life... on the farm: Farm Fresh

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Farm Fresh

Up to this point we have processed all our alpaca's fiber ourselves. We haven't sent any to a mill - no mill spun yarn, no mill made rovings. In fact in the last two years we have done our own shearing too (prior to that we did hire someone to shear our alpacas). This means we do everything from the fiber growing on our alpacas (feeding and caring for the alpacas), to the finished product (spinning the yarn and knitting the item). I like to call this Farm Fresh.

This weekend I dug through several blankets of fiber:

Rose's 2012 blanket

Tehya's 2012 blanket

Challenger's 2011 blanket

I also worked on Twilight's blanket and Gabe's blanket, but I forgot to get pictures of them.

I put each blanket on my skirting table, sorted it into smaller sections to shake out the second cuts and pick out the big pieces of debris. Then I bagged them up into weighed out bags for easy sale and use. I hope to have these up on the farm's Oak Haven Alpacas LLC ESTY store very soon.

2 comments:

Norma from Misty Haven Alpacas said...: Very smart to process your own if you can. The mill process is an expensive part of the finished product and I find it very disappointing when, the odd time, I receive product back that I am disappointed with. Mind you, the carding and spinning sure is labout intensive. What kind of carder do you use?; August 14, 2012 at 8:29 PM
oak haven alpacas said...: Norma,

I am still refining my fiber arts work. Up to this time I haven't used a carder, but instead just use a flicker. I am working on a post about how I flick the fiber into a cloud to spin.

My problem is that while it is cheaper to process it ourselves, there is not enough time in the day to do it all. We are hovering around 25 - 30 alpacas on our farm and that's too much fiber for me to process with everything else I have going on in my life. I keep thinking something will change and suddenly all the fiber will be processed :) really I need to send some off to do at least some of the processing.; August 15, 2012 at 2:59 PM

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The Adventure of a Lifetime

Our farming adventure began with the purchase of 3 alpacas in the fall of 2007. This eventually grew to an alpaca farm that birthed 23 cria. While we averaged 20 alpacas on a farm at any given time, we hit a peek of over 30 alpacas. We were involved in every aspect of alpaca farming: from breeding decisions, birthing, to attending alpaca shows, and shearing our own alpacas along with making product from their luscious fiber (hand spinning yarn and knitting product). We participated in 24 alpaca shows, and became very involved in the alpaca community.

In 2013 we added hair sheep to our farm.

Throughout this process we continued to tweak and revise our business plan. Our business plan evolved over time, and in 2013 it became clear that our goal was to raise grass fed animals for human consumption. While the initial plan was for this to go along side of alpaca farming, we slowly came to the conclusion our adventure was going to take us somewhere else.

In 2013 we began to sell off our alpaca herd to begin our new adventure with grass fed sheep and cattle.

Our adventure is still unfolding, so please, join us in our adventure of a lifetime as our journey unfolds.