Late summer meanderings.
Random musings from a long neglectful alpaca blogger as the leaves show their first little twinge of color here on the farm…
1. Had a great time at the Breeders Edge auction 2 weeks ago now, though I will freely admit that I mostly wimped out on wearing the long wig that I had brought along with a tie-dye T-shirt, for my hippie costume. For those that are not aware, the sale has a theme and a costume party every year on the day of the auction itself. I believe that our friends Dee and Don Sherman caught me on camera before I retreated to just wearing a bandanna on my head instead. Excellent future blackmail material!
Many, many thanks to Alison Mnich for her purchase of CCNF Abby Rose, our lone entry at the BE! Alison had called us and come up to see Abby the night before I left for Virginia, then ended up bidding over the phone. Marketing works! As it turned out, she had also purchased a couple of other lots on Saturday and I was able to deliver the whole crew to her place, conveniently just a couple of hours south from here in Connecticut, as I made my way home the following day. Just like that, our grey herd became 25% smaller!
The money we made selling Abby at the auction, I then of course turned right around and spent on the very next lot, a lovely little fawn female from all around good folks Gary Henderson and Casey Ashline at Keva Ranch, named Fila My Fleece (Gary loves him a good pun). Though we are of course always on the lookout for something special, I hadn’t gone to the sale necessarily expecting to purchase anything — and it’s worth noting that Jen was home with the kids so if I had blown this call, it was all on me — but once I put my hands on Lot #10, I knew we were going to be bidding on her at the very least. In the end, Fila in fact marked the third time that Keva Ranch and CCNF have done business together in one direction or the other in recent times. You could say it’s become a bit of a mutual-admiration society and Gary and Casey have unquestionably been creating some very interesting stuff lately (See: Money, Mint Mo).
As for the auction scene in general? One can try to make sense of sales and no-sales — and Lord knows, we’ve done plenty of each over the years — but the simple fact is that if you bring something special that gets the attention of multiple breeders, there is a much higher probability of it getting sold on stage. It’s not rocket science.
2. We’ve been putting the fall show roster together over the past week and all things being equal, as of today it’s looking like a nice round number of 25 alpacas will be going with us to the combined Empire/NEAOBA shows later in October. Late August into early September is always an interesting period in the developmental calendar of a young alpaca, as it’s normally the first time they truly have a enough fiber regrowth since their shearing in early May, for us to see what’s really coming back in. We’re no longer surprised as often as we used to be when an animal that was previously not looking so marvelous, suddenly “pops” into relevance during the summer of their 1st birthday. Over the years, we’ve learned the ins and outs of our various maternal and paternal lines and like to think that almost 19 years into this operation of ours, we have some notion of how the fleeces are going to change (or not) and develop as the animals mature.
Regardless, we’re looking forward to taking a crew back out on the show circuit for the first time since the Futurity back in April. Both of our boys will be tagging along to help us out as they often have over the past several years, something which we always enjoy. Though Friday and Sunday at the “Showtacular” should be straightforward enough with just 2 halter rings running at any given time, Saturday, when the shows are overlapping for the day, could get interesting in places. Though any chaos we experience will of course have been of our own making, so there can be no complaints from this quarter!
3. Speaking of our kids: Sam got his Private Pilot’s license earlier this summer and has been flying up a storm ever since. This weekend he began his ground school for his Instrument Flight Rating, the next rung in a young pilot’s developmental ladder. I can say that I got to do some neat stuff when I was 17 too — most of it involving racing 24′ sailboats — but flying one of my friends to Bar Harbor, Maine and back for lunch, was definitely not one of them. Pretty freaking cool.
We’re also for the first time in 14 years no longer driving either of our boys to school every morning as Sam and Max (a newly minted freshman) are at the same High School now and get back and forth together in Sammy’s car. Though the idea of both of our children driving up and down I-91 together without one of us always gives me pause, the extra time for work here in the farm — it was a cumulative 2 hours daily we spent on the road between Jen and I — has been a welcome change. Sam is almost as conscientious a driver as he is a pilot, though unlike the skies above us, on I-91 we have to worry about several hundred other drivers too, many of whom have no business operating a powered conveyance of any sort whatsoever. Oh well, it is the natural progression of things.
4. I did 6 AM cria check yesterday morning up at our Arena and when I turned the overhead lights on in an otherwise darkened barn, I came across the sight of our latest group of week-old neonates quite literally running circles around their still groggy and prostrate dams. Though I empathized with the moms to no end, the scene was definitely worth the price of admission.
As our ongoing year-to-year campaign to condense our birthing season continues to work (the cheeky goal of 2016 might be to finish up in September), we can now visualize the end of the season here at CCNF. Though a few mid to late October stragglers will be joining the final group of due moms (which includes among others Her Royal Highness, Magdalena), all of the females are now off of any outer paddocks and living back at the Arena. It’s been a birthing season with some ups and downs to be sure but on balance we’re pretty excited about this year’s class. Time, as always, will tell whether we are full of hooey or not.
5. Not that the Red Sox had given those of us in New England much to cheer about this season — at least until recently — but I did finally get to go see a baseball game with my Dad at Fenway Park last week, the day after I returned home from Virginia. The Sox even beat those bums from NYC as an added bonus. No doubt that there are few things as unbearable in this world as a vainglorious Boston fan (of any team). Did you hear? There really is a moral equivalency between war orphans and poor, poor oppressed Tom Brady! That said, booing Alex Rodriguez every single time he comes up to bat is still good for the soul. Dad and I have shared season tickets at Fenway since 1987 and we used to go see at least 5 or 6 games together every season. Something about alpaca farming and raising a family of my own though, has made that level of joint attendance more challenging in recent years, though we do try to tag up at least a time or two nonetheless. Good thing we got this most recent game in too, since it goes without saying that there will be no October baseball in Boston this year!
By the way: how is it that Fenway, with a team mired in last place for most of the season continues to virtually fill up most games, but every time I see highlights from the Bronx on Sports Center, where the Yankees have spent much of the summer leading the AL East, the Stadium there looks half empty? I know the so-called Legends seats in the lower bowl are famously obnoxious in their price point but shouldn’t the bleachers and the upper decks at least be full? Are the Mets a bigger actual draw in New York right now? Might be with the year they’re having.
In any case, one good thing (perhaps the only good thing?) about plumbing the depths of suckitude for the 2015 Red Sox, is that it’s unlikely for them to be quite this horrible again next year, at least the odds are against it. It would after all require an intentional organizational effort. “Let’s-Go-Draftpick!” 😉
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