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May has kept us busy with some of the usual spring chores as well as with new barn, pasture and corral planning. We seeded some specialty pasture and hay land [orchard grass and smooth brome with a bit of wheat grass and alfalfa for the alpacas, sheep and horses. We are thrilled with the chance to put some land into grass hay without the timothy that is so hard on fleece and fibre.

Fibre Works Alpacas: We started on shearing the alpacas this month. We will have some wonderful fleece this year, for commercial yarn production and for sale in raw or roving form for handspinnning, etc.

Fibre Works Shetlands: We finished lambing this month with two ewe lambs and two ram lambs. All four are presently black with krunet markings [white crowns on the heads]. The rams lambs could fade to grey but look quite black so far. Some of the lambs may be for sale this year but we will watch their development for a time before making any final decisions in that regard.

Fibre, Yarn and the Fibre Works Gallery: We are currently picking the alpaca fleeces that we have and will continue with this process as we finish shearing. We will be sending some of the fleece off to the mills during the summer and hope to have more exciting yarns to offer in the Fibre Works Gallery as the summer progresses. We will also be listing fleeces and rovings for sale in the Gallery as we work through what we have. We have already received one shipment of our Alpaca/Shetland blend yarn back from the mill. We will have it up on the "shelves" of the Gallery soon and it will be available in three gorgeous natural colours, black, medium grey and light grey. We have also started work on some Shetland lace knitting projects, using one ply Shetland cobweb yarn. Stay tuned for updates on that!

Bergen Norwegian Buhunds: We did the annual veterinary eye checks on Tjalfi and Treva this month. Both dogs have clear and normal eyes. With this good news, we will be going ahead with plans for a spring litter.

Farm Stuff: Designing the new barn, pastures and corrals was quite a challenge but the construction work has now commenced and things are taking shape very nicely. The barn will house a fibre workshop/vet room as well as a small machine workshop. The stock side of the barn will have an area for small stock [Alpacas and Shetlands] as well as for the large stock [horses and maybe cattle]. Getting feed storage, waterers, traffic patterns and gate requirements all figured out has taken quite awhile but we hope it will all pay off in making the stock handling much less labor intensive.

Limerick Link for May:

Lanette's flock has spots that are cool,
Pulled from her hidden gene pool.
Winchester's the ram
Who unlocked the dam
Lanette knows the genes always rule!

Link to Primolana Farm

Lanette Scapillato

| Home | Norwegian Buhunds | Alpacas | Shetland Sheep | Fibre Works Gallery | Step by Step |

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