New cria and preparations

Some females seem to have the same cria every year no matter who you breed them to. Star Dust is turning out to be one of those girls. Last year she was bred to a big strong 3/4 Accoyo guy (white) and had a great little white tight locked male (who sold at just 10 months old). This year she was bred to a small Peru import who's a rich mahogany color. She just had a great little white tight locked male, again. I can't pin a name on him so I think I'll let a visitor to our farm days name him.

Of course I was hoping to get Star to throw some color. I guess we'll try again. We just purchased a black suri male named Alpacaria's Pumpernickel Fanfare that I think we'll try on her. He's a good looking boy. I haven't taken a pic of him yet, mainly because I don't like his haircut. I know, I'm too picky. He was "belly shorn"; just his underbelly and legs were shorn making him look like Moe from the Three Stooges. It's a suri "trick" they use to keep their fleece long with the locks intact while shearing their belly helps them stay cool (as if!). I'll try to force myself to take a pic today. Then I'm going to shear him!

We're staying busy preparing for National Alpaca Farm Days that's coming up Sept 26 and 27. Since I'm not very meticulous about keeping the yard trimmed and stuff there is much to do. We are planning to have a spinner doing demos, Kathy is bringing her hand-knitted scarves and I'm sure she'll be doing knitting demos, we've purchased some product to sell, it's Peruvian but quite frankly that's what we could afford at this point. I hope that someday we can have nothing but US made product, but in this area the folks just don't have that kind of money. Dennis and I will be coming up with an obstacle course for kids to walk the cria through, there will be a pen to play with crias, another to pet some males, I want to have a felting station, and we'll also have some wet and needle felted items that mom and I have made for sale.

Posters are going up everywhere we go and the media has been alerted. There will be an ad in the local newspaper and the following week they said they will come and interview us and run a story on our farm! WooHoo! Our first article! {finally}