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Archives for August 2019

Visiting Applewood Llamas

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A NOTE TO OUR GUESTS

We no longer have llamas here at Applewood Cottage but we’ve decided to keep this post up as the animals were a part of our history and we still love them. If you would like to get up close to some llamas, you might enjoy a visit to the Virginia State Park, conveniently located just down the road from us.

Visiting Applewood Llamas is easy and fun. There is a large block of rock at the top of our llama pasture. It is the perfect place to sit and enjoy the grazing llamas and the fantastic view of the Blue Ridge Mountains. If you quietly sit on this rock and you are lucky, a few of the llamas will eventually come over to the check you out. They may even come over to sniff you. Stryker and Jonas are the most inquisitive. They probably won’t get close enough to touch, but certainly close enough for good pictures. And llamas do like to pose!
Just make sure when you enter and exit the pasture, you close the gate securely. We would not want any or all of them to find their way into our garden.

If getting up close is not your thing, another good vantage point is from above the pasture. We keep the grass mowed so you can walk up and around the pasture to get above it. From there you can see in all directions. Since the llamas seem to like the views, too, they often hang out up there. Conveniently, it also makes for some pretty cool pictures.

When visiting Applewood llamas, we always recommend that visitors wear shoes with good traction. The grass is often wet from dew and the terrain is steep.

Visiting Applewood llamas is limited to Cottage guests, so book early to get the best seat in town.

Fancy Hill Attractions

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Fancy Hill is located between Lexington and Natural Bridge, Virginia along Route 11. For many years it has been the site of Virginia Gold Asian Pears and the Virginia Safari Park. A few years back, Great Valley Farm Brewery opened up, perched up on a hill overlooking the Safari Park and the Blue Ridge Mountains beyond.
Lawn chairs with wide arms are available for you to take your flights of beer and just sit and enjoy the view.
In the fall of 2018 Halcyon Days Cidery opened up. Its orchard is in a maze configuration and the public is invited to walk the maze. They are producing an increasingly impressive array of hard cider.

In future blogs I will write about each one separately.

Llamas: why they spit and hum

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A NOTE TO OUR GUESTS

We no longer have llamas here at Applewood Cottage but we’ve decided to keep this post up as the animals were a part of our history and we still love them. If you would like to get up close to some llamas, you might enjoy a visit to the Virginia State Park, conveniently located just down the road from us.

Llamas are a member of the Camelid Family consisting of camels, llamas, guanacos, alpacas and vicunas. They are all ruminants, which means they chew their cud like cows do, but unlike cows, camelids have three stomachs. Spitting is a defensive behavior when one llama feels crowded by another. The first spit is usually whatever they are chewing on at the time. The more annoyed they get, they can draw from stomachs one or two.
Llamas often spit when groups of llamas are fed from one bucket, such as in petting zoos or safari parks.
This is where they get their bad reputation. Just remember that they are in an unnatural situation in those settings. The llama that has been spat at often gets what we call the “jaws”. His mouth hangs open and he drools and is unable to eat, giving the spitter exactly what he wants: sole access to the food bowl.

The other most often asked question is why do llamas hum? Each llama has a distinctive hum, some sound high pitched , others low pitched, some almost like a groan. It is a sound made when they are nervous or anxious. Over the many years we have had llamas, we most often have heard them humming when we gathered them for llama trekking. Once the trek started all humming ceased.

Personality wise, llamas are somewhat like cats, independent, inquisitive and aloof. They also share some traits with a human teenager. The males do a lot of posturing and bickering. However, in our experience the inquisitiveness has made them endearing creatures.