End of an Era: Alpaca Farewell

All good things must end eventually, and thus we decided to shut down the alpaca operation this summer. A combination of changing interests and longer absences this summer made us face the difficult decision of giving farming a rest. We are grateful for 13.5 happy years as alpaca farmers.

A series of "last" photos from June 7. The last beautiful dining done on the pasture. Dark Star is looking regal and elegant in his shaggy winter coat. 

Peggy-O is taking one last nap in the shade at Shady Grove. Her fluffy face is looking forward to a shearing!

Sweet fluff nugget Cherise is happily munching on her favorite grass snack. 

Lounging in the sunshine. 

The last time the ladies are lined up to come into the barn after a long day on the pasture. 

Waiting for pick-up in the barn on June 8. Our friends at Big Pine Acre Alpacas agreed to adopt the three alpacas into their herd. We bought Peggy-O from them in 2021 and they were delighted to have her back with some friends.

Peggy-O insisting on leaving the way she came, by sitting down and not budging!

If we resume animal farming in the future, this is the type of trailer I would love to own. It has two pens so you can transport both male and female animals in the same trip. Cherise gets a helpful lift into the trailer first.

Dark Star is trying to go the wrong direction. A true home boy. 

Final glances, sniffs, and hums from Dark Star inside the trailer. This picture breaks my heart. He was our first cria and a sturdy friend.

Another good-bye from Peggy-O as we load the remaining bales of hay and grain bags into the pickup bed.

And thus concludes our farming adventure, with three alpacas humming good-bye all the way down the driveway. What an amazing experience with the incredible memories they provided! Even though they are no longer living with us, we have hundreds of pounds of raw fiber and lots of yarn to remember them by. Gratitude!

Shady Grove Alpacas - October 31, 2010 - June 8, 2024

Great Pyrenees guard dog - Tenny

Suri Alpaca Foundation Herd - Bella Oak, 'Greta, & Moonstar

Cria #1 in 2011 - Dark Star (mom - 'Greta)

Cria #2 in 2012 - Cassidy (mom - Bella Oak)

Cria #3 in 2012 - The Eleven (mom - 'Greta)

Cria #4 in 2015 - Ripple (mom - 'Greta)

Purchased in 2020 - Ramble on Rose

Purchased in 2021, first Huacaya alpaca - Peggy-O

Cria #5 in 2022 - Cherise (mom - Peggy-O)

Year-End Alpaca Gifts

At the end of the school year, students are likely to show up with extraordinary alpaca-related thank you gifts. This year was no exception.

The first gift was from a senior whose grandmother crocheted this beautiful set of alpacas for me! They remind me of the late Moonstar and her younger "nephew" Dark Star. This student is far from forgettable, but this pair seals the memory forever. 

The second gift was from a new 6th grade violist. During her recess hour, she learned quilling and decided to make an alpaca. Derpy is clearly another Moonstar reference, as I'm sure I told stories in class! Although "Zazzy" brings to mind the Big Bang Theory episode in which Sheldon gets too many cats, names them after famous scientists, except for the one that has a "zazzy" personality!

Here is a detail of the quilling. So much work! Lovely.

Finally, my birthday is close to the end of school and my mother-in-law found these amazing llama/alpaca slippers at LL Beans and got them for me as a gift. I saw her the day after school let out, so it also felt like a year-end gift. They have been super comfy to lounge in during summer break!

 Summer is crashing to a close at the moment, but big thank you's for all the thoughtful gifts!

Syzygy

SYZYGY: noun, a conjunction or opposition, especially the moon with the sun. "The planets were aligned in syzygy."

April 8, 2024, a day I had been eagerly awaiting for several years, came together most beautifully: e-learning day at school, three day visit from two besties from my Colorado years, and the perfect weather for a total solar eclipse!

The weekend started with two airport runs (thanks, airline screw-ups), and so we started the weekend in Indianapolis at the the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art and wandering around downtown and along the canal. 

This incredible carving of a bird in the museum was made out of a musk ox horn. 

And the musk ox carved out of stone. 

And incredible paintings! This one called Stillwater Crossing by Daniel Smith was so unbelievably life-like. What a treasure!

Sunday started with a huge risk: baking popovers with and without gluten. Boy, did they pop!! The secret - don’t open the oven door… They we delicious!

Alpaca visits after breakfast! They weren’t quite as hungry, but we all had patience to hand feed them until they slowly finished all their grain. 

On Monday, the weather looked great for viewing in the neighborhood, but the continuous eye on the NYT up-to-the-second weather map around lunch indicated that we were better off going with the original plan A to avoid slight cloud cover at the house. We raced to the Cardinal Greenway bike trail and hiked to the center of totality near Losantville. 

We set up next to the road and waited, enjoyed, and were awed by the changes we experienced. The light started to get very weird the closer we got to totality. It felt like something was on my glasses and needed to be wiped away. 

The air cooled significantly. I was hot in the sweater initially, but almost wished for a jacket the darker it got. The wind picked up a bit. We started hearing bugs get more active in the grass and peepers in a pond started chirping. The following images were taken on a phone with eclipse glasses in front of the lens. 

And then it got truly DARK 360° around us! Twilight was on every horizon all around the edges of the fields. We were super close to the road, and traffic stopped for the duration of darkness. I caught the light disappearing in a 360 video I took. The phone camera lightened everything, so the feeling of the darkness was not caught completely. It was amazing to see the solar flares on the edges of the sun, a complete surprise! The whole experience was magical and difficult to capture in words and images. It was awe-inspiring and beautiful! My whole school was elated for the rest of the week. Remarkable and special!

And just as soon as the sun came out on the other side of the moon, daylight was once again super bright. The change was immediate, even getting dark featured a longer time with the murky light. 

Small joke! 😉

And a few maps. The small purple “x” shows where we watched the eclipse. 

And the years each part of Indiana had seen a total eclipse before April 8:

Finally, a video of the totality by the Ball State Planetarium.

Several photos are the works of EB and NW. Thanks for sharing the best weekend with me!
 

Friends, Foes, and Flowers

The Herd made some new friends this past weekend! They were excited to get some grain snacks. The girls are looking wistfully at Dark Star’s good fortune. 

Not to worry though, Cherise stepped right up for her turn at the bucket. Peggy-O did not partake, though it may be a bit hard to see with that mop on her head.

One thing they all agreed upon was that those dogs are under suspicion. The alpacas are standing guard and have a few choice scary clickety-clicks to share with the four-legged guests. 

But not to worry, those girls were tied up safely at the other end of the pasture, enjoying a snooze and the occasional wrestling! (And super adorable. I did not capture a still shot, sadly.)

Finally, here are some spring flowers to mark their dates of bloom. March 25

March 10

March 15

Enjoy the changing season!

Sock Repair Complete!

Turns out that sock repair has a long prep time before one actually gets to knit. Separating the part with the hole from the rest of the sock was fraught with partially felted wool and, of course, tiny stitches to pick up. 

But as you can see, the results are two perfectly serviceable pairs of socks. Not sure my sock knitting rate is as quick as the Yarn Harlot, because 14 rows on the striped sock and 28 decrease rows on the purple toe took a lot longer than I have time to knit in two days. Knitting 10 rows on two socks every day is a good starting point, but maybe I only need to do five  

It took very little time before China Cat Sunflower found these comfy knits to lay down on!

And create mayhem by playing with them during the photo shoot!

 I’m off to find some matching sock needle sets and select my first pattern and yarn…

Imminent Sock Repair

 Happy Valentines Day! I half-heartedly (pun intended) tried to knit all of my friends some Little Hearts, but alas, only two are half finished. I definitely have more friends, so that idea will be on hold for another year. 

Inspired by the Yarn Harlot’s 2024 resolution to knit 10 rows on two socks every day, I decided that maybe I’ll try the idea on a few socks that need repair. The striped ones need about 14 rows reknit where the washing machine chewed the top, and the purple ones have about 25 rows with decreases to repair a hole in the toe. 

It also turns out that my stash contains 9 brilliant skeins of sock yarn. If the Yarn Harlot can finish a pair of socks in 22 days with the aforementioned method, maybe I’ve found a way to become a sock knitter after all.