A Visit to Daybreak Criations

Today, Gib and I had a "date" day, which included enjoying mini cupcakes at a Fort Collins' Butter Cream Cupcakery (such a "chick" thing to do, but Gib admitted the tiny creations were delicious) and a trip through the Fort Collins Winter Farmers' Market, where we found Gilberto's hot sauce (great name!), MouCo cheese, and my favorite creamed honey from CoPoCo's.

Of course, we couldn't spend ALL our time in the "big" city, so we took off north to visit Daybreak Criations alpacas (the farm where we found Ralphie). We had an ulterior motive ~ to rent their tumbler to clean some of our backlog of fleeces, which sure beats picking them by hand (see THIS POST).

That's the machine in action to the right ~ look at Jake's fleece flying through the air, with all the VM (vegetable matter) falling out effortlessly through the wire mesh!

I learned something new today ~ do NOT wear a fleece coat when working with static-y fleeces, unless you want to look like an alpaca yourself!

Once all the "hard work" of cleaning the fleeces was finished, it was time to visit the alpacas!  On our last visit, I'd seen a female suri cria with the most amazing copper-colored fleece.  Although the sun wasn't shining today when I took this photo, you can just imagine what "Piper" looks like  in the sunlight!

Piper wasn't thrilled about having her picture taken, but several of the other friendly animals were more than happy to oblige (which did not make guard dog Clyde, seen here in the background to the left, very happy).

Look at the eyelashes on this cria!

Farm co-owner Denise Haines said she and husband Ron do not want to have many more "winter babies," like this adorable cria (no name yet) born on Dec. 31, 2010, one of the coldest days of the year.

Denise has a real way with the alpacas.  This is one of her older females, Tuku, who Denise says is a real love when she's NOT pregnant.  She was looking for ear "scritches" from us all!

Time to leave and Clyde was still on the job ~ look at those hackles!  He was all bark for us, though, and no bite.