OKC 2010: Some New Friends, Some Old Friends, and a Whole Mess of Empty Seats.

The Lutz family’s arrival back home at CCNF from the 2010 National Elite was staggered, just like our departure. Though by Monday night all were present and accounted for, at least physically anyway.

Though we did sell some of our alpacas at the auction on Saturday and in the process made several new happy clients (a photo or two to follow in the next few days), there is really no point in trying to sugarcoat our overall auction results from this year’s event. Our friends who have traveled this wild and wacky road with us over the past 13+ years know that going into the weekend we didn’t even have our expectations ratcheted up all that high. It was after all for all intents and purposes a (sort of) first year event, at a (sort of) new location, and in the middle of an economic recession/recovery (depends on who you ask).   But even with all of that having been said, is was still a rougher outing than we had hoped for or expected.

We certainly do accept our share of responsibility for the outcome though. It was essentially our call last spring, when we realized that the 2010 NEAA would in fact be in conflict with three other events on those dates, to do the old “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!” routine. Funny you know: we’ve seen others try that before with eerily similar results. Just the same, we felt that even with those other events last weekend that we could still hold our own ground so to speak. That was, hindsight being 20/20 of course, pretty hubristic on our part and to be quite frank we just had a big old can of whoop-ass opened up on us as a result. The truth hurts often enough, yet it also contains a certain simple beauty because, well, it’s the truth. Moving on now kids…

On a brighter note, the new National Elite Halter Show which was held on Sunday was widely panned as a big success.  We were of course particularly gratified to see several of our customers doing well.  In some cases with animals purchased the day before (Sovereign Knight & Cacao), in another with a young Archangel son we had the distinct pleasure of meeting for the first time (Sunny Mesa’s Ares de Archangel). Ah, family. I was genuinely thrilled to be at the show Sunday, talking with other breeders and catching up with some old friends but not actually, for once, going into the show ring itself. Did I mention how much fun it was not going into the ring??? Yeah, I know I shouldn’t get too comfortable with that concept, as April is only 6 months away. For now though there’s fires, dark beer, good books (I’ve got the whole Stieg Larsson trilogy happily staring me down), hockey, skiing with my kids, and some winter get-a-away time on the not too distant horizon.

So the short crib-notes version of last weekend is that you take the bad with the good sometimes. Live and learn as usual. Just the same there are many people on who we relied that made the weekend possible. Our thanks go out to the good folks at Celebrity Sales, to our resident Fiber Goddess and soother of tattered nerves, Cheryl Gehly, to our event co-sponsors Jim Webb and Sharon Brown of Virginia Alpaca Farm & Breeding Co., to our dear old friend and show manager/superintendant extraordinaire Kevin O’Leary, to our judges Amanda VandenBosch and Helen Humphreys, to our CCNF crew, Jason Godin and Tina Hann, for taking care of the 4-legged team while in OKC as well as the pack/unpack with nothing but good cheer, to our buddy and super-hauler guy, Matt Whitaker, for everything he did (very little of which involved sleeping) to make the whole weekend possible both for us and VAF,  and last but certainly not least to all of the breeders who came to participate in this past weekend’s festivities! Thank you all! More to follow, be well…