An Alpaca Show Odyssey

The Crib Notes Version

Some quick takeaways from the past 9 days while traveling to and from the Futurity:

1. Man can not survive on Krispy Kreme Donuts alone. At least not long term. For driving cross-country though, they’re just perfect. As Sammy pointed out as we were pulling into KC after a full day on the road, “I did have less than one per hour!” Barely.

2. For the overall quality of the show facility (the American Royal Center), the excellence and affordability of the hotel, and especially the vibrancy of the city itself, Kansas City, Missouri is my new favorite alpaca show city. No contest, really. No disrespect to the facility in Grand Island, NE we were at for the 2011 and 2012 editions of this show but this year was well, um…better. I for one, am psyched that the show is already booked for the same venue in 2014. It is a site and a town worthy of that event.

3. Having water in your truck’s diesel tank and losing power by virtue of a failing fuel filter is a drag. Doing so while hauling a fully loaded trailer of alpacas en route back home by way of the PA Turnpike and a stop in Maryland, doubly so. Many colorful words that described my feelings about that situation came pouring out of me at the time as we limped along I-70 at 20 MPH for some 5 miles, none of which I shall repeat here. Huge thanks to Woy Brother’s GMC of Somerset, PA for getting us in and out in a total of 90 minutes.

4. It all felt a little surreal last week watching the scenes from Boston unfold as we made our way out west. Not only was the neighborhood where the Marathon bombings took place intimately familiar to myself and Jen from our early 20s but my parents still live near Porter Square in Cambridge which was part of the area under lockdown during the final man hunt.

5. Next time you see either Dave Serino or Neil Padgett be sure to ask them about Dancing With Green Fairies. Trust me.

6. Speaking of our aforementioned partner/co owner from Maryland, Dave and I got to spend a wonderful evening — after the truck crisis was resolved — on Tuesday with Neil, Jo, and Bari Padgett at A Paca Fun Farm which is truly like a slice of Heaven. Elixir’s other home is a pretty cool place. I woke up in the Padgett’s guest room on Wednesday morning, the sounds of spring birdsong coming in through the window and thought I might just have understood why Odysseus was briefly tempted to stay on Calypso’s island when struggling to get back home to Ithaca. If you haven’t visited that farm before, you’re missing something quite special.

7. I learned more about honey bee reproduction, life cycles, and anatomy during Wednesday’s drive with my favorite amateur beekeeper than I ever knew. Seriously. We had a bit of time to kill. Let’s just say I’m glad I’m not a drone (male) honey bee. Your entire life builds towards two to three seconds of rather painful sounding glory and then you fall to the ground and die. Kinda harsh.

8. Two days of showing at the Futurity served undeniable notice that the leading edge of huacaya alpaca genetics is alive, vibrant, and moving rapidly forward.  Our colleagues from Snowmass Alpacas showed up at the show this year with with a killer show string and while we did our level best to compete, let there be no doubt who reigned supreme. Onward and upward we go.

The Narrative Version

I dropped off our old friend (and beloved volunteer show slave), Dave Serino, as the I drove through the greater Albany, NY area Wednesday afternoon, before finally pulling in here at the farm that night around 6PM. Home! That was some trek. For yours truly, it all actually lasted a little over a week. I collapsed into bed that night with the comforting and familiar seasonal soundtrack of our pond’s peepers keeping the time and slept like baby.

With our kids on their spring break last week, Sam and I had driven out to the show together, having left on Tuesday the 16th.  Jen and Max flew into KC and technically arrived about an hour before us on Wednesday night after what was a pretty harrowing approach by all accounts. Dave completed our show crew, flying in from Albany on Friday morning, coincidentally on the same flight as our friends and VT Fiber Mill partners, Ed and Deb Bratton, who used to call KC home and were using the show as an excuse to come and visit friends and family.

In the case of the terrestrial travelers, Sam and I had originally planned to stop some 3 hours outside of Kansas City on Wednesday night, with the idea that we would then wake up early and saunter in on Thursday morning. Two things conspired against that plan though: first a temperature spike into the low 90s an hour or so past St. Louis would have made things rather risky for the alpacas in a stationary trailer and secondly, the joyous news that we would be dealing with heavy thunderstorms and an active tornado warning whether we stopped or not. As such we elected to go the distance into KC that very night. If given a choice, we’d always prefer to be a moving target rather than a sitting duck. Plus, one upshot of driving into the heavy rains was that the outside temperature promptly dropped 37 degrees! Though the fleeces on our alpacas looked sopping wet by the time we got into the city, at least the animals were comfortable. With Sam closely watching the Doppler radar on the Ipad, we also had a pretty good feel for what we were up against over those final few hours of the journey and were lucky to dodge the worst of the weather. In the end, we managed to pull our rig temporarily into the American Royal Center itself for the night (there was still an active tornado warning) and plug the trailer’s electrical circuit into a wall outlet so that we could power our onboard fans. By 11 PM that night, the CCNF show string was tucked away safe and sound and our little family was happily reunited at the Marriott hotel downtown. Many thanks to our friends Kevin O’Leary and Tim Vincent for making that all happen with minimal fuss. All good.

As many people know by now that have followed our family’s (mis)adventures, our poor Sammy had the misfortune of being born in 1998 on a date that would ultimately become setup day for this show in most of the ensuing years. We adapt though, make lemonade out of lemons and all of that. That we were able to go back to the American Royal, unload the critters, and set up all of our pens early on Thursday morning (only after presents and room service, mind you!) and then head back into town to have a little fun and a truly celebratory birthday dinner with both of our boys, just reinforced our early warm and fuzzy first impression of KC.

Did I mention that there was actually an alpaca show too? Over the years there have been few events in the alpaca industry capable of creating such feelings of excitement and dread all at the same time the way the Futurity can. It is the Major Leagues to every other big show’s AAA. We have always gone to the Futurity for the purpose of measuring our breeding program against the best alpacas in this country. The problem with that though being that sometimes you don’t always like what you learn. At this very moment, four days after the fact, I have to say that the overriding feeling for me is one of relief. We won some and we lost some (rather more than we won, truthfully), though we were genuinely competitive throughout. Of the 25 alpacas we took to the Futurity, the majority of our animals placed in the top 3 of their respective classes, we took the Reserve Light Female Championship (CCNF Avalon), won the dark Get of Sire class with 3 of our little Snowmass Matrix Majesty kids (CCNF Legionnaire, CCNF Moonbeam, and CCNF Capuchin), and only one of our animals got the gate. It is also worth noting that 22 of those 25 alpacas on our show string were born here on our farm (the remaining 3 were shanghaied from our friends at TGF — whom we missed terribly — late last year). Of course we are first and foremost victims of our own long term success and the high expectations that we have placed on ourselves and our breeding program as a result. Though undeniably bloodied by the time the show ended on Monday afternoon, we felt like we had fought and scrapped respectably and left KC with our pride mostly intact. While Dave and I had our little mechanical drama in Pennsylvania on the way home, Jen, Sam and Max (who missed two days of school to help the cause) were able to leapfrog us in the air on Tuesday morning and were back home by that afternoon. All in all while we were definitely not satisfied with what we had accomplished, we had to be at least somewhat pleased. Like everyone else that competed at the Futurity, we now await the official tabulations for Herdsires of the Year and Breeders of the Year. Time will tell. The only thing not in doubt is that the Futurity remains both the most important and the most humbling show in North America.

Now we are home decompressing as the rest of the world both here at the farm and in the rest of our lives (class plays, lacrosse games) continues to swirl around us as though we’ve been here all along. We need to catch our breath very quickly though as amongst other things, there is the small matter of shearing coming up in less than a week. We also need to take pictures of some females for auction later this year before they get their snazzy summer hair-dos. Reality cares little for the fact that we put our lives on a virtual hold for seven+ days so that we could walk in circles for a total of two in pursuit of ribbons, banners, and trophies. We will be home now in one form or another through the remainder of the kids’ school year, seemingly a period of calm after the craziness of March and April. Though Jen will be skirting show fleeces like a mad woman as soon as we are shorn next week in preparation for the upcoming spring fleece shows, our spring show season of fleece on the hoof is over. The fact is that many of those longer, finer fleeces will look better off of their owners than on them at this point anyway. In any case, it’s time to start shifting gears: the first cria of 2013 is due in less than 2 weeks!

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