As we find ourselves in the depths of winter on this sunny day in February, we think about how a year just flew by and now we find ourselves with a fresh start. February is a great time to cozy up with a warm beverage, find a space to write, and to reflect on a few highlights and learnings from the past year. These reflections will also help us plan for the year ahead. There is a lot to cover in this post, including the farm animals, alpaca fiber, garden adventures, art explorations, and grown and foraged food recipes - a new page on our website! Let’s dig in!

The Alpacas

One of the big changes to the alpaca herd this year was that we had Marvin fixed. His behavior around guests (really, anyone but Jackie and the Veterinarian team) was a bit more charged than was comfortable.  While he was a great stud, we wanted to keep him on the farm and having him fixed was the recommended route to help him calm down a bit. We are pleased that it has helped - so much so that the youngest grandkid was even able to hand feed him pellets through the fence with him staying calm. We’re happy it worked!

Since we didn’t breed any of the alpacas in 2022, there were no new crias in 2023. However, Abby’s son Barley who was born in 2022 continues to grow steadily. He experienced his first shearing last May, which he handled very well, and will be a full grown adult this coming summer at the age of 2.

Barley made the big move from the girls’ pasture to the boys’ pasture in October. While there was some adjusting to do that included some bouts of chasing, wrestling, and roughhousing (as is common with male alpacas), Marvin, Phaethon, and Barley have become a well-bonded trio, which has been great to see. It has even seemed to help Marvin and Phaethon get along a bit better. It’s pretty neat to see Marvin and Barley hang out as father and son, and their shared facial features are especially apparent when they stand next to each other.

The last major change to the herd from the last post has been that we lost Abby in early January 2024. Abby was 18 years old, which is a good long life for an alpaca. They typically live between 15-20 years. Abby had arthritis, which increased in severity pretty rapidly over the last year, and much more so in the last few days before her passing, which had impacted her mobility quite a bit. 

Abby was a good mother to her young, including Bailey, Ginger, and Barley on our farm, and several more babies before she joined us here in 2019. Abby absolutely loved getting sprayed with the water hose in the summer and was both sweet and feisty in her own way, feisty mostly when it came to {not} sharing her food. She liked to have her own space.

Abby’s fleece spun into beautiful, soft, white yarn and we’ll always keep some of it to remember her by. We will miss our dear Abby and are thankful for our time with her. No more painful arthritis. Rest in peace, Abby. Thank you for the memories.

Alpaca Fiber

The last batch of yarn we had processed was ready last March. We were very pleased with the end product. We had them do a slightly different yarn for us than the first batch, with a smaller gauge - a sport or fingering weight yarn rather than the DK/worsted. If you’re a knitter/crocheter this probably makes sense to you. If not, it just means the strands were a bit thinner this time around. We had the same colors as the first batch, as well, but are looking forward to having Misty, Ginger, and Barley’s fleeces processed in the next batch, which will be new colors and their baby fleeces, so exceptionally soft. 

It has been fun watching Misty’s fleece change over the past year. Once a pretty solid brown, it has been gradually changing so that some spots and almost a fading are starting to show, giving it a grayish hue. Since the color change has been more prominent over the past year, the yarn from this year’s shearing come spring may prove to have a more unique appearance than last year’s batch. We will be looking forward to seeing how it turns out this year and into the future. Other than texture, the others’ fleeces really don’t or haven’t changed much.

We are continuing to work with the fiber to explore its texture, weights, workability, etc. and may have some for sale in the future, potentially as full fleeces for spinning and possibly as yarn to be knit/crocheted. Stay tuned for future updates.

Gardens

The long, snowy winter last year brought many complaints of folks with girdled trees come spring. Rabbits and small rodents feed on the bark of young trees near the ground causing scarring or girdling. With a full ring of removed bark, the tree above the girdled location can’t receive necessary water and nutrients, killing the tree. Unfortunately, with the deep snow and no protection to their bark, our newly planted pear and apple trees suffered from girdling, as well. Since it was 2-3” from the ground, we were able to cut the trees with a fairly decent trunk remaining. One of the pear trees survived, but the other three we cut just below the girdled location. 

We will allow new shoots of branches to grow from the trunk and then select one and trim the rest, in hopes that the root system of each one is well-established enough to essentially grow a new tree. We now have plastic tree protector tubing in place and will be mindful to ensure this setup for any future trees, starting with the new elderberry trees we planted this past spring. The elderberry trees also each have stakes holding down dog cage wire in a good 3 foot circle, which ought to help keep the deer, rabbits, and other critters away from their young bark.

In addition to adding elderberry trees to the farm, we also planted a lilac bush and look forward to its heavenly scent come spring!

Having jumped into gardening on the farm with much gusto in the summer of 2022, we decided to scale back and simplify this past summer. It was a fun challenge keeping up with the very broad range of vegetables and flowers in 2022, however with a drought and other obligations, narrowing focus seemed wise and preferable. This year’s garden aimed at learning more about companion planting, exploring unique varieties of vegetables, and some mixed-result attempts at new methods of irrigation. 

Some of the vegetables we planted were:

• Tomatoes - Terra-cotta, Roma, Beefsteak, Queen of the Night, Moneymaker, Early Girl, Grape, Mini Spoon Cherry

• Peppers - Yellow, Red, Orange and Green Bell Peppers, Jalapeños, and Nadapeños (jalapeños without the heat)

• Green beans, Chioggia beets, Uzbek yellow carrots, Cosmic purple carrots, Chinese Red Meat radishes, Wasabi radishes, Quinoa

• Herbs: Basil, Parsley, Cilantro

We companion planted the tomatoes so that each was accompanied by basil and a type of flower, either marigolds, nasturtium, sweet alyssum or a combination. These were to help each other grow and/or to help keep pests and disease away. 

This past year, rather than till the ground to prepare the soil for planting, we used the Meadow Creature 12 tines steel broadfork. This tool is designed to gently loosen and aerate the soil while keeping layers intact. This no-till method allows plants to establish a deeper root system with the necessary air, water, and nutrients able to reach them while maintaining and improving soil health. Better for the plants, and since it is human-powered, it’s better for the planet, too. 

Another method we used for the second year is known as lasagna gardening where you place layers of materials above the pre-prepared soil for planting. There are a few different ways to do this.

We used a base layer of flattened cardboard boxes (thanks Chewy!) topped with a combination of partially composted alpaca manure and dirt from our hay shed. One of the best performing beds we had this season was set up this way, leftover from the previous year, and had had a small number of marigolds grown in it. We repurposed the bed, amending the soil with a handful of worm castings and a handful of compost placed into the hole of each plant. These were Thorburn’s Terra-Cotta heirloom tomatoes, Gypsy Sunshine Marigolds, and basil plants. They all thrived.

One disadvantage we experienced in this approach in other areas was that the alpaca manure/dirt blend we used contained seeds of weeds. So, unfortunately, the weeds happily thrived in the nutrient-rich soil and became hard to keep up with (you should have seen the size of some of them!). In future attempts, more thorough composting may resolve this problem. We found that using a tarp to cover weed-laden areas wipes them out quite well; however, it also wipes out some of the good stuff, so it will be a continued effort finding the right tools and approach for this method.

One of the pleasant discoveries we made this year was the ease of using an ancient tool/technique for watering/irrigation with these clever devices called ollas (oh-ya-s). There are pre-made ollas available on the market, however, we opted for the 12” terra-cotta clay pot and saucer approach, which worked well. 

We will likely expand on these in a future post; however, in short, you place a hole-plugged clay pot into the ground within a couple feet of the plants you want to water. Place water into the clay pot with a saucer on top to keep out bugs and prevent evaporation. The plant roots grow towards the olla as a water source with the semi-permeable walls allowing moisture to slowly seep out. 

Given the area and number of plants we matched up, our ollas were a supplemental watering source that reduced rather than replaced the required manual watering, but was it worth it? Yes. They were very simple to set up and maintain, saved time and effort, and were effective for what we needed them to accomplish. 

We also tried setting up a rain barrel in the garden with drip irrigation hoses connected to the rain barrel; however, these were placed late and proved to have some design flaws that will need to be remedied in the future for further, hopefully more successful, attempts. 

All in all, it was a successful gardening season and we learned a lot. We enjoyed an abundance of tomatoes, lots of pesto from so many basil plants, and a sprinkling of the other vegetables come harvest time. We will share some of the ways we prepared our garden harvest as recipes in our new Recipes section on the website!

The Arts

Speaking of recipes, one area of the arts we enjoy exploring every year is the culinary arts with new recipes for foraged and grown fruits, fungi, plants, and vegetables. We are excited to have a new Recipe page on our website and will be casually adding recipes as we embark on new culinary adventures. This past year, a few we enjoyed were: Black Cap Raspberry Jam, Milkweed Pod Parmesan, Dehydrated Tomatoes, Creamy Tomato Soup, Basil Pesto, and from the previous year, Creamy Nettle Soup. With spring not too far ahead, we look forward to trying more of these and will see what new dishes we discover.

Fiber arts is another area we enjoy exploring. Over the past couple of years we have knitted and crocheted the alpaca yarn into a shrug, several shawls and scarves, and a couple of hats and headbands. Jackie has done some spinning with the raw fiber on her spinning wheel, as well. We are still exploring the fiber, how it works up, the texture, and the yarn and fabric it creates. We will continue to experiment with it and look forward to sharing more projects and learnings with you as we go.

Lastly, Jackie has been greatly enjoying painting, both digital and acrylic, so we wanted to share some of the paintings with you. Find the new digital greeting cards at the bottom of this post, available in our shop for purchase, and we also have new coloring pages available for digital download in our Free Printables Library. We hope you check them out and enjoy!

That’s a wrap for our reflections on 2023 that will guide us in planning for the 2024 year ahead. We hope you’ve enjoyed hearing about them and are looking forward to things to come. We’re envisioning lots of flowers, more of our alpacas, goats, chickens, ducks, dogs, and cats, lots of fiber focus, and other discoveries rooted in art, nature, and joy. Thank you!

~ Hello Bluebirds