Life on Alpacazona Farm

Happy New Year!

2012-01-05T08:13:00.000-08:00

Bu-bye 2011. Hello 2012. Let's see what the new year has in store for us.
The year ended in a whirl wind of activity. We had six events in eight weeks. All went really well except our own open house. For that the wind blew, the rain fell and the temperature plummeted. To say the least, it was a quite weekend for visitors. Oh well, can't win them all.
Then right on the heels of the events was teeth trimming day, Christmas and New Years. In between all of these, we had to keep running felted soap out to our vendors. That's some pretty big news for the end of the year; we now have soap in The Old Pot Shop in Tucson (an artist collective), Homology in Scottsdale (a contemporary home accessory store) and In A Pear Tree in Casa Grande (another artist collective).
I also plan on redoing the online store on our web site. But I've been planning on doing that for months, so I wouldn't be holding my breath on that one.
We did have some quite, fun moments du

ring all this. Like the afternoon we spent putting Santa hats on the alpacas and taking pictures. We had a blast and the alpacas were surprisingly tolerant. I guess they were in the holiday mood as well.
I finally got my but back out to the shop and have been dying and washing fleece again. I have an idea on doing some felted scarves. Hopefully after this weekend I'll be ready to actually start. I'll keep you posted.

The Holiday rush - I need a nap!

2011-12-12T11:44:00.000-08:00

whewwww! We had our last event for the season this past weekend; and open house atr Mesquite Valley Ranch in Gilbert. The weather was beautiful and the turnout was good. I always have fun doing these events (ok, so maybe OUR open house last weekend when it was 40 degrees and raining wasn't exactly a good time...) but after four weekends in a row and events going on in 7 of the last nine weekends, I am totally sick of putting up tents and taking them back down. I'm ready for a rest!
And I'll have to keep waiting. We'll be trimming teeth this Sunday. Which means I only have Saturday to get caught up on four weeks of house cleaning and laundry. It's getting pretty bad even by my fairly low standards.
Mean while, our socks have been slowly dribbling in. We now have most of the crew socks back, and medium tan hiking socks. The mill sent out a rumor that another box would be ready for shipping by last Friday. I haven't heard if it happened or not. If it did go out, it should be here by the end of the week and I'm hoping it has more hiking socks. Our waiting list keeps getting longer and I really HATE to keep people waiting!
I was poking around on the Internet while waiting for my boss and I stumble across this: http://www.wmicentral.com/news/latest_news/neafaa-s-th-annual-arts-crafts-festival-the-orchard-at/collection_edaaf7c0-aca7-11e0-89b5-001cc4c03286.html
It's the show at Charlie Clark's up in Pinetop that we did last July 4th weekend. There's even a picture of me and our booth in there! Cheryl and I always have a good time at that show. The best part was that our booth was close enough to the stage that we got to enjoy "the man of a 1000 voices". We especially enjoyed his rap song!

Getting ready for fall

2011-10-28T14:05:00.000-07:00

Our fall show season is starting to kick into high gear. We spent an amazing weekend up north for the Artist Fall Festival in Pinetop. Brian and I always have great time visiting with Pat and Cheryl and enjoying their very gracious hospitality. And Brian and Pat managed to make too much fun of Cheryl and I for falling asleep in front of the tv by eight o'clock Saturday night.
Last Saturday was the Tucson Wool Festival down at Wither's Ranch. Kathy holds the wool festival twice year; Spring and Fall. This past spring it rained the entire day and it was pretty quite. We made up for that this weekend. I think Kathy said around 1000 people went through the ranch. I'm pretty sure I talked to most of them! Which is fine by me, I'm a talker.
Our next event will be the Southwest Fiber festival which has been moved to Tubac Presido State Park. It's a slightly longer drive for us, but still doable for a one day event. This festival will be Nov. 5th.
I've been busy spinning yarn. I've been on a mission to clean and paint the inside of the house this past summer. As I was moving stuff around I kept coming across bags of roving that had gotten tossed into corners and forgotten about. I have been diligently working my way through them. Got to get these spun up so I can start making more!
Brain and I are suppose to work out in the shop this weekend getting it cleaned up before our own open house in a couple of weeks. I need to move the carder back over to my corner. Through the summer I pull it out to the opposite wall so I can work in front of the swamp cooler. It makes the shop bearable for a little bit longer in the summer. Plus I have fleece scattered everywhere. That all needs to be gathered back up so I can start sorting through it for the next big project. I think we're going to get some felt done this year.
We've gotten our dark brown crew socks and brown yarn from the mill. We're still waiting on the rest of the socks and the white yarn. sigh. Eight months and counting.
Now it's back to spinning and cleaning and dying and weaving and...
toddles from the sock monkey and me.

Fall is in the air!

2011-10-07T07:23:00.000-07:00

Finally, cool weather! It was actually down in the forties this morning. We haven't had temps this low since..... well, heck it's been so long I don't remember the last time we saw forties.
Fall Festival up in Pinetop is behind us now. It was such a good show. We actually had several shoppers that had bought yarn from us at Charlie Clark's on 4th of July, come back and get more yarn! It is such a good feeling when people like your work well enough to come back again.
Flynn and George are now weaned, much to George's dismay. Flynn fretted for about twenty minutes and then decided he was hungry and hasn't looked back. Poor George has been pacing and crying and is taking much longer to settle in. Not overly surprising as he was always more bounded to his mom than the other crias. But al nearly eleven months old, it's time to cut the cord and if mom won't do then I must!
Mean while, we are still waiting for our socks to come in. I'm beginning to fear that we will never get them! The waiting is killing me!!!!!!

Nuno scarf inovations

2011-09-01T12:34:00.001-07:00

I headed back out to the shop yesterday. I haven't done enough sweating this week. I'm bound and determined to perfect the lazy woman's nuno felting technique. When I first heard how it was done (put you fiber on your fabric and roll it all up. roll it back and forth 200 time) I thought: "I am so not standing here all day rolling a scarf back and forth".
Well with the building of the felting machine, I don't have to! I just make my roll, put it in the machine and go away to do something far more interesting.
This works well for the felt sheets, but I found that my nuno scarves seemed kind of, well, flat. Nuno is supposed to be textured. So I went back to the directions. (this is fairly unusual for me, maybe it's my defy authority youth, or the fact that I am one of the laziest people on earth, but I just don't tend to read/follow instructions). What I learned is there is another step. Apparently you are suppose to physically abuse your work by throwing it at something for upwards to 20 minutes.

.....??? (see lazy comment, so not gonna happen.)

This sent me in search of something to do my tossing for me. Enter my drier. Thirty minutes on air fluff with one of Molly's tennis balls whacking the heck out of my scarves and viola! Nuno scarves!

staying busy and waiting for cooler weather

2011-09-01T06:58:00.001-07:00

Hot , hot, hot! Buster what's-his-name may like to sing about it, but out we're quite thurghouly sick of it. The weather forecasters have started to plead publicly for people to stop sending them hate mail. I feel bad for them, though I admit to calling them a few rude names after hearing the latest forecast. I have notice that as of last night, they stopped pretending that cool weather was around the corner and just have it at 110 degrees all week long.

At least for us there is some relief through the night. Temps up in town where they have all that asphalt and concrete will only cool down to around 90 degrees while we'll get down into the mid 70's. Small comfort while I'm out in the shop hearing the automatic vent fan kick on at 10 a.m. and knowing it's set to turn on a t 120 degrees.

That hasn't kept me out of the shop. I've been busy working with the felter and am pleased to see my felt sheets getting more and more consistent. Now Jim, Dot and I have been working on making flowers out of all that felt. We're having fun, though I doubt what we are creating would ever be found in nature.
I laid a bunch of the sheets out on my kitchen table to get a picture of them. Silly me I left them sitting there and walked away to do something else. When I returned I found Frosty happily kneading the sheets and making herself a nest. Never mind that she was sitting on my kitchen table, she was messing up my felt!

I also tried some more nuno felting.

The scarf didn't turn out quite the way I was expecting, my projects seldom do, but I liked it. It was interesting to see how the silk textured after the felting was done. I'll have to do some more playing with this.

I've also been making more coil baskets. I have some novelty acrylic yarn that I've been using up. I had the ball sitting on the floor next to me while I worked on the basket. When I reached down for another length of yarn, I found my ball missing. Looking around, I found the culprit. Daisy was feeling playful and was happily chewing up the ball of yarn. I took me fifteen minutes to get it away from her. .

Her legs may be short but she can move them really, really fast. There is a reason Brian nick named her the carper torpedo!

2011-08-25T12:10:00.000-07:00

Summer will never end. I know in other parts of the world, people wish for this, but around here we can't wait to see the last of summer and all its 110 plus degree days. And to top it all off, we're in the middle of another heat wave. phooey, wake me when it's Christmas.
Last week we had the "great breakout". The older males managed to open, not one, but two gates to get to the girls. I don't know how long they were together before we discovered the party, but according to Dot, it was "long enough". I'm not super keen on doing it, but the girls will have to be treated so I'm not playing "whose your daddy" in eleven months. The gate to the girls could be fixed in such a way that you needed thumbs to open it, but the one from the boys to the hay couldn't be locked. I chased the boys out of the hay twice before the weekend. Once they figured out how the latch worked, there was no keeping them behind the gate. I even tied it closed once. The rascals actually managed to untie it and open it.
We spent the weekend reinforcing fences and fixing gate latches. Now I just get dirty looks from the boys whenever I'm out there. Apparently I've spoiled all their fun.
We have the veggie gardens going again. The heat wave managed to shrivel up all my carrots and chicory, but the corn, squash and cucumbers are doing well. In fact, I decided to hold off pulling out the Armenian cucumbers and the watermelon and those have had a bit of a resurgence and are flowering again. It will be neat if we can get a second round of fruit off of them.

...if we can't have rain...

2011-08-02T08:55:00.001-07:00

At least we can have a rainbow.

our new felting machine

2011-07-25T10:01:00.000-07:00

I have long wanted a felting machine. I like felting, but I am at heart, a very lazy person and standing there rolling a wad of fiber around for thirty minutes just doesn't sound like a good time to me. So I showed my FIL a photo of one and said: "can you build it?". Well his version is up and running! Now comes all the experimenting and playing to find out just what we can and can't get away with. I think this will work really well with nuno felting, but only time will tell. I haven't really spent a lot of time with it yet, it's still pretty darn hot out in the shop. Heck, only two, three more months until cool weather is back again. By then I should know how to work this beasty.

the REALLY dog days of summer

2011-07-25T09:36:00.000-07:00

sometimes a photo just says it all....

relapse

2011-07-21T11:33:00.000-07:00

Four weeks to the day after we took Jack off medication he went back down. I put him back on penicillin immediately and his fever didn't get as high or last as long as it has in the past. This is so frustrating, as next month it will be a full year that we've battled this infection on and off. The plan now is to put him back on Draxxin and leave him on for as long as we can. Now we face a situation like we do with alpacas that have reoccurring valley fever: the medication will control the infection, but it can also cause damage to liver and kidneys. Hopefully we will finally win out over this infection and we can safely remove him from medication eventually. For now we keep on and keep hoping.

dog days of summer

2011-07-11T07:12:00.000-07:00

Ah summer. So far w have survived a record 118 degree day, (I wasn't in AZ for the all time record of 122 degrees) one of the largest monsoon dust storm the state has ever seen and a rise in humidity that makes the swamp coolers no more effective than big fans. The critters are taking it all in stride. One or two are still out sun bathing every afternoon.

We went north for 4th of July at Charlie Clark's again this year. We had a great time, as always. Yarn was the big seller this year. Which is a good thing as I've been doing a lot of spinning lately and have a good supply.

We're still waiting for our socks back from the mill. We should start getting the yarn sometime next month. The socks will arrive after the yarn, if our last two orders are any indication. I have to admit, I'm getting a bit antsy to see what we get. It's kind of like Christmas. I have a rough idea of what each color will be, but you never really know for sure until all the fibers are blended.

The veggie garden is more or less dormant right now. Except for the Armenian cucumbers and watermelons. The cucumbers just keep on churning along and the watermelons are still growing on the vine. I'm going to start fixing some of the beds this weekend for the next crop. We should be able to get another batch of corn. We left the first crop too long, since we had never grown corn before and weren't sure what to look for, and the corn got tough. But this time we know what to expect and will pull it off sooner. I think I'll also plant some pole beans in amongst the corn and see what happens. Some companion planting advocates also say to plant squash in among the corn as well. The summer squash didn't do a lot and I continually had an issue with end rot. I started tossing the small, stunted fruit over the fence and Niska became a big fan. Now when he sees me at the garden, he comes running over, waiting for his treat.

Jack is off medication again. We ended up keeping him on the Draxxin for 11 weeks. He's been off for almost three weeks. I won't relax until he's been off three months! At this point, we know we can control his staph infection, if we can't knock it out completely. If it does come back, I'll have to find out what health issues we need to be concerned about if we keep Jack on meds for even more extended periods of time. As of last night he was feeling well, since he was having a grand time neck wrestling with Cartigan.

Flynn and Belle are registered now. I didn't realize until I got Belle's certificate that she and Jack are related. They both have Royal Fawn as their great grand sire. Both Flynn and Belle (and George)are growing well. I think we'll be bring the whole gang to the Southwest show in March.

So now it's back to cleaning up from the dust storm. yippee.

time to relax!

2011-05-20T10:04:00.000-07:00

Things have been quite here. With shearing behind us, there isn't a whole lot that needs to be done right now. Which means it's PLAY TIME!

Linda, Laurel and Brandie came out and I spent an afternoon teaching them the basics of hand painting yarn. We made a huge mess and had a great time! I figure you're not really playing hard unless you make a mess, so mission accomplished.

Here are some of the fruits of their labor. Not too bad. I got a bunch of yarn dyed and didn't have to do any actual work. I think this worked out quite well.

Where has the time gone?

2011-04-29T08:35:00.000-07:00

My how time flies! I've been a little lax about keeping up with the blog, sorry. The folks have come and gone for their winter visit. They stayed long enough to warm up before heading back east to the cold and wet. The Southwest Regional Alpaca Show is a memory. We didn't show any alpacas this year, but I worked harder than ever! Next time I'll know better and bring some animals with me so I can rest a little.

Brian finally got our vegetable garden in. It got off to a shaky start. I think I had a nitrogen deficiency in the soil. Everything started greening up nicely once I started adding some paca-poo tea to my watering regime. I made a map of what was planted where so I could keep it all straight as the garden grew. Should have worked. Didn't I show cantaloupe melons on my map, unfortunately the seeds are labeled honey dew, and quite frankly, now that we're seeing fruit, they sure as heck look like summer squash.

Fortunately we like all three of those, so whatever we actually get will be eaten.
The babies are growing well. Belle is turning out to be quite the character. She will follow me around the pen, telling me stories while I feed and pick up. She loves to have her back and neck scratched. You can almost hear her purring like a cat. I've never had an alpaca behave like this before.

Flynn is also quite friendly. He knows what the pellet bucket looks like and will come running if he thinks there is the slightest chance for treats.

Poor Jack had another bout of fever last month. We got him stated on penicillin, which acts fast and knocks the fever down within a day or two. We also got him back in Draxxin, which as a slower acting drug, but far less painful for him to get. We'll keep him on this for a minimum of ten weeks and see if that will finally get to the source of the infection.

We've been shearing in this area for the last couple of weeks. Just about everyone is done. Now we start over with skirting, tumbling and washing fleeces. I see lots of lovely yarns in our near future.

As for the fleece we sent off, I'm expecting yarn to start coming back pretty soon. I finally let my curiosity get the best of me and called yesterday for an eta. Bummer that the only person that knew the answer had already left for the day. Oh well, I guess I'll just have to wait a little longer.

That's it for now.

a busy new year

2011-02-15T08:41:00.000-08:00

We've been busy around here. We finally got all the fleece boxed up and headed out to the mill for the next run of socks. I'm looking forward to getting everything back, as we are running really low on socks. Except large crew socks, we have plenty of those.

Kinesis had her cria this past weekend. She's a fawn little girl that we've named Alpacazona's Invincibelle Spirit. Belle's was a textbook delivery and we thought everything was fine, until Kinesis decided she wasn't going to continue nursing the cria. It may be that Kinesis has a touch of mastitis which makes nursing painful for her. Unfortunately, the only way to treat mastitis is to keep milking mom out until it becomes more comfortable for her. We're making progress, Kinesis will now stand and let the baby nurse, but we have to get her up and hold her head at first. Which means every two hours or so one of us is out in the field getting Kinesis and making sure Belle gets a snack. Hopefully Kinesis gets past this soon, I'm getting tired!

And to confuse the situation even more, Tyche has been trying to steal the cria. She even allowed the cria to nurse off of her on Monday. Neat trick that, since Tyche hasn't has a cria in over a year and has no milk. Others have told me it is possible for a female to start producing milk in certain cases. It would be pretty amazing if Tyche actually does start to make milk and becomes a surrogate for little Belle. These animals never cease to surprise me.

Jack is off medications at last and hasn't had a reoccurrence of his infection. (knock on wood!) Keep your fingers crossed that we've finally licked this thing. Poor guy is really tired of feeling like a pin cushion. I know he's had enough, when I went to trim his toe nails, he cushed and then just flopped over on his side as if to say "do what you will, I give up". It actually made doing his nail rather easy, though I don't know that I need yet another drama queen in the herd.

This weekend will be teeth trimming for everyone that needs it.

Things to do in Casa Grande

2011-01-14T06:08:00.000-08:00

It has been a whirl wind of activity around here. I hardly know where the time has gone. We had a photographer call up and ask to come out and take some photos of the alpacas. I'll post some of his stuff a bit later. Also among our visitors in recent weeks as Lisa Earle, a young lady from Casa Grande. She works on a local blog about things to do and sites to see in the area. She came out to visit the critters and took a ton of photos herself.
If you're interested in the article (a very well written article, if I do say so myself), here's the link: http://casagranderox.com/

We're done with all our shows for the time being. The next event won't be until March with the Southwest Regional Alpaca Show. Maybe I'll actually get some rest between now and then.... na.

egg in my face

2010-12-08T08:19:00.000-08:00

We had our open house this past weekend. The weather was perfect. We had a good turn out and sales where brisk. I’d say it all went perfectly except for one tiny thing.
Laurel and our friend Sue where over admiring the new crias when Sue gestured me over. She whispered to me: “I know you told me Laurel’s new baby is a girl, but I swear to god I see testicles”

??????!!!!!!

Well Dot told me it was a girl, and in all honesty, I never did look closely, being more concerned with getting the second cria safely delivered. Then working late the next day to make up lost hours and running around getting ready for the open house and….. ok I blew it, Laurel’s girl is really a boy.
We’ve all started calling him George Castanza (there was shrinkage!). Brian went out and bought his mom an Almond Joy and a Mounds to help here remember that Almond Joys have nuts, Mounds don’t. And poor Dot, when we asked if she noticed anything when she dipped the umbilical cord, responded with; “well I dipped something”. That has us rolling on the ground.

Oh well, so much for Laurel thinking we know what we’re doing around here.

a social comment

2010-12-02T06:26:00.000-08:00

I have to admit that I’m fairly ambivalent about the whole boarder issue here in Arizona. While I don’t condone illegal entry, I do think the majority of people coming have good intentions. However, there is definitely a problem with the amount of illegal traffic. The following article is from a local news site. The area they are talking about is just a few miles south of my home. This all happened in a one week period. I added it up, they stopped over 5 tons of marijuana. They say for every drug smuggler they stop, three get through. Makes you think.

The Pinal County Sheriff’s Office has been kept busy the last two weeks, disrupting numerous drug and human smuggling operations in the Vekol Valley area southwest of Maricopa. This morning, PCSO spokesman Tim Gaffney released details regarding those cases.
On Wednesday, November 17th, PCSO deputies discovered a 2002 Ford F250 truck driving with no lights in the desert area. The deputies followed the vehicle for a short distance but the truck fled. The vehicle was located a short time later, abandoned. The truck had been reported stolen by a City of Phoenix resident. The rear tail lights were smashed out and he paint was badly damaged as a result of the vehicle being driven through the thick desert brush. The vehicle appeared to have been used to transport illegal aliens.

Deputies attempted to stop a 2000 Chevy minivan, near Interstate 8, the same day. The vehicle fled and was traveling in excess of 100 mph. Deputies backed away from the vehicle because of the dangerous driving. The vehicle was located abandoned a short time later. Deputies followed foot tracks from the vehicle and took an illegal immigrant (age 17) into custody. The van was packed with eleven bundles of marijuana and an additional bundle was located near the suspect.
On Thursday, November 18th, three trucks were observed traveling in a row near I-8. Deputies attempted to stop the vehicles but they split off from each other and began to travel through the desert. The trucks were eventually stopped and the drivers were taken into custody. One of the drivers attempted to escape by jumping into a canal but came out because of the cold water. The vehicles were headed to I-8 to pick up loads of illegal immigrants.
Also that day. deputies observed seven individuals carrying large brown burlap bundles on their back near Interstate 8. As deputies attempted to contact them they fled into the desert. Six of them dropped their backpacks and were able to get away. Ernesto Salazar (age 29) ran with his backpack and was taken into custody. Ernesto told deputies, he was in the United States illegally from Caborca, Mexico. (350 pounds of marijuana was seized.)
Friday, November 19th, PCSO located two abandoned trucks in the desert loaded with marijuana. Both trucks were reported stolen. The trucks contained a total of 3,700 pounds of marijuana.
On Sunday, November 21st, PCSO deputies stopped a Ford Explorer and immediately could smell the odor of marijuana. The vehicle contained ten bundles of marijuana. Three suspects were taken into custody. The total weight of the marijuana was 240 pounds.
Also that day, a vehicle containing seven illegal immigrants was stopped. They were turned over to Border Patrol. And an abandoned truck was located in the desert area with 1,750 lbs of marijuana.
Monday, November 22nd, a Ford F250 was observed driving with no lights near I-8. The vehicle contained approximately fifty (50) illegal immigrants in the cab and bed of the truck. All of the individuals fled when the vehicle was stopped. Six were taken into custody and turned over to Border Patrol. One of the individuals attempted to escape by jumping into a canal and had to be rescued by deputies.
Six subjects were located hiding in a wash near Interstate 8. Deputies also recovered communications equipment and fourteen bundles of marijuana. The total weight of the marijuana was 220 pounds.
Three trucks loaded with 2,035 pounds of marijuana loaded in them were also discovered that day.
On Tuesday, November 23rd, six illegal immigrants were located in a residential neighborhood, with marijuana backpacks, and were taken into custody. The total weight of the marijuana was 246 pounds.
Saturday, November 27th, PCSO was involved with two separate vehicle pursuits. Both trucks eventually stopped and both drivers were taken into custody. The total weight of the marijuana seized was 2,140 pounds.
And on Sunday, November 28th, PCSO was notified of a dead body in the desert. Saul Soto-Aguirre (age 29 of Morellia, Michoacan, Mexico) reported he, the deceased (age 42) and four other individuals had paid a guide $1,300 each to lead them into the United States from Mexico. All of them had been walking for the three days and had not eaten in two days. The victim fell while walking and the remainder of the group and guides continued on. Deputies followed the foot tracks of the other four but they disappeared once they hit I-8. Saul was turned over to Border Patrol.
Pinal County Sheriff Babeu stated, “We will continue to direct as many resources as possible to this area. I have joined my deputies during several of these shifts and continue to see the problems our Pinal County residents are faced with on a daily basis. The men and women of the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office are doing all that we can to help stop the continuous flow of drugs and human trafficking from Mexico.”

one boy one girl

2010-12-01T06:06:00.001-08:00

Fate had apparently decided I didn’t have enough on my plate yesterday. Molly delivered her cria in the morning. It was a text book delivery. Dot arrived just in time to see the cria hit the ground. She called me at work to give me the news and I called Laurel to let her know her herd had grown by one, a little brown girl.

Then Dot called me back to tell me Inara was now delivering. This was a surprise; Inara wasn’t due for another three weeks or more. After an hour Dot called me back to tell me that we had a head, but there was no further progress. Fearing a dystocia, I gave any pretense of getting anything accomplished and headed home, leaving a message for Linda (our vet) as I walked out the door.

Linda called me back just as I got to the barn. I confirmed the dystocia with her. Thank goodness for Linda, as she was a nice calm voice on the phone talking me through what I had to do. Alpacas, like other livestock, deliver their babies front feet first with the head and neck laying in between. Well our little guy had his legs back and twisted around each other. Once I located the legs, I had to untwist them and then attempt to bring them forward. The first leg actually came out fairly quickly, though it felt like I was in there twisting and pulling and pushing for days. The second leg took a bit longer. I remember, on the verge of panic, saying to Linda that I thought she had said the second leg was easier and her reply of “No, I said your half way there. Don’t get frustrated, you’re doing fine”. There is not a lot of room to work in there and I swear his leg was getting longer with every passing minute. Linda suggested trying to push him back in a bit to get some more room.
Seriously?
You do realize that Inara is doing her damndest to squeeze him out? And you want me to stick him back in there???
Ok, I’ll keep trying. A few minutes more and I had given up trying to straighten to leg and simply folded it nice and flat and eased him out.

Success!

The little guy was up and nursing within the hour, no worse for his untimely arrival. He looks like he’ll be a true black. Now we have to come up with some names. I don’t know, but all I can think of when I see our little guy is “early”.

So we managed to finish up baby watch in one fell swoop. I suppose it’s nice that I don’t have to worry about anybody delivering while I’m away at a show, but I still could have done with slightly less excitement.

off and running

2010-11-30T07:11:00.000-08:00

Three events down two too go. We’re in the home stretch! Sort of.
We spent an afternoon at a local school with a couple of the boys. That was quite pleasant. Then there was Pat’s open house at JMS Alpacas. This past weekend was the annual Christmas boutique at Kathleen’s
The Boutique at Singletree Farm in Chino Valley was a big success. It was great to see familiar faces coming back to visit with the alpacas. Some of the visitors where having a brag session, telling each other how many years in row they had been coming out. Saturday the weather was perfect, Sunday I woke up to see snow falling. It was quite pretty, I haven’t seen snow in quite a while, but after a couple of hours in the blowing wind, the novelty had worn off and I camped out in front of the heater. Not that I’m a wimp or anything.
This weekend is the open house at our place, looks like we’ll be in the low 70’s. I can live with that.
We’ll finish off next weekend at the Mesa Art Show. After that I’ll have to get my butt in gear and do some Christmas shopping. It’s more exciting when you leave to the last minute. Really.
As for the critters, Molly is still holding out on giving birth. Her due date is actually this weekend (which would make for an interesting show at the open house) but her previous own told us she tends to drop her crias early so we’re keeping an eye on her.
We got the results back for the blood panel we did on Jack. He has a staph infection. Staphylococcus xylosus, to be specific. Good news is it is easily treatable with a verity of medications, so we just need to decide on what would be most efficient (the Naxel we had him on is actually not on the list of treatments for this form of staph, which may be why it keeps coming back) and hopefully take care of this thing once and for all! As of this morning he was feeling quite good. In fact he was being a pain in the a**. He was jumping and playing with everyone, they were trying to avoid him and eat their breakfast. I expect when I get home he’ll have a new coating of green slime all over him. But it is nice to see him feeling good for now.
Ok, that’s it for now, I’m off to felt more soaps. Ta!

Just catching up

2010-11-12T07:43:00.001-08:00

It’s been a busy couple of weeks for us and we’re just getting started. The Southwest Fiber Festival and the Tucson Wool Festival are behind us. We’ve a fairly quite weekend this weekend with just a field trip for Jack and Cartigan to a local schools open house. The next four weekends are back to back events. It starts with an open house at JMS Alpacas another local breeder, then I’m heading up to Chino Valley for the annual Christmas Boutique at Singletree Farm. The following weekend is our open house, and we finish off with the Mesa Art Festival.
The weekend after that I plan to be recovering from exhaustion!
We rearranged the boys about a week ago. Cartigan was long overdue for weaning so he had to move. I took the opportunity to mix all the boys up. Luarel’s two (boarders) and Hielo and Adama moved in with the big boys. Mickey and Niska, even though they are older moved in with the little boys and Cartigan. Instead of having males separated by age, we have them more or less separated by size. It went with far less fireworks than I had anticipated.
In fact I was bragging to a friend about how smoothly it had all been and, of course, karma was listening. I heard a commotion in the middle of the night and headed out to find Niska squashing poor Cartigan. I pulled him off, but he was in rare form and wouldn’t back off. I finally ended up chasing him through a gate and closing it behind him. I ended up with Niska, Sunny and Spats on one side and Cartigan, Jack and Mickey on the other. Then I went back to bed.
That lasted for a couple of hours, when Niska decided Spats would be fun to jump on. Problem is Spats is a screamer and our bedroom window is thirty feet away from where they were. I spent some time out in the 30 odd degree night dressed in a tee shirt and paddock boots fruitlessly trying to get Niska to calm down. I finally just said have at it and closed the bedroom window. They appear to have worked out their differences for now. I’m kind of tired.
We also had a bit of an adventure with the dogs. Somebody knocked over the can of dog food (Dot had just added a 20 pound bag of food), and the pups had an early thanksgiving. Big Daisy and Molly ate their fill and left, but JJ and Little Daisy ate until they could hold no more. Little Daisy literally waddled when she walked, her distended belly practically hitting the ground. JJ was even worse off. Poor guy just sprawled on the floor looking completely miserable. You could practically feel kibbles pushing through his skin. We probably won’t have to feed him for the rest of the month!
Other than that things have been going well. I’ve been busy making felted soaps, just can’t keep up with demand! I’ve done a little work with the spinning wheel, but not much lately and I won’t see my loom again until after Christmas. Ah well, it’s a good thing to be busy!

Pink Dad

2010-10-18T06:44:00.001-07:00

It was a beautiful weekend. We’re getting into the time of year when we get to call all our friends and family across the country and brag about the fact that we’re out working on our gardens and sipping ice tea while they are bracing for freeze warnings and dragging out the winter coats.

The honeysuckle is just a mass of orange flowers,
and our wild sunflower is in full glory. Unfortunately, I found out the sunflower was doing so well because the hose had accidentally been left on for only god knows how long and it was responding to the large quantity of water. I’m so not going to enjoy the next water bill, but I am enjoying the display of color

My sister participated in the Susan Komen 3 Day Walk, in Philadelphia this past weekend. Through a series of events last winter, my father was, um, persuaded to dress in costume to cheer her on. She got to pick the costume. I will never think of tutus in the same way…

http://www.courierpostonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/gallery?Avis=BZ&Dato=20101017&Kategori=NEWS01&Lopenr=10170802&Ref=PH (photos 33-37 are my Dad and his buddy Cliff)

Brain wants to blow up the photo and hang it in the spare bedroom so that Dad will always remember that weekend. Brian is just really thoughtful that way!

I got to sit at the loom for a little while and finished up a rug I've been working on. All I need to do now is sew the ends back in and call it good..

We had a visit on Sunday, which made the alpacas very happy as they snacked on a bucket of carrots. All and all a relaxing weekend.

life goes on.

2010-10-15T10:30:00.001-07:00

Finally, things are calming down again. Everybody is on the road to recovery. Nadia, as it turns out had scratched her eye. The cloudiness is now gone. Cartigan is doing much better. He still has a bit of a limp, but he is using the leg pretty regularly now, it will just take time to heal completely.
We’re working on a new theory with Jack. Another breeder asked about the possibility of a reoccurring abscess. It made sense. We may have been knocking an infection down with medication, but not knocking it out. He is now on penicillin long term, much to his dismay. Normally we would keep him on 10 days. Now we’re looking at a minimum of 20 days and possibly up to 4-6 weeks. He really hates the shots and does his damnedest to spit at me and kick me when I go to give it to him. But true to his sweet nature, if I don’t have a needle in my hand, he still wants his treats and kisses.

May your life be interesting

2010-10-07T07:26:00.000-07:00

Life had been rather dull around here. Which, in my mind, is not a bad thing. That all came to a screeching halt this week. To start with, we got our hay. Very good news, since we were out and working on borrowed bales. However, Mother Nature seem to think this was a sign to finally send rain. And wind. Everyday. Things are a bit damp out here but we missed the worse of Arizona’s weather as Flagstaff had four tornados touch down yesterday.
Sometime during the last round of storms to hit our area, Cartigan managed to injure one of his front legs. We checked him out and didn’t see any obvious signs of trauma, nor could I feel any swelling, heat or break. As best I could tell the pain was in his ankle area, probably a good sprain. We wrapped his leg in an ace bandage to help give him some extra support and he will now walk around slowly on it. Any faster speeds and he pulls it up and hops around on three legs. At this point all we can really do is try to support the leg as much as possible, try to keep him from jumping around and let time heal the injury.
Mean while, Nadia has developed a cloudy eye. Again, no obvious sign of injury and she is an older girl so this may be just a sign of old age. We flush it with saline daily. Next time Linda is out, I’ll have her take a look, but at the moment, it seems to be bothering me more than it is bothering Nadia.
The latest is Jack is having another one of his fever episodes this morning. As cool as it was yesterday I doubt it has anything to do with overheating. More than likely there is some other underlying chronic condition and we’ll just have to deal with this periodically for the rest of his life.
I’m beginning to understand why the Irish think the most powerful curse you can say to someone is “may your life be interesting…”

Fall Festival 2010

2010-10-05T09:35:00.000-07:00

The Fall Festival in Pinetop is behind us now. It went ok. It was quieter than last year; I guess the economy is still keeping people away. We still had a great time and did well for sales. It was nice to get out of the heat for a while.
A small farmers market that we had scheduled for this weekend was canceled because of the lack of participation, another sad note on the economy. Oh well, I could do with the rest.
We finally got a break in the heat. This week ahead is forecasted to be in the 80’s. It feels good to walk outside and not get slapped in the face by 105 degrees. The alpacas are enjoying the coolness as well. They are finally venturing away from the fans and coolers. Of course the drop in temperature has been accompanied by rain. I wouldn’t normally complain, we love rain, but we just got a load of hay and haven’t moved under the cover yet. There are tarps over it, but the bales still get damp, so we’ll need to uncover the stack and let everything dry out, and then restack it. Yippee.

We're still here. Really!

2010-09-22T05:35:00.000-07:00

Ok, ok, I know I've been lax about blogging lately, and this one will be very short. Suffice to say, all the critters are doing well. Jack had another bout with heat and this time he had a little bath buddy, as Linda had one of her boys out for us to nurse as well. Both came through with flying colors.
Work has suddenly gotten very busy and free time is at a minimum right now. Everything has been focused on keeping up while trying to get ready for the Pinetop Fall festival this weekend. Wish us luck!

Heat stress and downer alpacas

2010-07-23T07:28:00.001-07:00

Heat stress on our alpacas is something we are very aware of here in the desert Southwest. When temperatures in the summer time average over 100 degrees and can get well into the teens finding ways to keep cool has become an obsession. We have fans and swamp coolers going 24/7 on the barn. We place buckets of water in front of the coolers which provides the alpacas with cool drinking water even at the hottest part of the day.
Even so, occasionally an alpacas body temperature will climb for whatever reason, and when it goes way off kilter, they lose the ability to self regulate for a while. Also when their bodies reach an extremely high temperature for any period of time, a certain enzyme is release which causes muscle pain and weakness (think how achy you feel when you have the flu). The alpacas kush in response to this and often are not only unwilling, but unable to rise. Linda, our vet, believes that we lose more of the alpacas to complications that set in because they are down and cannot rise for such a long period of time than due to the initial heat stress that started the whole ball rolling in the first place.
Last summer she had us build her a walk in tub to treat one of her alpacas that had gone down to heat. It cooled the animal rapidly and allowed him to ease aching muscles and get his weight up off his legs. This helped get the stain off him and allowed him to lightly exercise his muscles while he was ill. The tub was big, ugly and leaked like sieve, but it did what it was designed to do and Luc pulled through.
After seeing what worked and didn’t work on that tub, Brian and his dad built a second one. Since we had more time to dedicate to this one, it came out much nicer. We even had it fiber-glassed to make it water tight. Then the tub was rolled away into the shop and forgotten about. Until this past Sunday, that is.
I went out to feed and check on the alpacas and found Jack down and not behaving like his normal self. I quickly checked his temperature and was shocked to see a reading of 106.9. Brian immediately rolled the tub over and we got him into it. Since the water coming out of our tabs is pretty warm in the summer, we added several frozen milk jugs into the tub. We got his temperature down and set him up in the section of the barn that remained the coolest, right in front of the swamp cooler vent.

We monitored his temperature closely and every time it approached 104, we got him back into the tub. We also started him on Naxcel as a preventative in case there was an infection of some sort that started the fever going. Jack never minded going into the tub, and a big bucket of hay kept him content enough for the 30 or so minutes we would have him in there. We began to notice that his body temperature was staying lower for longer after each bath. By Wednesday, his temperature was staying in a normal range without the aid of the Paca-spa, as we are now calling the tub. Thursday evening, we let him back in with his buddies. We’re still monitoring his temperature throughout the day and at any sign of a fever, we’ll get right back into our routine, but it seems the Paca-spa has once again done its job. I’m convinced it save Jack a world of hurt, if it hasn’t in fact saved his life. As far as I’m concerned, that spa is worth its weight in gold!

time goes by

2010-07-12T09:40:00.000-07:00

So it’s been a while since I’ve up dated the blog. We’ve been pretty busy. We’ve completed both the Show Low Days and The Northern AZ Arts shows. We had a great time at booth, and now we’re completely pooped. Brian and I decided to take this past weekend off and just relax. We took in a movie in Casa Grande. Had a bit of a hick-up when I tried to use AMC passes at a Harkins theater. Oopsie. Well that did explain the odd look I got as I handed the passes through the window.
June was really hot and July is shaping up to be more of the same. The swamp coolers have been going 24/7 for a while now. I know they are providing some relief as I’ll come home in the afternoon, and you wouldn’t know there was an alpaca on the place. They are all in the barns letting the cool air (ok, so it’s still 90 degrees, but it’s cool relative to the outside temp.) flow over them. Those big swamp coolers are a god send. We still go out and hose the ‘pacas of once or twice a day to help cool them, though I’m not sure how helpful it really is since the critters run right out into the sun to bake after they get their bellies wet.
Only another 8 weeks or so till cooler weather! Fall is right around the corner.

A pretty, gery box

2010-06-02T07:22:00.000-07:00

Swamp coolers, while being very effective in our dry desert heat, are not really very attractive. The new swamp cooler on the barn is basically a big grey metal box.
My father in law decided that this just would not do, and dressed it up a bit.
Now we have the only alpaca weathervane in the State of Arizona that I know of. It can tell us from what direction the 110 degree heat will be blowing in from this weekend. Yeehaa.
Not that I’ll be here for the 110. I’m headed up to the high country for Show Low Days this weekend.

Good bye Miss B

2010-05-28T06:43:00.001-07:00

Sometimes you need a little time and space away from and event to gain some prospective on it. We lost Miss B a couple of weeks ago and I only now feel up to writing about it. It happened suddenly, she was sick when I got up on a Saturday morning and by Sunday afternoon she was gone.
I could shake my fist at the universe and rally about how unfair life is, and in truth, I did indulge in some of that, but it neither made me feel better nor brought Miss B back. And I’m not one to waste a lot of time on fruitless endeavors. I’ve been engaging in alpaca therapy instead. The herd still wants to be fed and the poo still needs to be cleaned up, and spending time amongst the animals with their calming influence has help considerably. I still miss B terribly, but now I can honestly be thankful for the six weeks we got enjoy her. And what a joy she was, that little girl never stopped moving and would often leap into the air just for the sheer joy of doing it.
Rest in peace Miss B, and thank you for your gift.

Seriously, Monday again???!!!

2010-05-06T07:45:00.000-07:00

Monday; day three: toasted another fan. Had a rock hit the wind sheild on the van on my way to Maynard's Market in Tucson. I now have a big 2' crack across the passenger side.

It's not all bad, this morning my mother-in-law let me know that my FIL has repaired the two fans. Any bets on how long it will take for me to kill them again?

And we did ultra sounds on the girls yesterday. Three out of four confirmed pregnant. The fourth is still determined to keep us guessing.

Monday... again

2010-05-04T06:54:00.001-07:00

Do you ever get the feeling every day is Monday? I seem to be in a groundhog loop of Mondays. Yesterday (which actually was Monday) I got home to find that the second swamp cooler had once again blown a motor. I got a fan out of the shop so the boys could at least have some air circulating, which they managed to knock over through the gate and the motor on that heated up and stopped working by the time I found it.
This morning, as I was headed out for work, the sensor in my van said “check right front tire, pressure 25) Well ok, I drove over to the shop took about fifteen minutes to figure out how to work the air compressor and then started filling the tire. The sensor never moved from 25 psi. What the heck? So I put more air in the tire (you can probably see where this is going). I finally said the heck with this the sensor is bad, got in my van and headed into work.
About thirty miles from anywhere, the oil light came on. Ugh! Well all right, not much I can do about it now. When I get to the next gas station I’ll get a quart of oil and add it in. Ironically, I have an appointment to change the oil first thing in the morning.
Now I start mess with the sensors and scrolling through to see what else is falling apart. Right front tire still says 25 psi. Rear right tire now says 83 psi. WTF!!!!!! A sneaking suspicion starts to come over me. When I finally get to the office (with my newly acquired quart of oil) I start digging around the van for a tire gauge. Why I didn’t use the tire gauge in the first place and relied on those stupid sensors is beyond me, won’t make that mistake again. I check the pressure of the rear tire; sure enough: 25 psi. I check the front, and the tire gauge maxes out (its limit is 75 psi, so what do you think the pressure was? Anyone want to guess 83 psi???!!!) The sensor on the tire is reversed. The front is actually the rear and vice verse.
So it’s seven a.m., I’ve got the front tire pressure back down, the back will just have to wait until I get home, and I’m just waiting to see what else can go wrong this morning…..

Happy May!

2010-05-03T06:43:00.000-07:00

Wednesday tends to be fiber day at Alpacazona Farm. Linda comes out if she is available and we spend the entire morning washing, picking, tumbling and carding fiber. After she leaves I usually try to keep at one fiber project or another. Last Wednesday was a dying fiesta. I hand painted over a dozen skeins of yarn, some hand spun some commercial. I love to just see the wild tumble of colors.
On other news, we’ve been really working with Kinesis. Back in January her demeanor changed, which we were expecting because we thought she was pregnant and due soon. Well she wasn’t and we should have seen the change for the warning sign that it was. She started to get pretty skinny and when she was shorn, we were shocked at the extent of the weight loss. I spent a good deal of time beating myself up for having let it get as bad as it has. But self recrimination does little to fix a problem so I went to work getting weight back on that poor girl. After week of paying very close attention the amount and verity of food Kinesis is taking in, I’m beginning to see progress. I haven’t weighed her in a week (another Wednesday chore) but I am beginning to see a marked improvement in her activity level. The guys at work have joined the “Feed Kinesis” band wagon have been bring in veggies and greens from their gardens to give her to keep enticing her to eat. Of course this may all back fire as she gets use to eating treats and will decide she doesn’t need hay anymore!
We had a horrible wind storm over the weekend. I hate wind. I really, really, really hate wind. I’ll be spending the next two evenings picking up all the trash that has blown into the yard and been caught up in the fences. I hate wind.
In the middle of the wind storm, we dragged out the old swamp cooler and started getting it cleaned up. We’re going to replace the smaller dead cooler with this big old monster. The thin has been sitting out in back of Brian’s folk’s property for years and is ugly as hell, but to my surprise the motor started right up when we plugged it in (ok, not right up, the capacitor needs to be replaced, but the motor still runs!) We’ll seal the bottom up; add a new water pump and presto! Cool air for the alpacas. And just in the nick of time, we’re headed for the nineties this week and I’ve a feeling they may be here for awhile.
Finally, we have three boarders arriving this week. We’ll be moving animals around once we see how personalities mesh. It’s always exciting for the first couple of days as pecking orders need to be re-worked.
Well that’s it for now.

Shearing is over for another year

2010-04-26T08:23:00.001-07:00

The Alpacazona alpacas are naked once more. Brian and I finished shearing the last of the big boys yesterday. Now I can turn my attention to sorting, skirting and washing fleece. Oh, and I can return to the war against the weeds in the yard. They’ve gotten ahead of us as we’ve been spending most of our free time denuding alpacas.
Plus I won’t feel so guilty when I sit down and work and a project here and there. There’s yarn to be spun, plied and dyed, roving to label, scarves to weave, baskets to shape. The list just goes on and on. At least I’m never bored.

Summer begins

2010-04-16T06:43:00.000-07:00

Things are slowly heating up. Literally. We had our first 90 degree day this week. It’s supposed to cool back into the eighties after this weekend, but it’s a temporary reprieve at best. We’ve been busy getting things ready for the long hot summer. The fans have all been cleaned and oiled, the swamp coolers have been checked and reconditioned, and the alpacas are, well, I’m working on getting them sheared. I do my own so it takes a while to get them all done. I’ve got two more girls to go and I did most of Legend. I hope to get the girls finished this weekend and start in on the rest of the boys. Legend will either have to go back to Kathleen looking kind of stupid (I couldn’t get any of his neck or head done) or wait until I either have a team of people to hold him down or a lot of drugs to calm him down. And possibly some drugs to calm me down as well….
Mean while, I’m taking advantage of the rising temps to get back into some solar dying. I did about ten skeins this past weekend. Brian and I took some vacation time and spent the first day and a half just hanging around the house doing chores and generally goofing off. Then we headed up for a couple of nights in the camper. A last little get away before the big shearing push.

Miss B is doing well. She usually spends the twilight hour racing around the fields trying to get Cartigan to play with her. Cartigan seems willing; he just can’t seem to get the rules. Though he spend a great deal of time following her around.

New alpaca fleece rugs

2010-04-07T06:21:00.000-07:00

Our rugs have arrived! Whoooohooo!!!
They actually arrived a couple of weeks before I thought they would. The mill had been telling customers the turn around time was 14-16 weeks. So when we brought O out to TX in December, I figured I had until the end of April until I would see the rugs.
I was so excited when I got called from the front office to say I had five HUGE boxes waiting for me. The poor UPS guy looked so crest fallen when I told him I needed them in my van which was around back. In order to ease his aching back, I told him just to get them back to the truck and I would drive over to meet him. It worked out well until I got home and realized I had to get the boxes back out of the van…
Not to be thwarted, I just opened the boxes up and carried the rugs in around ten at a time. Only took me eight trips. Now I have a stack of alpaca rugs (from ours and Linda’s alpacas) three feet high in my loom room. Each rug is unique, no two the same, though some are similar. The mill did an amazing job with styles and colors and I have to say I am very pleased.

Our Easter earthquake Or "Why is our house rocking?"

2010-04-05T07:25:00.000-07:00

We got to experience our first, and hopefully only, earthquake Sunday. Brian and I were hanging out at home, relaxing, and watching a movie. Our dog, Molly was sleeping on the floor next to me, when I felt the chair kind of rocking. I assumed Molly was stretching or scratching and hitting the chair. It went on long enough that I finally sat up to see what the heck she was doing only to see she was still sound asleep and not touching the chair at all. Then I noticed Brian was looking at me kind of strange and says, “Why is our house rocking?” The chandlers where rocking, the rod for the blinds where tapping the windows, it was kind of surreal. We thought the wind may have picked up, but it was still outside.
Of course we went next door to see if they felt anything and called a couple of friends. Everybody thought we where nuts.
I knew we had felt something, so, being a good geologist, I logged on to the U.S. Geological Survey website and started poking around. Sure enough, there had been a quake down in Baja California. At that time they said it had a 6.2 magnitude, which is big, but there had been bigger, closer earthquakes that we hadn’t noticed in the past. So I poked around some more.
The epicenter was 32km deep. Ah, there it is, that’s why the waves traveled so far. That’s a pretty deep earthquake and the deeper they are, the farther they tend to travel.
So I guess I get to cross this off the bucket list, not that experience any kind of earthquake was really high on my list of things to do.

A new baby!

2010-04-02T06:28:00.001-07:00

The herd has grown by one! Tyche finally had her cria yesterday (361 days of gestation). A little girl weighing in an22.3 lbs. We were expecting white and at first we thought she was white, but after we got her dried off and cleaned some of the mud off of her, we noticed there was a hint of gold to her fleece. You can really see it at her tail. So maybe we’ve got a beige or a really light, light fawn. Brian came up with her name: Alpacazona’s Miss B. Haven.
Little B is doing well and testing out those very, very long legs by racing around her pen while poor Tyche waddles along behind.

Spring Tucson Shearing Festival

2010-03-29T07:31:00.001-07:00

The Spring Tucson Shearing Festival was a success! We’re starting to recognizing faces from past events so it’s like a happy family reunion now. And of course I always like meeting new people, like Sara of “Woolies” (woolies.etsy.com) and “Buster and Boo (busterandboo.etsy.com), who has been helping me work though some of the kinks in my Etsy store. I feel very fortunate to have met someone patient enough to walk me through the technical part of on line selling, especially with my unique inability to grasp anything computerish.
I was pleasantly surprised when Kathy, the hostess of the shearing festival, asked me if I would consider teaching a class on making coil baskets. It’s something totally out of my comfort zone, but I think I might take a stab at it. What’s the worst that can happen? The people taking the class tell me I suck and demand their money back? Ok, well that would be bad, but I would live through it. I think.
After the festival, I ran down to Maynard’s Market to drop off more yarn and socks and found out I should have brought more felted soaps. There was only one left! Guess I’ll have to get busy making some more.

Never a dull moment!

2010-03-23T07:18:00.001-07:00

March will go down as an eventful month here at the farm. Things got rolling with the arrival of a female from CA, here for breeding. Then it was off to the SWRAS. I love getting to catch up with old friends and meet new people, who will become old friends.

One day to recover, then it’s off to Tucson, where Mom and I set up our vendor space at Maynard’s Market.
No matter how much you set up mock displays, you always end up changing it once you get in to your space. I’ll be heading back down there Saturday with more stuff and to rearrange what I felt didn’t quite work for me.

During this the folks got packed up and headed back home (by way of Vegas, of course). The day they left we had some strange men snooping around the house, up to no good. I called the sheriff’s office just in case other people had similar things happen, just so there would be a record for the police to keep an eye out. Brian added a “No Trespassing” sign to the gate. I hate to make people feel unwelcome, but we’ve been robbed once, I don’t plan to go through that a second time. Fortunately for us, Dot was keeping an eye on the house and she scared the men off by wandering over to see what they where up to. She said what made her suspicious, is that the guys never asked to look at the alpacas. Even the sheriff wanted to go see the alpacas!

That same day I made my report, I had to be home early from work because one of our boys in quarantine from the show (Jack) spiked a 106.5 temperature. Dot and I got him cooled down and I ran up to the vets to get antibiotics for him. By the next morning the fever had gone and he was back to his old happy self. Not that he’s enjoying the week long series of shots.

We also had another female arrive for breeding, which has been, um, challenging. She may have a retained CL, though she isn’t responding overly much to Estrumate. There’s also a possibility of a cyst. Or maybe she just hates boys, who knows. When I have Linda come out to do ultrasounds, I’ll get her done as well and see if there is anything to be gleaned.

Meanwhile, we’ve concluded that Kenisis is not pregnant after all, and have started breeding her. And Tyche is going for a new record on her gestation (353 days today with no sign of even thinking of giving birth!) Though we were hoping the hot air balloon they inflated behind the house would scare the cria out of her. But they must have just been training since both Saturday and Sunday, they came out, inflated the balloon, hung out for a while, then deflated it and packed it all up again without actually going anywhere

Now I need to get packed for the Spring Shearing Festival down at Kathy Wither’s farm in Tucson this Saturday.

I think I’m going to sleep in on Sunday.

when your mind starts to wander...

2010-03-04T11:13:00.000-08:00

So, we’ve been waiting for one of our alpacas to give birth. And waiting…. and waiting. I go back and forth between, she is still pregnant and she’s never been pregnant. Some alpacas just keep you guessing. (think young athletic females with incredible muscle tone that just tuck those babies right up tight)
Yesterday I happen to be at the dentist, suffering all kinds of inhumane treatment when a horrible thought occurred to me; we have another female due in about two weeks. I had to delay her breeding because the boys got a gate open and had a party with the girls. Was Kenesis here at that time, or was she still up north for breeding? Is she pregnant, but due much later than I thought because one of my knuckle heads is the father!!!!! Ugh! The harder I tried to remember where Kenesis was at the time, the more elusive the memory became.
When I got home I check my notes. I had written down when the boys got out, but not when Kenesis came home. Dang it. So since she is black, and she’s breed to a black, if I get a white cria, I’m going to be very suspicious….

Instructions for whimsy basket

2010-03-01T07:32:00.000-08:00

Well, here is the first attemp to post the instructions for the whimsy basket. Not sure if you can read it or not...

whimsy basket

2010-02-26T06:21:00.000-08:00

Well, I probably should be getting ready for the Southwest Regional Alpaca Show in two weeks. Instead I’ve been happily spinning yarn and setting up a new Etsy shop (www.alpacazonafarm.etsy.com). I’ve also been filling in odd hours when I’m watching TV or waiting in line by working on coiled baskets. I have a few Indian baskets that have been decorating the shelves around the house. I happened to knock one down one day and started looking at it. I thought, what the heck, I could try doing this. A couple of my creations are now on the Etsy site, and you’ll see I quickly moved away from the traditional Native American motif. The last one I did, was sold before I ever finished it, but I did get some photos before it went to its new home.

bamboo scarf

2010-01-29T06:49:00.001-08:00

It’s nice to see bits and pieces of fiber become something. Like this:

This:

Became this:

Christmas ornimants

2010-01-26T08:42:00.001-08:00

Off on yet another tangent. I found a recipe for these cinnamon ornaments so I had to give it a try. My FIL made the cookie cutter mold for me. Now I have little cinnamon alpacas drying all over the kitchen. Smells nice.

2010-01-18T07:02:00.001-08:00

We went ice skating this weekend for a friends, daughter’s birthday party. It’s the first time I’ve been on skates in over ten years, and let me tell you, it is NOT like riding a bicycle! I did pretty well, managed to not fall on my butt. I may have been a bit of a disappointment to the kids though, unbeknownst to me, Brian was merrily spinning a tale about how I use to train with the Olympic Figure Skating Team! Umm, I’ve watched figure skating on tv, that’s about as close as I’ve ever been to it. They wanted to see twirls and jumps. I wanted to maintain my dignity by remaining up right.
Haven’t had much to report on the alpacas. Everything is calm with them. We’ve got about six weeks until our next cria is due and another about two weeks later and then we’re done for the year.

woven tiles

2010-01-15T06:15:00.000-08:00

I’ve been working on a few new projects recently. I actually started these tiles this past summer, but just got them to a friend who had her husband do the frames for me. It’s kind of a nice project for the left over bits and pieces from other projects. Now I have something to add to the store that doesn’t have cold weather as it’s focus!

Happy New Year!

2010-01-15T06:10:00.001-08:00

Happy New Year!
Yeah, I know, I’m a little late. I’ve been busy. Ok, I’m always busy, maybe I’m just starting the new year a little lazy. Whatever.

We had the chance to go play over the long New Year weekend. We went trail riding with some friends of ours out in the California desert.
We had a great time, freezing our butts off, us in our sand rail (not really suited for trail riding, but the Prowler has engine issues) and them in their little dune buggy.
Great fun, until the dune buggy got a flat.
That’s when we realized that the tire patch kit was still in the Prowler, oopsie. The boys got pretty creative on thinking of ways to plug the hole. I’m sure we would have made it out eventually, but lucky for us, some other trial riders happened across our path and they had a plug kit.

It’s nice to be saved.

Busy, busy busy!

2009-12-16T06:41:00.000-08:00

Whew! What a month. It’s been nonstop since before Thanksgiving, but I think we may be able to relax a little now. It started with the Holiday Boutique up at Singletree Alpacas. It’s always good to see familiar faces and we weren’t disappointed. A good crowd braved the wind and the cold to come visit the alpacas and do a little shopping.
Then we had our open house. It was our third and the crowd gets bigger every year. This year we had a contest to name our newest cria. Congratulations to Jack K. for his winning suggestion of Alpacazona’s Cartigan. Now when we knit sweaters from the little guys fleece, we’ll have Cartigan’s cardigans.
After that, we had double duty; we packed up all our product to head to an event in Flagstaff, and we packed up ourselves to take Omega to TX, where he had a couple of hot dates planned. While we were in TX we stopped by Ingrid’s Rugs to drop 150 pounds of fleece and take a tour of the mill. The machinery was fascinating and I wish that we had more time to watch and poke around, but the long drive back to Arizona awaited us.
Now after a good night’s sleep, I have finally looked at the calendar and realized that Christmas is right around the corner and I haven’t done a lick of Christmas shopping. So all my family back east will be getting New Years presents and I’m implementing a new tradition: Merry February cards.

2009-11-06T05:09:00.001-08:00

Well, we can check one thing off the to-do list. Godiva had her cria yesterday, a boy, medium brownish, not as red as her. We weren’t planning on him arriving so soon, and as part of our open house next month, we’re having a “name the cria” contest. Sooooo, for the next four weeks we get to call him Little Whats-his-name. How undignified.

Happy late birthday Jacko!

2009-11-05T06:57:00.000-08:00

Halloween was Jacks 1st birthday. Boy has he come a long way. Hard to believe that this feisty little boy was so frail and sick when he was born. He’s still small for his age, something that is doubly noticeable because Sunny is so big for his. Both boys are doing great.

Legend came home this weekend. We have a smaller pen set up for him with beefier fencing than the rest of the alpacas get, since he doesn’t play well with others. No matter where the other alpacas are, he can always see at least some of them. So far he seems quite content with arrangement since he doesn’t have to share his food bowl with anyone else. This works out well for me too, since he has become quite a porker, and I can keep very close tabs on the amount of food he is getting. He doesn’t know it, but he just went on a diet.

As for happenings this month, this weekend is the open house at JMS Alpaca Farm in Casa Grande. We’ll be over there with our products. Thanksgiving weekend we’ll be up in Chino Valley for Singletree Alpaca’s holiday boutique.

And last but not least, Godiva is due this month. Sometime around mid November, so I figure only another 2 weeks or so. Think pink! We’re due for a girl!

Momo's recovery

2009-10-22T07:26:00.000-07:00

Momo is nearly back to her old self. Just 24 hours after she delivered the still born cria, her neurological symptoms had nearly disappeared. We’ll probably never know what really went wrong, but at least Momo will be with us for some time to come!

2009-10-20T07:09:00.000-07:00

What a month! This is going to be one that goes down into the category of “not so good”. Not that it’s all bad; we participated in the Tucson Wool Festival and had a great time. The down side to that event was we broke a record for high temperatures that day and I was sitting in the full sun doing carding demonstrations. At least I had my big floppy hat on to protect my face and neck.

On the down side of the month, Momo, our girl bred to Donny, went down late last week. One of the most difficult things to deal with when you have a sick animal, is that you can’t just ask them what’s wrong, where does it hurt. You have to start slowly eliminating causes to the problem (well, we know what it isn’t…) and as you slowly check thing off your list. You begin to realize just how many things it could still be.

Momo, presented with neurological symptoms, but it only affected her legs. No head tilt, no neck tremors. One of the options tossed out was that the cria she was carrying (she was due in six weeks) was pressing on a nerve, farfetched, but plausible. We immediately started her on vitamin B in case we were dealing with polio. But again, her appetite had been good and that usually affects animals that aren’t eating and their rumen is being compromised.

Four days in she stopped eating with her usual gusto. We could still coax her into eating a little, but not nearly enough, so we started force feeding a product called FibRevive. We mixed it up into a watery gruel and gave it to her in a turkey baster. She took it readily enough. At this point she was walking like a drunk, when she would get u at all. Several days I went to bed thinking I would find her body in the morning. We started considering if it wouldn’t be best to have her humanly put down.
Then Sunday night she perked up and started eating a little more on her own. Hope is restored!

Then Monday came. She seemed more restless in the morning, but she was still eating. I got a call at work a couple of hours later. Momo was in labor. I immediately left for home, called another breeder who lives nearby to go over and check the situation and then called our vet. Normally I wouldn’t have Linda come out just for a birth, but my gut told me we would need her. Sure enough, Pat called me a few minutes later to tell me that “the part that comes last is coming first”.

A detached placenta. Hopes of saving the cria are dashed.

Long story short, the cria had been dead for some time and her head was turned back so that Linda had to go in and get the cria out. It was a light colored little girl. She seemed fairly under developed for the gestation length, so maybe something had been going wrong for a long time and we just had signs of it at the very end.

This morning, Momo got up with the rest of the herd and came up to the barn. She even stood and let Jack nurse for a few minutes. Jack will be a year old in two weeks and really has no business nursing at all, but I just watched and let him stay as long as Momo was willing. Then she went back out to the field, found a comfortable spot and kushed. I brought hay out to her and she was eating readily enough when I left. Maybe we’ve turned the corner with her. We’ve decided we won’t breed her again, she’s had at least six pregnancies and has only two surviving cria, one of which being Jack, who is here only through heroic effort. We won’t put her through that again; she can spend her days being auntie Momo to the other crias. She’s earned it.

A quite moment, Brian and the dogs.

Adama's new trick

Pinetop Art Fest and Education

2009-10-05T10:31:00.000-07:00

Well, Pinetop was a success. We got started right out of the gate Friday night and stayed busy enough that I didn’t notice I was freezing my a** off until the last hour of the show. The joke as we packed up for the night was that now would be a bad time to find out the heater doesn’t work in the new van (you just don’t think to test these things when it’s 110 degrees). Good news! The heater does indeed work.

The soaps where a big hit! We sold so many Friday and Saturday that we had to raid Cheryl’s stash for Sunday. Cheryl was game enough to stay up late Saturday decorating the new soaps, I wussed out and went to bed.

This past weekend was set aside for education. We attended an all day seminar on marketing farm products put on by Ellie Winslow, author of “Beyond the Sidewalk”. Ellie’s books focus on rural businesses and the unique situations we face. It was extremely informative, and hopefully I’ll be able to put some of the things I learned into practice.

Now we will turn our focus to the Tucson Wool Festival to be held Oct 17. You can find more info here: http://www.uniquedesignsbykathy.com. I really enjoyed this one last year.

Tufa pots and soap

2009-09-22T12:09:00.001-07:00

Only days away from our first craft show of the year. We’ll be heading for Pinetop on Friday and I have to say we are both looking forward to a couple of days away from the heat. I wish the alpacas could come with us. I know they must be getting just as sick of the 100 plus temps. On the positive side, the evenings are defiantly cooling down and the animals have been responding to that by leaving the comfort of the fans and coolers early in the evening and browsing the pastures. I even caught them at quick pronk.
I’ve been trying out some new projects; felted soap and tufa pots. Tufa is a type of porous stone that is used for making planters. A fake version can be made using a cement mix. We further modified the recipe to use items available around the property and I made a couple of pots. The results were less than satisfactory. I think I made the mix too wet so the sides kept slumping down. Genius that I am, I used a big glass mason jar wrapped in plastic to keep the center open. Ever try to chisel a glass jar out of a lump of concrete? The jar survived, the pot, not so much. My second attempt I used dirt to fill the center. That one came out a bit better, but it’s still pretty ugly, a pot only a mother could love.
Not one to be easily discouraged, I’m already making plans for how I will change the next batch.
The soap came out much better, though Brian is a bit dubious about it (people are grossed out by a hair on soap, and you cover the whole thing with it???? He can be so supportive.) Even dressing them up and displaying them nicely did little to change his mind.

Men.

Pinetop-Lakeside Art show and other odds and ends

2009-09-11T07:02:00.000-07:00

Hi again. I’ve been remiss in keeping up with the blog. It’s getting to be that busy time of year again. I’ve been spending most of my time getting all the odds and ends projects finished up for the upcoming show in Pinetop. I hadn’t realized just who many different projects I had worked on over this summer until I started trying to get them packed up. Hopefully I’ll come home with a few less, but no matter what, I’m looking forward to this show. We have several people coming to demonstrate different fiber arts. There should be at least one person spinning every day, plus we’ll have to drum carders that the public can play with and I’ll have a small frame loom if anyone wants to try their hand at weaving.
The show info from the Pinetop-Lakeside Chamber of Commerce website:
Sep 26, 2009-34th Annual Fall Artisan`s Festival 9-4 pm both days $2 admission
Located at the Mountain Meadow Recreation Complex
Contact Information: Ruth McBride @ 928-367-4290

For all the people that have been wondering, Luc has recovered from his heat stress and no longer gets his daily dip in the pool. Go Luc!

Yet another project, here is some bamboo I spun and dyed. For some reason, I ended up with just about as much dye on me as on the yarn. Apparently I was in slob mode.

heat stress, aqua-cows and the downer alpaca

2009-08-17T09:41:00.001-07:00

Heat is something that is always on our minds in this area. Unfortunately, this year has been a bad one for the camilids and I know of four animals that have gone down to heat stress. Two of those did not survive. The other two are hanging in there, but recovery has traditionally been a very slow process.
On Friday, I got a call from my vet, who is treating one of the heat victims. She asked if we could build her an “aqua-cow”. To which I replied, of course we can; what the hell is an aqua-cow?
Basically, she needed a tank with the front open so the alpaca could be easily placed in, then water can slowly be added to the tank until the alpaca is being supported by the water. With heat stress, the animals will go down and not rise again for some times weeks. During this period the leg muscles will weaken considerable and this starts a whole host of other problems for the animals. The tank allows for hydro therapy of the leg muscles.
It took us a day, but we had an emergency test tank by Saturday evening. We brought it to Linda without knowing if it would hold water. It didn’t, but the water seeped out slower than it filled, so it works for the time being. Mean while, plans are being drawn up for the next version, when we have more time to build and find parts.
We’ve used it twice. The first time the alpaca seemed a little concerned that we were trying to drown him, but never got panicky. The second time, he was quite accepting and actually managed to maneuver his legs quite a bit. He wouldn’t support himself at all when we placed him in the tank. On the way back to his pen, he actually tried to brace his legs some. Hopefully, continued therapy will reduce healing time, and our little patient can soon rejoin his herd.

dust, dust and more dust

2009-07-20T07:01:00.001-07:00

Monsoon finally kicked in with a vengeance. Friday night brought us our first dust storm of the season. This one was a bit unusual in that the winds kept up for hours. Normally a dust storm will have a “face”, the initial wall of dust and wind that passes pretty quick. Then if you happen to be in the actual path of the storm generating the winds, you may get rain. We didn’t get a drop. We did get some pretty hard wind, however, and we lost a power pole. We were without power for about six hours, which when it’s over 100 degrees out, can be fairly uncomfortable.
Saturday we got the second dust storm. This one behaved more typically with the initial burst of wind passing rather quickly. It stuck around longer enough to take down four more power poles (SRP is not happy) and scattered some yarn that I was dying, across the yard. I’m still trying to untangle that mess! This time we got a little bit of rain, but not much.
Sunday night’s dust storm stayed mostly to the east of us and we just got a little bit of dust.
I’m ready for the dust storms to stop now!

Lazy days of Summer

2009-07-13T06:56:00.000-07:00

The heat is on. I always know when Summer is officially here because the girls move their poo pile to the breezeway between the barns. With their food there and the cooled water from the swamp cooler, they now never have to leave the shade at any point of the day. So for the next eight weeks or so, we all, animal and human alike, hunker down and try to minimize the amount of time we have to spend doing any kind of activity during the heat of the day. The people get up early and try to do all the heavy lifting in the early morning hours. You’d be amazed how much you can get done between the hours of six and nine.

Jacko figured out this weekend that the fences around the trees are really just suggestions, rather than commands. He got himself into one of the tree wells and started snacking on the grass growing at the base of the tree. .

When I found him, he was kushed into the cool dirt (I had just watered a few days before) enjoying the shade and a snack. For good measure, he got a nice long roll in before he got back out and ran back to the barn where everybody else was.

We also learned over the Fourth of July weekend, that alpacas enjoy water melon and the girls got to enjoy a sweet, cool treat

2009-06-29T08:25:00.001-07:00

Monsoon has returned. We haven’t had any storms as of yet, but the heat and humidity are upon us. It was a chilled 86 degrees when I let the dogs out this morning at 4:00, and it will only get hotter. Yesterday was the hottest day of the year so far, we topped out at 113. I heard the average first day at 110+ is June 20, so we managed to hold out a little longer than usual this year. I just hope we don’t have a run like we did two years ago when we had 110+ degree temps for over 30 days. That’s a long time to be that hot. As the humidity goes up, the temperature will come down slightly, but that is little comfort as the air just feels thick and hard to breath. The good news is, we only have to deal with this for 6-8 weeks or so, and then we can go back to bragging weather.
The alpacas spend most of their time sitting in front of the fans. We go out periodically and hose off bellies to try and help them stay cool, though sometimes I wonder if this really helps at all, as once I’m done spraying, they all run right out into the blazing sun and start sunbathing. Maybe it would be better just to leave them along so they stay in the shade. I have the overflows from the swamp coolers going into water buckets, so most of the alpacas do have access to chilled water though out the day. We started doing this last year and I really think it helps.

I’ve been slow to get back to my loom. I warped a project with some thread I got from the guild, and it has issues. After just a couple of inches of weaving, I already had four breaks. At the rate the threads where breaking, I was spending more time repairing the warp than weaving. I finally decided to heck with repairing, I was just going to weave until the darn thing fell off the loom. Wouldn’t you know, I haven’t had a break since. I may end up with a usable length of cloth after all.
The exciting news at the office is they finally started cleaning up the rubble across the street. Now we’re waiting to see if they take down the condemned building next to the rubble while they at it.

snakes, floods and Father's Day

2009-06-22T07:31:00.001-07:00

Some weeks, nothing much happens. This is ok, I don’t really need a whole lot of drama going on, and I kind of enjoy a rut once in a while. This week was not one of those weeks.
Nothing huge happened, just a whole lot of little things so that I never had a moment when I wasn’t engaged somehow. The major happening was the axe fell at the day job. We all knew it was coming and in light of the recent economic news, it really wasn’t as bad as could have been. Benefits are soon to be a thing of the past, and our hours have been sort of cut. The boss asked that we self police and if we know our hours aren’t billable, could we please consider not working. Well, of the thirty hours I worked last week, only 5 were billable, so I gave myself Friday off. Unpaid, of course.
It was such an odd feeling to be both completely content as I worked on the yard and out in the shop on fleece, and kind of worried all at the same time. The worry comes more from the fear of the unknown than from any real inability to pay the bills. But I’m a worrier, that’s what I do.
Anyway, I got a lot accomplished with my extra time. Maybe I’ll actually get some landscaping done this year…
Saturday we did some modifying to our hay storage area to make life a little simpler. The hay is stored in a portable stall. It’s under cover, tarps on the sides keep the rain and sun off, and for the most part it works out well. The drawback is the bales have to be brought in one at a time because the door is narrow. Brian’s dad made a frame for the front of the stall to support the roof and he and Brian removed the front panel. Now the hay can be stacked on pallets, brought over with the fork lift and placed right into the storage area, thereby cutting our work in half (and by our work, I mean Brian’s since I can’t lift a bale, much less stack them on a pallet)

Much to my dismay, we found another rattle snake by the hay. I have to remember to bring the new ‘snake club’ out to the barn and have it ready to go in case we haven’t seen the last of the rattlers. That’s four we’ve had so far this year between us and the neighbors on either side of us.
We also had a resurgence of Lake Klaus as the water hose to the boys ruptured, pouring a couple of hundred gallons of water on the ground. (maybe we got lucky and all the rattle snakes drowned…) The girls where happy as the hole was on their side of the fence and they got to play in the water squirting out. Of course this happened while Brian and I were out enjoying a lunch date so there was plenty of time for the water to flow.
After I got a temporary fix on that, I broke out the camera to try and get some current photos of Jack and Sunny.
So now I know that Jack is a total camera hound, happy to stop and pose, and Sunny has a knack for getting someone else between him and the camera. The only clear shots I got of Sunny, where in the few moments before he would see me and run over to see if the camera was at all tasty. I have a lot of blurry close ups of his nose. I also managed to get a nice shot of Kinesis,
the female we’re leasing. I’m really looking forward to the cria she is carrying and am all ready driving myself crazy with thinking about how much longer I have to wait!
Sunday I got to chat with my dad for a while (why do men never want to answer the phone) and we had a nice relaxing Father’s Day with Brian’s family. A nice way to wind down an eventful week.

Flagstaff wool festival

2009-06-10T08:38:00.001-07:00

Whew! What a busy weekend. Brian and I headed up to the cool pines of Flagstaff for the 18th Annual Wool Festival. We had a great time catching up with old friends and making new ones. We made one special friend in particular. Laura, the granddaughter of one of the vendors, spent quite a bit of time with us. She was a huge help in getting a fleece carded that I had brought with me.
On Sunday, she was even giving instructions to other children on how to card! I think we have a future fiber artist in the making. Still it was good to come home after it was over.
Just remind me I said that when we finally go over 110 degrees here.

Snake!

2009-06-04T06:48:00.000-07:00

So, yesterday I go out to the barn with some fresh minerals, la dee da. I step up into the barn and almost step on a rattle snake! And not four feet away are my four yearling boys sitting in front of the fan!
So I grabbed my herding stick, that was right by the door and beat the snake to death (take that you stupid snake!). Ok so, they actually tell you call someone to come relocate the snake if you come across one, but I have realized a couple of things. One, the snake is not going to stay put until someone comes for it. And two, I’m not going to try and corral a live snake. So sadly, the snake had to give up his life.

You think that's the end of the story? NO! As I was walking into the barn, I noticed Stormy (mature male) sun bathing over in his pasture.
Killing the snake then walking it next door to Jim and coming home took about 20 minutes. When I get back to the barn, Storm hasn't moved.
I take out the hose and start cooling ever body down. I do the girls, I do the younger boys, I start the older boys. Storm hasn't moved this entire time, not so much as an ear flick. I call out to Storm. Nothing. I drop the hose and start walking over to him. As I get closer I can see his lower lip is drooped and crusted with dirt. I scan his side for breathing. Nothing. I start to walk faster, getting a bit scared. Now I can see his whole head and his eyes are open and there is still no sign of motion. I think "crap! The snake got him." I get right up to him and he suddenly LEAPS into the air. I think he squealed, I know I did!

There needs to be some sort of law against alpacas sleeping with their eyes open.

Last Sunday we had a Fiber Fun day over at Pat’s. I brought some dyes and did some hand painted yarns.
We had about 25 people come out throughout the day. Some brought spinning wheels, some brought knitting, some just came to hang out. It was a good time. We even (finally!) got our friend Arline to come out. Her husband took the photos; I especially love the one of Sly trying for a kiss. Don’t be shy Arline, he’s just being friendly!

2009-05-18T14:45:00.001-07:00

Well, as you know, the building across the street collapsed some months ago. The building that was next to it is now for sale.
I think they need to try a different marketing approach than putting the for sale sign in the window, especially when you notice the sign above and to the left of the for sale sign…

Bobbin Winder 1.0

2009-05-08T08:23:00.000-07:00

Heehee, I have a new toy. I decided that I NEEDED a bobbin winder. What I didn’t need was to spend a hundred bucks on the darn thing.
It was my oh-so-handy father-in-law to the rescue. I vaguely sketched what I wanted, told him what it was suppose to do and viola! The prototype is here!
We’ve been playing with it for the last couple of days and have come up with a few modifications that we might try on Bobbin Winder 2.0, but for the most part, it gets the job done. And I still have $100 in my pocket to go buy myself something pretty.

2009-04-27T07:09:00.001-07:00

Ah, shearing is behind us for another year. It didn’t happen without its share of drama, our clippers decided to quit working after the first animal was done. I did two more with hand shears before deciding that wasn’t going to fly. So now armed with a new set of clippers, the twelve animals I had to do look, well, funny looking. Though I think they are slightly less odd looking than the two we had done professionally, since I tend to leave the fleece a bit longer on the neck than the pros do. I still have to use hand shears on leg and neck fleece since our clippers wont handle fleece that dense (we’re already asking them to do more than they are technically designed to do, hence the repair job on the first set.) and it can be a bit nerve racking trying to fine where fleece ends and alpaca begins, so I just stay a little further off the neck.
The ones that are done by the pros are taken right down on the neck, so they look like they have these little skinny necks and great big bobble heads to me.

Now to decide what to do with all this fleece. Just when we got use to having a little extra space from sending out last year’s clip. It never ends. Oh well, I do it because I love it!

The latest Open House

2009-04-14T07:32:00.000-07:00

Wow! We had an Open House at Linda’s (Mesquite Valley Alpacas) this weekend. It started out a bit slow as it was raining pretty hard, but around 11:00 the rain stopped, the sun broke out and it was a beautiful day! People started showing up and kept us hopping right up until four. I think everyone really enjoyed meeting the alpacas and I know they had fun matching up the yarns and rovings to the animals it came from. I brought my camera, but never actually managed to get it out of its case. Oppsie.
Monday, we’ll be back at Linda’s for shearing. We have over 100 alpacas to get done that day. I’ll have Aries, O, and Heilo there. Plus I’m bringing Dante back (Tyche tells me she is tired of his companionship and he can leave now) and I’ll have Linda’s Spirit. Dante will stay behind, but Spirit will come back with my boys.
Fajita and Posie will be leaving as well. Fajita has found a new home and Linda has room now for Posie. I think I’ll miss those two, I got kind of use to having them around, though I’m sure the girls will be just as happy to not have the compitition for hay and fan space this summer.
I started shearing my guys here and got the younger boys done. This week I’ll be working on the girls and maybe Jacko and Sunny.
Jack and Sunny are growing like weeds. Jack has finally discovered the joys of sweet feed and scarfs down his cup full morning and evening. Sunny still has no interest in the feed but where Jack goes, he goes, so he’s got his nose right down there checking out what Jacks eating. Interestingly, Sunny is extremely friendly for a cria. He likes to have his neck scratched and doesn’t seem to mind being touched while he eats. I wonder if it’s because Jack is so tame. Being bottled fed and handled so much while he was sick has made Jack a very friendly alpaca. I wonder if because Jack doesn’t run or get upset when we hold him, Sunny figures why should he? These are pretty intelligent animals, but can they reason like that?
We’ve started halter training Jack. Because of the extensive handling, we started earlier than we normally do. I want it firmly entrenched in Jacko’s head that we are bigger than him and we are in control, not him, before he is actually bigger than me. He tried to chest butt me once, and I put a quick end to that. He is doing pretty good so far and seems to enjoy looking around as we walk around the yard.

Stand By Me video

2009-04-03T07:09:00.000-07:00

There are moments in this life that bring powerful emotions to the fore front; moments when we believe anything is possible; moments when we know we are all part of a greater vision. This morning I had one of these moments. Maybe it was a result of not being fully awake, maybe it’s just “that time of the month” and maybe I’m just a little more aware this morning, but when a co-worker started playing a video on his computer, it stuck a cord in me.
The video is produced by a group called Playing for Change. It showed a street performer in CA playing his guitar and singing “Stand By Me”. As the song progressed, the film producers added in more performers. They traveled the globe layering more and more artist into this film, each adding his or her own unique voice. Then end result is amazing. I’ve heard “Stand By Me” before, it’s a pleasant song, I enjoy it, but I’ve never felt it like this before.
Watch the video yourself, if you’re not moved the way I was, well, then see the opening paragraph and call me in a week; I’m obviously not myself right now!

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=2539741

There once was a building...

2009-03-12T09:21:00.000-07:00

There was a bit of excitment at the office yesterday. The abandoned building across the street suddenly collapsed in on its self. Fortunalty, no one was injured, but seven cars are a bit less shiney, and there are a lot of homless pigeons now.

2009 SWRAS

2009-03-11T11:26:00.001-07:00

Where does the time go? The Southwest Regional Alpaca show is now behind us and as always, we had a good, if exhausting time. The Saturday night banquet had issues, but other than that, I thought everything ran smoothly and Aries came home with another ribbon. I think he would have done better, but the judge commented on wanting his fleece to be finer (it was 18 microns and a deviation of less than 5 at his last shearing) and all I can figure is she was feeling the infamous Arizona dust in there, since I can’t get much finer or more consistent fleece. Oh well, he’ll just be our little secret!
Heilo got a second look by the judge, but in the very competitive white class, we didn’t quite make the cut.
Everybody behaved well for Mom while she had them in the ring, even Vela, who has become infamous for being a stubborn, pig-headed brat. In fact Vela shined for Mom, and took a second in her class. It was pretty funny to see all our jaws drop.
Our newest cria finally got a name. Hence forth he shall be known as Alpacazona’s Sun Runner, aka Sunny. Jack has finally gotten use to this bouncy little interloper and has begun playing back when Sunny jumps him. Poor Sunny, however, hadn’t realized the rules had changed the first time Jack jumped on him and went running back to his momma for safety. Boys will be boys.

relaxing Sunday mornings

2009-02-26T05:59:00.000-08:00

I’ve decided that alpaca births are so much easier on me when I don’t see them. So keeping that in mind, Brian and I went on a long weekend get-away to Sedona last weekend. Tyche was due at any time. I left her in the capable hands of my mom and Brian’s mom and our friend Pat, and with the prediction of ‘she’ll have it on Sunday when we’re out of cell phone range’, off we went.
Sure enough, Sunday afternoon, the cell phone rang. It was Dot; “Tyche is having her baby! And she won’t get up and it’s taking too long! Talk to Pat!”
Pat described the situation to me:
Pat: “Tyche has been in labor for an hour. The baby’s head is already dry!”
Me: “ok, that’s no problem (thinking, an hour doesn’t sound all that long to me to have a baby, but what do I know about the subject). Does the baby look like its distressed?”
Pat: “No, but Tyche won’t get up”
Me: “So?”
Pat: “Doesn’t she need to be standing to have the baby? We can’t make her stand”
Me: “Well if it would make you feel better, go ahead and put a halter on her and get her up.”
Pregnant pause.
Pat: “A halter! That would make it easier.”
Ok, I have to admit, I was kind of giggling at this point.
Me: “Pat, I’m sure everything is ok, you’re doing fine”
And though she didn’t say it, I could hear it in her voice: “Oh sure fine for you, you’re in Sedona!”
My mom is officially over her desire to see an alpaca being born.
Anyway, long and short of it, the cria arrived within ten minutes of the call. So while we were looking at this:

They were looking at him:

A big (20 pounds) boy. He appears to be a light fawn. This is Donnach’s first cria, and he’s a good one. Straight legs, impressive density, good balance so far. I’m a bit bummed that Don has already left for Texas; this little guy has me so impressed.

Now we can turn our focus to the Southwest Regional Alpaca Show in two weeks. It should be fun, and maybe we’ll bring home some more ribbons!

2009-02-09T06:33:00.001-08:00

Occasionally, I’m reminded that this really is a small world. Last year, while out doing chores, a car pulled up and the driver asked if he could take some pictures of the alpacas. I saw his small daughter was sitting in the car so asked if she would like to come in and visit with the animals. She spent some time feeding the alpacas while her father snapped pictures.
Fast forward; we pick up a job for a client out near our property. Our client, Mo Sheldon, is in and out of the office. On one particular day, I’m talking to him and all of a sudden, something trips my memory. Mo is the guy who was out with his daughter and son (Benjamin, who I assume was sleeping in the car) visiting all that time ago.
Mo graciously forwarded some of the photos to me and I’m posting my favorite of his daughter, Sarah scooping grain, while the alpacas wait patiently in the background. Or maybe they’re actually keeping an eye on her making sure she doesn’t steal all the pellets. They’re greedy that way.

Winding down

2009-01-06T07:52:00.000-08:00

Oh to have a cats life

Well, going back to work after a couple of weeks of a very light schedule has been rather tough. There are still dozens of things around the farm that need to be done. Brian did manage to get the temporary fencing replaced with much nicer permanent stuff, but we still need to set up an area for Legend, who will be coming back at the end of the month. Legend is one of those super alpha males that just wants to knock the snot out of all other males, so he has to get his own “space”. We’ll have him next to the yearling boys, which means we need to reinforce that fence, since he has a tendency to try and climb them.
Have any of you read that alpacas don’t challenge fences? Well I have to amend that to say MOST alpacas don’t challenge fences. Legend just thinks you’re daring him to get to the other side.
Other than that, life has settled down to a pleasant routine. Jacko is doing well and growing strong.

Not bad considering we thought we had lost him at least twice in the past two months. We’ve been doing some breeding and Momo and Godiva have been spitting off. Don has made a couple of field trips to visit a girlfriend and the last time he was out, she treated him so badly. We were all really happy to see that, Don; not so much. Tyche is due in February and then we should be done with crias until next fall. Hopefully ’09 will be a little kinder to us in the breeding department than ’08 was.
Now it’s back to fleece work. I’ve been cleaning and storing away fleece for our next run to the mill. The plan is to have the fleece sent out in February. We’ll see how close we actually get to that mark. Plus there will be time in the shop, carding cria fleeces that can’t go to the mill. So much to do, so little time. Maybe I can train the dogs to sort and card fleece…

See ya later!

2008-12-31T13:57:00.001-08:00

Here we are, the last day of 2008. A time to sit and reflect back on the year, which honestly was a year of challenges. Some we met head on a came out the stronger and wiser for. Some laid us down in defeat, but never for long. I never much thought of myself as much of an optimist, but I so strongly believe in what we have here and I see such a bright future, that how can I not be? Setbacks? We all have them from time to time, but the good so far outweighs the bad, that it’s easy to brush the negative off and keep on going.
I looked back through my old post and had to laugh at the reoccurring theme “I feel like I’ve been going non-stop”. Well, I haven’t had a single chance to say I’m board this year!
At this moment everyone is well, people and animals alike. Jacko has had ups and downs over the past month, but we keep working with him and he is responding by growing bigger every day. Only four more months (or so) of bottle feeding, then he gets to feed himself!
As a result of Daisy’s reoccurring back issues, she was put on a diet and is down to a svelte 12.3 pounds. We’re excited, she’s just hungry. Poor thing is wasting away to nothing. I hate to be the one to break it to her that she has another pound or so to lose to be back to “normal” for a miniature dachshund.
I started breeding some of the girls earlier this month, and discovered that some of my supposedly pregnant girls weren’t. Oh well, we’ll just try it again. The boys don’t mind.
So tonight, I’ll try my best to stay up to midnight (remember, I get my butt out of bed at 3:30 in the morning, 7:00 is late for me) to ring in the new year, but chances are, I’ll claim East Coast rights, and when the ball drops in Time Square, the New Year begins. That means I get to go to bed a 10:00…if I make it that long.
So here’s hoping the New Year finds everyone happy and healthy and may only good things come your way!

Year end rush

2008-12-09T11:34:00.001-08:00

Whew! It feels like we’ve been going non-stop since October. Hmm, probably because we have.
Things started to get really crazy right after Jacko was born. Unfortunately, he got very ill and we nearly lost him. Our vet diagnosed septicemia, a very dangerous blood infection. The poor little guy must have felt like a pin cushion as we threw an army of medication at him.
He was diagnosed on a Wednesday and I had to leave Friday for Alpacafest west. I truly feared that he would not be here when I got home and wanted to cancel the trip and stay with him. My mother-in-law, Dot, really came through, she took over Jacko’s care and up-dated me every day on his progress while I was gone. He responded so well, that I actually got to relax and enjoy myself in L.A.
.
A shawl that I entered in their fiber arts contest won first place, and Aries came home with a third place ribbon in his class

Not only did Jacko survive the weekend, he looked 1000 times improved on Monday.
Then Tuesday came. I found Jacko in the morning limp and unresponsive. We ran him back to the vets where he was transfused. He had developed acute diarrhea and it was taking its toll on him. Again Dot came through. While I went off to work, she was over every hour and a half making sure Jacko got fed and received additional fluids, meds, anything we could think of. Then I took over for early morning and late night feedings. It was touch and go for a good week, then he slowly began to make progress.
Now he’s a bouncing happy cria, a bit small for his age, but making up ground quickly. We still have to bottle feed him, and I think it may be a permanent situation (well for the next four and a half months or so, anyway), but we have no doubts that he will grow into a big stapping male.

Dot took over feeding every time I left town, which seemed to happen often these past two months. One trip was up to Singletree Alpacas for their annual Christmas Boutique. It’s always great to see all my friends up there
and I look forward to this trip every year as a “girls” weekend. We work our butts off, but its well worth the effort.

Then we had our second annual open house down at our place. It was huge success, with easily twice as many people coming out as last year. Some driving way cool rods (Lloyd, you show-off!)
Hopefully it will only keep growing. Many thanks to all me “peeps” that came out to help make it the success it was.
Now maybe I can take a deep breath, relax and get back to my loom!

JMS Alpacas Open House

2008-11-07T08:49:00.000-08:00

Hey gang!
Want something fun to do next weekend? JMS Alpacas is having an open house Nov 15th. To get the details, drop them a line.
17001 W. Hopi Dr.
Casa Grande, AZ 85222-9362
(520) 836-0637
(321) 223-6895
jmsalpacafarm@q.com

Introducing Jacko

2008-11-04T08:26:00.001-08:00

Another busy week is behind us. Most of this week we were distracted, taking care of our ill dog, who is doing much better now. Imagine my surprise when I got home Friday to find Momo with a cria. The little guy couldn’t have been there long, he was still damp. I find that the births I don’t witness tend to be the easiest on me. Of course, I’m pretty much a big weenie.
Since the cria was born on October 31, we’ve been trying to come up with good Halloween names. For the time being, we’re calling him Jacko, short for Jack O’ Lantern. Though sometimes we just call him Pumpkin.
I went to my second Desert Weavers guild meeting, and made out like a bandit. I won two of the raffle lots that they do each month. I’m already plotting on what I can do with it. I see a whole lot of scarves in my future!

Tucson Wool Festival

2008-10-27T12:42:00.000-07:00

We were at the Tucson Wool Festival this past weekend. I had a great time. I met so many wonderful people and managed to get a little Christmas shopping done. Pat came with me and helped get set up and man the booth. I don’t think I would have managed without her. And now I possess her secret knowledge of how to put up and easy up tent with only two people.
We stayed pretty busy most of the day and at one point and such a crowd at our booth that one woman asked if she could walk around with her yarn and come back and pay later after the crowd had dispersed a little. It’s nice to feel wanted
The yarn seemed to be the big seller at this event which seems natural enough. I’m almost completely out of my hand painted alpaca and silk blend. Unfortunately, it’s commercially spun and the company I was getting it from had since stopped carrying it, so I’ll have to find a new source. Once I do, I’ll have to plan on spending the winter months with the crock pots going, getting my stash built back up.
Next big event for me will be Alpacafest West next month. I’ll be there with three of the boys. Mean while, Pat will be hosting her open house the same weekend and she has asked for a “care package” of products to offer for sale. I’m not quite to the point of cloning myself, but I’m getting there.
Next year’s Wool Festival will be held October 17, same place (Kathy Wither’s farm, www.uniquedesignsbykathy.com), so mark your calendars!

a new camera

2008-10-13T07:12:00.000-07:00

Momo and gang
Heilo and Adama
Satchmo
Storm

Well, the old camera insist on not being found, so Brian bought me a new one. I have been happily messing around with it all weekend, trying out various settings. What I like best about this camera is that it has a "you're an idiot, let us take care of everything" setting that is just perfect for my level of camera knowledge (ie: none).

Pinetop Fall Festival and other stuff!

2008-10-07T06:42:00.000-07:00

Where is the time going! I need 48 hour days just to keep up!
The Pinetop-Lakeside Fall festival is behind us. It was so much fun, and soooo much work. The event got off to a shaky start when a micro burst hit the soccer field Friday night. We faired ok, but about a dozen exhibitors had their tents picked up and tossed around by the wind. We stuck around to help pick up the carnage and by Saturday morning, replacement tents had been found and the affected vendors where back in business.
The socks where a HUGE success. We’ll certainly be sending fleece out again to have more made after the New Year. We also sold a ton of scarves, yarn, roving, and purses. It seemed at least a little of everything went. I’m going to have to get the web store updated, since some of those items have now found new homes. I’m busy at the loom making more!
The only bummer of the weekend was that I seem to have miss placed my camera. It was sitting there while we were packing up, and I suspect it got tossed into a box, but I haven’t figured out which one yet. Oh well, you’ll just have to imagine how AWSOME our booth looked.
Last weekend I went to my very first Arizona Desert Spinners and Weavers Guild meeting. I have to say, I found very insightful and inspirational. I came home with an idea on how to make some felt ear rings. My mother-in-law has been helping me with some of the experimental felting. I think I’ll have to bring some fleece along on our trip next weekend and get the kids involved. Then I’ll just sit back and watch all the work being done. How very Tom Sawyer.

New Mexico State Fair

2008-09-25T06:48:00.000-07:00

Ok, just a brief pause to come up for air, things are, ah, crazy right now.

We almost didn't make it to New Mexico. Our Ram decided to die the night before we left (bad fuel pump!) and the Dakota is running on slicks these days, so for safty sake, it wasn't an option. We ended up borrowing a truck and a trailer and off we went.
The show was fabulous. Even Brian had a good time. Heilo brought home a pretty green ribbon, which we where thrilled with. Even at the small shows, white/light is an amazingly competative class, so any ribbon is a possative statement on your breeding program. Unfortunatley, every single picture I took was totally blury. hmmm, can't be the operator, must be the camera...

I'll have another opertunity for photos in November when Heilo, Aries and O. go to Alpacafest West in L.A. Rather I'd BETTER get some photos, or Heilo's new half owner (my mom) will have my hide.
A.F.W. is also having a People's Choice Fiber Arts Contest which should be fun. I just have to decide what to pull from my stash of finished projects to enter.

Before all that though will be the Pinetop-Lakeside Artisian Festival this weekend. So I'll be rushing home after work (don't even get me started on what a rotten work week this has been! suffise to say that I won the showdown between me and my computer, but not by much)load up the truck and be ready to hit the road a 3 a.m.

whooo, I'm going to have to schedule a vacation to recover from all this action!

What? The AC is out AGAIN??????

2008-09-09T11:50:00.000-07:00

Summer is almost over, thank goodness. It’s been a rough one.
Not for the animals, they took it all in stride, but the electronics have taken a beating. We’re working on the sixth motor on our AC unit. To be fair, we’re talking about two separate parts, the motor on the condenser out side, and the motor in the blower inside, but we did blow up four blower motors in the span of one week.
We witnessed one of the most spectacular lighting storms I have ever seen, which was to precursor to the demise of the first blower motor. Lightning hit the pole in front of the house. It’s a fairly creepy feeling to be standing in the dark asking “do you smell smoke?”
Motor number two was the replacement we bought the following day. We didn’t notice it was a 1/3 hp motor, when the one we took out was a ¾ hp. It lasted about 15 seconds before flames were shooting out of that one. (ok, I exaggerate a little, it was actually a fairly small flame…)
Motor number three blew after we called the AC repair guy back (we were now enlisting professional help) because the blower fan wouldn’t shut off… ever (but the house was nice and cool). Apparently there was a short in the capacitor and when he hooked the ground up (which he neglected to do the first time), well you guessed it, flames.
So, now with a new capacitor and some new relays, motor number four seems to be holding its own. Of course, we lost power again last night. APS hates us and wants us to suffer.
The generators are getting a work out this year.
On other repair news, we kept busting a water line to one of the swamp coolers, but we have since replace the entire thing and I hope that will be settled for awhile.

Ok, so it hasn’t been all bad, our terri socks arrived from the mill and I have to say I am extremely pleased with the results. Our cable socks are on their way, and I expect the crew socks by the end of the month.
I’ve been busy at the loom. I’ll be attending a craft show in two weeks and have been trying to get as much done as possible before the big weekend.
I’ve also been busy halter training Adama and Heilo before the New Mexico State Fair. I think this will be a good place to get the boys started in shows. Here’s hoping they don’t knock me on my butt.

dog days of summer

2008-08-26T11:23:00.000-07:00

Ok, I’m finally tired of summer. The weather is just teasing us now, giving us a day of 97 degree temps, followed by a day of 108. Though last night we had a little monsoon action from tropical storm somebody or another, which produced a 20 degree drop in the evening. The alpacas actually pried themselves away from the swamp coolers and fans to go graze on the tiny smattering of grass that we have left. They even felt good enough to get a short pronk going.

On the craft front, I finished my guanaco and silk scarf and started warping the loom for another scarf. This one is a departure from most of my others in that I’m using a lot of color instead to texture. It’s all baby alpaca, hand dyed in blues and purples. And I have already learned a very, very important lesson: double check the amounts of yarn needed before you put it in the dye. That’s right folks! I calculated what I would need for the warp and forgot to add in the weft. Can you tell I use math for a living? Oh well, I’ll just dye up some more and have yet another, slightly different color, yarn to add to the mix. It’ll all work out, you’ll see.

I also finished up some novelty yarn I had been working on. It’s kind of funky and REALLY bright. Not sure what I’ll do with it yet, oh well, I have time to figure it out.

Sonoran desert toads

2008-08-15T06:43:00.001-07:00

Ok, for years now I’ve been telling the gang back east about the toads we have out here during monsoon. I always say they’re the size of dinner plates, and I always get the same response: “sure they are, Claud, been sipping that wine again have you?”
Well now I have proof! One of the big ones has taken up to bathing in poor old Lonesome’s water bowl every night. Last night I brought him up into the light and got a picture. I even got the ruler in there so you can all see that I am not, in fact, exaggerating. The things are HUGE!
They are also fairly toxic.
I’m told they contain two types of toxin in their skin. One is fairly nasty and can kill a full size dog; the other is some sort of hallucinogen. Apparently it’s quite the trip to lick the toad, but don’t eat it.
Right.
I’ve no worries about any of the humans or alpacas messing with the toads, but our pit bull-healer-billy goat mix is addicted. Every morning it’s the same thing: “Molly, leave the toad alone. Molly, I said leave it. MOLLY! Get away from the stupid toad!”
Of course by now, the idiot dog is seeing sounds and hearing colors and apparently enjoying it because her tail never stops wagging. Then she jumps on the dachshund, which is on a more straight and narrow path in life. If you can’t eat it, what’s the point, is Daisy’s motto. Anyway, Molly gets bit for efforts on getting Daisy to play. It works for them.

I love a contest!

2008-07-24T06:16:00.000-07:00

I just got Georgia Mountains new newsletter, and I'm thrilled to see that their partners, Amia Yarn Company is having a contest! I love a contest. All you need to do is go to their blog (http://knitwitchblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/contest-time-again.html) and it will instruct you on how to enter the drawing up to THREE times.
Whoohooo, prizes.

Ok, must go finish entering. Good luck everybody!

2008-07-14T07:18:00.001-07:00

Another weekend behind us. It was a most productive weekend, fleece wise. Pat and Linda came out on Sunday and we spent the morning out in the shop working away. It’s always more fun to work with company, though Pat was rather quick to point out that it was the most humid day of the year. But we’ll let her grumble, because she brought us lunch! Yeah Pat!

I ‘m still playing with dyes and techniques. I solar dyed some yarn for a scarf project I’ve got in the back of my head. Then I put some white batts in the exhaust and set those out to cook in the sun. I also got some onion skin dye started and picked a bucket full of prickly pears to get a dye started in pink. The prickly pear dye is fermenting in my laundry room. It will be interesting to see how that turns out.

I have a new scarf on the loom. All I need to do is press the last one and it’s done. Plus I’ve finished spinning the silk that will be the warp for the guanaco and silk scarf I plan to start when this current one is finished.

The weekend ended with a pretty good size monsoon storm rolling through. Of course I forgot I had a fleece out on the drying rack until the very last minute, which had me and Brian running out in the rain and dust to get it into the shop before it blew all the way to Mesa. Oh well, I may have to rewash that one.

2008-07-08T06:56:00.000-07:00

Happy July! Summer is well and truly here, as we've been at over 110 degrees for the last half of June. Temperatures are starting to come done now as the humidity is increasing. Which can only mean one thing: Monsoon is HERE! Last years was one of the driest on record, so lets hope for a little rain this year.

We took off for the long weekend and headed up to Northern Arizona, to a place called Clint Wells. For those of you that think Arizona is just one giant desert, I have proof that there are wet, green areas. You just have to go looking for them. We spent an afternoon playing down in Clear Creek catching crayfish. The crayfish have taken over much of the riparian habitats in Arizona and are actually killing off native species of fish, so we have the Az Dept of Game an Fish's blessing to remove them from the streams. Which we did. And then we ate them. Tasty.

Meanwhile, back at the farm, the alpacas are hanging out by the fans and swamp coolers. They get belly hosings a couple of times a day to help with keeping them cool. Though some times I wonder if we aren't actually making it worse as each time they get wet, they run right out into the sun and start sun bathing. Everybody except Vela, one of our little borders has discovered the fun of playing in the hose. As far as Vela is concerned it's nothing but a giant green snake spitting venom at her. Make a mud puddle, however, and she runs right over and starts to do a happy dance in it. I have really got to catch in video since it's hysterical to watch. She literally gets in the middle and just starts stomping all four feet making the mud splash all around her. Kids.

The only other excitement around here was finding Aries in with all the girls this morning. I'm guessing her rolled under the fence since all the gates were still latched. I don't think he got into any trouble, but at 17 months old, it's not impossible. Um, hey Linda, remember all those open girls you left over here....?

Happy Tuesday

2008-06-17T06:52:00.000-07:00

We're back. It's been a rough couple of weeks with the tragic loss of two of our girls. It threw us down for awhile, but we're a resilient bunch around here. I took a little of my own advise and have been spending a great deal of time with the alpacas. These are some of the most therapeutic animals on the face of this plant, in my own humble opinion. You simply can't stay down when you're around them, especially when one of the crias has discovered your toes and believes they must be some sort of exotic treat. Alpacas may have no top teeth, but it still smarts when one nips you.

I've also thrown myself into sorting fleeces. I've only got 30 days left to finish skirting show fleeces. I've got seven more to go between mine and Linda's. Then I've got to get them boxed up and off to the ACFNA fleece show in Colorado.

And we have a new product that we've been designing packaging for. Introducing.... Alpaca Poo Tea! We've been accepted on a nation wide ag site, Localharvest.org, and have submitted our request to sell this wonderful all natural fertilizer. We should know in a couple of days if we're in. Plus we'll get it on our own website with the next up date which should be ready to go up next month.

Well, that's all for now.

introducing J.J.

2008-05-12T07:02:00.000-07:00

So, we have another mouth to feed. And judging from his girth, that may be no easy task. This stray, now dubbed J.J., showed up last week. All our attempts at finding his owner have been amazingly unsuccessful, which was a bit surprising as he obviously had been well cared for. After two nights of sleeping on our front porch, Brian took pity on him and into the house he came.
There where some minor jealousy issues from Molly, but once she figured out J.J. had no interest in sitting on my lap, she accepted his presence. Daisy never cared one way or the other what the new dog was doing. She is supremely confident in her position as queen over all. For the first couple of days, J.J. just ignored the alpacas, but Molly has now shown him that oh-so-fun game of charging the fence to make the alpacas run. Great, now I have to attempt to train another one that this isn’t a game we like to play. I’ve only been marginally successful in getting Molly to stop. I had better luck with just desensitizing the alpacas to her attempts. Now they only run from Molly when they feel like it, but J.J. is obviously a much more vicious and frightening creature. Besides, he barks while he’s running, they’re not use to that.

Free time ahead!

2008-04-28T11:25:00.000-07:00

Whew! I feel like I’ve been going non-stop for the last eight weeks. Well it’s finally all behind us. The last alpaca has been sheared, I have learned the secrets of spinning novelty yarn and the Pima County 4H fair is a pleasant memory.
We even have the rugs back from Texas, now. They came out beautifully, but then, I expected nothing less from Ingrid’s.
These 3’ x 5’ rugs are 100% natural, made from the fleeces of our own alpacas and woven right here in the Southwest. They have a delightful southwest theme and would fit right in, in any ranch house or cabin. We’ll be getting those up on our website soon.
The spinning class was quite the success, with many “ah-ha” moments. I’m anxious to try my hand at some more novelty yarn and have been busy clearing the back log of spinning I’ve promised other people.
I’ve also been playing around with some different dye techniques and hopefully will be incorporating those fibers into some spinning and weaving projects.But mostly, I’m going to take a deep breath, relax, and enjoy a little down time for a day or two.

shear magic!

2008-04-14T07:35:00.001-07:00

Shearing time is upon us again! Friday we where joined by three other farms as a local shearer went to work on our alpacas (thanks Paul!). Of course I meant to get pictures, but, uh, well I forgot, so no visual aids for this blog. I’ll post some post-shearing photos of the gang in while.
We just had Paul shear out three yearling boys, as we may want to show their fleeces this year and he gets the fleece off so much prettier than we do. Saturday and Sunday, Brian and I went to work on the rest of the herd. We decided this year to just take our time and do a couple of animals each day and spread the shearing out over several weekends. We managed to get all the boys finished and about half the girls, and still had time to go out for lunch on Sunday. Next weekend we’ll finish up the girls and maybe get the crias done. Then it’s skirting and sorting and deciding what fleece will end up as what finished product! I love this time of year.

In between all this, I’ve been busy with my goal of clearing out the backlog of fleeces from previous years. My plan is to not have any stray old fleeces lying around with no purpose. To that end, I’ve been getting a batch ready to send out to be made into socks. Hopefully we’ll get those back in time for this years holiday season. I also will be sorting through all those bags of seconds that have been piling up, in the hopes of getting some rugs made. The test run is just about ready and we should be seeing the first rugs back in the next couple of weeks. I can’t wait.
We’re also exploring a possible felting project. And of course, we’ll be spinning up as many of the ultra fine royal baby fleeces as we can!

2008-04-03T10:53:00.001-07:00

Another exciting day at the farm, Reba and Zoe returned home from breeding. I had every intent on isolating them from the rest of the hers for a few weeks, but, well, it was a long trip and I had a major headache, and well, I forgot. So much for bio-security.

Adama was fascinated by Reba and spent the whole evening chasing her, much to Reba’s dismay. Though by this morning it was more a mutual run rather than a chase, as Reba, Zoe and the three crias where off on a full out pronk at 4:00 this morning.

Just so you know, no one, including alpacas, should have that much energy that early in the morning!

Dye Day

2008-03-30T17:03:00.000-07:00

some of the days results

Well Happy Dye Day! Our first ever hand painted dye class was held this weekend. I worked myself to the bone getting ready, on the heels of getting over a bit of a cold, and ended up flat on my butt for Sunday. But it was all worth it as we turned out a ton of beautiful, colorful yarn and roving.

Nancy was amazing and so very patient with all of us. And Molly the dog supervised all of the days activities. I’d say it was a successful class, and conducted with a minimum of dye on us (except for Jennifer, who’s hands may never stop being blue). I know I learned a lot.

After everyone left, I still had an iota of energy, so My mother-in-law Dot and I finished dyeing the left over yarn and roving. Hmmmm, now I need to decide what to do with all this yarn…

That winds up March. Now we need to gather our strength for April which will be a very busy month for us. We start on the 11th with Paul Sands, coming down to do some shearing for us. We’ll only have our three yearling boys to do, but there are three other farms bringing alpacas to be shorn. Then on the 18th I’m heading down to Tucson to take a class on spinning novelty yarn. Hopefully the new drive band for my spinning wheel shows up before then, or it may end up being a very challenging class. Finally on the 25th I’ll be judging the Pima County Fair 4-H alpaca show. I’ve even prepared a mystery obstacle for the kids and alpacas. I love a challenge!

In between all this, I have to get the rest of the alpacas shorn. Then comes the fun part of figuring out what to do with all our fleeces this year!
I’m exhausted just thinking about it.

hello

2008-03-21T15:34:00.001-07:00

hello

poo vac

2008-03-17T06:20:00.000-07:00

still learning how to add text

Ok folks, you asked for it and here it is… the amazing poo vac.

All you need for parts are a 55-gallon trash barrel, a yard leaf blower/vac and some flexible tubing (oh and calk of some sort to seal the connections, but I forgot to ask if there was a particular kind.)

Cut a hole in one side to mount the yard vac. The one we bought has a quick disconnect, which makes it easy to start on the ground (for those with short arms like me) and then connect to the can.
We used an old pair of panty hose to cover the air intake on the inside of the can.
Next cut a hole on the opposite side of the can for the hose connection.
Viola, you’re done.

Some notes after using this for about a week. At full throttle, the lid of the can sucks in and can break the seal. We think reinforcing the lid will prevent this. We’re going to try cutting a piece of styrofoam to fit up in the to prevent the lid from bending and keeping the whole thing lightweight. Some other thoughts were to ad wooden reinforcement bars to the lid or some sort of angle iron.
Widen the wheels. This works great on flat ground, but can get a bit tippy when you go baha with it.
And finally, it works great in beans, but you need to break up any clumpy stuff or it will clog the hose. We used a 2.5” hose; Brian thinks if we go to a larger hose, this will be prevented (and may also solve the issue of the lid seal.)
Hope this helps everyone.

2008 Southwest Reg. Alpaca Show

2008-03-13T08:41:00.000-07:00

Well that appears to have worked, photo and all. It appears that I have finally made it to the 21st century. Now I just need to get my web designer, Genia, to get it linked to the web site…

We’re back from the 2008 Southwest Regional Alpaca Show in Phoenix. I had a great time! And came home exhausted, as usual. I love meeting new people and getting to catch up with old friends.
Aries did quite well for himself. We took a fourth in our class. Aries was the youngest in the class and we got dinged a little for that. The judge said she would like to see him grow into himself. This fall we’ll be back on the show track and we’ll see what happens!

I set up my little P.G. electric carder and did some demos at our booth. I had the spinning wheel there too, but didn’t get to use it much.

Now that the show is behind us, we’ll be focusing on a dyeing workshop that we’re hosting at our place at the end of the month. There’s never a dull moment around here!
C

What???

2008-03-13T08:27:00.000-07:00

Well, this is a test, this is only a test, where this an emergency....

You know the rest.

I've never blogged and I'm not good with anything techno, so I have no idea what I'm doing and just want to see what happens.

C