Imaginary Alpaca Ranch & Fiber Store

06/27/2024

Biosecurity for visitors to the farm... Yes, visitors are the biggest disease vector on our farm.

 Now that we’re on the verge of summer, some farms may start to see an increase in foot traffic. Dairy farms receive regular visits from feed dealers,

06/17/2024

The 'kids' all enjoyed a belly bath and lounging in some ponding along the cooling water tanks today. They also have a nice cool barn to get out of the heat. The crias were especially fun during 'hose time.' At first they were skittish of it but they were soon shoving in close like the 3 adults... Herd has been significantly downsized over the last 9 years due to retiring. Here's a photo of hot summers past for your pleasure...

06/14/2024

She Shed option:

05/22/2024

Turkey chicks hatched and pulled 15 today. Left a wet one and an egg for the Jenny. Hope to catch her in the morning. Have a Jenny roving the yard trailing 2 chicks as well. Another Jenny in the barn sitting some older eggs and 13 of her poults that are about 3 weeks old getting ready to move up to the outdoor cage from the brooder. Hope to have lots of turkeys available come fall!!! Narragansett.

05/13/2024

5/13 5 PM Telescoping roof off of both hives. Inner cover with the oval hole is on. Set Nuc Body with 5 deep frames and it's Lid over the hole. Covered the 2 long side gaps with tiles and grass. Plan is for bee scent to get up inside both nucs. Queens in their cages in the house in the dark...swiped the sides of both cages with a wet thumb for water...fingers crossed. The hive is 1 deep body and 1 medium super body set over that. Forgot to put medium frames in when we pulled the queen cages after package install. They've built some comb up on the side where the queen cage was inside that super but the rest of the box is empty. Packages were installed April 16th. Both hives very active with a 3 inch entrance on the landing board. It's supposed to be 2 days of rain. Just didn't get enough equipment cleaned to deal with 2 upset hives today since I have to remove the supers, clean off the combs and rob the brood chamber. Packages were 4 lbs so loads of bees and queens had pulled frames to start laying and storing immediately and 1 full frame of honey each. Intent is to split off enough bees for 2 nucs...Maybe I'll get lucky and the rain will skip us....Grin...

04/26/2024

Free-range chicken EGGS available, $3 dozen. Most are extra large/jumbo size beige, brown, and a couple blue eggs. 20 hens in lay so about 6-7 dozen a week. Please pm me if interested near Helena and Millersville, OH 43435

04/26/2024

Great Original Homegrown Rock n Roll...no 2 songs are similar...give them all a listen, LIKE, and SHARE...even subscribe and help this channel out as the artist continues to create new tunes for you!!

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03/24/2024

The fiber show is over. The thing is, when you take fiber out of storage, it PUFFS BACK UP and takes up more space when you pack it up than what you came with, even though you sold a bunch!!!! It was a great morning show for me, 30 sales. Afternoon was dead slow, lucky if I had 10 sales...I hand process and hand dye all the home raised alpaca fibers. I buy wool roving and hand dye it. I do a lot of hand spinning into yarn as well. 90% of my booth inventory is my time (I figure it's 1 hour per ounce to card, spin, and ply yarn, that doesn't count tending the animals all year, their feed and meds, hand scissor cutting each fleece, skirting, washing, the wool. Drying takes 2-3 days. Then fluffing by hand and carding.) I'd like to get all my current stock relocated to happy customers. Then I can really do some dyeing and spinning!!! Seriously running out of storage space!!!

01/21/2024

April Bees and May Queens....planning on 2 hives and 2 nucs this year...Italians, Minnesota-Ohio hygenic....running the chickens under the hives has been helping keep down any overwintering hive beetles as well...

01/21/2024

Found a new youtuber, raising 5 kids on a homestead in BC, Canada, on an island, in garden Zone 3. Lots of good practical tutorials. Cheesemaking, dairy, sourdough, homemade teas. Absolutely delightful! "Venison for Dinner'...

Our very favourite soft sourdough master recipe- https://venisonfordinner.com/2021/02/16/kates-soft-sourdough-master-recipe/****** Connect with Us! We'd Lov...

01/08/2024

Vogue Knitting online has this camisole pattern available as a free pdf... Mayfair Camisole... difficulty, intermediate...probably because it is fitted.

01/02/2024

Learning the Diamond Knit Stitch as I make my next headband. It's a 12 row pattern repeat and I put a lifeline in on row 12 every time. I've done 30 rows or so now and 2 lifelines in. Pattern is written down in my market book as well!

12/25/2023

Happy Holidays from Imaginary. Hope your year is filled with fibery goodness!

12/24/2023

Enjoy your holidays.

12/24/2023

My sister had posted this and I had to snag it... Do you see it!! She is SPINNING!!!

12/24/2023

I had a beautiful $30 skein of handspun wool in greens with some variegation of colors in it (it was probable a blue roving the vendor said would turn green), that a MOUSE got into...chewed his way through most of the skein. So I first dyed it in Blue and Magenta, turning it into a teal green and light violet pink... it's actually still a pretty dark yarn. Then I opened up the skein and wound off all the yarn into little bundles of 1-2-4 yard pieces. Now I'm knotting the ends together and rolling it into a ball. I have a sweater pattern I want to make and I'm thinking I can still use this for a lot of it as striping between the solid color. I need the solid to give me enough yardage anyway. Next will be winding off the solid and seeing if I can dye it more into the blue ranges. If this novice knitter is going to complete a sleeveless sweater, she's gonna like the colors first. That mouse skein of yarn is to die for gorgeous yarn even though I don't yet have the color where I want it. Once knotted and wound, then reskeined and tyed off, I can dye it along with the solid....just lovely having dye to 'fix stuff' with to make it delightful!!

12/05/2023

If you card Blue and Pink fiber together what do YOU get? I always end up with a deep rich TEAL...seriously green.....

12/04/2023

I nearly have my 'fat core' bobbin filled up with the lt med blue alpaca..it takes half as much to fill it than the normal one. I had gotten a great deal on them and am always looking for extra louet bobbins for my wheel...here's the empty one. I spun the other ply up on one of these as well. I weighed the empty bobbin and the other filled one then weighed out the difference in fiber for this one. It only 'helps' my plys to come out even without a lot of one color left behind on the bobbin when I ply them together...

12/04/2023

Good morning world. We didn't 'set our clocks back' because we are retired and don't live much by the clock but a few times a year...so in our farmlife, it's 7:08 am. In the rest of the eastern USA today, it's 6:07 am. I've been up for an hour. So far, just half a cup of java and 1 stick of wood into the woodstove. I'm off here for a few to spin up a bobbin of light med blue alpaca roving into a singly ply for making yarn. Have a Merry Monday, y'all!!!

12/02/2023

Still doing well working in the fiber studio every day. Bit by bit getting it sorted out into the wire shelving cubes on 'the wall of fiber'. Once I see what I have I can finally start posting the fiber I have for sale. It's shaping up nicely. NO photos of it until another week or two!!

09/16/2023

Please support our local quilt shop in Helena, OH 43435!!! Please share...

09/07/2023

Taken from my booth display at the show Memorial Day Weekend (I am a Vietnam Era Vet, btw) Here are all the products currently available for SALE at Imaginary!