Chicks and Crias

Yes, Mr. Lonely settled in well with his new playmates. There are 45 now, of 4 breeds. I've stopped naming them ;)
I believe this handsome guy shown below is a 'Partridge Chantecler', a heritage breed. This breed is a variant of the Chantecler chicken which originated in Canada, and is resistant to our cold climate. Do I know what I'm talking about? Not really. I do find the whole chicken breed research fascinating though.


Well, it's summer here at Misty Haven Alpacas. Our weather has been pretty decent. Not too hot. Enough sun and rain to make things nice and green.


And what could summer be on an alpaca farm without some cria to adore?

This is SCA Pepita and her new baby from noon hour today.
It's a girl weighing 19.4 lbs! I love the medium fawn colour. The dad is our multiple ribboned bay-black DEA Cyrano.

Pepita is a new mom and even though she had a pretty tough time delivering this baby, she has taken to mothering like a pro.


Thanks for popping by to read my posts. Please leave a comment if you are inclined. I love to hear from others who either share my interests or those who are drawn to read about a lifestyle far from their own.

Mr. Lonely No More!

Mr. Lonely isn't so lonely anymore. In fact, I think he's a bit overwhelmed!

We were waiting for the call from the post office all day for the chicks to be picked up. The hay lady called to say that the hay was probably going to be baled for pickup off the wagon that night.
And you know how that goes.
The post office called at 6:00pm saying that the chicks were in North Bay for pickup before 7:00pm. The hay lady called to say the bales were ready to pickup...30 minutes in the opposite direction of North Bay.
I picked up the chicks, hubby and daughter picked up the hay.

Can you hear it now? "Oh, sure, we're unloading the hay and you're taking pictures for your blog!"
We are done one load of three. We usually ensure we have about 375 small bales of hay for 20-24 alpacas and llamas. Alpacas only eat 2% of their body weight in hay. That means that a 150 lb alpaca will eat about 3 lbs hay a day. Not much, is it? Some farmers weigh out the exact amount, to optimize costs and to keep the alpacas lean. Lean, healthy alpacas have finer fibre than overweight alpacas. The trick would be to ensure that each animal gets his portion. We choose to offer extra hay and much gets wasted. We have always had around 80-100 bales left over, but it's always good to be prepared with extra, in case of a late spring.

Lucy is our 12 year old husky cross. She's a sweet, sweet dog. Lucy had a very hard time getting over the absence of her buddy Molly, our 14 year old dog who recently passed. Lucy had never been alone for longer than 30 minutes. We are giving Lucy extra attention these days. Many people suggested that we get Lucy another younger dog or puppy for a companion. I think Lucy will enjoy her final years as an only dog who gets all the attention.

That black box that you see at her throat is the transmitter for our radio-controlled invisible fence. Huskies like to run and we live in a fairly populated area on a fast road. Having an invisible fence means never having to tie your dog up to keep them safe.

Mr. Lonely

Lonely, he's Mr. Lonely.....
Poor little chick had a rough start. Mom kicked him out of the nest and hubby found him on his side with his eyes closed. So, the back of my alpaca trailer has become a chick nursery. We've been wearing a path to the trailer checking on him. None of the other eggs have produced a live chick. We suspect some nasty chicken business is going on...I'll leave out the details for the faint of heart.
Hubby has ordered some chicks to arrive tomorrow, so Mr. Lonely will have some friends.
It was either that or I was going to bring him in the house.

I did some crock-pot dyeing of rovings on the weekend. Wild and crazy colours. The colour is random and fun to spin.
Some for sale, but I just have to try some of this myself.

Saturday was my first day at the North Bay Farmer's Market this season. I'm an occasional vendor, which means that I get offered a booth when a regular can't make it. I like to talk to people so I usually enjoy myself there. As usual, I run into old friends and customers that I haven't seen for a while. It didn't rain, which was a bonus on a market day.

Smokey the barn cat. "Mr. Cool" defined. It's his barn...don't forget it.

Our hay lady called to tell me that they've started cutting. Hopefully, within a few days, the hay loft will be full and another job will be behind us.

It's Been a Month!

Here's a picture of the "Simple Shawl for Fancy Yarns" that I made out of my hand spun, handpainted alpaca\kid mohair\merino blend. The pattern is by Jenn Hintz of FibreFibers and can be found on Ravelry. The shawl's for me and I love it! So soft and colourful.


It's been a month since my last blog entry. I could say that I've been awfully busy but that would be true of my life in general, no more this month than others. Well, I can say that I was rather distracted with an sad event that was unfolding in our family. I'll leave it at that for now and tell you about the positive things that happened in the month.

On May 16th, the Country Roads Studio members had it's own studio tour. This is the day that we set aside to travel together to each others' studio, have a meal and a meeting together. It was a beautiful day, spent with friends. I'm always amazed at the talent that is possessed by these artists and artisans on our tour. I'll be posting some pictures of this work in later entries.

The next weekend was our Victoria Day long weekend in Canada. We don't usually shear until the end of May or early June, but it's been terribly hot and I gambled that the May 8th snowstorm would be our last. Our family of three decided to try shearing without help this year. It went marvelous. We started with the little ones and found that it was so easy, we continued on. Usually we would be having a very long day trying to get all 17 animals sheared while help was onsite. This year, we sheared a comfortable number each morning and when it got hot, we quit and went to the lake. On the last morning, our friends Tim and Lise came over to help lift the table when we did the last 4 heavyweights. It was such a relief to get it done!

The following week, May 28-30, I drove to Kapuskasing, Ontario to participate as a vendor at the 2010 Weavers and Spinners of Ontario North conference. It's a 6 1/2 hour drive north, through a lovely part of Canada. I was happy to have my friend Jane travel in my car for company. The conference was wonderful as always. It is always amazing that such a large event can be put on by the members of these small guilds. I was the chair of the conference in 2008 when it was in North Bay, and I appreciate the amount of work and organization involved. Seeing it from the 'outside' this time, I can also appreciate what this conference does to help keep our craft and our important artist relationships alive.
Hat's off to the Kapuskasing guild, especially for juggling to find numerous generators to keep the conference going when Ontario Hydro announced a total town power outage for Sunday morning!

My friend and fellow weaver, Suzanne Philbin, completed our two black alpaca jackets in time for Wasoon 2010. We wore them in the fashion show and received much praise for them. Staying in a hotel crawling with textile artists and carrying these jackets on a hanger through the lobby made me feel like a celebrity! Everyone wanted to touch and admire! These jackets deserve their own blog entry - so pictures will follow on another day.

We are on "cria-watch" at the farm. That means that one female has passed the 11-month mark in her pregnancy, so we have to keep an eye on her. The other will follow shortly. We are only expecting 2 cria this year.

However, we have some new life springing forth. One of the eggs under Velma has hatched the night before last! Cute! We are waiting for 9 more....

This is our first time having chicks! I hope he has some buddies soon, he looks a bit bewildered!

So...the sad event unfolding is the death of our 14 year old dog, Molly, last week. We knew it was coming and thinking about it overwhelmed a lot of other things in our family life. Someday soon, I'll write about Molly and share some pictures to honor her. Not now. It's too soon. It's too hard to write it.

Enough Already!

Here's the reason that we will never shear before the last week of May at my farm. This picture was taken Saturday morning.
Not a great day for the Country Roads Tour. The hydro went out for a bit over 5 hours. We have an inline generator, so that didn't affect us much.
However, I didn't have customers Saturday.

I could have felt bad, but I felt worse for my friend that has the tour tea-room. She had spent Friday baking pies and cooking food for the weekend.

Today's weather was better. The wind was bitter, but the snow gradually melted away.

We did have a stream of customers come through today. Several were disappointed that the alpacas weren't out at the front to greet them. Most understood when I explained that I couldn't feel good about putting the alpacas out in a temporary pen with no proper shelter to stand knee deep in snow. The children felt better when I told them that they could call to come back in July to see the baby alpacas that we were expecting.

I demonstrated handspinning to the children, explaining how the pioneers would have made their clothing and they were so interested. I'm always surprised at the number of adults who tell me they have never seen a spinning wheel at work before. It gives me a lot of pleasure to be able to show this historical craft.

At 6:45pm Sunday, it looked like this.
Our area sure needed the extra moisture that the snow brought.
I am looking forward to the return of warm weather this week.

Happy Mother's Day Thoughts

We are heading into Mother's Day weekend.

A good friend of mine is missing her daughter right now, as her daughter is away serving with the Canadian troops in Afghanistan. However, I know that she is very proud of her daughter. They both will be thinking of each other this Sunday.

My thoughts are with all of the mothers around the world that are separated from their children because of war...whether they are away from their family and home serving their country themselves, or whether they are the mothers that are left home to wait.

I'll be busy this weekend, as my studio is part of the Country Roads Mother's Day Tour around the rural roads where I live. This collage shows a few samples of the interesting things and people that you find along the 12 stops of the 2010 tour.

This is the 30th anniversary of the Country Roads Tour. Find out more at www.countryroadstour.com.

I'm reading a book right now by Annie Leonard called "The Story of Stuff'. As the picture shows, it's about "How our obsession with stuff is trashing the planet, our communities, and our health - and a vision for change."
I'm probably three quarters through the book. It's a fascinating book.

I've been on a downshifting/downsizing/simplifying slope for a few years now. That 'downshift' in career was necessitated by health, and well, after a few years of not bringing in a nice fat salary, the finances get downshifted as well.

I already know that money doesn't buy happiness. My riches in life are made by being with the people I enjoy and by doing the things I love, not by the things that I buy. A message from this book is that once your basic needs are met, you can't get happier by buying and owning more. Most of us in North America need to figure this out - and for the sake of our planet - soon. I speak for myself - I have a long way to go... but after reading this book, I want to do better.

Here's a radical idea for Mother's Day. Bring Mom to your local public library and get her a library card. If you live in Ontario, Canada, it's free! Besides oodles of books to borrow, there are typically internet-connected computers to use, DVD movies to rent, magazines, audio-books, subscription to databases such as Ancestry.com. Our library loans out pedometers, others loan out tools and decorative cake tins. There are book clubs, knitting clubs, and the like. Everything is shared, so that one book or one movie can be used by many people in the community. And to make your mom REALLY happy...sign out a book for yourself...mothers like it when their kids read ;)

Happy Mother's Day!

Art for your Feet!

I'm celebrating with my friend, Fay, today!

I met Fay when she started coming to my farm shop to buy yarn. She always bought the nicest sock yarn and talked so passionately about knitting. It turned out Fay was quite a knitter and quilter with an amazing artistic touch.

Well, that was about 2 years ago and we've become great friends. She's started spinning with great projects in mind. She's also eyeing the weaving that my friends and I have been doing. Fay starts to talk faster and more intently when she starts thinking about a fibre arts project. She's a gem in my life.

I kept seeing Fay buy my sock yarn, but whenever I saw her, she was wearing store-bought (ugly) socks. I assumed that she did what many fibre artists did...loved the process of knitting and then gave away the finished product to love ones. One day, the topic came up. Fay told our little knitting group that she had a huge bag full of beautifully hand-knitted socks of the best yarn. She didn't feel that she should wear such precious things on her feet just for everyday.

Well, I'm glad to report that Fay came to my home the other day and this is what I saw!
OK...it's not my yarn in those socks and it's not alpaca..but Fay's made a start and is feeling worthy enough to wear her art everyday!! It's a start!

There is something comforting in just knowing that you are wearing pair of socks that were the output of a process that has been past down from generation to generation. Mostly by women caring for their families.

The ultimate is wearing handknit socks from handspun and handpainted yarn. If these are alpaca, the experience is almost sensual. My friend, Suzanne, wears hers with sandals and her blue jeans so they can be noticed.

Some sock yarn is machine-washable and other needs to be cared for like fine lingerie.
Hand washing socks has become a ritual for me...I handwash my handknit, natural fibre socks because I want to preserve them. These socks bring me pleasure when I wear them and are worth the small effort of handwashing.

I have some totally utilitarian socks that my husband's late grandmother knit from thick indestructible acrylic. These socks are probably 25 years old. I wear them in my barn boots when the temperature doesn't require the warmth of alpaca. Gary's grandmother loved this farm, I loved her and those indestructible socks she made remind me of her.

Most commercially available socks come from overseas mass-production with an attached environmental cost, and, in some instances, a human rights cost. You can buy a pack of 8 cotton socks at the big-box store for likely the same as some moderately priced yarn for one pair of hand knit socks.

But, those socks won't last very long and I can promise you that you won't get the same feeling that I get when I wear my hand knit socks. Especially my alpaca ones!