1. Alpacas are far easier to take care of than we thought.

At some point in my ten-plus years of spinning I knew I’d want to own the animals that provided my fiber. It was a pipe dream – I never imagined I’d live on enough land to do it, it just didn’t seem in the cards for me. But I read up on it for years anyway, joining the AlpacaTalk list years ago and simply lurking and absorbing everything I could, and reading as many books as I could find on small farm animal ownership. I used to think I wanted to own sheep, but once I began spinning alpaca and learned that they were easier to care for than sheep I switched my focus…even though I was sure I’d never get the chance to actually own any.

Then Matt found the house we live in now, a place with a pasture and barn already in place because the previous owners had had horses. He asked how many alpacas I thought we could raise on that pasture. I tried to bite my tongue because I didn’t want to jinx anything.

Once we moved in we started talking about eventually getting alpacas. You know, when we were ready to be farmers. And as we talked and thought and talked and thought the grass in the unused pasture grew and grew and grew. It grew to the point where a mere lawnmower to keep it down wasn’t going to work, and renting equipment to mow it was really pricey. We figured we’d better step up our plans, so I researched harder. And the grass grew taller. Eventually it was clear that the only way we were going to beat back that grass was by having animals to eat it.

Finally we knew we had to just jump in and do it. At a certain point with farm animals, I’ve learned, you can only learn so much by reading – the rest you’ve just got to learn by actually doing. So after meeting the Stanwycks and getting some basic supplies – water buckets, mineral feed, some hay, some wound powder for emergencies, and some toenail trimmers – we bought our three boys and brought them home.

We were shocked at how little care they actually needed. I had just finished contract work and was in between jobs, and I kept trying to find things to do out there in the pasture. But the reality was that the alpacas just really didn’t need us. We did, however, socialize with them whenever it was appropriate so that they’d get used to us – feeding them their minerals by hand and giving them belly baths in the July heat. But since we only have three boys we only need to clean the pasture twice a week, and even toenail trimming isn’t an all-day affair.

I think alpacas might just be easier to take care of than cats.

2. Alpacas will let you know when you’re doing it wrong.

I can’t tell you how many times I practiced haltering and handling the alpacas while being terrified that I was doing it wrong. I was scared I’d put the halter on them in ways that constricted their breathing, or that I’d put it on too tight and it would be painful.

I’ve since learned that the alpacas are really, really good at letting you know when you did it wrong. Benz is our barometer: he’s so calm and easy to handle that when he’s bucking after I put his halter on I know for sure I did it wrong. But as soon as the halters are on properly their whole demeanor changes drastically – they’re calm, composed, and, like dogs, seem to know that you’re in charge right now. And they’re okay with that.

We’ve learned to listen to the alpacas when they’re trying to tell us that the halters are on wrong instead of assuming that they’re just being obstinate.

3. Alpacas have way more personality then we thought.

It’s amazing just how different each one can be. Our three boys have radically different personalities and it’s been hilarious and fun watching those personalities interact as they’ve bonded into their own little herd. Like your standard pet they have moods and things they do that you eventually learn to interpret. Silverton is the herd leader but Cinnamon likes to think he is. Silverton is shy and likes to hang back to see if everything’s safe while Cinnamon will pretty much charge into an area and just own it, looking at you like you’re the interloper. And Benz is incredibly sweet and likes to walk up and just look at you calmly with his big, black-rimmed eyes.

4. Alpacas are a lot smarter than we thought.

I’ve always tended to equate all farm animal intelligence with that of a cow, but that’s definitely not true with alpacas. I feel like Wiley E. Coyote when trying to trick the alpacas into the barn for toenail trimming. Somehow our body language tips off Silverton every time.

5. Judging hay and pasture quality is hard.

We’re still learning about hay quality and how to tell good hay from bad, and we’re definitely still learning how to tell when the boys are getting enough forage in the pasture versus needing more hay. It seems in the last month that they’ve insisted on eating only hay rather than foraging, which is surprising to us because when we look out there we see what we think is perfectly fine pasture grass and plenty of blackberries. So we’re still trying to figure out if maybe there’s less out there for them than we think and maybe the pasture grass still just hasn’t hit its summer stride yet.

6. Alpacas are far more entertaining than we thought.

Benz falling over onto Silverton in the middle of the pasture when laying down; Silverton getting blackberries stuck to his butt and running around in circles wagging his little tail trying to get it off; all three of them wigging out in the sunshine and just pronking for the sheer joy of it; Cinnamon sneezing a big loogey right onto Matt during mineral feeding time and then looking at him like, well, where else was I supposed to sneeze?

There have been so many times this year when we’ve just stood at the windows and watched them be alpacas and derived so much joy from it. We certainly never expected it to be this entertaining.

And then, of course, there’s the whole reason we got them in the first place: the fiber. It’s been so much more rewarding than I though it would be to have the fiber from the source and be able to experiment, and to be able to look at a finished yarn, or something made from it, and know that I truly did the process from the ground up.

We’re planning on many more years of enjoyment, yarn, and learning from these guys.

Since we only have our three boys and we don’t do shows we don’t have a trailer, but Don and Jo had offered to lend us their trailer — in which case we’d take our boys up and also make any necessary stops at other farms for more alpacas along the way — or come pick up our boys. They dropped the trailer off the night before and, with no other farms to stop at, we took our boys up around eight in the morning Saturday. I was nervous the night before; having been hit or miss on getting their halters on properly over the near-year we’ve had them now I was worried I’d have a rough start to the morning. But I vowed that I’d get over my fear of having it on properly and just do it.

So Matt and I went out there and he held each boy while I put on their halters. This time I did it right: I got over my fear of it being on too tight and put them on properly. They need to be tight or the alpacas get nervous that they’ll slip down and cut off their breathing. I did the finger check and amazingly, as soon as we had them on each boy was perfectly calm. What a change! Even difficult Cinnamon was a different boy with his halter on and properly attached. They looked at me as if to say, “see? Every time you put it on wrong and we thrash around, we’re just trying to tell you that it’s not on right!” Then we walked them out, they walked right into the trailer (mostly — Silverton needed a teeny bit of coaxing), and we were off!

Benz and Silverton waiting their turns. Benz looking sweet as usual.

The weather was just terrible. Just about the worst weather you could ask for for shearing: cold and rainy. It’s been raining for so long, and with the guaranteed rain through the weekend we had to put our boys in the barn for 48 hours so they’d dry out enough to be sheared. They seemed to take it in stride, though — the first day Cinnamon hummed pathetically but by the second day all three boys were happily cushed and chewing cud in the barn. Benz even rolled over playfully on his back nearly onto Matt’s feet when he went in to check on them.

With the weather so bad it was going to take some juggling to make sure all the alpacas that were getting sheared would stay dry. Don and Jo’s females were all in a pen in the barn and we left our boys in their trailer so they’d stay dry and went down to help. Two other alpacas from a nearby farm hung out in the barn by the skirting table as we worked. A giant industrial fan blew into the girls’ pen so that they could dry out further — the 4H kids groomed and brushed some of the heavier-fleeced girls in front of the fan in the hopes that they’d be dry enough to shear by the time it was their turn.

The 4H kids groom Amber, who was damp and full of VM, before her shearing.

This is the first time I’d been present at a shearing and the first time I’d ever seen a shearer work. According to what I’ve been told I’m a little spoiled now. Bruce seems like a pretty amazing shearer — not only are there hardly any second cuts at all in the fleeces we skirted (something I’d noticed last year when I bought the boys’ blankets) but he takes the time with each animal to make sure they’re as calm as they can be before shearing. If they don’t like the vibration of the shears on their skin he tries to get them used to it before diving in. He’s also a sorter and grader, so before he shears he evaluates the fleece quality and tells you what each part of the fleece is going to work best for (yarn quality, rug quality, pillow stuffing, etc.). He’s got a pretty rigid but calm system of shearing, with each helper having a specific and outlined job, right down to where to hold the box he’s going to through the fleece parts into. I’m guessing that the reason why we managed to get through about 16 or so alpacas and a llama in a nine-hour period was because his system runs like clockwork.

Bruce sheared parts of the fleece and then threw them into a box as he told the helper with the box what part of the fleece it was — blanket, apron, hip, leg, etc. The helper brought it to Jody and I and various other helpers through the day at the skirting table, where we had labels we would put on the piles as they came to us while we skirted each one. Skirting is the process of picking over the fleece and removing any large vegetable matter (VM), dung tags, mats, second cuts, and other undesirable bits and then bagging it according to its use. Jody had a note on the barn wall that directed which parts of the fleece would be designated to specific bags marked “sock”, “felt”, “rug”, etc. If the armpit fleece, for instance, was soft enough and of good quality, once skirted it would go in the sock bag. If it wasn’t quite as soft it would go into the rug bag.

Me (on the left) and Jody skirting fleeces as they came off the animals.

The 4H kids that Don and Jo work with were on hand to help. A couple of the older ones managed the alpacas themselves while some of the younger kids hanging out on the farm helped run boxes to and from the shearers to the skirting table. When we showed up the kids were excited to see Benz, who appears to be the rock star of Fleece Fields. Benz was the 4H alpaca for a few of the kids there before we bought him from Don and Jo and his sweet personality had endeared him to everyone who’d visited the farm, so they were all really happy to see him. Cinnamon was also pretty notorious and I’ve since learned that his willful personality isn’t something he developed only with us; the 4H kids were pretty familiar with that. In fact, his mother was the first one to be sheared because she was the most difficult. Gee, I wonder where he gets it from?

In between shearings it was fun to call over the new llama cria (whose name I don’t know how to spell!). She’s a rescue llama that Don and Jo got two weeks ago and she’s not just adorable but friendly as well. She loves to give you kisses. All you have to do is walk up to the pen and she’ll run right up to you and start sniffing all over your face. She seemed to like Matt’s beard a lot. She also got sheared and her fleece was probably the softest of the fleeces done yesterday. It was amazing!

Sometime in the afternoon one of the other ladies, Anne, who’d brought her alpacas for shearing took hers home and then brought hot chocolate and hand warmers. It was unbelievably cold, raw, and wet for nearly-June. It said 50 degrees but it couldn’t have possibly been that warm. I can’t believe it was May 29 and I was wearing a scarf.

My poor little nekkid Cinnamon!

We got done with all 16 or so animals, including our three boys, by about 5:30 that night with a pizza lunch break in between. Not bad at all! Our boys hung out in one of the smaller pastures while we went to dinner with everyone, and then it was time to pack them up for home. Matt and I had an adventure of our own trying to back the trailer and truck into our driveway, something neither of us had ever had to do before. Cinnamon was humming away as I shouted out instructions on backing in to Matt. Eventually we got it in, took out the boys, and finally got them back into their pasture. It had just gotten dark so the skinny boys went over to their favorite tree and sandy spot and cushed down for the night, probably exhausted and tired of dealing with us. This morning they were out happily grazing again.

I’m pretty happy with the fleece we got from the boys. I had always thought Silverton’s was the highest quality fleece but was surprised to hear Bruce say that Benz actually had the higher grade. Cinnamon and Silverton were both a grade 4 while Benz was a high grade 3. Bruce seemed to really like Silverton and Benz’s fleeces and I was happy to hear that — they were both super soft so we definitely raised ‘em right this year, not feeding them hay that was too high in protein (which would make their fleece coarse). Bruce suggested that Benz’s black fleece would make a terrific blend with some merino or bamboo, and I laughed and told him I had just done that very thing with some of his fleece from last year and sure enough, it was a really great blend. I did feel like the staple length of their fleece might have been shorter than last year’s. There’s probably a few explanations for this and I’m curious what they might be. It might be the weather we had this year or it might be what we feed them. Regardless, the fleeces are great and I can’t wait to work with them!

My fleece harvest!

The boys’ weights were also good. They weighed in roughly about what they weighed when we got them, which isn’t bad — Cinnamon is at a healthy weight while Benz and Silverton could probably stand to lose a little bit, but they’re still fine. It was good to hear that we did mostly the right thing this year with their food, although Bruce suggested they could probably stand to be fed a little less mineral than we give them now, which we kind of already knew.

So it’s back to a normal routine for our boys, who seemed to be pretty adaptable and not at all terrorized by their shearing yesterday. But then again, they’ve done this a few times. We had a great time helping out at the farm and I’m really looking forward to diving into those bags of yummy fleece! We’ve got lots of other pictures to check out In our Picasa album, so head over there!

Are you talkin' to me? Are YOU talkin' to ME?

Because these are the first farm animals we’ve ever owned I’ll admit that we were really skittish and shy about how to handle them at first. Don and Jody of Jo’s Fleece Fields have helped us a lot with that, but really it just comes down to working with them more and more, which is why we’re trying to make sure we get some deliberate handling in about one a month even if they don’t need a toenail trim. Even though we’re not a farm in the big sense and our boys don’t have to be handled except when they get sheared and they get their toenails trimmed, what if — as unlikely as it is — we had to move them in an emergency and we were still uncomfortable with halters? And of course we want to be fully comfortable for all of this when shearing day comes up in early June. In order to do this, we are making a concerted effort to step up to the plate as Barn Bosses.

Alpacas are wily, perceptive, curious, intensely personable, and very smart. All experienced alpaca owners have told us that working with alpacas requires you to establish firmly with them that you are the boss of them, otherwise you’re just never going to be able to get them to go where you need them to go because they will be able to read your tentativeness and manage to escape your every attempt to corral or halter them.

Benz and Silverton have both been pretty easy. Benz takes a halter with no effort and Silverton is very calm once we’ve actually got him and he can see the halter going on — he only seems to start fussing if I take too long. “Good Lord, woman, it’s like you’ve never done this before,” I swear is what he’s thinking. Cinnamon is our drama queen, though, and the last couple of times we’ve done it have been with great effort and lots of bucking. While all three of our boys have very distinct and colorful personalities, Cinnamon’s is by far the most vibrant and spirited. If you want him to stand still so you can trim his toenails, he’ll slip like a snake out of your grasp. But when you want him to be ten feet away from you so you can sweep the barn floor or trim the blackberries, he’s literally on top of your feet. It’s what makes him so funny, though, and extra fun to interact with.

The first two times — a few months ago and a month or so back — I put his halter on he was almost unbearable. In fact, the first time I did it I didn’t even get the halter on, we had to just give up he was bucking so hard. The second time we managed to get it on but he kept thrashing his head around even after we let him go (just holding on to the lead) that it was clear we’d done something wrong and the halter was bothering him too intensely to keep on, so I took it off.

This time we were determined not to let him think he could just get his way. Matt caught him up in a good, solid hold and after a moment or two of bucking and a firm re-establishment that he was not squirming out this time, we got his halter on. Unlike last time I felt like I’d actually done the job right the first time: the halter was snug everywhere it needed to be and when Matt let him go he didn’t buck or squirm. He still whined and hummed, but he stood there. I wanted to walk him around the barn for a bit before we did his toenails just to establish a little calm first. Every few moments he would pull at the lead trying to get away from me, but I held it firmly just as I’d read in The Camelid Companion and told him, too bad, you’re not the boss this time. I led him a little bit around the inside of the barn, occasionally having to firmly hold the lead against his pulling but for the most part successfully establishing with him that he was going to have to do what I wanted him to do for a change.

Matt immediately noticed a difference, commenting that Cinnamon seemed calmer even as he was still anxious, and that I looked like the definitive boss between the two of us. Anytime Cinnamon pulled I stood my ground, told him to stand, and refused to let him wriggle away. Even I noticed a change — he was still wily and obstinate, but he seemed to understand that this time he was getting haltered and getting his toenails trimmed (oh, the humanity of it!) whether he wanted to or not. We still had to firmly hold him even with the halter to do that, but that’s normal anyway.

We got all four feet of all three boys successfully taken care of, and we body scored them as well, something I want to do at least once a month throughout a full year so I can note the changes happening under the fleece. Last time we body scored them we were surprised to see that Benz was actually the skinniest despite visibly looking like the largest — this time Cinnamon was the skinniest. Benz’s hip bones were feel-able but not sharply bony; Silverton’s I could barely feel at all. Cinnamon’s hip bones felt somewhat prominent under his fleece to the point where I’m wondering if he’s a little on the underweight side but I’m still learning what’s considered underweight for an alpaca, so any of you alpaca owners reading this, please feel free to comment on that.

So we’re pretty proud of ourselves today and our first real, firm establishment of who the Barn Boss is. The more we do this the more comfortable we’ll be. Shearing Day, here we come!

Look at that smile.

Here’s a one ounce batt that consists of roughly 60% Silverton’s fleece, 20% Merino wool that I dyed blue, and 20% white Tencel.

60% Silverton. Make that 60% of AWESOME.

I test-spun two of those batts. With the first batt, I pulled off pieces and spun it over-the-fold with a supported long draw. I knew this would ensure a truly woolen yarn, which would give it softness and loft. With the second batt, I pulled the batt into roving and then spun the roving with a modified worsted draw — instead of really short pulses, I let my front hand pull the fiber a bit longer than you normally would in a true worsted draw, while also pulling the fiber supply back a bit, and then I smooth the single with my front hand down to the drafting triangle and repeat. Here’s a shot of the finished yarn from the second batt, plied 3-ply. It’s not the best light, but it’ll do for now.

A short section of 3-ply test.

Tonight I knitted that yarn into a test swatch with some impromptu cabling, since I know I want cabling in the final sweater.

Beautiful!

I absolutely love the blue tweedy look combined with the beautiful natural color of Silverton’s fleece. And it’s very soft. This is the semi-worsted yarn, and tomorrow I plan to swatch the true woolen yarn to see which one I like better for the final project.

Take The Mysterious Broom, for instance. A few weeks ago we picked up a large push broom to keep in the barn because the boys throw their hay around when they eat with wild abandon, and so every morning when we feed them we sweep up the mess to discourage vermin and keep the boys from cushing down in it and getting it stuck in their fleece (because I’m the one who has to clean that out later). The first time we brought out The Mysterious Broom the boys were eating in the barn and they immediately panicked, flailing around and clumsily bumping into each other in their rush to get out of the barn. OH MY GOD WHAT IS THAT THING?! It’s some…big…brown THING! And they’re pushing it toward us! Get out! Get out while you still can!

The next day we practically had to push them out of the barn with the broom just to sweep around their feet. And now on most days Benz likes to play The Broom Game where we sweep and he gets in our way, leaning down to inspect the broom closely as we sweep at his feet.

Today we decided to do toenails. It’s only been about two months since we last clipped them so we knew they likely weren’t going to need clipping today, but it’s good practice for us and the boys to just do an overall check anyway. The last time we did this we closed the outer doors of the barn, got them in there with their usual treat bucket, and then closed the big door behind them — they panicked and suddenly the treats in my hand were completely unimportant as the only goal was to get OUT.

This time, though, we did the same thing but the boys panicked far less. In fact, the alpacas even let us dupe them not once but twice in rapid succession. Matt hung outside the big door, just like last time, while the boys crammed to the back of the barn, which is where we always feed them their minerals (and this is why). Silverton, being the keen, observant guy that he is, immediately sussed out that something was up. Why is only one of the humans in here? As soon as his little brain started putting two and two together he headed straight for the barn door. Matt hadn’t even gotten close to closing it yet as he was going to give the boys a second to get in there and get eating, but clearly that was the wrong move — Silverton booked it out the door and the other two boys followed on his heels. I was afraid that we’d blown it, that they knew today was some kind of Doing Something Unpleasant In The Barn Day but I shook the treat bucket in my hand and miraculously they came right back. As soon as they were in Matt grabbed the door and, just like last time, Silverton and the boys tried to make a break for it but it was too late.

But unlike last time they really didn’t panic much. Cinnamon and Silverton started humming a bit but apart from that, they actually went right back to eating their treats right out of my hand as if nothing was wrong. I was amazed. We’d only done this with them a couple of times two months ago and both times they were annoyed and displeased with us.

So we worked with Benz first and he was almost as easy as last time. What’s interesting this time is that since we only wanted to really check their nails and trim lightly we didn’t bother to halter them, we just decided we’d hold them. With Benz he was still super easy about it, but I noticed that he was actually just a tiny bit less docile than he was the last time, and I wonder if it had to do with the lack of a halter. Benz was a PR animal at Don and Jody’s, so I think for him the halter — which he takes very easily — signifies a whole different set of behaviors for him. I suspect that he knows that when the halter’s on he’s going to be handled and touched, but without the halter he doesn’t really know what to expect. Still, he’s such an easy boy to do this with that he was no problem, just like last time.

Cinnamon was far easier for us this time. We were prepared for his shenanigans. A couple of months ago Don and Jody had come up and shown us a few extra tricks we could use against all of Cinnamon’s foils: the cushing, the kicking, etc. So this time Matt held onto Cinnamon and I pulled out all the stops — when Cinnamon tried to kick with his back leg I put my knee under him just like Don had showed us, which prevents him from being able to bend his leg for that kick. Then he tried to cush down but aha! I put my knee under body so that he couldn’t actually lay down, the most he could do was rest his weight on me, but that only made his foot more accessible.

Silverton was also a lot easier. One funny thing I noticed was that he was actually far calmer when I was holding him than when Matt was. The moment we switched positions and I took hold of Silverton his whole body seemed to relax just a tiny bit. He did prepare some spit that he tried to let loose on us but it wasn’t to be. But boy, I’ll tell you what: Silverton is not light. The other two boys probably weigh around 120-130 pounds (I think that was Don and Jody’s guess) and Silverton weighs a little more than that. Silverton tried to cush while I looked at his back foot so I did the knee-under-him trick and got all 160 pounds or so of him on my one bent knee. That’s hard to hold up.

So we’ve been really bolstered by this. We didn’t need any extra hands this time and the boys just felt far more manageable. I think they’re getting used to The Routine and it should just get easier each time we do it.

The boys circa July 2009. So skinny.

They’ve finally acclimated to most of the fauna around our place. During the first few weeks in their new home every little nocturnal sound was a potential threat so we were constantly awakened at night with their alarm call (and one of these days I’m going to record it). Now that they’re more used to the place we actually haven’t heard it in a while…at least until winter changed the landscape a little.

The boys a bit more fleeced out in December 2009. And waiting for food.

Finally I noticed something…way beyond the road was the cattle farm across the street. Tiny brown dots moved slowly across the landscape. Dots that would normally be obscured by trees with leaves on them, but not in winter. Silverton was freaking out over the cows that were at minimum a half a mile away. Very dangerous cows, I’m sure. It was hard to tell so we just gave Silverton the benefit of the doubt on that. He’s nothing if not a very diligent and thorough herd leader.

I’ve been working my way through their fleeces from this year’s shearing and have been really pleased with how much fiber I have to work with from my own boys. I used Cinnamon’s fleece up fairly quickly — most of it was processed and turned into yarn within a couple of months of them being here, mostly because that was a period of unemployment for me so when I wasn’t job searching I was processing fleece. I still have a brown grocery bag of the combing waste I saved from making combed top, though, and most of this should work well for some carded preparation. Because his fleece is white it’s perfect for dyeing, and having used most of it up so quickly I now know that when we get a couple more alpacas (eventually) one of them will need to be white so that I have more white fleece to use for dyeing.

I have about a quarter of the bag of Silverton’s fleece left to wash before processing, and I think his fleece might be largest in quantity of all the boys’. This is great because his fleece is just amazing (all three of the boys have really great fleece, but the color and hand of Silverton’s is definitely at the top of the list). I’ve been very selective about what I do with his fleece so that I don’t run out of it so quickly on small experimental projects like I did with Cinnamon, and so far this year I’ve hand-combed some of it into top (this will likely become a small aount of yarn for the lady who does Uber’s accounting, who saw Silverton’s picture and fell in love with his color and has commissioned some yarn from him), processed a few ounces for a fellow spinner who bought some and apparently enjoyed it quite a bit, and the rest I’ve been drumcarding, combining it with a little bit of merino wool that I’ve dyed in various shades of blue and some silky white Tencel. I’ll spin these silvery batts with a tiny hint of blue in them into a sweater for myself, which I can’t wait to make. I don’t know how much of his fleece total that will take up but I’m anxious to know so that I have a mental measure of how many various knitted items can be made from my boys’ fleeces.

I’ve processed and spun about one-third of Benz’s fleece so far for another commissioned project for a coworker, who wants some scarf yarn (a two-ply yarn with one strand red and one strand black). This project shouldn’t take much of his fleece, and once it’s done I’m going to hoard some of his black fleece because I have plans for it: handspun sock yarn for myself. My feet are always cold and I’ve worn most of my handknit socks out (although they did last a number of years) so it’s time to make myself some new ones. Alpaca is three times warmer than wool so this is a perfect resource. I’ll be combining about 40% of his black fleece with 40% of some Falkland wool I have and 20% of some blending nylon for durability. This should provide some really resilient, durable, and warm winter socks.

And speaking of spinning, this has been a landmark year in that regard for me as well. I learned to spin sometime around 2001 and for several years I spun yarn unintentionally — that is to say that I bought fiber that I thought was pretty or felt nice and I spun it however it decided to come out and then figured out how I wanted to use it later. In the last year or so I’ve been refining my technique so that I spin more intentionally, creating yarns with a specific end-goal in mind, and I feel like I’m actually achieving that. I feel like I’m achieving it so much that I can’t remember the last time I bought yarn for a project (save for a souvenir skein that I bought in Cannon Beach last year) because now when I think about something I want to knit my very first thought is, “okay, let’s see…what do I need to do to create the yarn that I need?” I don’t even think about walking into a yarn store.

And that feeling is actually more awesome than you’d think it would be. Like sitting down to a plate of veggies that you grew yourself, you get this incredible sense of accomplishment and self-sufficiency when you want to knit something as useful and utilitarian as a sweater or a pair of socks and you’re able to control every detail of the resource you’ll use to make it. The batts I’m making from Silverton’s fleece are a great example: I’m blending in just enough merino to add the memory of wool, and I’ve dyed it in a couple of shades of blue that blend well with his silver fleece, giving it a silvery-blue hue. I’m adding Tencel for silkiness and durability, and I’m adding these things in amounts that I get to control. Because I’m making drumcarded batts and because I plan to spin the yarn long draw, the resulting yarn will be woolen (rather than worsted), giving it loft and warmth. And finally I plan to 3-ply it so that I can work cables into the final knitted sweater and have them pop. I could search yarn stores all over and never find a single yarn with all the properties I want in it to get the result I’m looking for.

And now for a final unrelated note: if you’re reading this on my actual site you’ll notice that I’ve completely changed the design and I’m now using a simple, minimalist WordPress template. I converted my blog tool from Moveable Type to WordPress and decided that the over-designed look I had before just wasn’t very easy to work with or extensible. I really only use my site as a blogging tool anyway so rather than dropping WordPress files into an over-designed site it’s simply easier to use WordPress all the way. I plan to add a module to show my Etsy shop offerings and, oh! This is a great time to show off the logo I’ve been working on to sell our handspun alpaca products:

The Glorious Grazers! Inspired by WWII nose art and Looney Tunes.

I’m happy with how it’s turning out so far and it’s been a terrific stretch of my artistic abilities — I can’t draw at all, but Matt was able to gently coach me through the process of getting what he knew I wanted out of my terrible initial sketch. He would check each of my iterations and then make suggestions on things to try on the next pass, and this is the final form pending some feedback I’d like to get from two awesome Uber artists I work with, Eka and Raf. We’ll see what they say.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Despite us feeling that we’re not really an actual farm per se one of the questions that Jody posed to me when we bought our boys was what our farm name is so that she can make the appropriate transfer in the boys’ registration documents. Wow, a farm name. A farm name? We have to actually come up with a farm name now! Of course we’d joked for a while about what our fantasy farm name would be, throwing around ideas, most of them silly and not something we’d really consider but a few of them worthwhile. We talked about it like people talk about the names they’ll give their children years before they actually have any. Then suddenly that once-unattainable idea of owning real alpacas was suddenly not so unattainable and we actually went and bought some and now, whoa, we have to come up with a farm name! Quick!
Much to my dad’s delight we had kicked around the idea of calling ourselves 12 Bar Ranch. Back when I lived in Wyoming I noticed that every ranch seemed to have some variation on a bar theme — Vee Bar Ranch, Two Bars Ranch, you get the picture. Being that we love blues and it runs strong in the family we thought it would be cute and funny to name our ranch 12 Bar. You know, as in twelve bar blues? And of course we’d name all our alpacas after famous blues artists: Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Johnny Winter…and the icing on the cake would have to be, of course, an alpaca born on our own farm who we’d name Rock n’ Roll, and whose mother would naturally have been named Blues.
(That thing about talking about kids and plotting things out way early? Yeah, I wasn’t kidding.)
Anyway, the idea is great. But I’m not sold on it. (Sorry, Dad. I know you’re disappointed.) It’s a stretch. But there is another idea that I’d been kicking around that I thought lent itself more to yarn labels, which honestly is really the main way I’d be using this farm name anyway. That idea was to steal from World War II-era squadron names and nose art.
Nearly every alpaca farm name I’ve come across has been the same: [Geographic Location] Alpacas. We didn’t want to do that. With both of us having experience in advertizing, marketing, and graphic design we knew we could do better than that. I’ve always, always loved WWII-era nose art and the awesome legacy of squadron names. What could be more awesome than a logo patterned after some great nose art and a cool squadron name to go with it?
I sketched out a very rough version of a logo based on one of the best non-sexy-ladies nose art imagery I’ve come across (hey, I’ve got no problem with sexy-lady nose art, it’s great; I just don’t really think it applies to alpacas, you know?): Maloney’s Pony. (My version is an alpaca chomping on a cigar, an alpaca that looks really to lead his boys into battle.)
Now to come up with a name.
I figured a good place to start was to look up a list of squad names. And wow, there’s a lot more than I thought there was. Seems like every military group of units had a name for themselves. I gathered up the best of what I found, the ones that seemed like they might spark something interesting, and these are the ones — real names — that I saved:

COMMON:
The 12th Roughnecks
The 51st Roughnecks
BRITISH:
The King’s own
The Kaiser’s Own
The Fighting 51st
The Glorious Glosters
The Dirty Dozen
The Dirty Half Hundred
The Iron Regiment
The Havercake Lads
The Lancashire Lads
The Ragged Brigade
The Holy Boys
The Ramnuggar Boys
Rusty Buckles
The Saucy Seventh
Titchburns Own
CANADIAN:
The Crazy Eights
The Dirty Thirty
Broo’s Crazy Devils
The Horny Lornies

Haha, the Horny Lornies.
Anyway, this list sparked a few ideas:

Trail Grazers
The Glorious Grazers
Inglorious Grazers
The Humming 51st
The Humming Dozen
The Dirty Herd

I’m pretty partial right now to The Glorious Grazers. Inglorious Grazers is great but it’s probably stealing too much from the recent Tarantino movie.
I’m continuing to mull it over a bit before I decide on anything in case any further ideas pop out. You’re welcome to contribute, with the caveat that I cannot promise you any shares of massive alpaca farm profits as there will not be any, so ideas should be contributed at your charity and peril.

We shamelessly lured them into the barn with their daily mineral treat. We’ve been insisting on feeding them their minerals in the barn each day for about a month now, and their hay is in the barn so they’ve already become accustomed to being in there (they were hesitant about it when they first got here). Matt hung out in the pasture while I banged the can to get them in there, and once I walked them to the back he shut the door. As soon as they heard that door begin to close their heads whipped around and started humming. I almost felt guilty for duping them like that. Silverton and Cinnamon immediately began searching out an escape route. Benz, on the other hand, was perfectly content to keep eating his minerals; he could not have cared less.
We decided to begin with him since we knew he’d be the easiest. Going into this, I assumed that all three of them would fight us at least a little bit, with Benz probably being the least difficult. I was wrong. Benz not only didn’t even put up a fight, he practically put the halter on himself. Since Matt felt the most comfortable doing the actual trimming we agreed ahead of time that I would hold the boys and he would trim their nails, so I put the halter on Benz and got the fitting right, and then stood there with my arm around his neck, ready and waiting for the moment to come when I knew he’d buck and fight to get out of our grip. It never came. We didn’t even have to chase him down to get the halter on him, he just stood there and let us wrap our arms around him. It took about one minute for Matt to trim up his toenails, and during the ordeal Silverton kept searching out an escape route that he was sure he’d missed while Cinnamon hummed up a storm so loud you’d have thought we were going to kill him. At one point Cinnamon came up to Benz and sniffed his nose and face as if to say, “don’t worry, buddy, I’ll get you out! I swear! We’ll avenge this horror!” And Benz’s response seemed to be, “whatever, dude, I’m getting a pedicure. Really, it’s not that big a deal.”
Benz was done and easy, so we thought Cinnamon was our next best bet. We sort of assumed Silverton, being the most shy, would be the most difficult, but again — we were wrong. We got a hold of Cinnamon pretty easily and managed to get the halter on him fairly easily as well. Once we got it on, however, he really made it clear he wasn’t happy. He bucked and fought against the halter, pulling this way and that, before we could even get near his feet. I checked to be sure the halter fit him okay and wasn’t cutting anything off but it seemed to be all right. We tried to firmly hold him into a balanced standing position but every time Matt would get his foot he’d buck and fight so badly that he’d throw himself and me into the barn walls. So then we tried walking him around the inside of the barn with his halter on via the lead for a minute or two, hoping to get him feeling okay with it. He seemed fine but then when we went back to trimming he kicked and bucked and nearly knocked me down. And when he wasn’t doing that he was cushing (going down onto the ground with his legs under him), which makes it impossible to trim his nails.
We went into this assuming that it wouldn’t go smoothly the first time and agreed right off the bat that if we didn’t get all the boys today, we’d be okay with that. What we didn’t expect was that the boy we wouldn’t get to would be Cinnamon. We took off his halter and let go of the idea that today he’d have his toenails trimmed. So we moved on to Silverton, who turned out to be fairly easy to hold on to and halter — he really didn’t resist us holding on to him, and he was perfectly fine with the halter, only humming a tiny bit as I fussed with his fitting. We had some minor struggles with him at first, but after maneuvering him into a space where he couldn’t really buck around too much he pretty much stood still and let me hold on to him while Matt did his front legs.
It was here we noticed that Silverton’s nails look a lot different than we’d been noticing. He’s got a pretty big crack in one of them on his front foot, and we noticed that as he slammed his feet onto the concrete floor of the barn trying to keep us from trimming them a couple of his back nails split and broke along the sides. While I was too busy holding him to see, Matt said that his nails looked like they were in pretty bad shape. Fortunately their previous owners Don and Jo are always available with questions, so we’ll be checking with him to see how normal this is. He’s not limping and appears to have no problems at all with his feet so I can only assume that either this is simply how his nails are (how many of us humans have dry, splitty nails naturally? Raise your hands) or that for whatever reason they’ve split and cracked a little but they’re not hurting him.
Matt moved on to his back legs and managed to get most of the nails trimmed on one of his back legs, but the other leg Silverton simply refused to let get trimmed. This one had a particularly splitty and cracked toenail so we’re wondering if maybe there was some sensitivity there. We tried all kinds of tricks to get it trimmed but it just wasn’t going to happen today, so we unhaltered him, opened the barn doors, and let the boys back out into the pasture.
All things considered it was successful, or at least we felt like it was. For our first time without any supervision or help from other alpaca owners we were able to get them each haltered and get most of the toenail trimming down. Since Cinnamon the Drama Queen was anxious even from the haltering stage my guess is that he’s just not comfortable with us haltering him right now, so we’re going to begin haltering him a little more regularly without any other things attached to it — just halter him, walk him around a little bit, make him stand while we examine his feet, and then let him go. Since it’s been three months that we’ve had them we can’t let his nails go too far before getting trimmed, but we’re going to try again next weekend and we figure we’ll just keep trying regularly until he finally figures out that we’re not trying to savagely murder him.

Silverton rarely helps out with this but today apparently he decided to chip in and began picking up pellets next to Cinnamon, who apparently saw this as encroaching on his rightful ownership to the dregs of feed. Then Cinnamon did something we haven’t seen him actually do before: he made an attempt to mount Silverton.
Naturally you can bet that Silverton took a little bit of umbrage to this. So he turned around and, in a gesture that clearly said, “dude, I do not swing that way and I’d be happy if you kept your advances to yourself” began to growl and wrestle with him. This escalated into full-on up-on-hind-legs body slams against each other, neck wrapping, you name it, with corresponding sound effects the likes of which we’d not heard yet. All of us out there stopped and watched, not really sure how serious it was.
It went on for less than a minute but was definitely the most aggressive behavior I’d witnessed in the boys. I was mildly concerned but also knew that, from Don and Jody’s past advice, boys will be boys and frequently they’ll wrestle, posture, shove, and generally act like teenage boys with something to prove. And it usually ends pretty quickly — the only times you have to worry are when you see torn or bleeding ears, in which case the fighting alpacas (now if that doesn’t sound like a great name for a high school football team I don’t know what does) need to be separated for some cooling off and their fighting teeth obviously need some checking.
Despite my mild concern one thing made me laugh, and that was Benz’s reaction to this whole thing. He had absolutely nothing to do with the argument but he half-heartedly joined in with a couple of weak body slams, kind of moving in and out of the fight as if he didn’t know whose side he should be on or if he should even be on a side at all, but somehow felt obligated to join in. Benz is clearly a lover, not a fighter.
The whole thing was over in less than a minute. Silverton and Cinnamon stood side by side with their mouths open (after fighting alpacas mouths will frequently be slightly open and sometimes they’ll appear to be frothing a bit), with Silverton ahead of Cinnamon. After a few seconds all three boys began walking to the corner of the pasture by the road with Silverton in the lead and Cinnamon and Benz so close behind him and to his side that I wondered if they were kind of pushing him into the corner, which is where he eventually went, or if they were just following his lead really closely for some reason. And then, as if it never happened, they all cushed in their favorite spots under the tree next to each other, and that was that.
When you own dogs and cats it’s usually pretty easy to tell who “wins” a domination fight. With cats it’s the one who flips the other one, WWE-style, on its back and pins it down. (When Pico was just a small kitten and Sam was a fully-grown adult, Sam thoroughly enjoyed luring Pico in for what seemed like an easy fight, taunting him by exposing her stomach, only to grab him, flip him, and pin him down. Unfortunately for her he seems to love this game…except that now he has five pounds on her, is taller and stronger, and still thinks he’s a kitten and that it’s his turn to flip Sam over and show her whose boss.)
But Matt and I don’t know all the ins and outs of alpaca behavior yet and wondered who won this fight, if there really is such a thing. The dynamics of the boys’ relationship didn’t change: Silverton and Cinnamon seem to vie for leadership a little bit but they rarely fight at all, and Silverton seems like the “real” herd leader most of the time. Did Siverton successfully tell Cinnamon that he’s still the boss? Did Cinnamon actually knock Silverton down a little in the pecking order? How many matches are there in the regular season? Is there a playoff? And more importantly, who has a licensing deal with the sportswear companies? The answers to these questions are pretty crucial as we’re hoping we can enter the winning alpaca into Brock Lesnar’s division, because that jerk needs a real takedown. Seriously.
So there’s your question, alpaca owner-readers. What exactly happened? Was it just a whole lotta posturing amounting to nothing?
In non-fighting events the boys continue to provide hilarious, cute, and sweet moments. Silverton seems to really be warming up to us, especially me (since I’m the one who’s home right now and tend to go out and do the pasturely duties). While doing fly trap maintenance the other day he cushed just a few feet from me, something he’s never done before. Up to this point he’s usually pretty watchful of me, being sure to stay several arm’s lengths away from me. On Sunday I cleaned the pasture and with the sun shining the boys all fell over into Dead Alpaca Pose (lying in the sun on their side, looking for all the world like they’d fallen over dead of a heart attack…except for the flicking ears above the grass). I had to maneuver around them with the wheelbarrow and Silverton barely blinked at me even though I could practically have stepped on him. While all the boys are equally cute and sweet, there’s something that’s especially nice about watching Silverton — with his one blind eye, who’s always the one being a gentleman off to the side, politely waiting his turn, being a little shy — start to warm up more.
Even Cinnamon with his willful nature can be sweet and cute. Today I dumped out their water and as soon as I turned on the hose to refill it Cinnamon and Benz were practically on top of me, obviously wanting a belly bath. I turned on the hose for them and they were so close to me that I actually got a bit of a belly bath as well. Cinnamon suddenly cushed right there on the spot, so close to me that he was literally nearly on my feet. It was such a shock to see him do this that I almost thought for a moment that he was sick or something was wrong with him. But then, as if realizing that he’s not supposed to be that comfortable with me, he suddenly got up and moved a couple of feet back.
Benz and Cinnamon now tag-team me when bringing out their hay. They know now that it comes from the room in the back of the barn, and when they see me go in they crowd the door so that when I come out I have no choice but to let them pull hay out of my hands as I’m carrying it to their feeders.
Over the past few days I’ve spent some time out at the table working on fiber preparation, and each time the boys migrate up to the fence nearby, cush, and just seem to enjoy hanging out a few feet away from me, sometimes sunning themselves, sometimes just watching me work while they chew their cud. It’s pretty sweet.

Now that our boys have been here at their new home for just under a month we’ve had a chance to really observe them and see how they’re getting used to the new digs, and also how their relationships with both us and each other are playing out. That’s been really fun and there have been some interesting developments compared to our expectations of how they’d behave.
At their previous home, Cinnamon and Benz were quite used to each other having grown up together and having spent a lot of time in the pasture together. Silverton, on the other hand, had been relegated to the goat pasture — despite having been gelded, he still wanted to bed all the ladies and fight all the boys, so he simply couldn’t get along with anyone (well, I’m sure he thought he was getting along with the ladies, but it sounded like they were getting just a little tired of his constant advances).
When we decided which alpacas we were most interested in, we knew that Cinnamon and Benz would be the easy choice: as 4-H animals they were highly socialized with people as well as with each other. But we were also interested in Silverton — his fleece was just lovely and he was so unique-looking to me. But we worried about whether or not he’d be able to get along with the other two boys given his bad boy reputation. So we asked Don and Jody about it and they decided to put the three boys with each other to see how they’d do. And it turned out they did just fine. Apparently Silverton’s time with the goats had curbed his bad boy ways and he was learning to get along with his fellow alpacas.
Being that he’s the oldest and had the reputation of being the pushiest, we assumed on bringing them home that Silverton was the natural herd leader. And mostly that has been the case: where he goes, the other boys follow. Silverton was also the first to do his alarm call when he saw something suspicious, and Don had told us that that’s the herd leader’s job.
To our amusement, however, Cinnamon has shown a tendency to be the bossier one and appears to be sharing herd leader duties with — or stealing them from — Silverton. We’ve noticed that about fifty percent of the time Cinnamon will decide to head off to a different part of the pasture and the other boys will follow. Benz appears to always be the swing vote, however. He’s the most docile of the boys but appears to be the one who picks who to follow first. If Silverton walks off and Benz follows, the Cinnamon goes. If Cinnamon walks off and Benz follows, Silverton will follow. If Benz chooses to stay with the other one in either case, the first alpaca doesn’t seem to go very far. Occasionally it will be Cinnamon who does the alarm call if there’s something to be concerned about (like the housecat that they’re absolutely sure is going to eat them, although they haven’t been alarm-calling in several days for that).
At first Silverton was clearly the loner of the group, probably because he’d been so used to being with the goats before. Cinnamon and Benz frequently spent their time close to each other while Silverton was content to be several feet away. Initially at feeding time Cinnamon and Benz crowded each other while Silverton kept his distance, having to be enticed to come any closer for food. Whenever people came into the pasture Cinnamon and Benz naturally walked up but Silverton would stay away, his head up with extra alertness.
But since they’ve been here the dynamic has gradually changed in interesting ways. With only three of them I’m guessing that the small herd size has forced them to become closer socially. Benz and Silverton appear to be better buddies now: during their belly baths the other day the two of them stood side by side for a moment and then looked each other and then, to my surprise, touched noses in what seemed like a sweet gesture of social bonding. Being that I know very little about alpaca social dynamics I honestly don’t know if that was the case — it could very well have been a toe-to-toe stand off for all I know or it could have meant absolutely nothing, but it really didn’t seem like that, especially since only a week or so before Silverton seemed genuinely concerned at Benz’s well-being after Benz laid down in the sun and gently poked his nose into the side of Benz’s face while humming. (Benz, however, was quite annoyed at Silverton for disrupting his nap.) Benz also seems to spend equal time sitting with both Silverton and Cinnamon now.
While Silverton has become sort of the hidden sweetheart of the group, Cinnamon has become bossier at feeding time. We’ve been feeding the three of them by hand so they can get used to us (rather than out of troughs in the barn) and Cinnamon is usually so busy lifting his head and making his pre-spit bossy face, moving back and forth between Silverton and Benz in an attempt to keep them both from eating what he clearly considers to be his food, that he forgets to eat himself. It’s clearly all talk and no walk, however, as most days Benz and Silverton simply ignore him and keep eating. Some days Cinnamon gets a little spitty here (not the green cud spit that means he means business in keeping you away, but the puff-of-air spit that comes first as a warning) but we’re told some alpacas are simply bossy. It’s not genuine aggression — that would mean biting and attempts at jumping on us, and these boys clearly aren’t going to be doing any of that. Cinnamon strikes us more as the playground bully trying to steal your lunch out of your hand. Unsuccessfully, really. He only really shows this bossiness at feeding time and it’s always directed at the other two boys, never at us. Occasionally I see him lifting his head and making his bossy face at the boys in the pasture when they’re eating closely together or when they’re standing close together during belly bath time, but it always looks pretty half-hearted. They don’t even wrestle each other, really.
We do find we need to gently push back on Cinnamon occasionally during feeding time. Sometimes I feed them by myself and sometimes I wait until Matt gets home, and if I’m by myself it can be hard to feed three alpacas with only two hands. I usually grab a scoopful of food and get two handfuls first for Benz and Cinnamon since every time they eat those two act as if they’ll never see the feed again. Cinnamon does his bossy face, occasionally spitting air, and then finally figures out that Benz is still eating and so, hey, he’d better eat, too. He’s willful enough that he tends to crowd me if I feed them by myself — the other day I found myself backed up against the barn wall with Cinnamon showing no signs of backing up. So I’ve started to take a firm but gentle hand with him at feeding time: I take my arm and slowly push back against his neck, forcing him to back up, when he crowds me a little too much. It seems to work for at least a few seconds, then he’s back again, making his bossy face. It’s pretty funny.
Silverton, showing his emerging sweetheart side, is frequently content to wait his turn. Up until recently I usually had to reach past the other boys to try and get him to eat out of my hand, at which point he’d very cautiously crane his neck, grab some food, and then scuttle back again. If I had to push Cinnamon out of the way Silverton used to get a little spooked and jump back. Lately, though, this no longer fazes him and he uses it as a chance to get closer so he can actually eat. And the other day he even took a bolder step: I crooked the scoop in my right armpit and fed Benz and Cinnamon out of my hands, and then turned to look and saw Silverton with his face buried in the scoop right in my armpit. The little bugger. It’s been really fun seeing Silverton get more comfortable with us as he’s been the most skittish. He’s certainly not going to be letting us manhandle him easily any time soon, but it’s been rewarding seeing him — and really all three boys — get more used to us being near them and touching them.
Benz is the biggest softie of the group. He’s clearly the sweetest and most social, always coming up when new people show up. He frequently lets me walk up to him and stretch my hand out to scratch his chin, mainly because he’s hoping there’s food in my hand so he’ll only let me do that for as long as he needs to determine that there is, in fact, no food in my hand and I have cruelly duped him. (Then he looks at me with those big, black-rimmed cow eyes as if to say, “why must you tease?”) But at feeding time he’ll usually stick around for a minute or two after the food’s gone — surely hoping for more — and will tolerate a quick rub of his neck, always looking at us with those huge brown eyes as if to say, “you…wouldn’t have any more food hidden in your pockets, would you?”
Because we don’t have as much direct reason to physically handle our alpacas — haltering them and leading them — as larger operations would, we figure we should take time to do it occasionally for the sake of doing it for a couple of reasons: first, so that we ourselves get more comfortable haltering them for them times we do need it, like vet visits, toenail trimming time, etc., and secondly so that they get more comfortable with us handling them. So later today (when Matt’s home to help me) I plan to start with Cinnamon and get him in the barn so I can halter him, check his toenails (they won’t need trimming yet but I want to look), and walk him for a little bit on the lead around the pasture. Maybe that will help curb some of his bossy ways. Let’s hope I don’t get spit on.