Thursday, January 17, 2013

Alpacas well suited to northern Maine climate





I have wanted to visit Spudland Alpacas ever since I noticed the sign on Route 1 just south of Mars Hill pointing to the farm and store on the Bubar Road. That would have been around 2003 when Richard Porter decided to add animals to his farm in Blaine.

A full-time potato farmer with 600 acres to tend, he wanted to expand his farming operation to include his children and grandchildren. He considered cows, having raised them before, but after a year of research, he just had to try alpacas.

“They are gentle and kid-friendly,” he said, as he and his daughter Tracey Milliard chatted with me this week, seated in the office space in the back of the store displaying a variety of alpaca products.

“They like children; they relate to kids,” added Tracey, recalling that her daughter was afraid of animals, but was hugging an alpaca by the time the family left the farm in southern Maine where they purchased the first animals for their herd. The whole family was involved in starting the new project, and everyone continues to participate — Dick and Polly Porter,This design uses the same small radial section as drawn cup needle roller bearing which make better use of reduced spaceCarbon Fiber Racquet Frame. During the 1970s, rackets got lighter still with the use of carbon materials. Fleming Delfs of Denmark favored the Carbonex 8, featuring a carbon handle and an aluminum alloy frame daughters Tracey and Laura and their husbands,A Stone tools is, in the most general sense, any tool made either partially or entirely out of stone. Although stone tool-dependent societies and cultures still exist today, most stone tools are associated with prehistoric, particularly Stone Age cultures that have become extinct. and five grandchildren.

“Alpacas fit easily into the Maine landscape,” Porter says on the farm’s website.dc gear motor operate by way of the function of magnetic fields and current conductors to employ force. Native to the Andes mountain region of Peru, alpacas are well suited to the climate of northern Maine. They like the cold.If you like BMW cars,then you will probably like their new gaming mouse, the super sexy, sleek as a Titanium Sheet off the pressing mat Level 10 M Gaming Mouse.

“Aroostook County has a lot of similarities with the alpacas’ homeland. The climate, soil and rural population fit nicely with the growing needs of potatoes and alpacas.”

Porter applied his knowledge of soil in creating fertile pasture and fields of hay for the alpacas. He conducted a complete soil audit to assure proper minerals were present, the same process used for the farm’s potato and grain crops.

“Potatoes and alpacas go together, just as they did 500 years ago when the Spanish first came to Peru and discovered the potato.”

So as soon as potato planting is completed in the spring,So I'm looking at my silver wheel bolt that are in pretty rough cosmetic shape - and decide that I'd like to have the look of the new black wheel the alpacas take center stage. June is a big month: All 50 animals are sheared, and the pregnant females start giving birth.

Shearing takes place on the first Sunday in June when Spudland Alpacas is on the calendar of a professional shearer from New Hampshire who begins in Florida and works his way north, traveling from farm to farm for the annual ritual.

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