Tuesday, July 23, 2013
Summer Update
Another wonderful cria season “we had 3 dark fawn females" Zoom Zoom, Bonnie Blue and Halley, 1 white fluff ball female named Zemma and two silver grey tuxedo males, Sheridan and Khan. All have done very well and are growing so fast. Three of the crias arrived on a shearing weekend, so that slowed down the process a bit, but our helpers loved being able to watch the first steps of the crias.
Shearing in May this year was a bit more challenging thanks to Mother Nature's mood swings. One weekend we were very hot the following weekend it was very cold and we had snow and were scrambling to find warm clothes for our helpers who live in the warmer climate of GTA. We also had to find children's jackets for our crias, thank goodness for the Penny Wise second hand store in Markdale.
We are very grateful to our family and friends who help us with shearing, from the young ones who hold the alpacas head and reassure them, to the ladies that prefer to work inside rather than in the barn and cook our meals for us, to the ones who help and get right down and dirty. Everybody is needed and appreciated. We thank you and during these terribly hot and humid days our alpacas thank you.
We have just received our first woven area rugs back from the mill and we are very pleased with the finished results. The rugs arrived on Tuesday and we sold our first one at the Flesherton Farmer's Market on Saturday.
We have a few other fibre projects in mind that we would like to get working on but there are never enough hours in the day.
We have now expanded to attending three farmers markets' Shelburne on Thursday afternoons, Meaford on Friday afternoons and Flesherton on Saturday mornings. We always bring along two of our alpacas to meet the market visitors. Please be sure to stop by and say hello.
In June we had a group of seniors from the Adult Day Program in Dufferin County come for a visit. We set up a spinning display and our store right in the barn. It was an enjoyable day. We also hosted two tours of accommodation and business owners, as well as many visits from others anxious to meet the alpacas up close and to buy some wonderful alpaca products.
Remember to check out our facebook page, it is updated with photos more often than the Farm News.
Have a pronking day! Carolyn & Doug