This weekend, Saturday and Sunday, is the Michigan International Alpacafest, MIAF. It is being held in Flint, Michigan, at the Perani Arena & Event Center. This is about a 2.5 hour drive from my farm.
We have chosen not to show any animals at this show this year. This is the first time in 3 years we have made this decision. It came down to the fact we only budget to be able to attend one fall show, and really want to show Rose. An alpaca has to be 6 months old in order to be old enough to show (who would want to take a young cria away from their mom anyway). Rose was born in late April, so she will be 6 months old in late October. This means she could show in November. We looked over the AOBA show schedule and found Alpacafest in Ohio in early November. We have never attended that show before (last year we opted to got to MIAF instead, being closer it was less expensive for us to attend, and November can sometimes mean bad weather). This year we decided to risk the chance of bad (ie snow) weather. We also decided to only take 3 of our animals to this show to cut back on cost. I'll blog more about this show when the time comes for it.
MIAF has a deeper meaning to us. In 2007, we met up with a farm, South Haven Alpacas, at MIAF. We had been in talks with them since the summertime, working out buying some of their alpacas. In September of 2007, at MIAF, we gave them the down payment for our 2 wonderful foundation girls: Hana's Victoria, and Kateri. Both of these girls were bred to Goldsmith. We could not have asked for a better start to our herd. Both Victoria and Kateri delivered Goldsmith daughters on July 11, 2008. We often referred to them as twins (they did after all have the same sire). Victoria's cria, Shelby, has moved onto another farm. She is incredible, an alpaca that people would see across the room and have to come and look at. I expect in the future we will run into her offspring in the ring. Tehya is Kateri's 2008 cria, and she is also incredible. We are expecting a 2011 cria out of Tehya! Our baby is going to have a baby. I could brag up Victoria and Kateri all day if you let me. Victoria has the typie look that we love so much. She has a compact body, incredible full top knot, and fuzzy face. She possess nice fineness and density in her fiber. These wonderful traits she passes onto her cria. Every one of Kateri's offspring has won 1st place, and 2 of the 3 claim a color banner! We could not ask for a better production female.
This year I will be at MIAF, but only on Friday evening. I have volunteered my time as a Color Check. This is the person who verifies the alpacas' color to make sure they are placed in the correct class for judging on Saturday and Sunday. I have never done color check before. I'm sure I'll have lots to say about it after this new experience.
3 comments:
We chose not to attend this year. Our show budget was blown and we are having National Alpaca Farm Visit Days Open House this weekend.
Glad that you are helping with check-in. We need to have people volunteer. Thank you.
I am bummed they have this show scheduled the same weekend as National Alpaca Farm Days. Strange to me that they would do that (it happened last year too, so it's not just a rare thing).
Our farm isn't really set up to do a good farm days here, anyway. We do fine with farm visits, but the way our animals are spread out, and we are so hard to find, wouldn't work for an open farm day. But I do like driving around to other local farms and catching up with them at their open farm.
We went to more spring shows than usual this past year. But managed to set aside enough for 1 fall show. We'll only take 3 alapcas, so only 1 pen. But, the flip of that is that we'll feel bored at the show. My husband likes to have at least 7 (preferably more) to show. Keeps him busy.
Cara
I loved learning some of the history of your animals. And I hope the weather is clear and gorgeous for your show in November.
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