Happy 12-12-12

I know I have neglected the blog. I am so sorry. Life just seems to get in the way and something has to give, which ends up being the poor blog.  I do try to post pics on both the ranch's Facebook page and on the Twitter feed. So if you follow us there, at least you get to see some cute pics. 

To get everyone caught up of what we have been doing... well we had a few more visitors this fall.

Melissa Fleis, finalist on this season's Project Runway.  For those of you who do not watch this show, it is about designers competing to win a lot of money, equipment, and publicity to start their own clothing lines. The 3 finalist of the show, get to show a collection at fashion week in N.Y.C. Meilissa Fleis is from Rogers City, MI. She resides in San Francisco.  She came "home" after the show and was honored by her hometown.  We invited her to meet us and the alpacas here at the ranch. Her and her family came out for the afternoon. It was a lot of fun and we really enjoyed their visit.

Melissa meeting Thing 2

We also had some fun with the Girl Scouts from Rogers City. The troop came out to the ranch to meet and learn all about Alpacas.

Girl Scouts feeding grain to Abby

Then a couple of weeks later I attended one of their troop meetings at the Rogers City High School. We did a fun project of felting soap with the alpaca fiber. After they were done with felting the soap, they even created Alpaca Soap commercials and performed them for me. What a "hoot".  Well done girls!  I really enjoyed it.

Girls Scouts hard at work felting their soap

I have been busy with all aspects of the fiber side of the business. I belong to spinning and weaving guilds. So I clean and card fleece for them to spin,  I also am filling orders for fleece, yarns, and finished projects. I am working on knitting an alpaca jacket, that I hope to get done soon as it is a Xmas present.  I have towels on on of my looms that I need to finish.  I did finish my alpaca felted slippers. I did a post about this project when my spinning guild visited the ranch. Here is a picture of my slippers.

Felted Slippers

Now we are finishing up anything that needs to be done outside, since our winter is starting here in Northern Michigan. It seems we are never fully prepared, but we do try.  I surely cannot end this post without a picture of some of our alpacas. Everyone take care and I hope you all have a safe and happy holiday season.

Good Bye

Fall is a busy time at the ranch.

I haven't posted much as I have been very busy.  I have been processing our Alpaca fiber (washing, carding and spinning).  I also have done 2 arts & craft shows this fall.  I am now busy trying to restock inventory.

Green tomatoes

We also have been putting the garden to rest. I had to bring in green tomatoes as we had an early frost that killed the plants.  I ripened them in a container in our house and of course this weekend they were ready to be processed. I canned them and also made tomato juice with my juicer. We still have some left that are ripening every day for us to eat. Even though we had a very dry summer and our garden relies on Mother Nature to provide the water, we were able to harvest lettuce, cucumbers, corn, potatoes, onions, zucchini, green peppers, tomatoes and our first attempt for growing mushrooms, we had wine caps. They were delicious.  Most of our beans, peas, and other squash were eaten by the deer.  Next year we will have to put back up the electric fence we once had around the garden. (We used it for the goats this season). We also have our meat chickens and turkeys in the freezer.

Wine Cap Mushrooms

 We have to now work on getting the animals ready for winter. We need to do a herd health check when it is not raining outside. It has rained now for the last 3 days. We have about 5 inches so far. Well, I guess that is better than the "white stuff".  I really am not ready for that.

Rain is coming

This year's crias are growing.  They are adorable.  What have you been doing this fall?

Smile for the camera.