Back at Hum

10:30am-4:30pm (6hrs)

As I arrived on Cindy's farm, so did the first load of the eight new alpacas coming to board at Hum Sweet Hum for the month. Boarding and breeding seem to be the two main incomes for alpaca farmers. Though the fiber is nice, it takes a lot of work to process and sell. In the background of this picture you can see Cindy's Element. The boarders were taking bringing four alpacas at a time in their sweet trailer, but when Cindy's alpacas hit the road, between two and four will pile in to the back of that little red car. Alpacas prefer not to pee and poop in confined spaces, so usually will hold it - even for longer rides, and generally will stay laying down or "cush" for the ride. The trick is getting the second, third, and fourth alpaca in without the first ones getting out. With this trailer, the animals were haltered and put on leads, then tied to places inside the trailer. 

Some of the young alpacas had never ridden in a trailer and were a little shaky coming out, but once freed, they joyfully bolted all around their new pasture, meeting the neighbors cows and racing their new friends. When the boarders first come, Cindy tends to keep them in a separate pasture from her animals until they settle in. A pair of long term boarders came a couple weeks ago and were booted out of the guest pasture and in to the main one when these guys arrived. 

The previous two had come down from Idaho and were quite shy when they first arrived, but are now getting more comfortable - not so with these eight who were kissing strangers right off the bat. Alpacas have sweet breath from the way they process food and think we smell pretty funny. (They have modified ruminant digestion. they chew their cud, though they are not quite like cows, and when that green stuff comes up, you probably want to hold off the the kisses.)

Back inside, I set to work carting wool into bats. On my first (working) visit to Hum Sweet Hum, skirted and washed fleeces. The next step from alpaca to finished product is the carting. I took the slightly felted wool, and pulled it apart by hand into a big fluffy pile of fiber, still more or less going the same way. Then I took small sections and fed them into the left side of the carting machine where the licker (that smaller toothed roller) picked it up and brought it to the main carting drum (the large one on the right). Once there is a thick layer around the drum, I took a tool, like a long nail with a handle, and separated the fibers along a line across the drum and peeled the sheet of fiber off. Sometimes the fiber needs to go through more than once, depending the animal it came from, how nice it needs to be, etc. I decided once was enough for today. Each sheet gets twisted and wrapped into a nice neat bundle, as seen, thrown in a bin with others of it's kind, then the next one get made. We start with the lightest fleece, do all of that fleece, then move gradually darker. If we felt so inclined, we could also mix fibers at this stage, like silk and merino.

An irrelevant side note on silk: the kind of silk we generally use comes from a domesticated insect - yes, that's right, a domesticated insect - that cannot survive without humans. The moths, if they are to hatch, are blind and flightless, even though they have big white wings. They are pretty cool looking but kind of sad. There are also some kinds of silk worms that have been developed to spin their silk cocoon so strong that it is impossible for them to break through once they become moths and they die trapped in the little coffin they made around themselves. I now have mixed feelings about silk, though it is an amazing fiber...

For my lunch break, I sat down to flip through some fiber magazines while I waited for the quesadillas to  cook. And what a fine looking gentleman they have on the cover of this one. I found this funny.

 After lunch it was time for some physical labor. Cindy and I got to work cleaning out and organizing the shed to be ready for sheering in two weeks. We removed garbage, empty boxes, and bad fiber (I took many garbage bags full of seconds and a couple large bags of stinky thirds got thrown away). Then we sorted to put tools, feed, and things on one half of the shed and the other half for alpaca things, including a shelf for shows and a shelf for sheering and sorting out the old fiber between seconds, firsts, and by color from light to dark. Meanwhile, Cindy's handyman came by and was doing some alpaca shelter roof repairs and building new hay troughs.

The day ended with some afternoon chores - distributing fresh hay and water. All the alpacas were eager to line up to have their toes hosed, and some time with the hose was a nice welcome present to the newest boarders.

 

One of the alpacas had been limping and favoring one leg all day. Cindy ran her hands over the alpaca and found some tenderness but nothing obvious. we kept her in a separate pen all day with her mom and favorite friend and Cindy waited to hear back from some doctor-friends with advice. The alpaca seemed to appreciate having the injured ankle iced with cold water at the end of our sunny day.