Show selection in the time of frozen hands

While my enthusiasm for winter may wax and wane depending upon my mood and my recent sleep patterns, if it is going to be steadily cold as it has been for most of the past couple of weeks (it was solidly below zero here this morning), it is also nice to have snow on the ground too, as we do at the moment. Call me a romantic but it’s pretty. In fact, I have to say that other than those deliciously cool late April/early May nights when we sleep with the the windows open, the air is infused with the smells of spring growth, and the tree frogs are chirping down by the pond, that my next favorite image of the farm is of nights like last night when it is frosty cold and there is moonlight reflecting everywhere off of a newly-fallen snow. With the weather and calendar gods cooperating, the boys and I even finally got to go skiing last weekend for the first time all season. With a little luck, we might even make it another time or two before the winter ends. I guess we’ll have to see if Mother Nature has other ideas?

Also in direct conflict with the winter fun and recreation plans of the Lutz clan, is the rapidly approaching show season. While I would normally call it the “spring” show season, seeing as how AOA Nationals falls the weekend of March 15th this year, that’s not really true anymore. For the record: we fully support and applaud those of you motivated enough that you will be shoveling out (or perhaps de-icing?) your trailers and heading off to other shows in the coming days and weeks. For our part though, we will happily wait and see you all in Harrisburg in just over a month’s time. The idea that we’re having to halter train newly-weaned juveniles in mid-February is frankly bad enough. Round pen training in January is just not ever going to be in the cards here. We hold the so-called “off-season” to be sacred.

Of course before we can train anyone for the shows, we need to select who it is that we are in fact taking with us in the months ahead though. So it was that we found ourselves over the past days attempting to pick the show strings for the first three shows of the calendar year (Nationals, North American, and Futurity), at least a couple of weeks before we normally would have in the past, simply because of the shift of the National show from May to March. That was not a calendar move that garnered a whole lot of enthusiasm from our colleagues who live on the west coast, or so I’ve heard. Something about a few mountains that make it difficult to get east? I completely understand though and please know that this New Englander at least will gladly switch roles and reciprocate. It’s actually a personal conspiratorial plan. In fact, note to the AOA BoD: I am in full support of the idea of Nationals moving ASAP to a late winter/early spring venue in either say Denver or Salt Lake City! We would fly out for about 5 or 6 days, drop off a bunch of fleeces at the National Fleece Show…and go skiing, you know, on real snow. Just a thought. Come on, make it happen!

In any case, selecting the rosters for the first shows of the year is always an interesting exercise, especially since we haven’t really been looking at our would-be show critters all that critically in a while. For the yearlings that were part of last fall’s crew, we haven’t opened most of them up in several months, other than the odd passing glance during herd health days. While the top layer of show animals does usually pretty much pick itself, we are generally trying to bring at least 2 or 3 animals of each gender/color/age group (as in 3 juvenile white females, 3 yearling white males), and often selecting the the so-called undercard when there are 4 or 5 possible animals to fill just 2 slots can be challenging. We try to be our own toughest critics though, putting our would-be judges’ hats on at those moments. We have been known to sandwich as many as 3 animals together in an attempt to rank them and decide who will be getting on the trailer, and who will be left on the proverbial bench. For the most part it’s great fun, though the literal loss of sensation in our hands earlier this week was making it difficult sometimes to feel the different handles of the various fleeces. As such, we found ourselves on more than one occasion retreating to Jen’s office at the Main Barn to restore circulation to our extremities!

Going through the ranks of our juveniles on the other hand, can be quite a different experience. The ease with which we can evaluate our juvis at the moment often correlates directly to the proximity of said juveniles to their beloved mothers. The late May and June crias have been weaned by now and though still emotionally vulnerable in some cases (I miss my mommy, do YOU have milk?), they are all together down at the Main Barn away from their dams, and are generally easy enough to work with in spite of the fact that none of them have yet seen a halter or lead in their short lives. On the other hand, getting a close look at the fleeces of their slightly younger peers who have not yet been weaned from their dams, can be tricky. Not because of the crias but because of their over-protective mothers! Especially the wily old veterans who know that weaning is coming up and have seen the older crias leaving the Arena for the last month (truck + trailer + winter = baby stealers). Case in point was Monday afternoon, when my better half came down to the house after all was said and done smelling of alpaca spit. Not content with the information she had, Jennifer had gone back to pull a final fleece sample off of dear old Savannah’s EL boy, Vagabond. Apparently Savannah had failed to fully appreciate why this action was necessary and let Jen know it by planting a big, juicy green lugie right on the side of her head. Yum. That my friends, is what showers are for. 😉

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