THE ALPACAS
Curtin Farms first got started in the alpaca business in the spring of 2011. Our son, Laird, found an interest in alpacas and asked if we could get some for the farm. We started off with four females named Margo, Micha, Maggie, and Savi. After a couple of months of the alpacas getting acclimated to the farm, we decided to grow our little alpaca herd. Later that year we added our breeding male, Ziggy, and our two geldings, FireCracker and Guss to the family. After about 11 months of Ziggy getting acquainted with the females, we had two baby alpacas or "crias," born into our herd. Now we have 12 alpacas, 6 of being offspring of the late Ziggy. We still continue to learn everyday about our alpacas' personalities and how they behave with one another.
WHO'S WHO?!?!
For some people it may be hard for them to figure out which alpaca is which, but when you are around them as often as we are, you can almost tell who they are by how they sound.
THE YARN PROCESS
Many people are astonished by how the whole process works "From Fleece to Fiber". However, it is actually a very neat and easy process. We start in the spring by getting the alpacas sheared. We do this for two reasons: to use this fleece to turn into yarn, and to get rid of the alpacas' winter coats. The next step is to clean and align the fibers that we cut from the alpacas to create roving, a more refined fleece product. From this step we turn the roving into yarn used to knit, crochet, and weave. When we first began we had a fiber mill turn all our fleece into yarn. Now we have them turn some into roving and spin that into yarn here at Curtin Farms.
