9.27.2009

An Alpaca Road Trip

A couple weeks ago, Alex sent me an article from one of the local papers about an alpaca farm in the area having an open house this weekend. Upon further research, we discovered it was Alpaca Days in our area (it only takes about a ten minute drive from our house to be in Illinois farm country. That is why I love living in here. But, I digress.)
Anyway, we drove out to Wishing U Well Alpacas first to check out their herd.
They had quite a few alpacas. This is Cochita (I am pretty sure that is her name). Alex and I liked her the best:
The chickens were also roaming around in the yard, much to our amusement:
After we left Wishing U Well Alpacas, we decided to find one more alpaca farm to check out. So, we headed to J4 Alpacas. We really loved this place. Everyone was super friendly, and we even got to pet one of the alpacas (a male named Mickey Finn. Which is awesome because Mickey Finn's brewery is one of my fav places to eat and drink beer!) We also saw 'the maternity ward' where three babies had just been born in the last few weeks:
While at J4 Alpacas, we were told all about their herd and how they protect them from the coyotes (they have a guard dog AND a guard llama!) and about how they send their fiber to a mill to be processed and stuff. It was super cool. I may have walked away with 8oz of undyed alpaca roving as well as a pair of alpaca/merino socks for my coworker who loves alpaca and dreams of having an alpaca farm. It was a very cool day. I was so happy that Alex had fun too. He was a very good sport. Had lots of questions and stuff. We both had so much fun!

We also were reminded that there is an alpaca show coming up at the end of October. I am thinking we may need to go check it out!

Happy knitting and have a good week!


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