As seen in Advance Cessnock - Business Review
5th November 2018
Fibre Fest 2018
Today we visited Singleton’s Fibre Fest 2018 organised by the Knitters Guild NSW. It was a pretty huge turn out on their Sunday ‘retail-day’. Saturday was full of fibre workshops. Now just one spinning wheel demo and now I want a new spinning wheel and a weaving loom…. oh, plus I want more coloured alpacas.
The alpaca yarn and rovings on sale today was absolutely amazing quality and we know its something that we can produce at LVF down the track.
Here I am demo-ing a two peddle spinning wheel which is made in Holland. Its super easy and I just need to get my hands drafting the alpaca fleece a lot faster. The perfect wheel to spin our alpaca fleece at Little Valley Farm.
#littlevalleyfarm #alpacafarm #alpacabreeder #lagunaNSW #huntervalley #alpacafleece FibreFest #fibrefest2018 #getspinning #getweaving
Spring into Little Valley Farm
Spring is the best time to visit the Hunter Valley. The valley is alive with colour and finally our paddocks are lush green after thankfully, receiving a lot of rain in October. It was amazing! Our alpacas are happily frolicking across the fresh grass and feeling cool after their big shearing day.
Don’t forget we have our unique farmstay in our rustic train carriage by the alpaca paddocks. So you can book on airbnb.
Farmstay Rustic Train Carriage Alpaca-farm Laguna
#airbnb #littlevalleyfarm #alpacafarm #farmstay #alpacabreeder #trainstay #uniquefarmstay #smallfarms #lagunaNSW #visitwollombi #touristdrive33
Summer Natives
Summer natives are out in force and paddocks back to their deep green. Thank you for the rain. 156 mls fell in the month of October. Loving Spring again.
Our glamping train and shepherds’s hut is booked out until December 2018. From January you will be able to book for a one night stay as summer is hot-hot-hot in the hunter valley and our alpaca’s love to see visitors.
Visit our Farmstay rustic train carriage alpaca-farm Laguna here.
#lagunaNSW #wollombi #littlevalleyfarm #visitwollombi #touristdrive33 #alpacafarm #farmstay #alapcabreeder #alpaca #alpacalove #alpacafarmstay www.littlevalleyfarm.com.au
Team building stay at Little Valley Farm
Working behind the scenes again…. Little Valley Farm organised a team building event last weekend with our tents, our petite Shepherd’s hut, our unique Train stay plus our huge hang out deck overlooking the alpaca paddocks.
A wonderful snag bbq dinner by Daniela followed by entertainment provided by Neve, Allessandro and Winston the alpacas. I forgot to add the alpaca's in the video! oopps!
Camping and dining at LVF and building down the road at WPF check out the video of the new duck home at WPF.
Alpaca supplies
Alpaca shearing season has started so make sure you have your vaccinations, worming, vitamins ready. If you are low on supplies we have supplies available to purchase. Simply email us what you need and we can arrange pick up at Laguna. Please note, we don’t post as most of the supplies requires proper refrigeration.
Ivomec Injectable
Cydectin Injectable
UltraVac 5:1 Injectable
Propaca vitamins (powder)
ADE supplement Injectable
You can ask your your local vet to run a fecal worm count before worming so you don’t run the risk of over or under worming. We can supply the supplements in 1, 2 or 5 ml syringes so you don’t need to buy in bulk if you only have a couple of alpacas.
The day after shearing
The day after shearing. We are exhausted. Now it can rain! The alpacas are a little naked but happy. We are now ready for the hot summer days.
A very big thank you to our shearing team. The Cole family, Kierran, Socie, Frank, Frances and Drew Shearman Our favourite shearer who is gentle and kind with our alpacas. It’s a long exhausting day in the shed with a touch of spit-dodging.
The fleece is drying and our ‘fleece buyers day’ will be happening some time in November.
#littlevalleyfarm #alpacafarm #alpacabreeder #shearing #alpacagleece#alpacas #lagunaNSW #wollombi #visitwollombi#touristdrive33 Daniela Riccio Drew Shearman Thank you!
I will do nothing today! Thank you, Daniela
Our dear sweet Lilly.
Alpaca Shearing Day
Here’s a couple of images from our shearing day. Its a long day in the shed with shearing, worming, vaccinations, nail trimming and teeth checking.
Our girl Bianca was the most relaxed and seemed to have enjoyed it. Winston was the most vocal drama queen and kind Allessandro (our first born), comforted little Neve on the table.
What a lovely alpaca family we have at Little Valley farm.
Shearing for October 2019 already booked in
Enjoy the photos.
Alpaca Fleece Buyers Day
We will be opening our farm gate for our “Alpaca Fleece Buyers Day”. Dates will be sometime in November and it will give fleece buyers an to opportunity to see and feel our luxurious Huacaya fleece.
Date will be announced end of October 2018.
In the meantime, you can still purchase our hand spun 8 ply alpaca yarn online click here.
And then there were 25....
Coming soon to Little Valley Farm - more alpaca's!
Our super stud, Richmond as you can see has been very busy. Currently working on Merribelle our chocolate alpaca.
Shearing is booked for 13th October 2018 and then our next lot of females will be mated with Richmond. We are expecting the first lot of cria’s due May-June 2019.
Slow Fashion : Alpaca Fashion
At Little Valley Farm we are very excited about the changes to the Australian Alpaca Industry.
The Italian fleece buyers have been around for many years buying Australian fleece, now China is on a growth path as they are starting to appreciate the quality of our Australian fleece and genetics. We can thank the Australian Alpaca Association for helping with this growth.
Over the years, there has been an increase in family run mills across Australia. We have used a small mill to clean our fleece and make our own alpaca yarn knitting balls. We also work with a local artisan in the Wollombi Valley to hand spin our yarn. You can see our products for sale online here.
We have made pillows, cushions, bed throws, a scarf, a beanie and a super warm and heavy winter quilt for us to use. Its heavenly!
We will send our next batch to the clever people at Adagio Mills who are based in Orange. Our shearing day is booked for 13th October 2018.
We recently purchased two top fleece girls and one super stud to change our genetic and fleece structure at Little Valley Farm. With the new fleece, we will start to produce 'slow-fashion' which is 'sustainable fashion' made by family owned businesses in Australia.
This kickstarter campaign from Adagio Mills will help take this industry to the next stage. We are in! Are you? If you would you to help kickstart Adagio Mills then click here.
Wanna yarn?
Check out our fabulous 100% Alpaca yarn. Hand spun 70g yarn balls. Even better is Nonna’s knitted throw. Beautiful isn’t it. Yeap, I had Nonna working for us. Gotta keep the old girl busy.
#alpaca #yarn #handspun #littlevalleyfarm #lagunaNSW #wool #alpacafleece #sustainable #notfastfashion #auatralianmade #localmade #farmlife #alpacafarm #linkinbio👆 #buyonline @littlevalleyfarm
Purchase our yarn or unprocessed fleece for felting online at Little Valley Farm. We send anywhere in Australia.
Don’t forget we have our airbnb Farmstay rustic train carriage alpaca-farm Laguna here.
Spinning 2018 fleece collection
At Little Valley farm we are getting ready for Alpaca shearing day so looking at what colours we should spin together. Should I keep our yarn knitting balls one colour or add colours to our fawn yarn ball. Here is a sample we spun which is 100% Alpaca fleece in fawn with black. Do you like? Hmmm should I do both or stick to one colour?
#littlevalleyfarm #alpaca #alpacas #australianalpacas #instaalpaca #knitting #alpacafleece #lagunaNSW #visitwollombi #touristdrive33 #myopenkitchen #myopenkitchenstories
Shearing day is 13th October, 2018 at Little Valley Farm, we will be shearing 14 alpaca's in white, fawn and one chocolate brown alpaca. We can't wait. If you would like to help out and get some hands-on alpaca experience please contact us.
We also have the train and shepherd's hut accommodation available for that week.
Alpaca cuddle anyone?
Say hello to Majestic and Suki Oberon. They are the sweetest alpacas you will meet and they will come up to you to eat out of your hand. Their fleece is outstanding with lovely crimp and we look forward to shearing them in October and then spinning their fleece. Its glorious!
Both girls are pregnant and due early 2019 so we will have three different blood lines at Little Valley Farm.
Book your farm stay with us at Little Valley Farm. Couple farm stay for 4 adults so book online before Spring 2018 books out. Alpaca cuddles are free.
www.littlevalleyfarm.com.au
Photo taken by Daniela 31st July 2018. You can see how dry the grass is here. We are so looking forward to some rain. We have only received 2 mls for July.
Drought2018
Its just on six months since we did the ABC Newcastle drought interview. It was a stinking-hot summer and I looked like I had enough. I had never felt so un-glamourous in my life!
But now looking back to February 2018 after my interview, we luckily did receive some rain but definitely not enough and definitely not constant rain. We are lucky, as we are a small farm but we all have livestock and produce to grow so it all affects us - whether you live on a farm or in the city, the produce quality will decline and our grocery costs will slowly increase, I won't even mentioned the hay costs for us!
So I think its time to do another interview as after our ABC interview it rained two weeks later and we received some good rain with 104mls for that month but sadly not enough. March onwards it reduced down to 69mls and April was 26mls, May 15mls, June 72mls and July only 3mls. So maybe if I do another un-glam interview I will make it rain!
We finally managed to sell our mini-cattle only two weeks ago and buying hay was getting harder and also feeding the 15+ alpaca's who are all pregnant so that will expand quickly up to 25+ alpacas, which means a lot of lucern hay for my babies next season.
Hope you have all seen the images of the Upper Hunter drought and how worse it is across NSW and QLD. The good team at Buy a Hay Bale have been working non-stop delivering goods to large farmers who need help. You can make a small donation to them here.
Photo taken June 2018 its all very crunchy under foot. The alpaca having brekkie on lucern hay and they love it.
Click here to read the February 2018 ABC Interview.
Got Influence?
We love bloggers and influencers so we'd love to talk with you! If you’re open to collaborating, doing a product review, a location shoot or a photo shoot of the farm or alpaca's or are just generally interested. Please include a short message on how you would like to collaborate.
Just hanging around waiting for you!
Winter has arrived!
Six years on the farm and never have we experienced frozen water pipes - three days in a row! Which means, ouch, no hot shower in the morning and even worse, burst water pipes down on the paddock in the alpaca troughs. It's fun running around 0 degrees fixing and checking all water pipes with the artic wind blowing in my face and frost bite taking off my fingers and nose.
May have to re-think my idea of fun.....
Photo taken by Euan Wilcox, Sunday morning cold. So pretty when looking at it sitting by the fire place~
Bernie versus Beanie
Jack Frost is back and my 100% handmade Alpaca beanie now back on my head. It’s cold here but now my noggin Is toasty and warm. Bernie the sheep is wondering why I am wearing Alpaca..... Bernie mate, it’s a lot warmer than sheep and does not smell of lanolin like you, Matie!
This fleece was shorn from Allessandro back in 2016. Allessandro is light fawn alpaca with a chocolate kiss on his neck. He is a sweet little thing and our first born. We love working with the alpaca fleece as its so clean, warm and easy to use without that lanolin smell and oily feel that sheep's wool has.
You can always purchase fleece from Little Valley Farm either raw, spun or milled. Click on our website for online sales or simply send us an email.
Who doesn't remember quoits?
We are just about to start the wood-fired pizza oven but a good game of rope quoits is now in play. It's such a classic game and something we played back in the days!
Its now available to play in our AirBnB farm stay.
We are now taking bookings for Spring 2018 so book now before we book-out again. Spring bookings are now only for 4 pax and a minimum two night stays.
You can book online at AirBnB for your unique glamping farm stay experience at Little Valley Farm.
A big thank you to Planet Finska for our fabulous quoits game. Check it out here. We are having too much fun on this lovely winter's sunny day, with boutique hunter valley wine, gourmet pizza and a lot laughter....
No Monday Blue's here....
Its such a glorious Monday at the farm. So its time to kick off my oh-so glam boots and get relaxing in that outdoor bath on the famous red rattler train deck.
The alpacas have been moved to other new paddock so we can now rest the creek paddock for a couple of weeks before they return there. From the bath, I can see the boys neck wresting the day away. Boys will be boys!
Check out my glam red boots by Merry People - they are made by an Australian company who produce fabulous, comfy and warm - yes, finally a pair of boots that are warm! Thank you Merry People Rainwear. We love them.
T4615 RED RATTLER
Rustic farm stay glamping style: Satisfying your craving for the outdoors and your penchant for a good meal, nice glass of wine, and a comfortable bed. Its nothing like a hotel, your room does open up to a beautiful landscape instead of a lobby.
Our off-grid farm has a 1950's Sydney Train carriage, the famous Red Rattler plus our petite Shepherd's Hut.
A unique 'glamping' farm stay experience for 4 adults plus its the perfect place for star gazing and so much more.
Read more about our farm stay here
Photo by Daniela at Little Valley Farm