2022 shearing is complete. now what?

Shearing day is behind us, so now what do we do? Shearing is just the first step in turning the crazy soft and warm alpaca fleece into crazy soft and warm apparel for people to wear. After shearing we skirt the fleece on (what else) a skirting table. Skirting is when the fleece is picked through to remove any unwanted fibers and barnyard debris to get it ready for processing at the mill. The mill will wash the fleece and then run it through a carder to get all the fleece fibers pointing in the same direction. The end product is called roving. Once that is complete the roving is spun into yarn. We pick up the yarn and then label it including a picture of the alpaca that produced it, our farm logo, and our Homegrown By Heroes-PA Preferred logo. Now it is ready to be used by Kathy to weave or knit products for our farm store or simply sold in our shop and at various vendor events in the area.  The other big item we look forward to after shearing is the arrival of our Spring crias! We are expecting two in 2022 - one from our true black dam Rhiannon in late May and the other to our blue ribbon winning Layla in early to mid June. The sire for both is our own Poseidon Isaac's Matoskah. His previous offspring with Rhiannon took 2nd place in a class of 7 a few years ago so we are hoping for a repeat performance! We will have two more cria coming in the fall and have already planned our breedings for this spring which will produce next year's cria's. Spring is always an exciting time on the farm!

The pictures above are a before and after shearing picture of Sugar Hollow's Daydream Believer. In the group picture on the right he is the one on the far left. What a difference shearing makes!