alpacas – Page 3 – Dutch Hollow Acres

October 1, 2010December 3, 2010

Fiber Arts Friday – Flat Alpacas Don’t Spit

Hello again Fiber Arts Friday and Crafty Friday Folks.

Good weather and big crowds made our stay at DEC days great! Day 1 I had both CoHo and CW with us but CoHo decided he no longer wanted to be at trade shows. He hummed, squealed and when some rowdy teens started to provoke him he covered them in spit. Normally I’d be upset and embarrassed at this but as I said, they were rowdy teens *grin*

Day 2 I left CoHo home and CW came with me. He must have been tired from all the fuss the day before because he slept almost the entire time. The alpaca that got the most attention is what I called our “flat alpaca.” I brought my Miracle blanket and any time someone wanted to pet the boys I herded them over to Miracle who was kind enough to never run away, kick or spit.

All in all, it was a great weekend for both answering alpaca questions and selling my wears. Next trip will be to the GV Hunt Races on October 9^th.

I have a new hydrant! M. Finally finished the trenching and my new hydrant is in and looking oh so pretty next to our new barn. Believe it or not I haven’t had a chance to use it yet because it’s been raining so much the boys are getting all their water intake from the grass.

I did manage to get one silly project done this week. I was playing around on my knitting loom and worked up a small dog coat. Since I don’t own a dog that small I opted to test it out on our new kitten Frito. Well that turned out to be a good laugh since he couldn’t figure out how to walk with it on. He figured out how to wiggle out of it in about an hour though.

Photos! I got a call last night from a Photography student at SUNY Geneseo who’s looking to showcase local farms as her project. She’ll be stopping over tomorrow morning to photograph our cute and fluffy herd, I’m sure the horses will get their moment too.

Speaking of photos here’s some of the girls I got this week. Babies! Awe…..

September 24, 2010December 3, 2010

Fiber Arts Friday – Preparing for Shows

Welcome to Fiber Arts Friday and Crafty Friday!

What a crazy week! I’ll try to keep things short and to the point and in some sort of order without too much babbling. Hope you can keep up.

1. We have yet another new cria! Last Friday I got a call around 4pm saying there was another cria bouncing around the pasture. Sure enough I came home to a very strong 17lb fawn girl who was already dry, up, nursing, and running around with her half sister. I present to you Dutch Hollow’s Fontia.

2. Finger Lakes Fiber Arts Festival. I did manage to sneak over to the fiber show for only an hour. Next year I want to take classes and stay for a whole day. It was the first time I’ve ever been to a fiber show and WOW, I so wish I could spend more time.

I went for the purpose of talking to my local mill which I did. I’ve got about 30lbs of fiber heading their way to be made into rug yarn.

While I was there I ended up finding another tannery that captured my interest. They claim they can process sheep/alpaca hides and make them washable! I’ll have to contact them when I have more time and learn more. I was under the impression that the chemicals needed to make a fleece washable were illegal in the US but apparently they have another way?

3. This weekend is not only National Alpaca Farm Days but is also National Hunting and Fishing Days. Since my neighbor happens to be the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) and hosts the oldest DEC Days in the country I piggy back off them. My farm is not able to handle the thousands of people that come for the DEC show so I set up a booth and bring a couple of my boys over to them. This will be me 2^nd year participating in DEC Days and it is a whole bunch of fun with the exception of hunters constantly asking me if they can eat them. I tell them no but they do give you great fiber to keep feet warm while in tree stands!

4. Inventory! With vendor shows comes the need for inventory. Here are some of the hats/scarfs that I’ve been making all week.

That about wraps it up what did you do this week?

September 17, 2010December 3, 2010

Fiber Arts Friday – Where Did Sept Go?

Welcome Fiber Arts Friday and Crafty Friday folks.

What a crazy week. Unfortunately it wasn’t all fiber fun. Instead I was dealing with things like my car failing inspection, my herd sire getting beat up by 2 intact fiber boys and crappy weather making it impossible to get things done outside. But, I did manage to do some stuff.

HATS! I didn’t get photos of 2 of my favorite hats but here’s a photo of 2 kids hats I’m making for vendor shows I’ve got coming up.

Roving! The alpaca/merino I got back from the mill was in 1lb bumps so I have been weighing out 4oz of roving and hand rolling them back into center pull bumps for sale. Completing them of course with DHA logos.

Fiber weekend coming up. The great Finger Lakes Fiber Arts Festival is going on this weekend at the Hemlock Fair Grounds. Can you believe I might not actually be able to go?! I totally forgot I’m volunteering at a Carriage show all day Sunday which leaves only Saturday for Fiber time. But that also leaves only Saturday to re-fence a “dirt” paddock around the new alpaca barn. I’m so hoping I can get that done early Saturday morning so I can go to the festival in the afternoon. *crosses fingers* Why is there never enough time for fun things?

September 10, 2010September 10, 2010

Fiber Arts Friday – New Fiber

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 🙂

September 7, 2010December 3, 2010

Labor Day 2010 – Too much work

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.

WedgeLocTpost — Using Wedge-Loc to brace the end posts.

FieldFenceAlpaca — New alpaca field fence is up!

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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.