal in getting this thing built.  We used Ol’ Blue to move fencing around and we attached Jim’s come-alone and wire stretcher to the bucket to stretch the fence to make it tight and secure.

It started slowly as we were trying to learn and get into a groove.  Jim took the lead because he’s done it before.  The rest of us were trying to follow his lead and figure out the best way to use our tools – we bought a couple of fancy bending tools that were supposed to help with twisting the clips around the t-posts but only Uncle Tiny could figure out how to make them work at first… the rest of us were using pliers.

Eventually we figured out that it worked best to work in pairs – one on the inside and one on the outside of the fence.

Some of the teams MAY have gotten a little (a lot) competitive toward the end… there may have been words exchanged! (ahem… #hillsisters)

We had pizza and beer, chips and cookies, and lots and lots of water!  It felt really hot in the sun for awhile.  I kept thinking that we were getting to “the shady part”… but it turned out not to be shady when we got there!  Some of us MAY have been sore and tired the next day…

But we did it!  The fence is all up.

There are some finishing touches for us – we need to finish the shelter, and smooth out the areas where we had to remove plants like rhododendrons that can be poisonous to animals, but we are so close to done done..  So close!!  And we’re really getting excited about having our girls here!  Even Carson said he’s excited tonight.  YAYYYYYY!

Big big big thank yous to all who helped physically in person… we literally could not have done this without you! And to those who cheered us from home, we appreciate you… we feel the support and love, and it helps more than you know!  I have a feeling our alpacas are going to have a lot of visitors in the next few months!