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It's Officially Spring

(Mostly) great news on the sheep front - they are sheared, and there are babies! Last year we didn't get the sheep sheared until sometime in May, and I had to milk them fully-coated for a month or so. I did NOT want to do that again, and for several other reasons it's just better to get them sheared before they lamb. Their beginning due date was around the 1st of March, so we were getting pretty antsy to get the shearer lined up by late February. Fortunately, everything came together suddenly after weeks of playing phone tag, and the shearer came Sunday, March 4.

Soap & Wool

In my busy life, dealing with alpaca fleece always ends up taking a back seat to a myriad of other priorities - not from lack of interest, just lack of time and it seems like everything else is more pressing.  It takes something specific to suddenly bring fleece to the top of the to-do list, and that happened about 2 weeks ago. 

Knit, Knit, Knit

I said I would post a knitting update, and I should - I've actually been knitting a lot!  While that last month of pregnancy is pretty miserable in virtually all other respects, it is nice since I get to basically sit on the couch all day and knit, and now, with a nursing infant I am still spending large amounts of time sitting on the couch (I learned with Liam how to stack nursing pillows to nurse hands-free.  I used to read, knit, and nurse simultaneously when he was little!).

Soap, Soap, Soap!

I was sitting here thinking that I needed to write a blog - but about what?  There's so many topics, even just things we've done in the last week, but I don't want to get into a cycle of "this weekend we did this and this and this...)  I'd rather do a better job addressing single subjects at a time - and then I realized I haven't talked about soap in a while - there's been too many animal and other things going on (and still are!).  But I didn't want to neglect my soap!

Shearing Day 2015

Shearing was great! Caleb took the day off, and he set up fences and pens while I spun some yarn, (trying to get through a bit more of last year's before the avalanche!), and we got the alpacas separated out from the cattle. It took a bit – the alpacas are often all together, near the gate, but as soon as we'd open it the cows would just come running.

April is for Alpacas

Most of the year our alpacas are practically invisible. We catch them occasionally to check their coats for mites and to preventatively medicate them against meningeal worms, but otherwise they just hang out in the pastures.  When April rolls around, though, it's a different story!  Especially this spring in particular, actually.  It was still March, but a few weeks ago, while browsing local online classified ads for a tom turkey, Caleb ran across a farm selling their small herd of alpacas for a truly bargain price.