Shear Perfection

Shearing is now done until October 27, when all of the angora goats and some ram lambs will be shorn.

Thanksgiving is getting her hair cut by Nathan Good of Shear Perfection. He did a superb job. No stress for the animals or for me (most important!) While shearing Maryland, the cria born May 5th, he mention that "he" had a lovely fleece. Based on how he squatted to pee and no obvious testicles, I thought I had a girl. I do not breed with the intentions of papering my alpacas, so I will keep him, if I don't find a buyer. His fleece is as lovely as Thanksgiving's so with plenty of pasture, I am not under pressure.

Nathan was also willing to grind down teeth, so Jennifer went to the dentist without leaving home!

Marc held Winter, Maryland's mom, so she would know where her baby was. I think of the alpacas as large animals, but they are not once shorn and especially being held by Marc!

I am still doing lots of freeform - between spinning, washing fleeces and gardening. I am also checking out the various knitting and spinning groups in the area. So far, the spinning group associated with the Baltimore Weaver's guild has my vote. I plan to check out the Columbia Sip and Knit group that meets next Tuesday at the King's mall.

I have signed up to be a vendor at Spin Quest on August 25th. You can find more information by going to Spin Artiste's website and Ravelry pages.

Shearing in Maryland

I would have thought that there were lots of sheep and goat shearers in Maryland due to all of the farms. I was in for a surprise. There are only 3 listed on the Maryland shearing site and I managed to use all three.

David Todd, the first shearer only does sheep. He is more used to production shearing, where lots of sheep are run through in a hurry. We were expected to already have the next sheep ready, so we had to scramble to get the hooves and CD&T shots done as he sheared. Above, Columbian is being sheared. She did not have a very heavy fleece.

Anne, the second shearer, uses the pole-and-stretch out method of shearing, similar to how alpacas are usually shorn. Ruth, my friend on the left, helped Anne by holding down Ruby (the goat). This method is slower than the other methods, but the cuts are reduced. However, the biggest disadvantage for me was that I had to stay holding heads all day long while sitting on the ground.

Emily Chamberlain was the last shearer. She did a lovely efficient job of shearing the remaining goats. I am scheduling her again and she has me on her calendar for three days in October 26-28. I am doing an fiber festival on October 27 and you are all welcome to come watch her in action. I have already scheduled my spring shearing for the last weekend in March. It is Easter. What better time to do it? Right now she will not shear alpacas. I am trying to talk her into going to the alpacas shearing school and told her that I will give her a scholarship, if she decides to go. She has shorn alacas before. I hope she will again!

Marc is trimming the hooves on Hummer, our seven year old buck. Check out the awesome horns!

Harvesting Hay

John finally showed up on Sunday afternoon to cut our hay. It is a lengthy process and the weather plays a big part. Once cut, it has to be fluffed until it dries. If there is no sun or it rains, it all takes longer.

The grass is so high that you can barely seen the haybine (mower.) It is cutting the width of the red mower and shooting the hay to the middle.

Above is a better shot of the haybine. It is attached to the tractor by a long arm which swings around and cuts the grass.

Once cut, the hay has to be raked which is basically fluffing and turning the hay, so it will dry evenly. John had to fluff it three times. Fortunately it dd not rain, but we did not have a lot of sun either. On the fourth day, the hay was sucked into the baler on the front side.

And a bale - packed nice and tight and already bound with twine - popped out the back end.

Once the hay is baled, the farmer drives around with a wagon. This is not an ordinary wagon. On the front right side it has a scooper that grabs the bale and lifts it onto a platform. Once the platform is filled, the platform is raised and the bales are raised into the back of the wagon.

When the wagon is full (this one holds 160 bales), it is driven to the barn - or wherever the hay is going to be stored. The wagon is then tilted 90 degrees, so the bales are resting on the ground. The idea is that the wagon is pulled forward and the hay is left in a neat stack. This obviously did not happen here, but it did not really matter, since the hay needed to be stacked in the hayloft, or in this case the garage. Sorry, Marc, but you were not here to do the lifting, so the hayloft is clean, but empty.

My neighbors, Harry and Ruth, came down and graciously volunteered to help me get the hay stacked. I am really grateful, because 20 minutes after we finished, we had a thunderstorm run through. Nothing like a little monsoon in Maryland!

We harvested 283 bales. It will feed my animals approximately 70 days. I plan to hoard it in case we do not get a second cutting. The farmer's machinery was too big to cut all of the areas, so a tractor with a sickle mower is looking like a necessity. For now, we are going to put up electric fencing and let the goats clear the other areas. They have all been shorn, so I do not have to worry about weeds and seeds getting stuck in their fiber.

Above is my new washing area. It was finished yesterday. I went down this morning and started washing and dyeing. I now feel at home, since I can get back into the routine of starting my week washing, dyeing and drying . It helps that the cellar of the red barn is a little less creepy now that the lights are on and part of it has been swept out. We found a baby snake in the area and lots of snake skins. Fortunately these are black snakes and I have been assured that they are not poisonous!

Tomorrow I am going on a field trip to The Mannings, a shop in Pennsylvania, that is pretty famous in this area. They are doing a spinning day and I plan to surprise my friend, Joan Ruane, from Bisbee, Arizona, who is teaching a class there.

In Production Mode





I am listing the above and below yarns on etsy this afternoon. It takes a while, which is why I will never be able to feature all of my yarns. I have signed up for four shows, so I am busy spinning again.



 

 This is the view of my freeform hat upside down. The freeform part turned out rather heavy based on the yarns I chose, so I knitted the ribbing with elastic yarn and used only 56 stitches instead of my usual 66. It would make a cute bowl or bag, but I plan to keep it as a hat. The extra layers around the ears will help block the wind in winter.

I am trying to figure out the new design for the blogger. Can't seem to get the pictures and then the text to line up, so bear with me.

 The text is trying to do its own thing independently. If anyone knows how to get it to text wrap, I would love to know!

Our hay! Finally found a farmer willing to cut it for us. Now we just need to get the weather to cooperate. Since it will be the first time for us, I plan to photograph all of the steps. It is currently waist high.

This is a close up view of some of the grass/hay. I thought it was pretty with the sun shining on it. I am so used to seeing the grass cut and never flowering. 

 I am getting lots of queries about Flower and Orphan. Orphan has a very sweet disposition. Both of them will follow just like a puppy with the occasional stop to nibble on a tall piece of grass.

 Orphan is very pushy when I go out to feed. He has actually drunk three bottles at one time. I thought he was going to bust. When they got like this in Tucson, I started feeding through the fence. I won't be able to do that here. Pixie, our part Maine Coon cat has no fear. She got right up to Orphan, but the camera was too slow to capture the picture.

 The alpacas have figured out that it is okay to go in the barn. They are rather stupid, since we had a gully washer last night - thunderstorm and pouring rain, so Marc and I could pretend that we were in Tucson during a monsoon. We sat on the front porch to eat dinner and watch the river run down our driveway. He sure cannot complain the he has not had his fair share of rain!

I am also creating nuno felting kits and will be listing them online. The pink silk and the roving on the left have already sold. I will feature another one with a different colored silk. I am also listing rovings. Based on the number of hits on the one listed already, there is not a lot of interest in kid mohair rovings.

Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival

This was the weekend for the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. I have to admit that I found the birth of Winter's cria, "Maryland," to be a lot more interesting. I looked out over the pasture before 8 a.m. and all was quiet. I went out at 8:30 a.m. to feed grain and throw out some hay and looked halfway up the pasture to see a small spot of color sitting next to Winter. Maryland was cold, so I toweled her off and went to get ready to leave for the festival. By the time I came back out, Maryland was running all over the place. And today, she is running among the sheep and goats.

I always check to be sure that babies are drinking before I head out. Thanksgiving is watching in the background. She has been displaced as the baby and I am not sure that she is happy about it.

Flowers and Orphan are doing very well. Orphan is guzzling 2 bottles for every one that Flowers inhales. I go out with 6 bottles and a group of other kids take turns coming to drink. Their mothers have enough milk now, but they have gotten a taste for the bottle and how quickly the milk comes out. Smart kids!

I am busy looking for a shearer. The one I had planned on did not put me on her book, so I will probably end up using three shearers to get it all done. One won't do alpacas, one won't do goats, etc.

Anyhow, with the help of a neighbor, I have shorn two goats so far. This is Barbara's Daughter and she was way too hot.

And so, on to the festival. I have to admit that I was disappointed. I was expecting to see lots of handspun yarn and unique designs. Well, the main hall was filled with all of the vendors that I saw when I went to the Stitches. There was an awful lot of millspun fiber and hand dyed fiber - that obviously came from Ashland Bay or a similar source. Not very exciting for me as an artist. Don't breeders process any of it themselves any more? I saw a few skeins of handspun and they were seriously over twisted or spun out of coarse wool. Gives wool a bad name. I plan to apply to the show next year. Maybe I will start an art revolution!

My hat is most of the way done. I am knitting the ribbing with my elastic yarn. It is actually going to fit. I do plan to wear it. Looks a little like scrambled brains!

I have been asked to show my "new digs." The carpet is eventually going to go since it is going to soak up lots of the vegetable matter. I did have a sheet down, but it aggravated me too much, so I threw it in the wash and gave up on it. On the right side of the room you can see a door that leads out to a large porch. Great place to sit when the wind is not blowing.

This photo was taken standing at the door mentioned in the photo above. I have not finished unpacking books, so the miscellaneous stuff is going to have to find a room. The closets are already filled with fiber to be carded and spun.

The electricity is being run to the big red barn now, so I will be able to use my carder this week. We are running water lines to the barn and I will put a water heater, mud room sink and my washing machine in the basement. I plan to teach nuno felting there. I had originally planned on putting all of my raw fleeces in the basement on the shelves until I saw the room empty. If I take out the shelves, I will have a lovely large room that will be perfect for classes. We bought lights for the shop today, but they need electricity. It won't be long! I am starting to feel settled in.

Progress

The Mini-Barn that we ordered was delivered last week. I found the trailer that they used to deliver and unload it to be quite ingenious. It sure saved the builders a lot of time.

The sheep and goats have all checked it out now, but the angora goats are going back into the main barn to sleep at night. We are going to have a fence installed around the barn, so we can leave doors open. Up until this past weekend, I have been running out to herd the animals in when it rained. It does that frequently here, so the fence is going to save me a lot of time. The blue panels are working for now, but it will not be long before the alpacas realize that they can jump the fence.

This is a project that I started a week ago. It is going to be a freeform slouch hat. It is going quickly, because I am motivated by the need to have something to wear that a little nicer than the red Santa style hat that I gave my son years ago. It is bright and I can be seen from anywhere on the property.

 A close up of the hat. I plan to use the matching elastic yarn to gather the edge and make it sturdy enough to hang properly. Pixie (one of our cats) bit the elastic yarn - so I can't sell it.

The two yarns above are going to be listed on my etsy shop. The top one has knots in it that can be shoved to give the appearance of a bullion. I used this style of yarn and a single to make the freeform hat. The elastic yarn below is core spun and the colors match the knotted yarn. The two will make a lovely hat. I have stretched the elastic yarn so you can see what it will look like knitted up - just like any other yarn!

Weather

The photo of the geese is dedicated to my son, Kyle. He said we should get geese for the pond. A few mornings ago, Marc came in to tell me that geese were in the pond. I went out to look and found 4 geese. These two have remained. They were mating and have created a nest in the pond area. We don't know whether they are migrating or native to the area.

Yesterday morning I woke up to fog. It had rained the day before and we ended up moving all of the angora goats back into the barn. The kids were soaked and had to all be towel dried. None got sick, which is a blessing since I have been bottle feeding two and will probably have to bottle feed the buck born yesterday. He pushes against his mom's teat, but will not suck.

The white buck that Marc is feeding is named Orphan. He has a mom, just no interest in her. You can just barely see Flower, a black angora doe, wrapped around Marc's ankle. They both had pneumonia and are doing well. Flower is the sweetest.

This has been a year for bucks: two white does, one black doe, and 5 red does. The Shetlands have given me two ewe and the rest rams. I have three more Shetlands to deliver and two Merinos. The goats are done, thank God! The last to deliver were first time moms and had to be sheared before the kids could find the teats. I sheared the last three immediately and still have yesterday's buck that will not suck.

Here you can see the variation in shades of the red angora kids. This photo was taken right before letting the goats back out.

All of the rain has meant that the grass is starting to grow. Marc and I are already plotting which area we can fence in next, so we have less to mow. We do have grass eaters, after all! We are thinking of a fence around the front of the barn, so the animals can roam and get back in the barn when it rains.

The goats were not eager to leave the barn - but they finally got the message that the pasture was waiting.