So what does it mean to skirt a fleece you ask? 

 After the animal is sheared and the fiber is sorted into prime blanket  2nd's and 3rd cuts. The prime blanket {fleece} is laid out on the skirting table and picked through to remove any shorter cuts and vegetation before it’s ready for processing. This is when you will pull out anything that has gotten stuck in their fleece through out the year. You will be surprised what you will find, small sticks, leaves and I have even found a few beetles hiding in some of the fleeces. 

 

A skirting table is a special table that has holes in it so when you shake the fiber any dirt, debris, and shorter cuts fall through while the fleece rests on top. This step can take awhile if your alpacas are dirty and their pastures will play a role in how dirty they may become. Our pastures were once wooded land so there is still some briers that the alpacas manage to find and of course they think the grass is greener on the other side of the fence ;) So they stick there heads through the fence and many end up with birdox on their heads. UGH.  Anyhow this will get better each year as we work on improving the pastures.

{this moment}

A single photo ~no
words ~ capturing a moment from the week.
A simple, special,
extraordinary moment.
A moment I want to pause, savor and
remember.
. . . . . . . . . .

Finally getting around to posting about our shearing that took place this spring. This was our first year shearing our alpacas. Last year we only had 5 alpacas and the people we had bought them from came over and sheared for us.
Our shearing did not go as smoothly as we had hoped. After working out some kinks we had with our shearers we were able to get all our alpacas sheered. We ended up going through 2 fiber gears and had to send the shearers back to the company to get them fixed which put everything on hold. The weather didn't help either, there was a lot of rain this spring! We ended up spreading our shearing out over a month.

Some family and friends have asked us "What do you do with your alpaca fiber?" And many have wondered what is all involved in hand processing the fiber. Over the next few weeks I will put together some post that will take you through the steps we take to process our fiber.