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The New Year with The New Wheel!

Happy New Year to you and Happy New Wheel to me! WooHOo!
That's right. I am now the proud owner of a Majacraft Pioneer spinning wheel. She's lovely and talented. Quiet, yet outspoken when it matters most. She is a modern take on the ancient art of spinning. Take a deep breathe and behold the beauty...

And my first yarn on her, white huacaya alpaca.




Don't be calling wanting me to spin up all your fleece for you. I've got a whole room full from my own animals just waiting for me. Shearing 2010 is in just 2 1/2 months so I don't have much time to make room for more. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Speaking of shearing season, we are using a new shearer this year. Last year we had over 50 alpacas and llamas here for their annual haircut. That's alot to shear so we've hired a team from BioSecure Shearing to do it for us this year. We've heard great things about them and look forward to working with them. The really good news is that they assured me they can get them all shorn in less than ONE DAY and all we have to do is bring them the alpacas and bag the fleece. No sore knees and backs! No chiropractor trips when we can't stand up the next day. Hurrah! I'm more excited about shearing this year than ever.
Everyone is invited to join in the fun. I'll post the date when I get it.

Maybe you've heard, maybe you haven't but we are having our annual BIG SALE! to make room for spring crias and to get more people interested in alpacas. The sale is going GREAT but will be ending soon. We're only selling a few more at these rock-bottom prices and then the sale is ending. People are calling every day. If you've been considering buying any of our animals now is the time to act. These prices won't be available again. Here are some of the alpacas we've sold recently...many thanks and continued success to our customers!

Marc

Ester and Riga

Ember

BlackBerry

Rudy

Another Christmas done

Christmas has past, it's time for taxes. Hurrah!Hurrah!

I sold my spinning wheel, an older traditional of unknown origin. Thanks to Ravelry's Mariaknittedit for a smooth transaction.

Now I think I'm going for a Fricke Double Treadle like this...

It's closer to the style I learned to spin on and it folds for travel needs.

All of the animals are doing well. We had a close call with Bella getting sick, but after some wonderful care by Dr. VanAmstel at UT-Knoxville she's well on her way to recovery AND she held onto her pregnancy. Unfortunately they had to shave both sides of her body so now she's wearing a nice warm coat all winter.

A special thanks to Melody Johnson for mentioning us in her blog Fibermania. Check her out for tons of creative stuff... Fantastic quilts, art, knitting, etc.,etc.!

Time flies

Time flies! Since my last post we've had National Alpaca Farm Days, which was a rain out on Saturday and awesome on Sunday. About 50 people showed up! We were expecting maybe 10. Sweet! I was so busy I didn't get to take many pics, but here's Wendy and Kevin playing with a new cria in the rain.

My first SAFF was a BLAST! Kathy Swift-Lawson and I spent the entire weekend learning and shopping and shopping and learning. We did a fair amount of eating, too, but that's a whole other blog! We learned how to spin, I learned to crochet and needlefelt and nuno felt. It was a whirlwind of fiber! I got to try out lots of spinning wheels and see several alpaca friends. I could have stayed another week! Can't wait to go next year.

Skipping ahead, we just recently took some juvies to the Royal Alpaca Challenge, the first GA alpaca association show. It was a nice venue but would have been much nicer without the rain and if Brian hadn't lost his Nintendo DS. Our good pal Wendy couldn't take her boy Blizzard but we asked her to show Juliet to get some practice. She did better than all the others! Thanks Wendy!

Juliet brought home a 2nd place ribbon, Ember had a 4th because he was in a tough class of older boys who had all been previously shorn-he was docked for having "weathered" tips, Serafina got 3rd and Trinity a 6th. Tim Lavan didn't care for our "open locked" suris appearantly. Oh well, there ARE other judges. We love them all like banner winners.

We're looking ahead to Southern Select! I am planning to take a surprise attack, our newest addition-Eclipse. He's our new true black stud!

Oh yeah, he's a HOTTIE! And sweet as the day is long. We already love him and we're putting him to "work". His grand daddy is Silvio of Magical Farms and he's got tons of other gray in his background. We can't wait to see what he produces.

We're still deciding who else to take to Southern Select but a couple of our soon-to-be weanlings are looking really good. Rudy, the light fawn with dark fawn eyelashes is drop dead gorgeous!

And Marc, the beige suri, is shaping up very nicely.

My instinct is telling me to take Angelia, too, who will be in the yearling class of light suri girls.

The youngsters I took to GA will probably get to go as well if we can get enough stall space.

Our new boy

I felt bad after my last post having not taken pics of our new suri boy. So here he is, his name is Pumpernickel Fanfare...

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}

Another new cria!

It always seems like a VERY long time waiting for alpaca babies to arrive. You spend months deciding which male will improve on each female in your herd, you breed them, then you wait to see if it "took". After waiting and testing, and waiting more and testing more, you finally take a deep breath and convince yourself that she is, indeed, pregnant. Next is the REAL wait. Nearly a year later (and sometimes even longer!) you spend every waking hour thinking "When is the cria coming?", "Is there something wrong with the cria?", "Was that the cria kicking I saw?", "Is the cria positioned right for birthing?", "Will I miss the birth?", "Has it been too long?", "Should I DO something?" and a million other questions and doubts that mean exactly ZERO to the mom or the cria unless you act on your worries and get the mom stressed out, at which time she kicks it into 'low gear' and effectively delays the birth until you leave her the hell alone long enough to get the job done without any "help".


That's the stance I took with Halle Berry. Just let her have her cria on her own time. Well, she finally did, and I missed it. I had been gone for less than 10 minutes when my cellphone rang with the news that she was in heavy labor. We turned around and, in trying not to kill anyone, we were too late to see it hit the ground. When we arrived, just trying to stand for the first time was a gorgeous black boy next to Halle. The wait was finally over. He was perfect.

His sire's name is Black Mist and with his mother's name being Halle Berry we combined the two to come up with his name... Black Berry.