Our fall open house is rapidly approaching.  Along with our usual compliment of activities we have tentatively scheduled the Adams County 4-H Fiber Club Sheep to Shawl team to be onsite doing a demonstration on Saturday November 19, 2011 during the open house.

Along with Jeannas Passions soaps and The Sock Lady, this year we’ll also have some hand made jewelry available.

Check out our open house special on alpacas.

More details

Hope to see all of you this weekend.

100% Baby Alpaca Bears

[Update 9/9/11] – I just talked to our friend Sharon at Jeannas Passions, and she has graciously allowed us to place some of our open house cards at her shop inside the Yesteryear Family Restaurant located at 130 West King Street, East Berlin, 17317.  While you’re there check out some of her great soap and maybe get a quick bite to eat.  Those of you that were out at our open house last year may remember Sharon as she had some of her great soap her at the farm.

[End Update]

Our setting up at the East Berlin Colonial Day has been washed out by the remnants of Hurricane Lee.  It’s been raining here now for about 3 or 4 days, don’t even remember.

We were coming through East Berlin earlier today and the bridge over the Conawago was closed by PEMA until they could inspect it.  We did go back a couple hours later and it was open.  But the river was still quite high.  Here’s a picture up the creek from the bridge.

If you would like to join our email list we’ll keep you updated as to happenings here at the farm.  You’ll also get discounts at our online store and reminders of our fall open house.

We were pleasantly surprised by Peekaboo at the 2011 PAOBA Breeders Showcase.

Peekaboo at PAOBA Breeders Showcase

Interested in becoming a sponsor of Peekaboo?  See our Sponsor an Alpaca page for details.

MAPACA Jubilee is coming up April 8-10, 2011.  This is the 15th year of celebrating the jubilee with alpaca, fiber and fun.  The schedule is packed full of activities for everyone.

One of the new features we like this year is the MAPACA Member store.  It’s an area designated for farms to consign products made with fiber from their own herds.  This will be the debut of our Handspun ROX yarn.  This is the yarn created through our hand spinning offer.  We have been getting beautiful yarn back from hand spinners across North America.

After MAPACA the yarn will be available at our online shop and other events that Big Rock Alpaca Farm does.

Here are a couple shots of the hand spun yarn we will be offering at MAPACA.

Valentines Day is coming February 14th!  This year get your loved one something unique, get them something alpaca!

February 12, 2011, Big Rock Alpaca Farm along with our friends from Paso Ligero Alpacas will be at  Brown’s Orchard North in Emigsville located at 3100 North George Street, Emigsville, PA 17318.

Brown’s will be having seminars throughout the day on different topics related to gardening.  We will be there with several alpacas for viewing and several unique alpaca products offered for sale.

When:  November 13,14 and 20, 21 2010  12:00 Noon to 5:00 PM all days.

Where:  Big Rock Alpaca Farm
186 Big Rock Road
East Berlin, PA  17316

We plan to have a lot of exciting things going on at our open house this year.

As if Peekaboo and Thunder Storm aren’t enough to come see, here are some of the things we’ll have:

• A tractor pulled hayride
• Bourbon red turkeys and guineas to view
• Antique tractors for viewing
• Hand spinners spinning alpaca fiber
• The Sock Lady with her antique sock knitting machine (Sundays Only)
• Jeannas Passions, Homemade soaps, lotions, lipcare and bath products
• Our farm store

As we get more details pulled together I’ll update this page.

Alpaca Stand Setup At Ashcombes

We will have a couple alpaca along for everyone to see and pet.  Not quite sure who it will be yet.  It will probably be different alpacas from day to day.

Hope to see you there.  If you can’t make it out you can shop for alpaca products at our online store located at http://shop.bigrockalpacafarm.com.

Latest News:  There will also be a friend bringing her spinning wheel to demonstrate spinning alpaca fiber from apx. 9:30 – 12:00 on Saturday!

Wow where did the summer go!  As you can see from my extensive amount of posts since shearing day back in the spring we’ve been busy all summer.  Well, we were busy, but it wasn’t all alpaca stuff.

We are going to be at East Berlin Colonial Day on September 11, 2010.  We’ll be in our usual location behind the East Berlin post office and food vendors.

We hope to see you there.

Big Rock Alpaca Farm Stand at East Berlin Colonial days

East Berlin Colonial Days

Right on the tail of PAOBA Breeder’s Showcase 2010 we had shearing day.  We again went to Paso Ligero for shearing.  Kim from Paso Ligero is wonderful.  Since we don’t have a trailer she again this year came and got all of our animals and transported them to her place for shearing.  We couldn’t ask for a better neighbor.

It was a long day.  We started shortly after 7:00 AM since we had almost 50 alpacas to shear and the guys doing the shearing were going to another neighboring farm to shear after we were done.  Ian from Big Mount Alpacas had enough animals at his farm this year to have them coming there, instead of him bringing all his alpacas to Kim’s place.

We got lots of great fiber off some wonderful animals.  The shearers did a good job again this year.  I don’t think I’ve seen him yet knick an animal.  I can’t say that for myself, I hit some blood on a couple toenails, but not many.

We now have 12 more blankets and 12 more seconds bags of wonderful alpaca fiber here to work with.  If you are interested we could still use some more hand spinners for spinning the fiber.

All of our short cuts, leg fiber and other waste is being sent to help clean up the oil spill in the Gulf.  Isn’t alpaca fiber wonderful!

Alpaca shearing

We had a good turnout for the open house.? We hope everyone had a good time.? We enjoyed meeting everyone, and sharing the alpacas with them.? Everyone, including us, had a good time talking to and seeing the demo of the The Sock Lady.

The bourbon red turkeys were also a big hit.

Bourbon Red Tom Turkey, a heritage breed turkey

Bourbon Red Tom Turkey, a heritage breed turkey