Temptation

I've been good this week, but I've wanted to be so bad!  This week has been full of temptation...

First I saw an ad for 3 free female alpacas in a nearby town (I actually know the farm).  A few days later I found another ad for free pet/fiber quality male alpacas (I know this farm too).  I would love to have more alpacas...  As much as I prefer llamas to alpacas, alpacas produce so much more fiber (at least on average).  I do eventually plan to get 2-3 more alpacas to raise for fiber, but I managed to talk myself out of considering adding more right now.

My first 3 fiber alpacas.  Unfortunately the two white ones were fairly brainless so they were sold after a couple of years.

The third temptation was the LFA sale this past weekend.  For the first time in years, I really wasn't super interested in any of the llamas in the regular sale, but there was a male in the claims futurity that I would have loved to bring home!  He is a gorgeous paint, half Argentine, with multiple halter and fleece winnings.  Just what I'm looking for!  Again, lucky for me I have ABSOLUTELY no business buying a breeding male right now.  I just don't have room.

These temptations, especially the LFA sale (and also seeing tons of pictures from the ILR Gathering show the same weekend), have really given me the bug to start a breeding herd again.  I want nothing more than to be able to get back into breeding and selling (and showing!) llamas!

My goal for my breeding herd in the past was always to breed the all-around llama...personality (and training), conformation, and fiber.  Not to toot my own horn, but I think I've done pretty well.  (I guess this is a good time to mention that Kara (Autumn Hill's Karakoram) was entered in her first 2 shorn fleece classes in the past 2 weeks, and she won a Grand Champion Double Coat (The Fiber Frenzy) and a Reserve Grand Champion Double Coat (ILR Gathering)!!  So proud of my girl, and my breeding program!)

Kara's fleece from last year, right before shearing.

When I start a breeding herd again, that is still going to be my focus.  I don't expect to have performance champions (though I have raised one!), but I want my babies to have a handleable personality, so with extensive training they could be!  I'd love to have halter champions (and have raised several who have gotten champions in halter, one even got enough to be an ALSA Halter Champion!).  And of course I want fine, single coat fleece, but this one I'm going to step up a notch.  I'm sick of having beautiful fleeces, but only getting 1 pound of prime fleece per animal!  As a fiber farm, animals need to produce more fleece to make it profitable.  I also happen to love thick bone structure in a llama, so my plan is to introduce some Argentine bloodlines into my herd in the future.  Argentines have extremely dense fiber, capable of producing 5+ pounds of prime fleece (and often are single coat).  Adding thick bones would just be a plus!

The pride and joy of my breeding program, Autumn Hill's Khatadyn.  He finished his ALSA Halter Champion!

Autumn Hill's Charity, multiple fleece and youth performance champion.

Autumn Hill's Rainier, winner of multiple fiber and halter champions and some great performance placings too!  He's also Kara's full brother.

I really can't afford to get several full Argentine llamas (even in the future), so my plan is to get an Argentine male and a couple heavy wool North American females (and maybe even a heavy wool NA male too).  I've heard that Argentines can increase fiber on their crias in just one generation (even 25% Argentine llamas can have thicker fiber), so I think that might be the way to start and make it more reasonable.

I fully intend on Kara being one of my cornerstone females in a future breeding program.  She has interesting bloodlines, and represents 2 of my favorite llamas from my past breeding program.  She hasn't been in the halter ring in almost 2 years (!), but she did very well at her first 2 shows as a juvenile.  I'm really hoping she will impress the judges when she gets back in the ring this fall.  And of course her recent fleece placings are very encouraging.

A terrible picture of Kara.

I also have high hopes for another representative of my former breeding program, and it hasn't even been conceived yet!  I'm not sure I've announced this here yet, but I'm getting a baby llama in 1.5-2 years!  I've regretted selling May (Little May Flowers) since the day she left our farm almost 8 years ago, and I finally decided to do something about it.  I'm going to "rent" May for the next year...any day now she will be bred to a gorgeous ALSA Halter Champion male, and hopefully have a fabulous baby in about a year.  Once the baby is weaned, I will bring him/her out to my farm in NY.  I'm really excited to have a relative of April (Alder Crest April Showers) in my breeding herd again, and I think the dad will add some great traits to the cria (one of his crias was an ALSA National Champion in halter).  Needless to say I hope the baby is a girl, but a male would actually be okay since it will be completely unrelated to Kara.

May definitely has a lot of great traits to pass on to a cria.

Who wouldn't want a cria related to this beautiful girl (April)??

Autumn Hill's Blazing Starr, May's first cria and one of my best production to date.

Unfortunately, even though I have all this completely planned out (I even know what farms I'm going to "shop" at!), I don't think it will be happening any time soon.  My barn is just not set up for a larger herd, so it all will have to wait until we either move or build a new barn.  I'm definitely itching to get started though!

Definitely my best group of crias ever!

Busy Weekend at the CNY Fiber Festival!

I need to apologize for not posting on Saturday, but I have a good excuse...  I was at the CNY Fiber Festival all weekend!

Batts, roving, and finished items.

It was my first time vending at a true fiber festival in a long time (I did the Fiber Event and the Hoosier Hills Fiber Fest in Indiana when I was in high school and college), and it was a great experience.  The campground where they held the festival was only about 40 minutes from our farm, so my husband and I went up Friday afternoon to set up.  Saturday was cold and cloudy, but there were tons of shoppers!  And probably due to the cold, they were buying finished items (knit hats, cowls, mitts, etc.)!  I've never sold so many finished items at a fiber festival before.  Sunday was much nicer in terms of weather, but there were a lot less people.  Luckily the sales I made on Saturday made up for Sunday!

My awesome new display covered in handspun yarn.

Rugs and felted wool bags.

Overall it was a great weekend.  It is always fun hanging out with other fiber nuts, and catching up with people you haven't seen in awhile.  Plus I was able to do a  lot of llama education, which is awesome!

The other side of my yarn display.

Can't wait for next year!

Pasture Rehabilitation Progress

It has been a few weeks since I let the llamas out on their old pasture.  So far I'm pretty happy with how the rehabilitation of the pasture has been going.  With a few small exceptions, most of the new grass that I seeded has begun to grow, and I'm slowly working on getting rid of the weeds (mostly burdock).

Pasture in mid-spring, before grazing.

A little bit later in the spring, after I mowed but still before being grazed.

And as you can see, the llamas are VERY happy about being out in their pasture!

T, Duque, and Kara out grazing.

The added bonus is that their dry lot area is starting to recover.  I still have a lot of straw to remove, but it has been raining cats and dogs this week!

Grass is growing back in the dry lot!

The pasture after a few weeks of grazing and some more mowing.

The llamas aren't great about eating weeds in general, but I've discovered that they love these berry bushes!  I'm not quite sure what kind of berries they are, probably rasp/black berries.  I chopped down all the old stalks last year, but of course they came back.  Within days the llamas had eaten every single leaf off the new plants.  I don't hold out much hope that the plants will survive, and that's just fine with me!  Unfortunately they won't eat burdock, so I'll have to continue to mow and pull those by hand.

Stripped berry plants!

Unfortunately it looks like the llamas are going to have to go back in their dry lot next week.  They're not grazing the pasture very evenly, and the areas closest to the barn are getting too short for comfort.  I can't afford to let any of those grass plants die!  I'll probably return to letting the llamas graze in their portable pen (either in or around the garden fence), and give them some freshly mown grass in addition to their hay.  They won't be happy, but they'll survive!  Hopefully it will start to dry out so we can get back to working on their new pasture!

Pattern Sneak Peek!

One of the things I've been busy working on before the CNY Fiber Fest is designing new patterns!  I've been so busy that I haven't gotten around to publishing them, but I wanted to give you a sneak peek!

For worsted weight yarn, a pair of very versatile ribbed hats.  The large (in purple) should fit an adult small to adult large, and the small (blue/yellow) should fit a large baby to large child.

My new favorite type of yarn to spin is an aran weight spiral ply.  I made up an aran weight version of the ribbed hats shown above, as well as a buttoned ear band, all of which can be knit with the spiral ply yarn.

I made another DK weight project... another ear band!  It is hard to see the texture in this picture, but there is a simple slip stitch pattern which makes a subtle design.  It is very cool!

And last but not least, an art yarn project, specifically for my thick-n-thin spiral ply yarn.  This is a stockinette cowl, knit flat and seamed together.  Super easy and cute!

All of these patterns will be debuted at the fiber festival this weekend.  I'll be selling yarn (and roving) in kits, so you can get your choice of pattern for free!

More Planting

The garden wasn't as busy this week as last, but there were still several big things going on.

A good looking garden if I do say so myself!

Most importantly I planted and mulched (and then re-mulched) the tomatoes!  At first I had red plastic in solid sheets going down both rows, but after talking with my dad about how he uses the plastic, I went back and cut it into squares to go around each plant.  I think they will get more water this way.

About 40' of tomatoes!

When I planted the tomatoes, I dug a 3-4" deep trench all the way down the row.  I pruned all but the top 3-4 branches, and buried the rest of the plant sideways in the trench.  Tomatoes can grow roots out of their stem, so this way they will have a better root system and be more stable in the wind.  Just before I buried the top of the stem, I wrapped a newspaper "collar" around each plant...this is supposed to keep cutworms away from the stem.  Once they were planted I also sprinkled some crushed eggshells at the base of each plant for added calcium.

Newly planted, mulched, and caged tomato plant.

A couple days later I planted 4 basil plants between the tomatoes.  Basil is supposed to make the tomatoes sweeter.

Tomato and basil plants.

The day after I planted the tomatoes I had something come through the garden and take out a few plants (mostly flowers, but it also got the parsley and a broccoli plant).  Turns out there was a groundhog burrow just inside the garden fence, so my husband set out a trap and we caught the little bugger the next day.  I could've sworn there was more than one groundhog, but that's the only one we've caught, and since then the garden seems *mostly* undisturbed.

Abby is checking out the newly-laid trap.

 Other than planting a few more flowers, the rest of the week was fairly boring.  Everything is growing well (although a bit slowly in my opinion).  I may start watering next week...we're only getting water about once a week right now, and maybe it isn't enough?

My first batch of onions and radishes are doing great!

The potatoes finally sprouted too!

Even my poor chomped broccoli is recovering.

I just set the cucumbers outside to harden off, they will go in the ground next week!  Then the peppers the week after that and I'm done with planting!  I suppose I do have more root veggies to sow...

Starting on the New Pasture!

I apologize for not posting this last night...first time I've forgotten since I re-invented the blog!

Anyway, we finally started on the new pasture this week!  Granted we haven't gotten a ton done, but we are 3/4 of the way done with the aisle from the shed to the pasture.  We're out of t-posts though, so next up is a trip to Tractor Supply!

Pounding the posts.

Our stick-chewing helper.

The southern edge of the pasture (a gate will go where the orange flag is).

Happy llamas grazing in their current pasture.

Countdown to the CNY Fiber Fest!

It is getting close...the CNY Fiber Fest that is!  Just a little over a week away, and I still have a ton of stuff to do!

I have been busy though...  I've been spinning like mad, finishing up some last-minute knitting patterns, and sanding my new display.

At my "day job", I've been carding 4 final batches of fiber.  One was done last week, I did 2 more today, and I think the last one will get done tomorrow.  The first batch is all wound into 4oz balls, but I still need to do the last 3.

Unfortunately I still have a ton of stuff to do!  

• One last batch of skeins (8 so far, we'll see if I get any more done before the weekend) that need to be washed
• Lots and lots of batts to card, wrap, & label
• Tons of skeins to measure, weigh, and label
• Patterns to fine tune and print
• Signs to design & print

Luckily I'm not too worried about getting it all done...I'd just like to get it all done before next Friday night!