So it's decision time!

Well we had a great weekend though it was lots of travel. Now the real work is about to begin. After several hundred miles of travel and looking at about 20 different boys we have decided on one boy but need to finalize 2 others.

I would like to thank all the farms we visited and worked with this past weekend. Every person/farm was very helpful and a great resource that we will use either this time around or I'm sure at some point in the future. My thanks again to Santa Claus Alpacas, Windswept Farms, Raging River Alpaca Farm, Once Upon A Farm Alpacas, Michel Century Farm and R'AlpacaLand LLC.

We have set our goals to purchase our boys with a much more hands on approach. We bought our first boys sight unseen and we are very happy with them as our first purchases but have learned a ton since then.

With that said I'd like to announce the addition of our 4th alpacas, Raging River Jupiter. He is a super ball of fleece already and we are happy to have added him to our farm for showing over the next couple years.

We will be making 2 more purchases this winter to add to our program. we just can't wait to have all our new boys picked out and moved to our home later this spring.

The great alpacas search!

Well, for us it's a great search with many rules and things to follow. There are lots of questions to ask when doing this probably for every person at every farm. for us as non-breeders and male only it may be a little simpler but it does not appear to be much.

So our questions we are mulling through include do we venture into any suri alpacas? How much room do we have and how will it limit any future purchases? What are we willing to pay? Should we venture into colors since we have all white now? How do we make sure we have companions and the right group sizes to put the boys in? How much will the additions add to our costs for food and medications? How far are we willing to travel to get our new boys?

Well that seems like enough for us to mull over for now. We are debating the addtion of 2 or 3. We have 1 likely candidate and then 4 others we are reviewing closely. We'll keep you posted as we progress through the process.

Busy busy days

Well it was a busy weekend. The wife and I skirted a whole lot of fleece this past weekend. Though we are not sure that we are not being much pickier about our skirting process than others. We are also willing to admit that we are likely slower than people who have been through 100s of fleeces too. I would like to thank Anita over at Windswept Farms for allowing us to go through a couple of the fleeces they had sitting around.

While I'm on the note of fleece, Michelle attended a needle felting class at Windswept Farm this weekend and seemed to have a good time. She has been showing the process to the kids and I as well. We've had mixed success but it is a learning process. We would really like to get to go to a wet felting class as our first attempt at wet felting came out differently than we expected.

Lastly this weekend was finally our prep for winter weekend. I have put up some blockades using wood and straw to help block out some wind in an area of the barn for our boys. We also put down a nice amount of straw for them to lay on to keep cozy. I have plent of extra incase we want to add more. I was happy to find my neighbor had plent of straw and lives right accross the street from me. So it made life a bunch easier. Lastly we changed to the heated bucket and got that plugged in.

I haven't poked myself yet!

As my husband had mentioned previously, we purchased some materials to begin the felting process when we visited a larger farm during National Alpaca Days. Beverly (the lady who was spinning and felting at that farm) was nice enough to show me how the process works and what to expect...she also told me that I would, indeed, poke myself at least once with that sharp little needle.

I haven't done it yet...yea! And the kitten seems to think I know what I'm doing already.

I must be doing something right, because I've intrigued my 11 year old daughter enough for her to say, "That's cool! I want to learn how to do that!"

Hopefully, I can keep going with my felting without poking myself, but then again, maybe it would just be better to get it out of the way so I can stop thinking about it when I'm working. We'll see...

After this, I'm going to have to try my hand at wet felting.

Alpaca life style is more than just a phrase.

From working on things this past weekend I have found that the term "Alpaca Life Style" is truely something that is more just just a catchy saying. It has to do with the hours it will take to do everything related to alpacas. We are a small farm with only 3 animals at this time. As we keep churning along with working and learning it is easy to see how people with dozens of alpacas end up with a real life changing investment. Feeding, cleaning up, caring for and processing each have requirements that need to be met.

Anyway, a quick bit on last weekends skirting proces... It was a good weekend as we were able to skirt 2 show blankets as well as all our second cuts. The thirds still need skirted but we will have to take some time to do that as well as cleaning it. Cleaning it ourselves will be another new part of the process. We plan on making felt items.

As far as yarn creation or other processing. Our seconds alone are not enough to ship off for processing so we will package them up for next year. We'll be able to combine the new blankets, the show blankets from this year as well as next years seconds for processing. At that point we'll get to learn about that part of things.