To Harrisburg and back again…

Oh, the joys of a late winter road trip! After watching and fretting over the weather forecast starting almost a week in advance — and with things looking increasingly dire with each passing day — we got the automated call from Sam’s high school last Tuesday night (3/11), that his school was in fact cancelled for the following day. Knowing that Max’s school would almost certainly follow suit (it did), it rather counterintuitively meant that we had our first piece of good weather news in several days. With a major winter storm scheduled to role into the the area early on Wednesday and forecast to get progressively nastier as the day wore on, it meant that we were now free to get the heck out of Dodge and get an early start making our way to the AOA National Show in Harrisburg, PA, perhaps in time to avoid the worst of what Mother Nature had in store. The goal was a simple one: get south as quickly as possible and get beneath the line (somewhere in western Massachusetts if weather.com was to be believed) where the snow/sleet just became innocuous rain.

So it was that the next morning we awoke to a gentle freezing drizzle at 5AM and headed up to begin getting the 37 show animals (34 of our own and 3 that belonged to clients) down to our large trailer, which was parked on the relatively flat and safe ground below the Stud Barn. We did briefly use our Acadia and small 16′ trailer — which because of the size of the show string would also be making the trek to PA filled with juvi boys — to shuttle critters from the Main Barn down to the behemoth on wheels, before realizing that it was really more efficient to just walk them all down with halters and leads. By 6:30, just as we were getting the final groups of animals down, the rain started to switch over to snow. Thankfully, we were able to get both vehicles and their respective trailers down off the hill, onto wet blacktop, and headed on our way south before the snow could really coat our dirt road in any meaningful way though. When fully loaded with animals and gear, I would guess that our large trailer, which is 32′ long on the floor, weighs somewhere in the vicinity of 20,000 lb. That and a snow-covered 10 degree grade would never have been a good mix. While every car that this family owns (including our little hybrid) sports studded snow tires from November to April, and we had psychologically prepared to limp down I-91 south with 4-wheel drive engaged as far as was necessary, we were thrilled to instead encounter just some light freezing rain and sleet which turned to pure rain by the time we hit the Mass border south of Brattleboro. The storm — whose official NWS name I refuse to use as a matter of principal — did indeed come in fast and furious after we left, so much so that our boys ended up having their school days cancelled again for Thursday as well. Luckily for us, we had long been free and clear by then though. Had we departed on Wednesday afternoon or Thursday morning as had been originally planned, I doubt that we could have even made it off of the side of our mountain.

We arrived in Harrisburg and pulled into the PA Farm Show complex around 2:30 on Wednesday afternoon, a little tuckered out but above all just relieved to have made the drive without any of the winter conditions we had thought we might have had to travel through just 24 hours before. That afternoon was spent getting all of our pens bedded, the animals settled in with hay and water, hooking up electrical cords to run the ubiquitous fans that are a necessary evil at every show, color checking the aforementioned 37 critters, and checking in the fleeces that we (read: Jennifer) had brought for the National Fleece Show. After a late dinner, we made it to our hotel and all happily collapsed into bed.

Having arrived a full day early — the first official check-in day was to be Thursday — and with no animals of our own consigned to the auction on Friday, it left us to spend the next couple of days just setting up our farm booth, looking after the mini-herd we had brought with us, and above all just catching up with a lot of other folks, many of whom we hadn’t seen in close to a year. After the animal training, fleece skirting, planning, packing, and driving that went into getting to the show itself, I dare say that it was all really quite relaxed by contrast. We even made our way back to the Apalachian Brewing Co. — the scene of many fondly remembered shenanigans from alpaca shows past — for the second time in less than 18 hours and had mid-day beers on Thursday with lunch. Because we could. All in all I have to say that it was also just nice to find ourselves back in Harrisburg for the first time in some 5 years too. We had spent many of our formative years in the alpaca business attending the Mapaca Jubilee show in April, but had not been to it in person in quite a while because of scheduling conflicts with the Futurity. From a show-city perspective, Harrisburg, like Springfield, MA where the North American is held, still feels like a comfortable old shoe though. We know the hotels, we already have several favorite restaurants, and for the most part we know our way around the town, or at least Jen does!

Of course Saturday and its 5AM wakeup call came very quickly, and with it the start of the actual alpaca show – the entire reason we had been waiting around for the previous 48+ hours! While the judges selected for the national show were all excellent, the decision on the part of the powers that be at AOA to run 4 simultaneous huacaya rings starting on Saturday afternoon (once the Suris had all been judged), did admittedly put us off-balance, even with 6 actual handlers already lined up weeks ahead of time (Kevin Brown and Marc Motti of Brontti Farms were there too in addition to the full Lutz clan). All good in the end though! With some help, we were able to find several willing volunteers over the course of the weekend who saved our bacon many times over, helping us to shuttle animals from our pens to the waiting areas (and back) where they were usually handed off to one of us coming out of a previous class. With 37 critters at the show, there were multiple times that 5 of the 6 of us were all literally in several of the show rings simultaneously. Though a bit nutty, it did definitely help pass the time watching other members of the team from afar while biding one’s time in a class of 14, even if yours truly did get caught on at least two occasions by a judge with my mind some place other than the animal whose lead line I was holding. Oh well, it probably wont be the last time either.

As for the show and our results? The short version, is that it was far and away our best collective result from a National show ever by a considerable margin. Our crew produced 4 Color Championships in halter: CCNF Marick in Brown Males, Spirit Wind’s Maestro in Fawn Males, CCNF Prima Majesty in Fawn Females, and CCNF Daliance in White Females. Cas-Cad-Nac animals also swept the 3 huacaya production classes in halter: three of our yearlings (Marick, CCNF Precipice, and their sister CCNF Moonbeam) won the combined light and dark Get of Sire class for their dad, Snowmass Matrix Majesty; CCNF Legionnaire and his baby sister, CCNF Maria, won the Produce of Dam for our beloved Magdalena; and CCNF Centurion, CCNF Eldunari, and the aforementioned Ms. Daliance teamed up to win the Breeder’s Best 3 class. Precipice also managed to win Best Bred & Owned Huacaya Male which ultimately led to him actually getting a good long look in the Judges’ Choice class. All told, 28 of our 34 animals finished in the top 3 of their respective halter classes (14 1sts, 10 2nds, and 4 3rds) and not a single one of them finished worse than 5th. Not too shabby.

In the fleece show, Jennifer’s work selecting and skirting fleeces — many of which were looking a bit worn being entered in their 2nd National fleece show in less than 10 months — produced 1 Color Championship and 1 Reserve Color Championship: Prima against the males too, this year being a Level III fleece show, winning Fawn Huacaya, and our wonderfully infamous Xanadu P. Cadenza winning her 4th National fleece banner as Reserve White Huacaya…again, just because she could too. With 30 of our entries finishing in the top 3 of their respective classes (9 1sts, 11 2nds, and 10 3rds) and fleece show wins in the Get of Sire class (Majesty in fleece as in halter), Produce of Dam (CCNF Defiance and CCNF Concerto for Cadenza), a best crimp award (Centurion), and the Spirit of the Industry award (Cadenza, surprise!), we had nothing to complain about here either!

The icing on the cake though for the entire weekend can of course be seen in the photo above. Maestro and I had the extreme good fortune to be standing right next to my youngest child in the Judge’s Choice class at the end of the show on Sunday. The memory of Maxy’s face when the four judges came up and presented him and Marick with that red banner will be with me forever. He’s really not the least bit jaded yet, and the unadulterated mix of complete surprise (almost embarrassment) and joy was just priceless. If we could all just tap into that emotional space every now and then, the world would probably feel like a better place, no?

Of course with the show running until early afternoon that day, by the time we got the trailers fully packed and loaded again, we didn’t get back on the road and pointed home until 5:30 PM or so. I’m proud to say that we weren’t the last farm to leave the facility, at least technically. As someone who drastically reduced my alcohol consumption some 3+ years ago (a finger wag from my GP because of borderline high blood pressure), it is no secret amongst my friends — to say nothing of my better half — that I have become a relatively cheap date. What I haven’t also been so cognizant of though, was that having given up regular daily caffeine at the same time, that my so-called “tolerance” for that substance was also reduced. What that thankfully means for me nowadays is that a couple of iced teas and some chocolate goes along way towards putting a jump in my step. With Sam and I in the big rig and Jen and Max following closely with the small trailer and a car-full of show fleeces, we were able to gut it out and pull into home around 1:30 on Monday morning. As I texted to our friend and partner Bari Padgett from A Paca Fun Farm (whose parents, Neil and Jo, likewise had an amazing show themselves in her absence) the next day, that drive home was almost Padgettesque!* Even if it was 2 AM by the time our heads hit the pillow, and probably another 20 minutes before my body overrode the caffeine/adrenaline buzz and shutdown, it just felt great to be back home again in our own bed. Yes, we spent a goodly chunk of the day on Monday shuffling around our house zombie-style but we were happy, content, zombies and not hungry for brains, just physically and mentally wiped out.

So one show down and two to go. There is still a small group of 4 weaners that need training prior to the North American show the first weekend in April. Though after training up 18 raw animals in less than 2 weeks for Nationals, I think Jen and Kim probably can handle that with one hand tied behind their backs. The large trailer does also need to go into the shop to get it’s onboard generator tuned up with the departure for the Futurity coming less than 48 hours after the completion of the NAAS. Odd to think that just three weeks from now we might actually be worried about hauling show critters in HOT weather! There is also the repacking and re-bedding of the house-on-wheels, but somehow that all feels very doable after this past week. I hope everyone enjoys these last official days of winter. For our part, we’re ready for spring!

Follow me on Twitter @CCNFalpacas

*Padgettesque: Doing something in a manner similar to a what member of the Padgett family might do. In this particular case, partaking of the habit of driving long hours at odd times of the day while traveling to or from alpaca shows. Requires excessive amounts of caffeine and sugar for those less experienced practitioners.