Llama Sounds and Pronking

Llama Sounds

At certain times llamas make distinctive sounds that express their emotions. 

• A mother will hum to her cria or baby llama, to assure it and show affection. 
• A young llama and adults will make a worrisome hum when they are anxious or bored or hungry. 
• The clucking sounds are like making a tic-toc sound with your tongue on the roof of the mouth. Clucking means stay away from me, I do not want you in my space. 
• The high pitched alarm sound is a squeal warning of a predator or some kind of danger or uncertain event, like a heads up. 
• My llama, Starbuck, cries out like a pterodactyl, when he does not get his way. It is a definite Jurassic Park sound. 

Pronking

Pronking is a hop up and leap forward on all fours. It reminds me of the cartoon Pepee Le Pew, the skunk. Boing* boing* boing*

 In the video below you will hear the high shrill alarm sound, see how tall the llamas are when they stand on their hind legs and see them running and pronking ( a bounce on all fours)

Many people have asked where we get the brush shown in the video. The llamas use the big blue brush for self-grooming, scratching a hard to get to itch and they also massage their upper palette with the bristles. A street sweeper brush can be sought by inquiring at street sweeper companies, city or county road departments.

DeborahMoonMoen
of Little Utah Farm

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I hope you enjoyed the video of my llamas. 
Llamas are very entertaining.

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We just made some 1/2" black llama with a red heart, tattoos on a whole sheet of 72. Just cut out a llama and follow the instructions. Put one on your face, make a string of llamas around your wrist or ankle or a parade going up your arm or over your shoulder.  

72 Black Llama With Red Heart Temporary Tattoos
by LittleUtahFarm

Easy Mock Lasagne Casserole

Easy Lasagne Casserole

We loved this recipe. It was surprisingly easy, quick and delicious. I am aware that this is not a real lasagna because it is not layered but your taste buds will recognize the lasagna goodness. 

Here is the recipe:

Brown: 1 lb. ground beef
Separately, Cook: 8 oz of egg noodles set aside

Add to browned ground beef: 24-26 oz. of spaghetti sauce
Simmer 5 minutes
Add: cooked egg noodles
Mix in: 8 oz. shredded mozzarella cheese and 8 oz. of cottage cheese


Transfer to a greased 2 quart casserole dish

Top with 1 cup of Parmesan cheese

Bake uncovered at 350 degrees for 30 minutes

Eat

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Until next time, I will share this with you.

Everyday I look for joy.I ask the universe first thing in the morning, "What is my greatest joy?"  While feeding the animals, I become aware of the thrill of the snow crunching under my feet, and shortly after, Mother and Father Raven perch above me and call back and forth to each other. Later in the day, my husband invites me for brisk walk with our three dogs in the juniper forest. The feeling of being healthy and having my family with me fills me with so much gratitude my heart overflowed with joyful tears. The evening ended with a drive through the juniper forest as the sun was setting. A pair of large birds either golden eagles or large hawks were soaring high above the cliffs trying to escape some angry ravens. When the sun hit their wings it was like they had white feathers. 

All day the joys kept coming into my awareness. I recognized the feelings of joy. Do you know how many times our minds are so busy we do not notice the possibilities for experiencing the feelings of joy and the potential for joys that are all around us? 

Each joy sent tingles and thrill bumps through my skin like a signal that proved to me yes, this was yet another joy and I milk that feeling holding it within my whole being as long I can. 

 Ask yourself in the morning: What is my greatest joy? That opens the door to joy. Then begin noticing the things that you appreciate. The more you appreciate the more there is to appreciate.  

by-Deborah Moon Moen of Little Utah Farm


What do you love? Customize this easy to use template by changing the word "Llamas" and put in your own favorite animal, word, or person. Mug comes with " I (Red Heart) (love) Llamas. You can even customize the color and choose a different mug.

Customize This MUG
by LittleUtahFarm

Gathering Duck & Hen Eggs

Ducks and hen eggs uncovered on Little Utah Farm

Every morning I go on an egg hunt. It is really fun. I feel happy and curious like a child while I search for the eggs.

Lolli, Ducky, and Daisy slurp up some snow
 after foraging through the garden. Little Utah Farm.

We have 3 Buff Orpington ducks. Their names are Lolli, Daisy, and Ducky. Some of their nests are so nice that the hens prefer to lay their eggs right in with the larger white duck eggs. I can tell who is who. The Aracana, Pearle and Isis, lay beautiful blue-green eggs. The White Plymouth, Angel and Fae lay pale light brown eggs. The Giant Black Jersey, Maven, lays a similar light brown egg. And they look so pretty all together in the nest.

Duck eggs are different than chicken eggs. I think they tast same but some people swear there is a difference. The only difference I can see is the size and the fact that Duck eggs have less water content in the white portion. They cook faster.

The ducks dig the nest deep and line it with an intricate weave of straw and feathers till it makes a nice shape, like an upside down crown of a straw hat. After they lay their eggs, they cover everything up with straw till it is even with the ground. I have to stick my hand down into the straw and wiggle my fingers around to find those eggs.


Sometimes I find a duck egg lying in the center of the coop as if it just fell out on the way to a nest. And it probably did. One of the ducks, I think it is Daisy, has been doing that since she began laying in the fall. I also find an occasional egg in the shallow pond or on the grass lawn. It makes me laugh.

8 Eggs gathered in one day. Little Utah Farm

We share our eggs with our neighbors and in town. With 8 hens and 3 ducks I gather at least 5 eggs a day. Some days, like yesterday, I gather 8. That adds up fast!

I am about to go out this morning on another egg hunt. I would love to have one of those egg pocket aprons. I think I will sew my own before spring gets here.

Deborah Moon Moen

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Until next time, I found a story for you to enjoy.

“I have never before gathered eggs from under a hen. Fernando has never before seen a hen. We bend low into the shed where perch a dozen or so fat lady birds. There's no shrieking or fluttering at all. I approach one and ask if she has an egg or two. Nothing. I ask in Italian. Still nothing. I ask Fernando to pick her up but he's already outside the shed smoking and pacing, telling me he really doesn't like eggs at all and he especially doesn't like frittata. Both bold-faced lies. I start to move the hen and she plumps down from her perch quite voluntarily, uncovering the place where two lovely brown eggs sit. I take them, one at a time, bend down and nestle them in my sack. I want two more. I peruse the room. I choose the hen who sits next to the docile one. I pick her up and she pecks me so hard on my wrist that I drop her. I see there is nothing in her nest and apologise for my insensitivity, thinking her nastiness must have been caused by embarrassment. I move on to another hen and this time find a single, paler brown-shelled beauty, still warm and stuck all over with bits of straw. I take it and leave with an unfamiliar thrill. This is my first full day in Tuscany and I've robbed a henhouse before lunch.
Back home in the kitchen I beat the eggs, the yolks of which are orange as pumpkin, with a few grindings of sea salt, a few more of pepper, adding a tablespoon or so of white wine and a handful of Parmigliano. I dig for my flat broad frying pan, twirl it to coat its floor with a few drops of my tourist oil, and let it warm over a quiet flame. I drop in the rinsed and dried blossoms whole, flatten them a bit so they stay put, and leave them for a minute or so while I tear a few basil leaves, give the eggs another stroke or two. I throw a few fennel seeds into the pan to scent the oil, where the blossoms are now beginning to take colour on their bottom sides. Time to liven up the flame and add the egg batter. I perform the lift-and-tilt motions necessary to cook the frittata without disturbing the blossoms, which are now ensnared in the creamy embrace of the eggs. Next, I run the lush little cake under a hot grill to form a gold blistery skin on top before sliding it onto a plate, strewing it with torn basil. The heat of the eggs warms the herbs so they give up a double-strength perfume. Now I drop a thread of find old balsamico over it. And finally, let it rest.” 
― Marlena de Blasi

Winter Layers For My Garden

Compost right over the soil.

I discovered a natural way to nourish our garden soil and keeps the weeds down. In this post, I will share how I did it.

 Our soil is hard clay and for 5 years we have mixed in llama manure and rototilled it in. I came across this method of putting layers of materials over the top of the soil like you would a compost pile. This process will invite beneficial microbes, bacteria and earthworms. It will also keep most of the weeds from growing. 

Autumn is now in full force. The nights are in the 20's. The orb weaver cat spiders, which came to visit us this year, transitioned in the cold leaving their beautiful webs behind. The grasses in the pasture have begun to brown, and the leaves that fell from Grandmother Apple Tree were mulched and placed in a pile by the corn field to use later in the garden. 

The garden was dismantled, cleared, and ready for a nourishing mask of green manure, kitchen scraps, hay, and fallen leaves. Husband went out and collected cardboard boxes for the project. You can also use newspaper ( no colored ink or shiny surfaces) discarded toilet paper rolls, shredded junk mail ( no colored inks or shiny surfaces) We had everything else we needed like kitchen scraps, tea bags, hay, llama manure, dead leaves, and hay or straw.

Here is how we laid the layers in the garden.

      1. Removed any tape from the boxes and cut them to lie flat. 

       2. Water the soil first then lay down the cardboard. I let them overlap about 6" so the weeds cannot come through.

      3. Water over the cardboard.

      4. Put down green manure on the cardboard. We used fresh llama manure and kitchen scraps. 

       5. Water over the manure.

      6. Scatter dead leaves and hay or straw over the manure. 

      7.Water over the leaves

You can repeat these layers if you want to. Water each layer.  

The snows will come and in the spring the ice will melt into this nourishing mask and it will be ready for planting and seeding. 
The cardboard will be easy to penetrate for planting or roots to grow through. If the cardboard is still firm, then I cut a hole or x’s in the cardboard to plant.

I thoroughly enjoyed this project. I felt close to Mother Nature. I am also doing the layer technique in our garden boxes. I will lay down what is left from the plants in the boxes and begin to layer over that. 

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Until next time, 

Garden as though you will live forever.

                                                         ~ William Kent

DeborahMoonMoen
Little Utah Farm

Duck Teeth

Do ducks have teeth? Lolli at Little Utah Farm

Do ducks have teeth? I set out to find the answer. I Googled duck teeth. In this post I will tell you my findings and show you a good illustration of the duck bill. 

I went out back with my camera to get a good photo for this post.

trying different places and techniques to capture an image of these "duck teeth".

Winona is the most energetic of the flock.
Little Utah Farm.

I bent down on one knee on the lawn. This made the ducks very curious so that they hung around wondering what I was doing. Winona, our hen ( we call her Red for short) kept looking into my camera lens.

Ducky hears something. Little Utah Farm

At one point the ducks heard a peculiar noise out by the barn.  Ducky stepped forward and stretched way up high to see what she could see. I was surprised to see how tall she was. Daisey, Ducky, and Lolli usually swing their necks low to the ground to gain momentum as they waddle from one place to the other.

I realized my camera was too high to get under their bills for a good look. I bent down lower and tilted my camera up.  

Just then a plane went overhead. The ducks tilted their heads with one eye looking up to the sky. Voila! Click* I got the perfect photograph of the "duck teeth". 

They are not exactly teeth but serrated fringe on the edge of the beak. This makes it easy to sieve the water on out and keep the tasty stuff inside. The only things that compares, they say, is how a Blue Whale feeds in the ocean. It is quite an advanced filtering system. 

Check out these chompers. 

 Look at those serrated sieving edges on these Buff Orpington females on Little Utah Farm.

This morning it was 22 degrees. I put warm water over their feed and had a big bucket of fresh water nearby. They love water.  The sieving process is very splashy and noisy. Listen to these 3 girls sieve. Watch the video below and turn up the volume. It is 52 seconds.

Deborah Moon Moen of Litte Utah Farm

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And remember..

Shower the people you love with love, show them the way that you feel. Things are gonna be just fine if you only will.
~James Taylor. 

The Spaghetti Squash Gift and Recipe

The spaghetti squash gift. 

I love spaghetti squash. Below this recipe is my true story of how I got this homegrown squash. 

1. Preheat oven to 375
2. Lightly oil a baking sheet
3. Cut squash in half from stem to blossom end (lengthwise) and soup out seeds and pulp
4.  Drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper 
5. Place cut side down on the prepared baking dish
6. Bake for 35-50 minutes ovens temps vary. I do 50 minutes because I am high in altitude. Honey is good drizzled over the top if desired. 

MY SPAGHETTI SQUASH STORY

Spaghetti squash grows really well in our clay soil. Each plant grew  6-7 nice yellow/lime green spaghetti squashes. Last year the squash bug got my crop of pumpkins so I opted not to grow any kind of squash this year. While shopping at a local nursery in late spring, I was attracted to a beautiful banana squash plant  in a small pot. I bought it and planted it out back away from the garden hoping the squash bug would not see it. The squash bugs came anyway and I had to pick them off one by one and also scrape off the eggs deposited on the backs of the leaves and stems. To my surprise after 3 weeks of picking off the bugs, they stopped visiting. With the daily care I gave them and the nourishing monsoon rains, the plant flourished and began to form deep yellow buds. 

A week later I noticed a squash forming!  I had visions of baking the squash in warm oven on a chilly fall day. 

A few days later I happened to notice the baby squash was 

eaten by a lucky critter, probably a squirrel or a skunk. But I still had faith it would grow nicely in spite of the eaten squashes. 

Early October, before any more fruits developed, Jack Frost came and waved his frozen wand over all the plants here in Utah. The Squash plants withered and sunk into the earth. It would seem that all my inspired action had turned into failure. But,  I had crops frozen before so I took it in stride.

 I let it go. I still loved the idea of eating squash and still had the vision of baking it in the warm oven on a chilly fall day.

A few days after the frost my husband went to get hay for our llamas and brought me a spaghetti squash! Well, what do you know ! I was so delighted. I got my spaghetti squash in spite of my troubles. The man who sells us hay had shared his crop with us. 

A week later, we went to buy 4 more bales of hay for winter. The man said, " Go to the back of my truck and get yourself a few squashes" I went back to his truck bed and it was filled with beautifully formed spaghetti squashes. I chose two. So now I have 3 homegrown delicious spaghetti squashes! I was so grateful and delighted that in spite of my dilemma with the squash bugs, the hungry critters, and Jack Frost, I had gotten the squashes I desired. They seemed to come on the Great Conveyer Belt of Life !  

Woo hoo ! Thank you, universe !

As I sit in my kitchen writing this post, I am preheating my oven on a chilly fall day for delicious oven baked spaghetti squash. I have chills writing this because I can feel the magic in this process.

Never give up on your dream or desires. The gifts are revealed to you in ways our human minds cannot yet imagine. 

Try this recipe. You can scrape the flesh with a fork and it separates like spaghetti. Top it with spaghetti sauce and meatballs or your favorite  veggies or eat it with coconut oil or butter. 

Now I am going out to check on my bundled corn stalks and my scarecrow construction.

Deborah Moen
of Little Utah Farm

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Until net time, Enjoy your time on earth and remember,

"There's a farm girl in all of us" ~ Mary Jane Butters

The Pasture Gate

Here is the pasture gate that opens to an acre long pasture road on Little Utah Farm. ~ Deborah Moon Moen

When we first stepped foot onto what was to be Little Utah Farm, I noticed it had a long gate across what I imagined to be a pasture road. I was smitten with the romantic notion of a pasture road with a long gate that swung across so you could tie it to the garden fence to bring in the big bales of hay. Just the thought of actually driving along a road into the back of the property was wonderful to me.  When we moved in, the road was hard clay. When it rained, the clay got really soft and muddy. We sunk up to our ankles and hub caps. One of my first chores was pulling out a good 1,000 tumble weeds that grew all the way from the front to the back. 

Our corn field and tractor sign along our pasture road. ~ Deborah Moon Moen

Now as I walk down the pasture road I enjoy the golden light of morning shining on the corn field and this tractor sign. Paul and I first saw such a sign along a very rural Route 1002 on our way to Milford, UT. It was so simple yet the silhouetted picture on the sign told you everything you needed to know. Paul's tractor drives down this pasture road often. 


Improvements have been made. The road is now covered in gravel. Tall cottonwood trees line the road and in summer the garden is full of sunflowers and corn. There are hens in the coop, ducks in the pond, fresh eggs to gather, and llamas in the corral. I love how Little Utah Farm has grown into our dream farm. 

~ Deborah Moon Moen of Little Utah Farm

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Until next time: From Fresh Eggs Daily

Tractor~ Greeting Card
by LittleUtahFarm

   This book is about:
Raising your own backyard chickens for eggs and companionship.

Simple DIY Safe Water For Bees

A simple drinking station for our bees. 

We are learning how to be good stewards to the earth.

We can provide bees with a safe place to drink. They risk their lives for a sip of life giving water. Many bees drown in water bowls, pools, rivers and streams.

Take a shallow bowl and fill it with rocks or marbles. Pour in enough water so the tops of the rocks are exposed and dry. Bees can easily get a good footing on the rocks as they take a drink. Little pools will form inbetween the rocks or marbles and that makes for happy safe watering holes for our beloved bees.

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Until next time,

Believe in your dreams.

One day Venus and Jupiter just
began jumping into my arms.


Deborah Moon Moen of Little Utah Farm





  

More than 100 classroom activities to help children learn about and care for the earth
Educate young children about the environment through experience and play. These activities encourage children to develop a sense of wonder, curiosity, and joy for nature.

Easy Peel Eggs

Easy Peel Steamed Fresh Eggs

Did you know freshly laid farm eggs can be almost impossible to peel if you hard boil them?

Here is the solution.

Steam them instead.

note: ( your time may vary so test an egg by plunging it in cold water peel and open to see the yolk is done)

1. Place one layer of eggs in an empty 4 quart saucepan till they are cozy. I was able to put in a dozen eggs.
2. Fill the pan of eggs with 1" of water
3. Bring to a soft boil then cover with a lid. Steam chicken eggs for 15 minutes and duck eggs for 17 minutes.
4. Plunge into a bowl of cold water and ice cubes then peel.

I have found peeling immediately after steaming and plunging in ice water gives me the easiest peel.

Here is a delicious recipe for Avocado Deviled Eggs. Yum *

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Deborah Moon Moen
 of Little Utah Farm

Until next time,

"Believe in your dreams. No matter where you live, cultivate your farm dream. Plant a seed, nurture your pets or enjoy nature in some way. Cook a fantastic stew or make your own bread. Be the dream you want to create. Do what you love. Not only will these things make you happy but you will notice other things like it coming into your life."
~Deborah Moon Moen of Little Utah Farm

This book focuses on what you can do right now in your own city to become more self-sufficient and sustainable. That makes it unique. Lots of ideas. 
Written by city dwellers for city dwellers, this copiously illustrated, two-color instruction book proposes a paradigm shift that will improve our lives, our community, and our planet. By growing our own food and harnessing natural energy, we are planting seeds for the future of our cities.