Nine Bags Full

A couple of weeks ago, a neighbor of mine who attends the same church as we do made an offer: she knew somebody who raised alpacas but who wasn't interested in the fleece (why would you raise alpacas if you didn't care about fleece? Makes no sense) and who had been storing her unwanted fiber for years in her barn. The woman was threatening to make a bonfire of it, but my neighbor intervened and said she would come and pick it up.

She knew that Rowan was a fiber fanatic, so she offered us all the fleece in exchange for lessons on processing and spinning it, and a hunk of fleece to work with. Are you kidding? we asked, incredulous. Bring it on!

Well, today, she brought it on. She brought a pick-up truck full of hefty-trash bags full of fiber. She told us that in fact the pick-up load represented only a fourth or so of the fiber the woman had, but that she felt a little overwhelmed and decided enough was enough. I couldn't agree more.

nine bags full

There was black fiber, brown fiber, white fiber - there was high quality firsts and low quality seconds. There was enough fiber to clothe the Russian army (to paraphrase my mom). I'm going to guesstimate that there is something like forty or fifty pounds of raw alpaca fleece piled up in my shed.

pretty nice white fleece

Plus, she said that if we want, her brother-in-law, a shearer, has access to basically unlimited quantities of fresh alpaca fleece. Apparently, there are many people around who own alpacas but are not interested in fiber. I know - beats me, too. So, suffice to say, we have access to enough alpaca to keep us occupied until basically the end of time.

Now we are planning a fleece-processing party - a nice sunny day, a trio of kiddie pools, some chicken wire stapled to sawhorses, an industrial sized bottle of Dawn dishwashing liquid, and a case of beer. Maybe chips and salsa. Music. Make a party out of the hard, backbreaking work of processing fleece.

Many hands make light the work, and all. I love neighbors. I love it.

Fleece at the Framer's Market

I'm so very proud of my daughter Rowan. She has worked extremely hard this year and has succeeded in taking the raw alpaca fleece from it's natural state to the beautiful display you see above. She washed it, dried it, dyed it, carded it, and spun it on a drop spindle. She has spent something like thirty hours on it so far. Her yarn is truly a lovely finished product.

Unfortunately, although she sat at the farmer's market all day long, spinning, she made only.... $1.00. That's right. One. That right there is why we had to get rid of the alpacas.

Adios Alpacas

Austen and Miguel

Benji

I had too many animals on the farm. Something had to go, and it was the alpacas. I freely admit, I went a little crazy on Craigslist during my first year here. I wish I had enough land to indulge all my animal fantasies, but I just don't. Turns out, five acres is not as big as I thought it was when I moved here. It's only natural I would misjudge. I spent my early and middle childhood on a 3.5 acre mini-farm, and it always seemed pretty big to me! We crammed three horses and a dozen goats on that place, not to mention a score or so of chickens.

But I've learned that the number of animals I have acquired here - 2 ponies, nine goats, three alpacas, and about twenty-five chickens - just isn't sustainable in the long run. This has been a very dry year, and I've flat run out of grass. I don't have the funds to be buying hay nine or ten months of the year. Also, there's the little matter of the county's sustainability plan.

Those of us with animals are supposed to have no more than 1 "animal unit" per acre of usable pasture, which excludes non-permeable surfaces, wetlands, or steep slopes. What's an animal unit? Well, I'll tell you. It's one cow, or one 1000 lb. horse, or 3.1 sheep, or 1.4 llamas, or 100 chickens. I added up my animal units (assuming that a goat was the same as a sheep, and that an alpaca was slightly less than a llama) and I came up with 4.1. That's actually just under the limit, considering that I have about 4.25 acres of usable land. However, it feels unsustainable, considering the quality of my land and what has happened in this year's drought.

Realistically, the ponies are the least practical animals I have, but I LOVE them and won't consider getting rid of them. The alpacas are the next most useless (no food products, just hair). So, even though they are funny and silly and decorative and even though Rowan has done wonders with their fleece, we had to say goodbye to them.

They did net me $50 each. That's more than I paid for them.

Flying Fleece

Man am I filthy. I mean truly, utterly, disgustingly grimy. 

Here's what I've done today to get this way: cleaned out two barns, all the way, because two of my goats have terrible diarrhea. I pitched the hay, scraped the floors, rinsed the floors, and sprayed everything with bleach water. Then I dosed the sick goats with kaopectate, a procedure that involved a certain amount of wrestling. Wrestling goats with explosive diarrhea. One of the sick goats is Iris, who is now two days overdue to give birth. I really hope she holds off another few days until this tummy thing resolves. Birth is gross enough without adding pints of liquid poo into the mix.

Then the guy came to shear the alpacas. I didn't have time to shower and change, I just jumped right in to catching and holding down the terrified alpacas while they were sheared. They bellowed and sprayed half digested grass from their mouths and kicked up dirt and sand and poo. The wind was blowing pretty hard. I have little fleece bits in my hair, eyes, clothes. And other stuff, no doubt.

It was pretty fun, though (alpaca wrassling, not goat wrestling.). Finally, we could pet them to our heart's content, while they were in four point restraint. The fleeces are gorgeous, heavy and velvety and beautiful. Now Rowan has got three months to process and sell enough fleece to convince me that the alpacas are worth their keep. Today's work cost us $115.  

But the pictures alone are worth that. Now that I've published them, I'm going to take a shower. A long shower.

                                                 Miguel resists arrest

                                                             Not so feisty now, are you?

                                            The Girls get to pet Benji

           

Who the hell are you?

                                                        Under the fluff

Alpacas Getting Fluffy

Alpacas are usually sheared in May or June around here, to give them plenty of time to grow back enough fur for the winter. Last year, I think mine were sheared in July, and I felt sorry for them all during the long, cold, rainy fall. Not that they seemed to care much; they just lay down, close their eyes, and let it all wash over them. It was only a few weeks ago that they suddenly appeared, to my eyes, to be getting really fluffy. 

Which means it was time for me to figure out how we are going to shear them. There was a man on Craigslist advertising that he sheared sheep, so I decided to ask if he also sheared alpacas. Lucky for me he said yes, he has experience with alpacas. The next question was; do you have experience with wild alpacas that flee like rabbits from the very approach of mankind, who have never been haltered nor herded, and who live in a rather large enclosure? 

His response had a tinge of amusement. He wrote, yes, I have sheared "wild" alpacas before. Since I have a catch pen, he seems to to think it won't be too difficult to shove them up against a wall, get a halter on them and tie them close. He'll shear each alpaca for $40, and throw in a hoof-trim, too, no extra cost. But he wants a $30 travel/set up fee, because he lives kind of far away. So, all in all, I'll get three fleeces and three trimmed alpacas for $150. 

I doubt that's going to represent any kind of profit. I've been thinking about moving the alpacas on to another loving home. I'm just too dreadfully practical. What do they provide? When we got them, Rowan was heavy into fiber arts, knitting up a storm and constantly begging me to buy her yarn. Instead, we got alpacas and a drop spindle. She did learn to spin, sort of, and she did process some of the suri fleece that alpaca lady very generously gave us along with the alpacas, but it seems not to have turned into any kind of lasting passion. No spinning or carding or even knitting has been going on for a while, now. And the alpacas, while certainly decorative, I'll give them that, are taking up rather a lot of space on a very small farm. 

Rowan is upset at the prospect of losing them, so I made her a deal. Let's see you process one fleece as far as you can. Really do your best to turn it into something like roving (that's a long piece of soft, fluffy, ready-to-spin fiber). Then let's see how much we can sell it for. If we can make back the $150 shearing see, we'll keep them. I don't care about trying to make up for all their food and hay; for now, just the shearing fee is good.

But if we can't even make that back, well, I think it's time to say goodbye.

Digging Out

The mountains are out today, for the first time in well over a week. It's been one record breaking day after another here, temperatures down in the teens, wind chill factors of negative 20, and approximately two feet of snow. It's kind of hard to tell how much snow we got up here, because of the wind. I have bare patches and drifts up to my waist. I can't open the gate to the alpacas, because it's buried in a deep drift which has frozen solid. I'm passing their food and water over the top of the fence. To think, I should be in tropical paradise right now. Well, okay, sure: I should be in my mother-in-law's house in a city which is not on the beach. But it is the tropics, anyway. 
Iris wearing polar fleece. I put polar fleece vests on Iris and Django, my two skinny does, and it seems to have worked great. They have both started to put on weight, finally. I was feeding them hot cooked oatmeal with raisins, and that didn't help until I got the jackets on them. Iris has been bred again, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that she took this time. Eeryone I know on Goatbeat (the goat-related forum I've joined) is having babies already, posting photos that just make me so jealous I could scream.
The front porch. 

Funny Farm Fotos

Not much going on on the farm these days. Just keeping up with feeding six goats, three of them pregnant; three alpacas; a pony; and one very hungry pig. It's starting to freeze every night, so pretty soon I'll be carrying warm water from the house and walking back with frozen pant legs. Can't wait. So far the hose is still working, long may it run!

My camera is still broken, likely to remain that way, so here are a few funny fotos gleaned from the collection on the computer.

          Old fashioned toys: the rock and the stick. The kids independently discover the fulcrum.

                        

                                    Portrait of an alpaca. Benji withstands the weather. 

Teaching the goats tricks. Up!

The goats are tired of doing tricks. Give us that grain, boy!

Goat attack!!!!!

An Unexpected Guest

                                                              Benji

Yesterday afternoon, as I sat here at the computer looking  out the window, I noticed a lady I almost recognized walking toward the door. I popped up and opened the door and she said "Remember me? The alpaca lady?" (Incidentally, when people say "remember me?" they ought to follow that question with their name. Just in case I don't.)

She (Of course, I can't remember her name, although I do remember what a nice lady she is. Alice?) had been driving by and decided to visit her alpacas, see how they were doing in their new home. "Oh of course," I said, mentally picturing her horror to see them as they look now - wet, tangled, stuck full of burrs, dirty. They were pristine at her ranch. Of course, they lived in a barn with concrete floors.

We walked out to the pasture and I locked up the goats so that we could feed the alpacas unmolested, and lo and behold, when she called their names they came trotting right up to her. Benji even let her pet him. "what nice fiber you have, Benji," she said, digging her fingers into his coat. 

"Does their fiber look about right," I asked, "I mean, for when they were last sheared?"

"Looks great. They look just great."

Phew! Still, I had to apologize about the burrs. "Look at Benji's head," I said. 

"Yeah, well. When you get him sheared next May, they'll just have to take off his whole topknot." 

They're gonna look so silly.

Welcome Alpacas, Welcome Back Chickens

Austin looks unimpressed at meeting Iris.

It's been raining today, good for my garden, but unfortunate for the alpacas, who are too timid to enter the barn. They look very wet and very cold, having just been sheared, but I can't either entice them or chase them into the barn, where the scary scary goats are. Alpacas are incredibly timid. It's like having a herd of wild antelope out there. I hope they go into the barn at night, because it's going to be quite cold tonight. 

Linda from Lost River brought them over about 11 am. this morning. What an incredibly generous lady. She gave us Austin's recently sheared fleece, all seven or eight pounds of it. She didn't have to do that, I certainly wasn't expecting it, and it's quite valuable. Rowan was ecstatic. Of course, it hasn't been processed yet (Rowan will do that) and it hasn't been spun (we'll find somebody to do that), but it is as soft as a cloud and absolutely beautiful silvery white. I gave her some chevre and some cajeta to take home, as well as gas money for transporting them. 

While she was here, my neighbor's son came over in his truck and told me he'd caught a rooster and a hen and they were in a cage under the cherry tree at his mom's house, if I could kindly go and pick them up. Which I very promptly did. So now I have three of the four escaped chickens locked tightly in the small barn. I told Homero that the time had come to dispatch them as soon as possible. He tried to tell me "oh no, they're too skinny, we have to fatten them up first" but I know he's just trying to get out of killing them. So I told him either he kills them by this weekend or I take matters into my own hands. I just can't risk them escaping again. We have to live with these neighbors forever; I'm not going to let a few stupid chickens jeopardize our relationship.

What, me kill them? Heck no. I'd find a chicken processor. 

Llama-O-Rama

These are alpacas, actually. In the top photo are Benji (brown) and Miguel (right behind Benji, with silly tufted ears), and the lower picture is Austen. Miguel and Benji are huacaya alpacas, meaning they have fluffy curly wool, and Austen is a suri alpaca, and he has the most expensive and sought after kind of fiber, long and silky and straight. 

So what about them? Huh? Why am I showing you alpacas?

Three guesses, and the first two don't count. 

Yes, Craigslist. The owner of Lost River Alpacas in Nooksack is purging her herd of unneeded males we are getting three of them. These three. Personally, I could care less about alpacas. You don't eat them and you don't milk them, and I don't knit or spin. But Rowan is in seventh heaven. They don't take much care, just about the same as goats, and they will help eat my extra herbage. We will need to hire someone to shear them once a year, which costs about $35.00 per alpaca. And my guess is we will probably end up paying someone to bring the fleece to a spinnable condition as well. The process is fairly involved. 

And I have to admit, they are pretty cute.