Welcome Fiber Arts Friday and Crafty Friday Folks.
I haven’t been overly fibery this week because of some big projects and unexpected surprises.
Let me start off with what I did manage to do. I got 2 skeins spun up of my alpaca/merino. Nice bulky 2 ply ready for a hat or thick scarf.
If you saw my post earlier this week about our Labor Day projects you’ll know why I haven’t been able to keep up with my usual Fiber ADD self. Sometimes even I have to get down and to “real” farm work.
The other surprise this week was the arrival of a new cria. I had come home on Wednesday to meet up with the UPS freight guy and noticed an extra body in the girls pasture! Vanilla had her cria 2 weeks early. I rushed inside, got towels and of course my camera and went out into the field to meet our newest member. I got to work drying off the cria and about 2-3 minutes later it dawned on me I didn’t check the sex. IT”S A GIRL! I was totally thrilled that A) I was home B) the cria, though early, was healthy and strong and C) it’s a girl! D) I got the color I wanted! Yippy!
At 13.6lbs she was a bit small but stood up within the hour and started to nurse and mom had LOTS of good milk/colostrum ready to go. Since she was a bit early one of her ears is a bit folded still but it should correct itself in a few days. Otherwise she’s beautiful in every way and I can already feel the superior density in her fleece which is exactly what I was breeding for.
Well if I think about it, maybe I was fibery this week by welcoming new fiber animals into this world.
Lastly name. I think we decided on Dutch Hollow’s Parcella D’oro (Parcel of Gold) Play on the fact the only reason I was home was because of a UPS delivery 🙂
Here we are at another labor day on the farm and another year of projects too big for the weekend.
Project 1 was planned. One of our alpacas constantly got through the strand fencing and went on walk-about. So, I decided to rip out all the old fence and install field fencing. Sounds simple. Yeah 2 solid days and I’m still not finished.
Taking out the old fence was no problem. With the help of a tractor invention removal of the old T-posts was a snap. Pounding in the new T-posts….. PROBLEM! We live in the land of drumlins (aka Glacial Poop). Some areas are soft, loamy and easy to pound posts in. Other areas might be solid gravel or clay.
The top line of posts went in easy, about 15-25 pounds per post. As I turned to go down the hill the soil I was pounding in drastically changed to and evil dry hard clay. My 20 pounds per post was replaced with 60-100 pounds. Yes I count. When you are doing nothing but pounding posts, you can’t help but count especially when you do them in sets of 10. A full day of pounding posts and that’s all I did. My shoulders screamed at me the first night.
Day 2 and up goes the fence. It seems like such an easy and fast task but 8 hours of work and I’m still not done. The fence was rolled out. Secured on one end and a fence stretcher with 2 come-alongs to the other end the idea is to just tighten, stand up the fence and tie her down. The steps are not complicated but the time for each is drawn out. Blah.
The fence is up and 2 t-post clips are secured to each T-post but there’s many many many more t-post clips to do per post.
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Project 2 was NOT planned. The mini job: to dig down and ‘T’ off a water line and put in a new hydrant and power to the new run-in shed for the alpaca boys. Really this wasn’t supposed to be a big task, the shed is within 15 feet of where the utilities are.
Problem, as M. dug down and found the water and power he discovered a mess. The previous owners who ran the utilities 1) didn’t do it to code 2)didn’t put the power in conduit and 3) used indoor plumbing PVC for and outdoor run and it disintegrated when M. found it.
*sigh* so my helper for the fencing now had his own long weekend project digging up the old utilities and having to do them correctly with 2 conduits for power/coax/Ethernet and another line for the water.
Digging was slow as he could only dig down so far with the backhoe and then hand dig the rest so as not to destroy the power cables. It was bad enough we lost water to the one barn losing power would definitely put a damper on things.
Another fun finding while tackling this project is how thoughtless the folks were who installed initially. I think their mentality was something like…. “Oh look, hole. I can throw garbage into that.” Errrr.
Well that project is about 2/3rds the way done. Trench is complete, new conduit is glued together, water pipe in and M. put in proper junction boxes at the house. He also ran pull string in the conduit to make it easier pulling cables through later. All that is left is to put in all the elbows, clean out the bottom of the trench, lay all the conduit and pipe and cover the hole back up.
Hello Fiber Arts Friday and Crafty Friday folks!
What a wonderful week of fiber surprises. When you send your shearing clip off to the mill often it seems like you’re sending it into oblivion. Initially you talk to the mill, making sure they know exactly what you want and then you wait. Depending on the backlog the mill may have you could be waiting 4 weeks or 4-6 months.
After 5 weeks I came home to find a box on the porch. I assumed it was my alpaca sock order and brought it in and set it to the side to “deal” with it in the morning. (Inventory is not my favorite thing in the world) Come morning I opened up the box and what a great surprise! 13 glorious pounds of alpaca/merino pin drafted roving greeted me though a clear plastic bag. Yippy! I have plenty of roving to spin, dye, and sell.
Immediately I took a small 6oz bump and started to spin to get a feel for the roving. Well I kept spinning morning and that night and plied it up. Remembering my Wonder Roving that I spun up during the Tour de Fleece I decided to tackle a hat. I haven’t finished it yet but here’s how far I got.
I should have the roving up for sale in our Shop this afternoon as well as our new shippment of socks!
The sight was cleared in time with just 2 days to spare. I got a call last night that our new shed was on it’s way up from PA and scheduled to be delivered at 8am Tuesday morning. Here is is 8:29am and I’m already writing to say I have my shed! It still needs some pushing around to get it exactly where I wanted it and lined up but it’s here!
I got my shed from a young Amish guy named Sam. Really really nice guy who had a lot of questions about alpacas. Anyway here’s his contact information if you are in the market for a shed or full size barn. He and his crew cover all of NY and PA and can build anything from this little shed to Montior style barns. I’m keeping his card for when I need a new barn 🙂
SSR Contracting
84 Billman Lane
Mill Hall, PA 17751
Wood and Steel Construction
Sam Stolzfus
Phone: 814-280-7099
Fax: 814-625-0010
Photos of our new shed with a few of the views the alpaca boys have from the top of the new pasture. I can see why they like it up here soo much.
