Alpacas & Small Organic Family Farms

Cure for PMS

2011-11-07T08:52:00.001-08:00

PMS can’t be a normal occurrence. It can’t be part of what nature intended…and now I know that our toxic world is causing it (just like cancer, alzheimers, dementia, diabetes, and all “chronic” diseases). For years I’ve looked for a way to cure my PMS, trying acupuncture and surfing the Internet for ideas. Finally, I’ve found the single most significant contributor for me: hormone disruptors in our food. BPA or bisphenol-A is a lining used in throughout the food industry in food packaging, and it interferes with our bodies’ production of hormones (hormones that we need for a natural, sane menstrual cycle).

Canned tomato products like tomato sauce and ravioli have the MOST BPA per serving because of the acid in the tomatoes and the high heat used to process the food; it causes the most BPA to leach into the food. Liquid cardboard containers have plastic ingredients that cause the same problem (like the cardboard milk and rice milk containers, which also contain aluminum by the way).

To get rid of PMS, first avoid all canned foods and liquid cardboard containers (and then all plastic containers including plastic water bottles; bottles with “2” and “7” for recycle numbers have BPA and when plastic containers heat up during storage their toxic ingredients leach into the liquids). Then eat lots of green leafy vegetables to get the magnesium, calcium and other nutrients that your body needs for a normal cycle.

Please forward this to every woman that you know so that she can make informed buying decisions. There are other sources of toxins in our environment, but from personal experience I can vouch that avoiding BPA alone has made the difference for me between PMS and no PMS.

Here are articles with additional, supporting information:

https://www.pacherbs.com/2010/09/29/what-does-bisphenol-a-have-to-do-with-pms/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A (what is it and banned in Canada and baby bottles)

http://www.greencradle.net/2009/11/are-tetra-paks-a-healthier-or-greener-container-for-organic-foods/ (estrogen mimicking substances in liquid cardboard containers called “tetra paks”)

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080130092108.htm

Look for us these local Colorado events

2011-09-30T08:33:00.000-07:00

Look for us with all of our lovely alpaca products at these upcoming local Colorado events:

22nd Annual Colorado State Fair Holiday Bazaar, Saturday, November 5th, 9 AM - 5 PM and Sunday November 6th, 9 AM - 4 PM at the Palace of Agriculture at the Colorado State Fair Grounds in Pueblo,

November 26, Craft Fair at the Holy Cross Abbey, Canon City, 9:00 am - 4 pm

December 10th and 11th, Craft Fair at the Florence High School, Sat 9-4 & Sun 12-6

Beautiful Dyed Yarns Added to our Store Inventory

2011-02-25T08:18:00.000-08:00

We've added some beautiful new dyed yarns that are so exquisite! From The Alpaca Yarn Company, we are carrying some of their Alpaca de Seda yarn. This is yarn made from 80% baby fine alpaca wool and 20% silk. It is soft, shiny, gorgeous and fun to work with! View all the new dyed alpaca yarns here.

All the crias are in!

2010-09-23T08:30:00.001-07:00

We've had six beautiful, healthy crias born on the farm this year! More than any other year since we began raising alpacas in 2000: four boys and two girls. (We've always kept the herd small and sold the females as we went along). This year, our family has agreed on naming themes. Each year, we'll name all the crias born in that year after a favorite movie or TV series. That way we'll quickly know how old they are by their names. This year's movie is "Avatar: The Last Airbender," a children's TV series that has this year been the model of the blockbuster movie "The Last Airbender." So our magnificent crias have equally magficent and imaginative names: Katara, Toph Bei Fong, Fire Lord Ozai, Prince Zuko, Sokka, and Avatar Ang.

2010-06-16T10:31:00.000-07:00

We've had three crias born so far this spring, two black boys and a brown girl. Here are some photos of the new arrivals...

2010-06-16T10:22:00.000-07:00

We had a beautiful heavy snowfall late in the spring. It's strange to look at these snowy pictures in the middle of the hot summer

Cure for fibromyalgia

2010-02-27T13:16:00.000-08:00

At a Gerson Basics Workshop in San Diego on February 19-21, 2010, Charlotte Gerson related to me and the rest of the class a first hand account of one of the patients at the Gerson approved clinic in Mexico. The patient, there for a cure of a her cancer, was cured of her fibromyalgia after only FIVE DAYS (!) on the Gerson Therapy. To learn more about the therapy read "Healing the Gerson Way" by Charlotte Gerson with Beatta Bishop. Or watch one or more of these documentaries (available on Netflix): The Gerson Miracle, The Beautiful Truth, Dying to Have Known

Go Organic to Fight Global Warming!

2010-02-25T08:15:00.000-08:00

Organic and small family farming can resolve agricultural pollution, global warming and the health care crisis all in one. Organic vegetables and meat are higher in the nutrients that our bodies need to stay healthy, and organic methods of farming naturally combat global warming. Eat only ORGANIC, and START TODAY! To find out more, watch the movie Food, Inc. which is available through Netflix.

Living Greener and Less Toxic By the Day

2010-02-25T08:04:00.000-08:00

Our family is simplifying and living greener...we are looking at hair and body care products, and removing toxic substances like flouride and sodium laurel sulphate. A great way to do this is to go back to way our forefathers used to live. Washing our hair with home-made or simple, natural shampoos. Brushing our teeth with water and killing germs in our mouths with hydrogen peroxide mouthwash.

My goal is for us to only put products down our drains that are non-toxic and eventually edible. Because the water treatment plants are taking the solid waste materials (also known as sewage sludge), composting them with dirt, and giving them back to people for use as compost in their gardens or shipping the waste to remote areas and dumping them. This means that all the waste medicine, cleaning products, petroleum products including mercury, antibiotics and more from all the hospitals, automtive shops and homes can all be found in sewage sludge.

The solution to our toxic waste problem is to stop using toxins to clean our homes and bodies and stop putting them down the drains. If this idea resonates with you, a GREAT place to start is to read the book, "Green Goes With Everything" by Sloan Barnett.

Spring is on the Way!

2010-02-25T07:58:00.001-08:00

We see small beautiful GREEN blades of grass peeking up in the fields. The alpacas are spending their days individually ingesting each new blade of grass that comes up. Looks like fun to watch whether the alpacas or the grass will win out. It feels so exciting and happy once again... spring is on the way!

We are expecting five baby alpacas or crias this spring. Whooppee, it's getting closer. The results of the many, many hours deliberating on the best herdsire for each female and now we will see the babies. It's a fun time of year.

At the Farmer's Markets

2009-06-22T07:23:00.001-07:00

We will be at the Florence and Canon City farmer's markets and other craft events with our yarn, rovings, rugs and other alpaca products!

4th of July Celebration at Pathfinder Park (on Highway 115 between Canon and Florence) on July 4th

Canon City Farmer's Market:
(on Hwy 50 at the west end of Canon) Wednesdays: July 8, July 29, August 26, September 9, September 23, October 7th.

Florence Farmer's Marke: July 23rd and August 20th

Hand-woven rugs from Texas

2009-06-22T06:56:00.000-07:00

19 beautiful handwoven, berber style alpaca rugs have arrived from Ingrid's in Texas

We send the fleece from our alpacas legs and necks to Ingrid's to get woven into these extraordinary rugs. These alpaca rugs are 2' x 3' or 3' x 5' with cotton warp and tassled fringes. They are all natural, non-dyed colors created from the fleece of our alpacas here on the farm. These are berber style rugs handwoven in Texas, very sturdy and beautiful. Custom sizes and designs can be ordered as well. All the rugs are pictured in our yarn store online.

Yarn & Rovings!

2009-06-22T06:52:00.000-07:00

We just had two years' shearings of alpaca fleeces processed into beautiful yarn and rovings. The yarn is 100% grown on our farm, and processed at the Shepherd's Mill in Kansas, all American grown and processed. The colors are 100% natural, non-dyed, non fading as grown on the alpacas. The mill dehairs the fleeces (removing any scratchy guard hairs), cleans and spins it into a fantastically luxurious yarn...We have a range of colors from white to beiges, tans, browns, grays and blacks in lace weight, sport weight and worsted weight yarns. Come and see them at the shop! Stop by anytime or call ahead to be sure we're here.

Along with the yarn, we have had select extraordinary fleeces made into lovely rovings in a variety of colors.

Shearing - DONE!

2009-06-22T06:42:00.000-07:00

We always breathe a big sigh a relief when shearing is done for the year. It's a lot of work and the alpacas don't like it very much either, until we're done. Then they lay spread out in the grass completely at ease taking sun bathes and luxuriating in the relief of not having five to ten pounds of fleece insulating them while the sun bakes down.

This year was especially nice. Having sold quite a few animals and with boarded animals returned to their home farms, and with females out for breedings, we were down to 11 alpacas to be sheared (from 26 last year)!

Plus, due to a problem with our original shearer we had to find a new one at the last minute, and she turned out to be terrific! Penny Jernigan from Arizona travels around with her shearing table, and did the most fantastic shearing job in our last eight years of raising alpacas! Her phone number is on our resources page, if you're looking for a shearer.

The animals look fantastic and there are very few second cuts in the fleece (which cause a problem in the yarn we have made out of it). Hurray!

Recent Sales & Thank Yous!

2009-04-17T10:53:00.000-07:00

We'd like to thank Gaye Cornell for the purchase of Navatara (who is due soon with a Bueno grandson) and her dam, Molly (due in a few short weeks with a Dino son) and Peruvian Macchiatto son, Thunder. Macchiatto took 1st Place at AOBA Nationals two years in a row.

We'd also like to thank David Schnur for the purchase of two top-notch gray females with super low micron counts: Silver Nitika and her daughter Avatar's Himalayan Mist (one of the only Avatar daughters available on the market)!!

We're happy and sad to note that with these sales, we'll have to pull the remaining females off the market and build up the herd for a while.

Shop Alpaca Products ONLINE

2009-03-26T08:13:00.000-07:00

Our yarn store products are now available through our online store: View our summary of products or start shopping.

Puzzle Fun

2009-03-25T16:52:00.000-07:00

I've added an electronic jigsaw puzzle created from one of our own photos: click here to try it out!

Raw Milk!

2009-03-25T16:44:00.000-07:00

It's so wonderful that small, local farmers can provide people with the opportunity to get back to natural, healthy food. Milk that hasn't been pasteurized and homogenized has natural enzymes and bacteria that aid in digesting the milk so that we can actually absorb the calcium. It has been know to have healing properties as well, including keeping the joints flexible.

We drink raw milk from the local Jersey Girls Farm.

To find a source of raw milk near you, visit: http://www.realmilk.com/where2.html

Read more about raw milk:

Benefits of Raw Milk

Raw Milk in the News

Local Cooperatives

2009-03-25T16:43:00.001-07:00

The Canon Coop is a local cooperative located in Fremont County Colorado. We are a group of dedicated people striving to provide green alternatives (food-coop, support for local producers, natural & healthy living ideas) to people in southeast Colorado. We found out about the raw milk opportunities and the CSA farm through this cooperative.

If you're interested, search in your local community for cooperatives to help you find local resources for healthy, local and sustainable living.

Solar Power on the Farm!

2009-03-25T16:36:00.000-07:00

We are so thrilled to have been able to set up a significant number of solar panels to provide electricity to our house. Our panels were funded in part through a statewide monetary incentive to encourage people to set up solar. Check with your local power company to see if any incentive programs are currently available to you. We have 27 panels and they provide a little more than 1/2 of our electricity to support our home and home-based business. Our solar panels are hooked into the grid so whatever we don't use, we sell to the power company, and whenever we need more than the panels generate, we get electricity from the grid. Find out more about why we need to use renewable energy: Watch the movie "An Inconvenient Truth" by Al Gore

Save the Planet: Stop Eating Beef!

2009-03-25T16:32:00.000-07:00

I am a vegetarian, because our world can no longer support clear cutting forests to raise beef for McDonalds. — Liz Beckman

Cows are raised on pastures. In order to create enough pastures and hay for the huge number of cows consumed on this planet, people are clearcutting old growth forests. Trees produce oxygen and fewer trees mean less oxygen to combat global warming. It can take 100 to 300 years for a forest to develop back to the same level of oxygen production. Plus cows produce enough methane gas in their digestion process to create an additional significant factor in global warming. Simply eliminating beef from our diets is a big and positive personal step that each of us can take to help save the planet...fewer cows, less methane gas, more trees. Vote with your dollars, don't buy beef!

Find out more:
"Grazing animals, such as cows, produce a great deal of methane, one of the leading causes of the greenhouse effect" Cattle Contribute to Global Warming By Mario Osava
Global Warming Culprits: Cars and ... Cows by ABC News
Old Growth Forests

Website Design

2009-03-25T16:31:00.000-07:00

In addition to enjoying the earth-friendly alpacas and producing local yarn, rugs and clothing accessories from their fleece, we also design websites, email ads, and magazine ads. Among our customers are alpaca farms, llama farms, an executive recruiting company, an internationally known author, a livestock insurance company and many more. We excel at top search engine placement. Learn more.

Halter Training the Alpacas

2009-03-25T16:29:00.000-07:00

We are halter training the weanling alpacas. We generally wean the baby alpacas from their moms at about six months of age. We might alter this in either direction based on their weight or emotional maturity. We begin putting them in a field separate from their moms for the day and put them back in with the moms at night for a few days to let their milk production reduce slowly.

We like to take this time to halter train them as well, since we need to move them back and forth from their dam's yard. We lead them around with grain cupped in our hand in front of their noses to get them used to walking on a lead. This year's group of weanlings is one of the most attractive we've ever had. Feb. 2009

Introducing PacaPages.com

2006-11-20T09:05:00.000-08:00

We are PacaPages.com (Ron & Liz Beckman), a web design and Internet market company, that we run out of our home in the rural mountain town of Florence, Colorado. We are also Phantom Canyon Alpacas, and have a small herd of huacaya and suri alpacas and a farm yarn and gift store. This blog is to share our alpaca raising and marketing experience with anyone who might be interested in either!

Our Alpaca Herd

Right now we have a very small herd of our own and we are agisting alpacas for a couple of other people; we've had alpacas since January of 2000. The alpaca market is going strong and has been for about two decades now. People have a passion for these exotic critters with fantastic fleece. I absolutely love the fleece and the terrific blankets, shawls, hats, gloves, suits, wall hangings, rugs, and more that can be created from it. I can't imagine buying synthetic yarn when you can use alpaca. View our alpaca farm wesite.

Selling Alpacas

So far, we've been able to run a profitable alpaca breeding business using email/Internet marketing and a website alone, with no postal mailings to date. The use of the Internet significantly reduces marketing costs when it costs between 55 cents and a dollar per page to print color flyers, not to mention postage. Find out about our email marketing service: http://www.pacapages.com/email-ads.htm

You can list your alpacas for sale on the Internet for as little as $40 per year. Check out http://www.alpacaseller.com/ This service lets you post as many alpacas and herdsires as you want for only $40/year. They also offer a very nice and sophisticated website integration tool that allows you to integrate your alpacaseller listings into your personal website. So that any updates you make to your alpacas for sale (which you can edit and maintain yourself) will appear on your website pages.

AlpacaNation.com also offers an online database service of alpacas for sale and herdsires, plus a whole lot of other complementary services like brokers, fiber processors, transporters and more.

Raising and Breeding Alpacas

It turns out that it is just as fun as I'd hoped and imagined when thinking about living on a farm and raising animals. They are gentle, beautiful, easy to care for and so rewarding.

We're gathering inventory for our farm store. We have a bit of it available in our online store

That's all I have time for now, but I would welcome any questions!