Winter Outing this Saturday – 10:00 until 5:00

January 28th is fast approaching. I just hope the mild weather will be around for our 2012 Winter Outing. We were very fortunate last year for our Fleece and Wine Tasting Day to have great winter weather.

Diastole will be offering a selection of rovings from our alpacas for spinners that were processed by Zeilinger Wool – a name well known to spinners. We will have our usual selection of alpaca socks as well as other alpaca apparel.

We will once again have our friends, Pam and David from Brandon Hills Vineyard (http://brandonhillsvineyard.com) with their award winning wines.

Ann Potter from Pilot Mountain Llamas (http://pilotmountainllamas.com) will again be joining us with her spinning demos and her own yarns and hand knit garments.

We have added Knit Picky Yarns (http://knitpickyyarns.com) where Sandy and I took knitting lessons under Sammie Jo Thomas’s most patient instruction. Jo has a large selection of wonderful yarns and knitting supplies.

Pam and David’s neighbors and good friends, Jo and Mike Linville, are joining us this year. They are the owners of LinCrest Farms (http://lincrestangus.com). LinCrest specializes in grass fed angus beef. We have enjoyed it at Brandon Hill’s outings in the past and are very pleased to have them joining us for 2012. They will have tastings available and be taking orders for their delicious, healthy beef.

Check out the web sites for our partners, these are all excellent organizations that pride themselves in providing top quality goods.

We look forward to having you join us. We will have a couple of the alpacas by the store to say hello – winter is their kind of weather. Nothing like a great alpaca fleece wrap to keep you warm in the middle of winter.

Jim

Our 2011 Fleece and Wine Tasting Day was a big success as so many of our friends and customers, old and new, had a great day at the farm. We were very lucky with the weather this past January. Everyone left with a smile on their face and assured us they would return. January 28 is the date for our 2012 event, it will run from 10:00 until 4:00 on what we hope is a beautiful Saturday.

We will have two of the same partners from last year – our great friends from Brandon Hills Vineyard and Pilot Mountain Llamas, as well as two new friends – Knit Picky Yarns and LinCrest Farms.

Sandy and I met Sammie Jo Thomas of Knit Picky Yarns through several classes we have taken under her tutelage. A great friend and an expert knitter, spinner and general fiber guru. Jo and Ann Potter of Pilot Mountain Llamas are long time friends and will have their yarns and garments available as well as presenting spinning demonstrations. They have been our “go to” people as we learn more and more about the wonders of fleece.

David and Pam Blackwell will return for wine tastings with their award winning wines from Brandon Hills Vineyard. Through our friendship with Dave and Pam we have been fortunate to make the acquaintance with Mike and Jo Linville of LinCrest Farm. Mike and Jo raise grass fed beef on their 300 acre farm in Yadkin County. The have catered events for Brandon Hills Vineyard and we have throughly enjoyed their beef. It is truly beef as it was intended to be.

We will have more on the event, relabeled, Diastole Alpaca Farm’s Second Annual Winter Outing on the website as well as on facebook – as I learn how to use it.

We can only hope for the weather to cooperate as it did for 2011. Rain or sun, sleet or snow, we will be here. We hope you can join us.

Jim Morris – fresh off a wonderful day at Whimsical Women – thank you, Luli, for letting us destribute our flyers again this year at your marvelous event.

In case you missed it last Sunday the paper wrote a very nice article about our lovely protege, Erica, and her senior project, our alpaca farm.
She did an excellent job of presenting the farm to her classmates and teachers. Maeve, our party girl alpaca, put on a fun show by nosing into everything, nibbling hair and hats and providing many photo ops.
The article is available on Facebook under the farm name.
We thank you all for your very responses and kind words.

What good news! We entered 7 fleeces at SAFF, the Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair. It is an annual event held in Asheville, NC dedicated to the promotion of the fiber arts, fiber animals and products. We won four first places, two seconds and one third. Hooray!
I will update with the names of our furry winners.

Libby is our only husky right now. She is a healthy girl but she had a growth on her head that was removed by the vet. yesterday. She did fine and will be fine from that, I am happy to write. Libby is retired now, age 10, but she had a lovely career as an obedience champion, a certified therapy dog and on rare occasion a sled dog. I wrote this poem for her some years ago after she finished her final obedience trial. This is a true story.

Intelligent, crafty, smart, sly and wise, Libby is a pretty red Husky with soul searching eyes.

Obedience training is not her cup of tea but her momma said, “Libby, please do this for me.”

Their first trial was a fun filled and happy event. First place, first leg plus a blue ribbon at the national Siberian Husky award tent.

We needed two more wins-or legs-in dog trainer lingo, Libby did it again, “that’s twice, she said, bingo.”

Not bingo, not yet, we need one more leg, momma pled her case. Libby said “twice, that’s it, i’d much rather race.”

After hours of training and too many treats Libby grudgingly agreed. In her husky way she loves her momma and will, on occasion, work to please.

Adding injury to insult Libby went to be groomed, bathing, blow drying, hair pulling, poor Libby felt doomed.

At a Saturday trial into the ring for eight different events Libby did her thing. Blue ribbon and title, hooray and amen, thank Sirius, said Libby, I’ll never do this again.

But momma had entered for two days, ahem…the entry for Sunday was improve Libby’s score. Libby was shocked! “You said never more!”

Unhappy and prickly and obviously bored, she entered the ring, decided “why not” and shat on the floor.

Libby the hoochie husky loves rolling in road kill, the smell’s a delight.
She runs at full speed, no matter my fright.
Her nature is pure, she is a dog not a bore and she is completely free of regard for any obedience score.

Lena, one of two of our Siberian husky dogs, died August 10, 2011. She was 11.8 years old. She was fine on Sunday, her usual sassy self. She was a very vocal girl as are many husky dogs. Monday morning she had trouble getting up. Jim helped her outside and when she came in she ate most of her food and received her AM insulin injection. She was diagnosed with diabetes in January of this year and was doing well with the shots and a modified diet. The short version is that she went to the vet. and an xray showed a very enlarged spleen and blood in the abdomen. Thinking dire thoughts, you know, cancer, she had a chest xray, too, and that was clear. So we thought that since 90% of tumors in the spleen are not malignant we might have a good chance of survival. After lots of discussion the decision was made to bring her home, get her as stable as possible and have the spleen removed Wednesday. Lena had ALOT of moxie. She underwent bilateral ACL repairs at 7, maybe 8 years of age and she sailed through that with flying colors. So we really thought she could get through this surgery as long as it was just the spleen that was involved. The plan was for a thorough exploration of her organs before any removal of the spleen and that revealed that her liver had multiple nodules (malignant). Our vet. called us with that information and as per our previous discussion/decision Lena stayed asleep. We brought her home and she is buried in the Garden of Owen. We let our remaining house dogs give her a goodbye sniff and each one of them laid down in the garden and quietly watched as we buried her. Such remarkable senses of respect and honor on their part. Our great hoochie girl, Lena, is sorely missed.

We sheared 23 alpacas last week and their apppearance continues to surprise me. They look so different without that full fleece. We learn something new with every shearing (with every day, in fact). We were able to “groom” them a bit this year using scrub brushers to remove obvious debris. I know of some farms who vacuum the alpacas but I doubt our herd is up for that yet. We have received great benefit fom the “fuzzinator”, a motorized tumbler that shakes out dirt, etc., that was designed and built by our dear friend, Al, the retired engineer. Fleece cleaning is a time consuming and boring job. Anything that makes it easier and more efficient is most welcome.
Our freshly shorn alpacas are all doing well. They are staying in the barns most of this day with the rain and 54 degree temps.

Kwanita, one of our original girls, died on April 10 of this year. Every loss is tragic and hers more so because she was pregnant. It was a gastrointestinal issue. We are not sure exactly what the cause was. She is sorely missed, especially by her sister, Panyin. Animals grieve. I would go into detail about Panyin’s actions but it hurts me too much right now.

We sent five full fleece blankets to Nice Threads Fiber Gallery/Studio in Black Mt. They are on consignment there with Leslie Owens. Lots of spinners in that area and we hope they find our product worthy. Check out the studio if you are in Black Mt. or visit their site at www.nicethreadsgallery.com.

We are very fortunate to have lush pastures now. They are nice enough that we are cutting back on grain supplement because some of the alpacas are a tad too heavy.

Happy Easter and let your heart rest.

Diastole Alpaca Farm and their many friends will be covering the phones for WFDD’s final push of their spring pledge drive. Call in from 4 – 7 pm on Wednesday, March 23rd and pledge your support for WFDD.

Sandy and I have been long time supporters of WFDD. We feel like part of the family and could not imagine losing the varied programming we enjoy, and depend on, from WFDD.

Our alpacas listen to WFDD 24/7. I’m sure they enjoy the programming but they also appreciate the protection they get from having a human voice coming from each of the barns. It has been shown that having a voice coming from the barns acts as a deterent to coyotes and other predators. I guess predators just lack the class that WFDD supporters show.

Get off the predator list! Call us on Wednesday, March 23 from 4 – 7 pm at 800-262-8850 and pledge your support to WFDD!

Jim Morris – Chief Pooper Scooper at Diastole Alpaca Farm