Happy New Year!

Well it's a New Year and things are looking great!
I want to thank Dew Hills Coffee Shop in Marinette for selling our alpaca sweaters, gloves, hats and scarves. I also want to thank everyone who purchased our items there. Sales were very good, especially for Christmas! I will be dropping off more sweaters sometime this coming week.

We've been trying to streamline our chores at the farm. We've purchased large round bales of hay and placed them out in our two shelters for our alpaca boys and that helps save time. We're also in the process of rearranging things in the barn to make better use of stall space and the barn's "built-in" feed bunks to provide hay without having a lot of waste.

I (Elizabeth) will be getting married in the fall and my fiance' doesn't plan to do much farming so we are looking for more ways to minimize my time at the farm. Part of that plan includes selling off some of our alpacas so feel free to check out our new, lower prices on our AlpacaNation farmsite.

Busy time

These past few weeks have been extremely busy! Not only does Christmas have us rushing around but so has the winter weather.

Last weekend, the power went out at the farm and wasn't back on until about 12 hours later. This caused problems in the house and barn by freezing up the water pumps. Fortunately, after the power went back on, the heat tape along with Rick's persistence and some heaters got the water flowing again.

The snow brought about more challenges with drifting and blowing snow making our daily chores to the outside pastures miserable. Temperatures have varied between the single digits up to the low 20s and the wind chill makes it more uncomfortable. Of course this is something we are used to in Wisconsin.

We do several things to prepare for the winter. The first thing we do is increase their daily food ration to help them build up a little more body fat. We feed them alpaca pellets and add some "Sweet 16" to it for a little extra energy. We also make sure they have enough hay to munch on throughout the day since there is no pasture available to graze on. At least half of our alpacas and llamas are housed in the barn which is the best place for them during the winter.

The others (all males) are in shelters that we have built as our herd grew. The first shelter we ever built is a little smaller but is able to house five alpacas. My brother added an overhang off the front entrance which is a nice area for them to stay in the shade during the summer. In the winter, we wrap the outside of the overhang with a couple of tarps, creating an extra "room" for their shelter. This seems to work well for us and the alpacas.

Our second alpaca shelter is much larger and has paneled walls. In the summer, we remove one panel on opposite sides to allow a breeze to pass through. When the weather starts getting cold, we put those panels back up. A heated water bucket keeps them with a fresh supply of water all day, without freezing up.

For both of our shelters we make sure there is hay or straw for them to lay on. It always amazes me when the wind is blowing hard and it's snowing or the wind chills are below zero and I walk into one of our alpaca shelters and it is cozy, quiet and noticeably warmer than I expect it to be. The animals will be standing or laying down inside, all content with their hay.

We always do our best to keep our animals warm and comfortable. They do their part by growing long, thick, beautiful fiber.

That's all for now...take care and keep warm!

Wrapping things up for 2009

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas!

Now is the time of year when we close out the "old" year and prepare for the New Year. I've got the majority of our tax information together but still have a few loose ends and information to gather yet for our tax preparer. The hardest part is getting everyone else's information and receipts together. It seems to get easier though and Quickbooks has been a wonderfully helpful program for keeping all of our account information accurate and accessible for our tax preparer.

Looking ahead to 2010, we've already registered for a show in the spring and I hope that we will be able to attend at least two shows this coming year.

I would like to make one New Year's resolution and that is to get back on track with my blog posts. I realize I haven't been updating very much lately, especially this last month when my computer died, but the new (used) computer seems to be working great so I should be able to get back on a blogging schedule.

In the meantime, I wish you a very happy and healthy New Year from all of us at Hidden Pond Farm, LLC!

Always busy at the farm

Today was a very productive day at Hidden Pond Farm! Rick and I had all the animals watered and stalls cleaned, one pasture cleaned, and we gave Ivermectin shots and trimmed toenails on a group of five alpaca boys -- all before 9:00 a.m.

Later we picked up a load of hay and put it up in the loft. Then we fed everyone dinner and cleaned two more pastures before calling it a day. It seems as though everyone loved the "new" hay so we'll see if we can buy another load next weekend.

My computer died on Thanksgiving Day so until I figure out what's wrong with it I'm temporarily (hopefully) using an old computer. Even this simple update is taking me forever as I wait for the computer to catch up with my typing! I hope to be back up to speed by the end of the week at the latest.

HPF around town...

I had hoped to discuss something different for this post, but I've been running in a lot of different directions lately so I haven't had time. I did want to mention where we'll be selling alpaca garments over the next couple of weeks.

Look for our Hidden Pond Farm alpaca sweaters, gloves, hats, scarves, etc, at these upcoming events:

• Saturday, November 14th at Best Western (corner of Hall Ave and Riverside in Marinette) from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
  
• Saturday, November 21st at Little River Country Club, N2235 Shore Drive in Marinette, from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
  
• Holiday Beauty & Bazaar -- Sunday, November 22nd at Holy Family Parish Center, 2715 Taylor Street in Marinette from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. This event will include a vendor fair with great gift ideas, a bake sale, and skin care information presented by local Mary Kay consultants. As a new Mary Kay Independent Beauty Consultant I invite you to stop in for a free facial/mini-makeover at 10 a.m., 11 a.m. or 1 p.m. Visit my Mary Kay webpage at www.marykay.com/ewoodky to view the latest products or to contact me to reserve a time for your facial! Walk-ins welcome. Bring in a non-perishable food item and enter your name into a drawing for a great prize! Food donations and proceeds from this event will benefit St. Vincent De Paul in Marinette.

What's in a name?

We recently named our newest cria, born nearly a month ago. I wanted to call him "Monster" because he's been gaining weight and growing like crazy, but I was voted down. About a week or so ago, we officially began calling him "Matthias" (pronounced muh-tee'-us). Here is the big guy above in the cria coat, hanging out with the ladies on this sunny morning in October.

Any fans of 1980's-era rock music may sense a theme with the names of some of our boys. Matthias and Nuno are both names of guitarists that we admired "back in the day." I'm not sure if we will be keeping with this theme for future alpacas born at Hidden Pond Farm. We just sort of chose these names because we like them, not to intentionally name them after musicians.

Actually, Francis Bean is also a name I borrowed from the rock music world for our huacaya female born last year. (The real Francis Bean is the daughter of the late Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain and musician/actress Courtney Love.) I liked the name because my grandmother's name was Francis and I thought "Bean" was cute because we alpaca farmers always refer to a natural alpaca byproduct as "alpaca beans." And since I'm on the subject... our suri male HPF Iggy was actually named after our grandfather Ignatius and not after musician Iggy Pop.

There really is no rhyme or reason as to what we name each alpaca born at our farm. I tried to be creative in the beginning, but now we all kind of brainstorm and try to find a name that everyone likes. If it takes three weeks or more to choose the name we all feel is right for that cria, then so be it. Each and every one of our alpacas is unique and their personalities are very different. We try to select a name that each one of them will be happy living with for the rest of their lives. They all seem to be very happy so far, so I guess we're doing alright.

Have a great day everyone!

Winter preparation

We've started having snow flurries here in Marinette over the last few days. Not any "real snow" but just a few little snowflakes to let us know that winter is on it's way.

All of our alpaca and llama girls are in the barn so there's no big change for the winter except for spreading straw bedding around to keep them warmer on the barn's cement floor. The boys, however, are a different story. We have two pastures and shelters for our alpaca boys and the shelters need to be "winterized".

Winterizing the boys' shelters is not a very big deal. The older boys have wall panels that need to be put up. In the spring, we remove a couple panels on either side of the shelter to allow better air flow. Now it's time to put the panels back up to keep it cozy and warm inside.

The younger boys' shelter is a little different. We have an overhang that provides shade in the summer. In the winter, we hang tarps on two sides of the overhang to provide extra protection from the strong winter winds and all of the snow. This also creates an extra "room" for the shelter so the boys won't feel too crowded inside when it's cold and nobody will get left outside.

Fortunately, the alpacas are growing nice thick fiber to keep themselves warm in addition to the extra straw bedding and winter preparations that we do at the farm.

Misty's big baby!

It wasn't easy taking this photo of our newest cria this morning. The girls all crowded around him and protected him from the camera as soon as I took his jacket off for the pictures.

We've haven't decided on a name yet -- last weekend we were calling him "Charlie" -- but I'm now thinking of calling him "Monster" because he's getting so big. I weighed him yesterday afternoon and he's gained FIVE POUNDS at only one week old. He was 14.8 pounds the day he was born and yesterday he weighed an even 20 pounds!

Our little monster is such a sweet, inquisitive and energetic cria and his suri fiber looks great so far.

This second photo shows all the alpaca and llama ladies crowding around "Monster" as I tried to take his picture. Seriously, he's in the middle of that crowd -- they even managed to hide his legs from me!

While I was out taking pictures, I checked out a couple of the girls to see how long their fiber has grown since shearing them this spring. It's amazing to see how fast that fiber grows out. They are all ready for the cool temperatures of the fall and will have even longer fiber by the time winter sets in. Nature really does take care of these beautiful animals.

Fall has arrived!

Fall officially started last week and the cool temperatures have definitely come with it! It's time to bring out your alpaca sweaters, gloves and hats. Rene' has a nice inventory of all of the above and has sold them at craft shows and also at our own open house. We've talked about setting up an online store and I'll be looking into this more closely.

If and when we do set up our online store, you'll be the first to know. In the meantime, take care and stay warm!

Weekend Wrap Up

So did you visit an alpaca farm this weekend? We met some really nice people and had a fun time answering their questions about alpacas and llamas. Plus, the alpacas really enjoyed all the attention they received from our visitors! (Moe sends a special thank you for the carrots from a new friend he met on Saturday!)

The weather wasn't the most cooperative this weekend...rain on Saturday morning and gusty winds on Sunday that brought our tent down and sent alpaca gloves flying off the table! But at least the brief showers this afternoon held off until after our event ended. Overall though, it was a great experience for our first farm open house.

If you live nearby and you missed the open house, feel free to contact me and set up a time for a farm tour. Thanks to everyone who stopped by to visit and thanks also to Rene' for the cool HPF logo shirts for us to wear!

National Alpaca Farm Days This Weekend!

Our new - and still unnamed - cria relaxed in the sun this week while we prepared for our Open House event.

We're as ready as we'll ever be for the open house at Hidden Pond Farm running from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. Rene' has plenty of alpaca clothing items to display and sell. We'll also have a fiber display table set up on our actual shearing table and we'll show you what we feed our alpacas and llamas. Of course there will be plenty of alpacas around for you to see and feel their luxurious fiber!

We're expecting rain on Saturday, but hopefully it will hold off during our 3-hour event. Sunday should be a great day with nicer weather, but we'll be happy to see our visitors no matter what the weather forecast!

Have a great weekend!

Oh Boy!

Misty's new cria arrived this morning...and it's another boy! We now have over 50% male alpacas at our farm. I don't know why we are having so few female crias over the last few years...

Anyway, back to our new baby boy...he's a beautiful fawn colored suri and he's very healthy. This little guy was standing and trying to nurse from his mom within 20-30 minutes after he hit the ground!

As you see in the photo above, the new cria has the pink jacket on that Victor has been wearing for the past few weeks when it's cool outside. Our next larger size cria coat is green so Victor will get that one if he needs it. We washed the pink jacket this morning and then I rubbed the outside of the jacket all over the new cria before putting it on him. I wanted to make sure his mom was comfortable with the smell of the jacket before I put it on her new cria.

Both mom and cria are comfortably relaxing in their own private stall. It's cool and rainy outside today so I'll wait a day or so before letting Misty and her cria outside with the other alpacas.

Everybody's birthday!

Well, August 18th proved to be quite a day for us at Hidden Pond Farm! It was our mother's birthday as well as our great-nephew's birthday...and then it became "Victor's" birthday.

Don't let the pink jacket fool you, that's a male cria in the photo. My calculations must have been off because I didn't expect this cria for at least another couple of weeks. Unfortunately, Victor's mom has not been very cooperative about feeding him so we are supplementing him with a colostrum powder mixture as well as milk we've gotten from his mom.

It has been a busy couple of days. I'll update you more later this week...

Wet hay

This is a picture of our wet hay on the field. Since this past weekend, the weather reports had shown a sunny 5-day forecast so we started cutting hay on Tuesday. Then I believe there was a 30% chance of rain in the forecast for Friday. Last night on the news, we saw a 50% chance of rain. I was hoping the rain would bypass Marinette so that we could get our hay dried and baled, but unfortunately that wasn't the case.

During the night and this morning, we received a significant amount of rain. If it clears up soon, maybe we can salvage our hay on the field without any problems. All we need is some sunshine and a nice breeze to hopefully dry it out. I'm not getting my hopes up though.

The alpacas, however, are enjoying the rain after several days of hot, humid weather.

First Time Fleece Show Entries

Wow! It was a lot of work but we skirted two fleeces for the 2009 AFCNA Continental Fleece Show coming up in Gettysburg, PA, this weekend. This is very new to us because we have never before entered a fleece show competition. I'm really excited to find out how things turn out.

What is even more exciting is the fact that they will be sending us back a DVD (at no extra cost) showing the fleece judging as well as all of the seminars at this weekend's event. Even though we won't be there in person, we'll still get to see all the seminars. Even better -- or not -- we'll get to watch as the judges look over our fleece entries and make their comments. Good or bad, it will be a learning experience for us. If the comments are bad, we'll know better next time.

PHOTOS: The "golden" fleece in the box above belongs to our now 12-month old suri male, Luxor's Lucas. I'm worried that as a suri fleece I may have let it get too "fluffy" in preparation. His flat lock style was more connected and actually fell off in more of a blanket as I hand sheared him.

In contrast, our 10-month old suri male, HPF Leroy had all individual pencil locks in his fiber. This photo doesn't quite do it justice since the sky was so overcast as I snapped the picture on my back porch. Although the photo makes it look like a mop, it really is beautiful to see in person.

Both entries are different from each other so we'll have to just wait and see how each of them fares in the fleece show. As they say, you can't win if you don't enter. We took a blue ribbon in our first spin off competition...maybe we'll be just as pleasantly surprised in the fleece competition. When we hear the results, you'll be the first to know!

Naked alpacas...and llamas, too!

Everywhere you look at Hidden Pond Farm, there are naked alpacas and llamas! For the last few days, I've seen them laying flat on their sides, sunbathing.

Yesterday, Rick and I switched gears a little and sheared five llamas. Since we were shorthanded for a day, we knew we could just put the llamas in the chute and shear them fairly easily. Some of the llamas get a little feisty when shearing around their legs and necks, and toenail trimming on a couple of them can be nearly impossible. Nevertheless, we had a nice feeling of accomplishment at the end of the day.

Today was no different. Rene' was able to help us shear four (big) alpaca boys and one more llama. This weekend, we can finish up with Java Joe, our 400+ lb llama, and three alpaca boys. The two juvenile alpaca boys will be hand shorn instead of using the clippers so that should be interesting!

Wishing you a safe and happy memorial day weekend from all of us at Hidden Pond Farm!

Before and After...Shearing Season at HPF!

Federico ("Rico") was the first to be shorn this past Sunday at the farm. We hesitated to shear because it was very chilly that morning. After we got started though it seemed to warm up.

Rico wasn't extremely excited about the shearing but he's feeling very comfortable now and about 8.5 pounds lighter. We also trim toenails at shearing time. Rico's toenails didn't look too bad but they still needed some trimming.

Our nephew Noah and brother-in-law Rob were there to witness their first alpaca shearing. Rob was kind enough to snap a couple of pictures for the blog. I decided to use the one below with me (Elizabeth) at Rico's head and Rick starting the shearing. That's Rene's arm holding onto the back legs. And, of course, Noah giving a two thumbs up!

Black sweatshirts and flannel were not the best clothing choices for shearing -- we all ended up full of white fiber. Hopefully, we'll have warmer weather these next couple of weeks so we won't have to dress as warm.

Rico was our "practice run" to help us get started. I can't remember how long it took us, but it was not our fastest time. Once we get into the rhythm of shearing, we can usually get each alpaca shorn and toenails trimmed within a half hour.

If you ever have a chance to see a professional shearing demonstration done at an alpaca show, I highly recommend it. We watched a demonstration at the show in Madison. The professional shearers were able to completely shear one alpaca in about six minutes! Of course they had several people helping and they didn't have to worry about toenail trimming either. Two men would hold up the alpaca while two others would place the feet in ropes. Then the alpaca would be lowered to the floor and stretched out. As one man sheared, someone would collect the fiber off the alpaca and bag it up for the owner.

Personally, I'm happy getting them done in 30 minutes. We usually have about three people -- one to shear and one at each end of the table holding down the feet and head. We'll stop every few minutes to gather up the fiber and place it in bags. The shearing table makes it a lot easier on our backs, too.

So this is what we're up to lately at Hidden Pond Farm and most every alpaca farm across the country at this time of year.

What's up at the farm?

Here's Leroy and Callista enjoying the sunshine today. As you can see, Leroy is looking great and doing really well. He's finally gaining weight and is now over 23 pounds.

The fall color is really starting to burst on the trees around the farm. This is a great time for taking pictures of the animals because the background scenery is just beautiful.

We'll be busy this weekend, packing up our fiber to sell to the American Alpaca Fiber Federation. We'll be meeting them in Green Bay on Wednesday where they'll be picking up fiber from a couple of other farms besides us. I'll try to remember the camera so I can get a picture for the blog. I'm excited to see the AAFF fiber truck in person. I'm wondering how they can handle picking up so much fiber from farms across the country on each trip. I can't imagine where they store it all. That's what I want to see. Maybe they'll let me take a couple of pictures so you can see it too.

Little visitors...

Joyce and the children from Gran Gran's Daycare came out for a visit today to meet the alpacas and llamas. Check out Heide laying down next to the gate so the kids could get up close and personal with her!

There were about eight children and two adults in the group and they all seemed to have a good time petting and visiting with the animals. We even penned up a couple of my brother's fainting goats who were very friendly with the children.

Rene' and her daughter Beth helped with setting up for the group this morning and Rene' brought a sample of alpaca apparel to show how the fiber is used. She also brought a supply of finger puppets made from alpaca yarn and those were a big hit with the kids! Each child got to pick out a finger puppet to take home as a souvenir of their visit.

We all enjoyed their visit today and hope they had a good time, too.

What to do with all that fiber!

We've joined the American Alpaca Fiber Federation (AAFF) and I'm excited to see how this investment works out. As members, we'll have the opportunity to sell our fiber every year to AAFF, a guaranteed place to sell it. The best part for us is that they do not require us to skirt, sort or scour it. We also have the option to not sell our fiber if we have other uses/buyers for it and that's what I really like.

The AAFF will travel to major farms, cities and alpaca events across the country with their tricked out fiber truck. Member farms can bring their fiber to these drop off points and get a receipt for their fiber. The special equipment in the fiber truck will allow them to weigh, cut and bale the fiber to get it ready for processing.

Eventually, our alpaca fiber will be made into denim and marketed as Paca Blues jeans. How cool is that? Hopefully, our investment, along with that of all the other AAFF members, will pay off and demand for American alpaca fiber will increase. We took the leap of faith to join the AAFF and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this has been a good move on our part. I'll give a little report now and then as we progress with this new organization.