Love to shop local? Check this out!

I wanted to remind you all that this weekend is the Virginia Spring Market at The Meadow Event Park in Doswell, Va! We will be there with all of our wonderful alpaca apparel and products, such a socks, hats, mittens, blankets, shawls, gloves, fingerless mittens/gloves, finger puppets, stuffed animals, yarn, ornaments, felted soaps, dryer balls and much more! Please come out and see us and visit all the other awesome vendors as well! I am all about supporting LOCAL instead of the big guys and this Spring Market is a great way to do that! There will be all sorts of artists and crafters there this weekend so I hope you can make it out! The hours are: Friday 3/14 and Saturday 3/15 from 10am-6pm and Sunday 3/16 from 11am-5pm. I love these types of events because I enjoy meeting new people and teaching them all about alpacas. I will admit, I do love to SHOP though, too! 

I hope everyone is having a wonderful week so far! I've been on vacation the last 9 days and today was my first day back. Luckily, I have a pretty awesome job and love what I do, which makes it much easier to go back! Happy HUMP DAY all! 

Don't forget to enjoy the journey!

Abbey :) 

Some of my handmade felted goats milk soaps! We will have these this weekend for sale! 

Hand felted alpaca dryer balls! Use these instead of your dryer sheets and you will never go back! Like a scent? Just add a few drops of essential oils to each ball before throwing it in the dryer! These will be with us this weekend too! :) 

Hand felted Easter/Spring ornaments(100% alpaca fiber)!! 

Handmade hats for newborns(100% alpaca) 

Hand painted alpaca glasses... Aren't these awesome?! 

We will have MUCH more with us! This is just a sneak peek! :) 

The Perfect Day

Everyones definition of "perfect" is different. Perfect for me, is enjoying time with my husband outside on a gorgeous afternoon, building things together, doing "paca" stuff and enjoying each other's company! Wes and I had such a wonderful Sunday! We went to breakfast then headed to Lowes(my favorite store, no joke!) to stock up on some supplies to build a garden! We enjoyed time outside building our vegetable garden bed and he surprised me with some new picnic tables for the farm! We spent the day staining the tables and putting soil/paca poo in the garden. I love spending time with my husband and I love WARM weather!! Spring is almost here and I can't wait to start planting! Wes knows how much I love gardening and I don't tell him often enough, but I am so thankful I have a husband who knows me well and knows the simple, little things that will make me happy. He planned to do nothing and relax yesterday because he's been working a lot, but instead, he spent the day building my garden and staining picnic tables. I am very blessed to call him mine! ❤️ 

I hope you all enjoyed your Sunday as well and I hope you got to spend time with the ones you love! We all deserve those "perfect" days every once in a while. 

Don't forget to enjoy the journey!

Abbey

Home with the goods! Ready to build! 

My awesome vegetable bed! 

The pacas were watching us build.... :)

We had to put panels around the garden so the silly dog doesn't eat all our veggies!! ;)

Working hard!

I swear I helped!! See, covered in stain haha! It only got worse from here... Hair, face, clothes..... 

I can sit and watch my garden grow! We have one by the barn and one by the store now too! Come have a picnic with the pacas! :) 

Love this man! ❤️❤️

Piles and Piles of...

Poop. Yep, that's right. Friends, the alpaca lifestyle is wonderful, rewarding, exciting, and joyous, but there is a lot of poop involved!! I swear every time you look at an alpaca, they are pooping. Even when I am trying to clean up the poop, someone is always pooping ON TOP of the poop I am trying to clean up!!! Now, all joking aside, all this poo is a wonderful thing because it can be reused for gardening as fertilizer, which is awesome! So while we are on the subject, if you ever want to try a new or different fertilizer/manure for your yard, flower beds, vegetable gardens, etc., "alpaca beans" are amazing!! They get the "bean" name from the fact that their poo is in the shape of a jelly bean or a kidney bean! Here are a few great ways to use "alpaca beans":

*Use Alpaca beans safely on your houseplants, just spoon a little into the soil, and the fertilizer will gradually release as you water.  It is odorless and harmless to pets.

*Sprinkle some Alpaca beans around your plants or trees, mix with a little dirt and every time you water your plants you are fertilizing them at the same time.

*For seedlings, use alpaca tea.  Mix 1/3 cup alpaca pellets with 2/3 cup of water and let it sit from 5-12 hours.  Within 24 hours of the first application, you will begin to see the difference in your seedling.  Alpaca tea appears to be an effective deer repellent also! Deer do not like the smell.

*When transplanting house plants, mix it in with your potting soil.

Alpaca beans are great for delicate plants and terrific for soil health.  Adding it to your garden or lawn can help reduce disease and pest problems.

We will be using it this year on our vegetable garden and flower beds and I can't wait to see the results! Need some alpaca poo? Just send us an email at uprightalpacas@yahoo.com or feel free to give us a call! We have several piles that have aged for over a year and are ready for gardening! 

So all of this poop really isn't so bad, after all! I'll take the pooper scooper job any day, just to get a few fuzzy kisses from the pacas and the bountiful blessings they bring to us every day! Truth be told, I never knew true peace, until I sat in the middle of a grassy pasture, filled with grazing and pronking alpacas while the sun beamed down on all of us.... Even if there was a pile of poop in the distance waiting to be scooped! ❤️❤️

Don't forget to enjoy the journey!

Abbey 

"Mom, mom, mommy, mom, mom, mommy...." Alpaca mommas don't get any privacy either lol! ;) 

You bought, WHAT?!

You bought, WHAT?! 

I remember the first time I told my parents that we were buying alpacas. They thought we were totally nuts! I'm pretty sure they still think we are nuts, but they all love coming to the farm and visiting with them and have supported us 100%! 

So what made us buy alpacas, you ask? Back in 2009 Wes and I went to the Virginia State Fair for a fun date night. I am not a huge fan of fair rides so we spent a lot of time just walking around checking out the food(of course!), vendors, and all the other fun stuff. We eventually ventured to the barn area with all of the animals and in the far back corner, there were alpacas!! Now, at the time, I had no idea what an alpaca was. I knew what llamas were and I knew they spit, but I had never seen an alpaca! We walked over and I noticed there was an adorable little baby alpaca with his momma. We started talking to the guy and of course, he wanted us to come visit his farm and check out all the other alpacas he had at home. We picked up a few brochures from his table and from another alpaca farms table and we continued on through the barn. The rest of our time at the fair, we walked around talking about alpacas and how cool it would be to own a FEW(LOL)! A few weeks later we visited one of the farms from the fair and fell in love with the animals even more! We decided we would buy two boys, but had to get ready for their arrival! We went home and prepared our yard for what would soon be an alpaca farm!!  Two months later we brought home our first two alpacas!!!  Obviously, our farm has grown quite a bit since then! It has been such a wonderful journey and quite the adventure. We've had our hard times, but we've learned a lot along the way! We've witnessed death and dying, but we've also witness the miracle of new life and that is something you don't see every day! 

Don't forget to enjoy the journey!

Abbey 

Atilla and Guss- Our first two boys!!!

Building our first barn!

Bringing the boys home!! 

Am I really doing this?!

Welcome!! If you are reading this, THANK YOU! I hope you enjoy your time here and if I send you away with anything, I hope it's a smile! I have always loved to write(not saying my writing skills are perfect by any means), but it's such a release for me and I think this blog will be a great place for that! I want to share a little bit about my husband and I so you can get to know us better! We live on a 3 acre alpaca farm(Upright Alpaca Farm) in the middle of nowhere and have a pretty amazing life. We both work full time away from the farm so to say we live a busy life, is an understatement! We currently have 20 alpacas and 2 llamas as well as a dog and a cat! Life can get crazy around here, but it's our piece of paradise in the country and we love it! I plan to use this as a forum for the daily life occurrences on our farm and to share DIY projects I find along the way! Life is not always pretty here, but I try to find the beauty in the darkness and I make sure I thank God every day for the little blessings that pop up in the midst of it all! 

Don't forget to enjoy the Journey! 

Abbey

Photo credit: Dawn Howeth- Picture This by Dawn

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