Interlude

So after 2 days of shearing, we have 145 of the 211 total animals we are doing this year done! All of our adult Herdsires, yearling and juvenile males and females, as well as any of our pregnant females that are due in June, all have groovy new haircuts as of this morning. Someone said years ago, that newly shorn alpacas look a lot like characters out of a Dr. Seuss book and nothing much has really changed in that regard.

On Wednesday morning as I was making my way back from dropping our kids off at school (and picking up the all-important shearing donuts), the thermometer said that it was only 37 degrees outside! It was of course pouring rain too. Typical, mind you. Last year, it technically snowed a little bit on the final day of shearing and that was almost a full week later than this year’s go-round. Thankfully, with our infrastructure here on the farm — three separate centralized barns that each have paddocks radiating out from them  — we are able to work around whatever unpleasantness Mother Nature throws our way on shearing day in terms of keeping the fleeces (mostly) dry. By keeping animals locked inside and/or under the barn’s sheds with fans running on high, we are able to keep everything more or less under control, even when there is a virtual monsoon outside as there was 2 days ago. The hard part is always watching the newly shorn members of the herd shivering for a while on the cold days, as they adjust to losing their winter fleeces. Though before you even fully form the thought in your head: no, coating 72 alpacas on Wednesday night was never an option. In any case, as luck would have it by the time we got to yesterday afternoon, the cold had passed and the sun even came out to play – for a few hours anyway!

We now take a 10 day break, allowing the middle aged human bodies here on the farm to heal a bit — and in Jen’s case a chance to kick the horrible head cold she’s been battling the past week: Sudafed and Nyquil were her friends the past few days — before all-around good guy Matt Best returns to us again on 5/12 to finish shearing the final 66 critters. Happy Spring everybody!

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