Monday, July 22, 2013

Deep Dew-Dew



We wanted to give you a little information about our Alpaca Magic Beans.  To put it simply, Alpaca Poop.  Now, before you say I'm making much adew-dew about nothing, read on to see how awesome this stuff really is!

Did you know that alpacas have 3 stomachs?  Those stomachs are the secret to fertilizer success!  Alpacas graze all day long, and as it travels through their digestive system, it gets more and more digested.  By the time the dew-dew comes out the other end, you have a soil-conditioning fertilizer that is:

1) Not "hot" - it won't burn your plants when applied directly like other manures dew (um... do).

2) Helps improve soil's water retention - Bonus!

3) Seedless - because alpacas digest so efficiently, there aren't any weed seeds that will pop up later in your garden/flower beds!

4) Virtually Odorless - seriously.  Once again, efficient digestion saves the day!

5) Useful on any plant, from house plants to vegetable gardens to flower beds!

6) Green!  No need to use chemical fertilizers.

Here at Thistle Dew Farm, we have available dried Magic Beans or we have Composted Dew-Dew.  What's the difference you may ask?

Magic Beans are straight from the alpaca's... you know what.  They are dried and odorless.  They can be sprinkled into house plants or flower beds.  Then when watered, the water will release the fertilizer each time the plant is watered!  When planting new plants/trees, add some Beans to the hole for Dew-rific growth!  They can also be made into Fertilizer Tea.  Soak them in water and use the water to water your plants.

$5/5 gallon bucket (BYOBucket!) or smaller burlap "tea bags" for $3

Composted Dew-Dew can be used in all the same ways as Magic Beans, but has been composted and is safe to put right on your edibles/vegetable plants.  Mix it in with your garden soil in the spring and fall, add to your own compost pile, or add around the base of plants after planting.  Is your garden already in full swing?  No worries!  Sprinkle some Dew-Dew around the base of each plant and water, or make compost tea and water the garden with it each week.

$5/5 gallon bucket (BYOBucket!) or $2/gallon ziplock bag

(how to make alpaca tea: put some beans/dew-dew in a nylon stocking (or burlap tea-bag provided), mix with 1/2 gallon of water, let it soak in the sun for an hour, pour liquid on plants, flowers and trees)

Interesting Facts:
Alpacas are communal poopers and they always poop in the same place!
Alpacas pick one spot for their pile and that's where they always go.  That makes it nice for us to collect it easily, and nice that it's not collecting random seeds throughout the yard. 
You know how when a human female will get up to go to the bathroom and suddenly all the girls go to the bathroom together?  Alpacas do it that way, too.  When one goes, they will all line up at the pile to go.

Alpacas, have an efficient digestive process due to their 3 true stomachs. This means the manure contains significantly less organic matter than most other manures do.  The manure also tends to have a higher nutrition content than other livestock, including cow and horse manures.  

Animal
Nitrogen %
Phosphorus %
Potassium %
   Alpaca
1.7
0.69
.66
   Chicken
1.0
0.8
0.4
   Cow
0.6
0.15
0.45
   Goat
2.0
0.5
0.6
   Horse
0.7
0.25
0.55
   Pig
0.5
0.35
0.4
   Sheep
0.95
0.35
1.0
(reprinted from http://www.alpacasofmontana.com/e-commerce-solutions-alpacacompost.html)

See that tree Cody is standing under?  It's actually a tomato plant.  You can see from this picture and the one at the beginning on this blog post, that our garden is going quite crazy this year.
We have limited access to water, so watering is not always consistent.
It has been a HOT summer, most days at or above 100 degrees.
We live in a very dry climate (Utah).
We have very sandy soil.
But we DEW have alpacas, and that means we have alpaca poop.  And you better believe it's been going in to the garden since the first tilling.

So if you would like your garden/flowers/plants to go crazy, 

skip the chemicals and pick up some Dew-Dew or Magic Beans today!


Email me for more info: thistledewalpacafarm@gmail.com or visit our facebook page and leave a comment: https://www.facebook.com/ThistleDewAlpacaFarm



Sunday, June 30, 2013

a rug in the woods

This weekend we had a rare opportunity to sneak away to a cabin in the woods.  It was a couple days of being lazy and smelling pine trees while you breathe.  One afternoon, I whiled away the time making this.


It's a little rug made out of our alpaca fur.  It's just shy of 2' across.  A little starter rug.  And each year that we send in our alpaca fiber, I'll get more rug yarn back.  And each year I will add to this cute little rug until it becomes a respectable grown-up rug.  Like a tree, it's rings revealing its age.



I told this cute little girl that one day she would pass this rug down to her kids, and they to theirs, and so on.  That they would tell the story of how great-great-great grandmother made this rug from the alpacas she and great-great-great grandfather kept, and how one sunny day at a cabin in the woods, she sat and started this rug.  And every year it got bigger and bigger.  This cute little girl looked at me sideways, and just ran off to play again with her brother.


Monday, June 17, 2013

Shearing Day!

Shearing Day, Shearing Day!

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Our funny little alpacas finally got their hairs cut last Monday.  Seriously, nothing can prepare you for how funny a skinny alpaca looks.  You have these big, fluffy creatures, and then suddenly there are these threadbare little twerps running around your yard and they just look ridiculous.

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The shearers were going to try to come Saturday, but if they didn’t get to us, they would come Monday.  It is a traveling shearing company based out of Ohio (with guys from all over the country – I think our guys were from New York, Ohio, and… Louisiana? somewhere…)  So they have several different crews and all they do for a couple months is drive and shear.  They spend hours in the car to get to a farm, shear the alpacas, then hop back in the car and drive to the next farm.  That doesn’t sound like much fun to me, but hey…

I heard you should take a leaf blower to your alpacas before shearing to clean them off.  Then I read using a shop vac is better.  Saturday, we decided to harness everyone up and vacuum them all off.  If the shearers came, we would be ready;  if not, we had practice.

So I was quite proud of myself to have harnessed each animal.  I got Daisy & Dee Dee with no help, and the rest of them with a little caging in from Cody & Levi I was able to get everyone harnessed no problem.  Go me.

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20130608_115321Levi came to help us.   Here he is (below) multi-tasking.  He was even a great sport about Nevada bucking him right over his shoulders as he tried to hold him (yeah we didn’t vacuum Nevada, he wasn’t having it).  I asked Levi to come back Monday to see if he could take some pictures which I thought meant him standing there with his iPhone, but he brought his fancy Nikon and thanks to him we have all these nice photos of shearing day. Thanks, Levi!!

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Monday we harnessed the girls and used a blower to blow them off.  Not sure how much this did, but combined with a brush I think it did a little.  Monday evening, the shearers arrived and we were somewhat surprised to see 3 teenagers.  Just young kids traveling the country, shearing alpacas.  But any doubts we had upon first glance were soon dispelled.  These guys were amazing.  They handled the alpacas easily (which I would hope so when you handle thousands within a few months) and they were gentle and they were fun to have around. 

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Shearing 101: First you walk up to an alpaca and catch it.  Then you walk it to the shearing pad, then you pick it up and flip it on its side, then you restrain legs front and back so no one (including the alpaca) gets hurt. 

We were surprised mostly by the handling.  We were pretty proud of ourselves for getting everyone harnessed, but these guys just led them around by their necks.  Even our most difficult customer (Nevada) was no match and actually provided a light-hearted romp across the grass for his captor  (the guy literally skipped his way across the lawn using Nevada’s angry bucking momentum, and oh gosh do I wish I had that on video for you to see.  It was the best moment of the whole day.)

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Look at all that fiber…

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This guy was a delight.  His name is Sardis and he had us in stitches the whole time.  He’s the one who skipped Nevada across the lawn and you’ll seem him again on the haystack.

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They trim the nails, give shots (which we forgot until we were all done, oops), then they shear the blanket, which is the best part.  You catch that and roll it up (noodling) and put it in a bag, then they do the neck and you bag that, then the legs, etc is all just extra.  (the thirds are not good for yarn, but you can use them to stuff dog beds, things like that.  I stuffed a little open-sided ball full of some and hung it in a tree so birdies could use it to line their nests)


When they were done, we had a little fun. We were their last farm of the day so they took their time getting their gear cleaned up.  I think the main shearer felt a bit jealous of all the attention Sardis was getting since he used to do his job (wrangling) but now he just shears.  So they went and caught some alpacas just for fun. Yep, they picked up Nevada, carried him a ways, then put him back down.  This is fun for alpaca shearers.

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Sardis strikes again. Click to watch the video of him trying to sneak up on the girls via the top of the haystack to give them their shots.  Notice how the other guy just walks right up to her and catches her.  Hilarious.

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Here is the scene of the crime…

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and the spoils…

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And the victims…

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(See Chanel’s (tan) little pregnant belly – stay tuned for that excitement, coming towards the end of summer!)20130611_140733

 

For fun videos of all the shearing action, please check out the farm’s YouTube channel!