Chance and Serendipity were doing their jobs on this one. A Denver friend was stranded on the west side of Vail Pass a couple months ago when it closed for a snowstorm, and while waiting at a cafe to see if she could stay the night at her boss's place in Vail, struck up a conversation with two sisters who were in the same predicament. The sisters were Vermonters, and one of them the owner of an alpaca farm. They all ended up staying for the night at the boss's place and consumed, from the sound of it, a fair amount of wine that facilitated accelerated bonding. So when my Denver friend heard I was going to Vermont and didn't yet have a place to stay, she put me in touch with the alpaca farm owner, S (additional info about her operations here, if you're curious). And I was going to be passing through right at the time they were doing their annual shearing of the herd. We got to stay for two nights on the farm in a trailer S's husband uses once a year to go to a music festival in upstate New York. Perfect!
BEFORE shearing...
...and AFTER, looking like aliens...
It was plain as day that the not-yet-sheared animals were approaching the newly sheared ones thinking, "What the HELL happened to YOU!?!?"
And this is what had happened:
I've learned that what you shear off alpaca is not called fur or wool but fleece. It was crazy soft and full of lanolin.
More before and after...
The most useable fleece from each animal, laid carefully out on a trays to dry:
Upward of five pounds of fleece came off of each animal. Pretty incredible, considering how weightless a huge armful of fleece felt. Afterward, I felt cold just looking at their skinny little bodies. They're so dang cute, though, regardless.
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