Thistle Dew Alpaca Farm: June 2013

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.

Shearing Day, Shearing Day!

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.

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.

Levi 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.

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.)

Look at all that fiber…

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.

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.

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.