Filed under: Humming | Tags: alpaca breeding, fiber, Llama Futurity Association, National Alpaca Farm Days, selling llamas, Sweet-n-Tart
Well, again I’ve managed to not write regularly. I’m going to STOP that by making this my journal — isn’t that much of what a blog is, after all? A public private journal. Ah well –
At any rate, this past week has been a flurry of getting ready for this and next weekend. This weekend Carl and I are going to the Llama Futurity Sale and Show — not to buy or sell, but to take EDR Chilean Sweet-n-Tart to be bred to New Venture’s M.R.S. Night Vision. I bought the breeding at last year’s LFA auction, and hope it will help sell my gorgeous little girl next spring. I may put her in the Suri Llama Association sale next May, if I can’t sell her on my own. I’ve got a picture of her at the end of this blog note, so anyone interested in buying a beautiful female who will be bred to an exceptional male [and no, it's not going to be at a 'giving her away' price, but will be fair], let me know!
The next thing we have been working on is our participation in National Alpaca Farm Days, atwww.nationalalpacafarmdays.com.
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We will have llamas and alpacas for people to see and pet, brochures to hand out, things to sell, and all sorts of stuff. I’m even going to have unprocessed fiber to sell. Wow. Hope this goes well! I’m going to send individual e-mail and maybe post card invitations to people who have been here for activities, and just about anyone else I can think of. I’ve spoken with two of the farms in the general area [in Metamora and in Bloomington] and they had, respectively, 200 and 300 people show up. Much work to be done!
The OTHER thing we have going is that two of my suri alpaca females, Amber Glo and Lady Astor, are headed off to Dos Donas Alpaca Farm in St. Louis to be bred. I hope they get Amber Glo pregnant — she’s not been happy with Chacana for the past couple of years. Then they will be sold, hopefully fairly quickly. At least I’ll be able to put them on AlpacaNation with Bolero. Lady Eleanor is going along to head toward Julie Weir’s farm to be sold. I also have a possible interest in the three guys [Day Dream Believer (Rabbit), White Knight, and Midnight Idol], and in October, when Otis heads to the ‘boy’ group, Hokatika will probably go to a local alpaca farm as a herd guard.
Two other items — see, I said we are busy! One is that we are being audited — the IRS seems to think I enjoy getting up at 4:30 and working my buns off all day long and then trying to figure out how to make more money half the night, and this is nothing more than a ‘hobby farm.’ We’ll see what happens, but if nothing else, I feel good about knowing that I have been and continue to do everything I can to make money; and for me this is as much of a real business as I can make it.
The other item is almost as bad, but still can be good. Spicey Hot [Sweet-n-Tart's mom] is being put up for sale at Bob LaMorte’s Herd Dispersal sale. That’s a sad one — personal reasons and he has to do it NOW rather than being able to wait until the Celebrity Sale next spring when he would have all sorts of people there — and it is the first big sale of the year. At any rate, she and her M.R.S. Soul Majic boy, Mocha Latte, are being offered, so right now I’m spending lots of time getting her clean to the skin. She’s not happy, needless to say, since she is full of mats, but I’m about done with her third leg, leaving only one more, and then we can let her be for a while to get her fiber to get back to its lock structure. She is a fantastic female, and I hope she and her boy bring some good money. As my vet said, now that I’m not breeding anymore, I’m getting all these exceptional animals — just the way my life goes! At any rate, I’m going to be walking Sweet-n-Tart around so people can see what Spicey Hot produces and have fliers ready to hand out once the LFA sale is over.
Oh yes, and I forgot that I’m working on a scholarship for the Illinois Agri-Women Association and have helped a friend start a prayer shawl group. I’ll start one at the River’s Edge United Methodist Church in Spring Bay in November in case anyone in the East Peoria area is interested. It will meet on Thursday nights at the church — this is in addition to the fiber group that meets at the ranch on Monday nights.
So that’s it for now. Hopefully this has been enough reason to not write regularly. I may not get to write again tonight or tomorrow night, depending upon whether Carl takes his computer to Cedar Rapids, but I will be back Sunday night briefly.
Sweet-n-Tart -- isn't she!
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