Day 14 with alpacas: no spit, accepted into Americorp, Skirting a fleece

Yes indeedy, the day before shearing and I have not been spit upon. Tomorrow will come quickly, though. 7:00 a.m. start time. They are doing the 'big girls' first, which is about 30 'breeding age' females (and crias, the babies). I'm guessing when we enclose them in the barn and whip out that shearing table the spit will be flying.

Got an email that I've been accepted into Americorps. That is a good thing, but sadly it is only as the 300 hour volunteer, which means I keep track of my hours and at the end of the internship I get $1000 applied to whichever loan I choose. There is no stipend. (alas) I am glad to at least get the $1000 toward student loans, though. Perhaps being 'accepted' here and 'accepted' into Americorps is the start of a trend. Yes? Yes.

Learned how to 'skirt' a fleece last week, and got to practice today. Basically you take the main part of the fleece (the blanket), and separate it into 'firsts' and 'seconds'. Good fleece and not so good fleece. Then you pick out all the icky tough 'guard hairs' and shake out/pick out any grass seeds, twigs, etc. I am good at picking out small things and making it clean. :)  It's like sorting seed beads, very Zen! YEAH!!

I told them I want to learn how to shop-vac an alpaca tomorrow. That needs to be on my resume: shop-vac-ing an alpaca. I'm not sure what I will do with that skill, but it needs to be on there. Perhaps in a library storytime?

And yes, they literally take a shop-vac to the alpaca before shearing. It cleans off a lot of dirt/seeds/straw.

I do not think the alpacas will like this. Perhaps this will be the spitting point, the shop-vac.