Summer begins

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.

Spring Tucson Shearing Festival

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.

The latest Open House

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.

There once was a building...

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

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

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!