February Goals

I have all these goals and hopes and dreams floating around in my head. I thought I would try to organize them and verbalize them. I find I am better held accountable when I do that. My idea was to check in on the blog every Saturday morning in February with an update on these goals.

1 ~ halter train our alpaca juvis: Thunder, Shamballa, Lady Bing and Dutch

2 ~ spin a skein of yarn a week

3 ~ run 60 miles this month

Number 1 is essential as The Best of the US Alpaca Show is March 10 & 11. All of our alpacas have to be walking well on the lead in order to go to the show. The good news is that we have already had a few halter training sessions. Shamballa and Lady Bing walk really well, and Thunder walks ok (I've taken worse to a show before). But Dutch, oh is she a stubborn girl! It's going to take some more work with her. While we are at it, we might as well work some more with Thunder too. We have also been doing a refresher course with Challenger, Chaska, Gabe, Twilight and Rose. That's our show string of 9 for this spring.

Number 2 I will talk more about in some posts later on this week. I have a great idea of increasing our alpaca product production line. The biggest slow down we face is not having yarn on hand to use or sell. I am looking short term right now, and going to aim to create 4 skeins this month. I'm not counting the one I plyed early Saturday morning, but by Monday I hope to have skein 1 done. (I say this is short term because creating a skein a week long term might be more than I can accomplish, but for a month, I totally can do this!).

Number 3 is a personal goal. I have signed up to run in the Fifth Third River Bank Run, the 10K, in May. I'm not nervous to run a 10K as my typical Sunday run is 7 miles (longer than a 10K). But I do want to keep up a level of running fitness. It's easy this time of year to get caught up in farm stuff (spring shows, spring cleaning, etc.) and forget that I need to do some things for me too. 60 miles is actually a low goal, but with all my other goals of halter training and yarn spinning, I think 60 miles is realistic (I can always run more, beating the goal would be great). My typical run week schedule is 19 miles (long run of 7 miles, shorter run of 4 miles, hills run of 5 miles, and intervals at 3 miles). If I stick to my usual routine, I should run 76 miles this month (making 60 miles a low goal).