We did it! We made it to 2021.
I’m sure I don’t have to say this but 2020 has been a rough year. A pandemic, rocked and continues to rock our country and we’ve all made sacrifices and had losses that will forever change us and our country. But 2021 turns over a new leaf, a fresh start, a way to do things better, with more heart and more feeling. So without further ado, let’s recap our 2020 projects and look forward to what we hope to accomplish in 2021!
From our previous recap blog, “Welcome to 2020” we set these goals for 2020. And for the most part accomplished all of them:
Set up a composting solution:
This was the only goal we didn’t get as far into as we would have liked. Which as far as I’m concerned is pretty dang awesome! We did super get into worm composting though. This is called vermicomposting. Instead of using heat to compost we use composting worms. We got red wigglers (worm breed) back in January of last year and they have been happily composting almost all our kitcken’s veggie waste this year. I’ll have a blog coming out about these fascinating creatures and am looking forward to having enough vermicast (the compost created from worms, also called worm castings, aka worm 💩) to try out in parts of our garden this year!
Located near our kitchen! 
Worm Poop
We also got a tumbler to try out some traditional composting methods this year as well. We didn’t quite get that setup fully before it froze, but when it warms up a bit more it should be easy to start as well. Plus we have tons of amazing alpaca poo now too so our need for traditional gardening compost is a lot less. Alpaca poo is awesome because you can apply it directly to the garden without burning it like some other manures would #themoreyouknow
Play around with Microgreens:
We started with doing some sprouts, mostly for our chickens in the winter. There’s some iffy-ness with sprouts since you are essentially growing them just using water (no soil) and wet things are prone to growing other questionable things like bacteria and mold. But if done correctly (we didn’t have any issues) they’re pretty tasty. And our chicken ladies LOVED the greens during the cold winter months!
Microgreens are the next stage, half way between a sprout and an actual seedling. We used coco coir for the “soil” as it has great water retention and is generally more sustainable than peat moss. These are grown in densely packed trays and harvested before the plants realized how crowded things are.
We did radishes, peas, broccoli, lentils, and a few other generic “salad” mixes combining multiple seeds together in the tray. And of all of them the radishes were the most tasty. The harvested microgreens are densely packed with both flavors and all the nutrients for growing a full plant. Thus they’re like biting into tiny packets bursting with flavor. The radishes tasted just like spicy radishes, except they were just green stems/leaves, which throws your brain for a loop haha!
Start a Garden:
We planted our first ever garden. And it went terribly 😂 And that’s okay! I think a lot of times you set out on new adventures and when they start to go poorly or you start to struggle, it’s easier to throw in the towel and feel discouraged at the all effort/time that went into something that is ultimately going to fail.
We got two raised garden beds. We added compost from a local supplier, coco coir, and vermiculite. We tried out the square foot gardening method which is a compact way to squeeze as much garden into as small of a place as we could. And planted a ton of things!
Then we had one of the hottest, and definitely driest summers ever in Iowa. We only mowed our yard TWICE and that was mostly to keep the weeds down and not actually because we needed to mow any grass. Still nearly all our grass browned and died. And thus our garden got sad. We tried to do our best to monitor moisture and water as needed, but our attempts to mimic nature didn’t go too well. Turns out nature has a lot more experience than we do haha. We started out overwatering then eventually underwatered, and combination of both of these made almost everything pretty sad.
We also learned the importance of hardening off seedlings we started indoors. Because when we suddenly dumped them into the real world, they all became stunted and sad. Welcome to the real world plants!
We ended up giving up most of them and bought 12 seedling tomatoes. Those did fantastic, even given our noobness and inexperience. We got probably 2-3 harvests of 30+ tomatoes.
Then the derecho hit. With sustained 100+ mph winds for over half an hour. And that finished off pretty much everything else that might have existed haha. And took out our largest tree on the property!
Ellen For Scale! 
Almost Completely Hollow!
Install fencing for 2+ pastures:
This project was masssssssive. And it was probably the most satisfying thing we did in 2020. Starting with a plan in our minds, designing everything on paper, sourcing all the materials ourselves, and then seeing it all come together. Glorious.
We designed out our pasture to have a small catch pen and visitor area, then three main pastures off of that. Each pasture is just over a quarter of an acre and designed to work with rotational grazing throughout the year. Gates control which pastures they have access too and they’re all centered around a lovely barn area for shelter from wind/rain/snow.
And none of this would have been possible without the assistance and support of others in the community. From our fence post provider, Smith Post Yard out of Kansas, who helped us source Osage Orange or Hedge Posts which are a natural alternative to creosote oil or penta-treated wood posts. These posts will likely outlast the metal fencing (not joking!) as they are a incredibly hard wood and also rot resistant.
We got our fencing and staples from a local hardware store McCorkle Farm & Home. And then more shorter staples, when our recommended two inch staples could not be driven into the posts because the wood was too hard 😂 We got six 200 ft rolls of 5 ft, high tensile, no climb horse fence which is the perfect height/style for alpacas as they can’t stick heads or feet through the 2×4 inch holes!
Our amazing local lumber yard, Jefferson Tri-County Lumber, who if you recall has assisted us with building out our garage and whom we will be using for some other house remodeling things this year. They helped us unload our posts from the semi and brought them out to our place! They’re fantastic nice people and we’d highly recommend them for any remodeling or contracting needs!
And lastly to our awesome fence installers, Huber Fencing. They did a stellar job pounding and auguring in the posts and were super flexible in working with us to source our own materials for the project. We’re looking forward to using them again for our future pasture plans!
Plus the end result turned out amazing!
Update/modify barn for alpacas:
Our last stage of our alpaca project and arguably the one causing the most growth for us personally, was improving the barn. It was also the most challenging as it was stretching the both of us into areas we were unfamiliar with.
We started with a painting project. We got half the barn’s repainted, with the other half scheduled for this year. Weather was rough to start with and other projects got in ahead of finishing it this year. We first removed the paint with our pressure washer. Let everything dry back out. Then put on a nice thick coat of oil based primer, which the wood just SOAKED up. Then finished it with two coats of acrylic paint. And it looks glorious!
We decided to dig out and replace the existing barn floor with fresh dirt. The barn, prior to us, had been used for by a mechanic who liked to tinker with cars, so we were worried about what oils/chemicals might be present. Plus the existing floor was a gravel/dirt mix and I didn’t want to be picking out gravel from our fleeces haha!
We then did some woodworking projects. We build a door for the entryway dividing the cemented side and the dirt side of the barn. We demolished out the old plywood filled doorway and replaced it with a new wall and door opening. We built a rectangular pen with some of the leftover fencing and oz-posts for the 4×4 posts. We also built a new hay feeder and gate too!
Get Alpacas:
Lastly, and most importantly and excitedly, we finally got our alpacas on Thanksgiving Day!! We got four ladies: Kiss, Cinder, Bit of Honey & Ella from Rusty Stars Alpacas in Winterset, IA. And as an extra cute bonus, we got a tag-along cria, Chip! He’ll be staying with us until March/April of 2021 and then returning to Rusty Stars as we aren’t yet ready for our boys yet! He’s Bit of Honey’s son and came as a bit of a surprise as the breeding done in 2019 didn’t appear to have been successful, but in fact was! We’ll definitely be sad to see him go back as he is such a character, but he’s related to our other four ladies and thus is not a good choice for a herdsire for our farm.
The ladies arrived easily, and got settled in. They LOVE the fresh grass and it’s such a joy to look out at them munching away. Such quiet and peaceful animals. We love them all so much!
It was a big leap for us to get them. Similar to a baby or an adoption, one day you just wake up and boom you’ve got new responsibilities and charges to look after. And it’s filled with all the unknowns and uncertainties of that. But you keep trekking onward and learning and growing as you oo.
The ladies and Chip are doing great. We’re working on improving handling skills for ourselves so we can easily move them where they need to be without stress, panic or fear. We’re also working on training for both them and us, so we can halter, walk, and care for them with the least amount of grabbing, forcing or restraining them as we can. Our goal is restraint free shearing in April and it’s a lofty one, but they’re smart cookies and I’m strong willed, so we’ll keep moving forward!
Other projects:
I learned to spin this year too and how to process our fiber. A key step towards our overall goal to hand process all our fiber ourselves vs using a mill or machines.
First Skein 
A few skeins later 😉
I also learned how to weave and am looking forward to seeing what creations we can make with that.
We got our first pasture raised, grass fed beef from a locker. Farm to table style. Which I wrote about here: Buying Meat Directly from Farm
And we’re learning how to sew! We wanted to have an alternative to hand stitching hems for our weaving projects! And I’ll be excited to show you my latest adventure once it’s received and opened by my dear friend/sister-from-another-mother Savannah 🙂
We also did a photo challenge a day (280+ days and counting) as a moral pick-me-up for us and our followers on facebook – a reminder that each day has some goodness and wonder if you look hard enough! If you’re not a follower, feel free to join us and share with us the good of each day. And that’s a wrap!
Our goals for 2021:
We’ll keep these more brief, since this blog is already a mini-novel haha 😉 #dealwithit
Write Moar Blogs/VBlogs!
We kinda flopped on this last year, as just getting through the days of working from home since March and doing all the outdoor projects we did left us little energy for making smart words. This year we’d really like to post a blog a month and start doing a video blog! We started our youtube channel up which you can visit here Sunset Creek Farm, but we want to engage more with all of you lovely folks as well as better capture and document our adventures!
Beeeeeeees!
Ben wants to get started with bees. He’s been doing a bunch of research currently in picking out our hive and we hope to start this up in early Spring. This should help as well with our apple tree failing to pollinate and the garden should do better too!
Finish painting the barn:
Two sides down! Two more to go! We’ll also be hiring someone to reseal the roof and help us extend the life of our barn a bit longer!
Breeding our ladies:
Alpacas gestate for eleven months and boys need to be separated around six months of age. This will give us around 17 months after breeding to ensure any males have their own space. We’ll breed in June/July of 2021, which could result in potentially two crias May/June of 2022. Any males would need to be weaned and moved to new pastures around November/December of 2022.
Alpacas do not have breeding cycles like other mammals do, so they can become pregnant at any time. Thus boys/girls can never be together after they reach sexual maturity. We’re planning their barn for 2021 (see below) and their separate pasture for 2022!
This year we’d like to breed Kiss our true-black girl and Cinder our all white lady. Cinder. We’ll be looking for stud breedings, since we don’t have any males currently, this year to help us diversify our genetic pool a bit more!
Small studio & alpaca barn:
Lastly our largest project this year but a critical one for the progression of our farm, a small studio and barn. We want to have a small shop on our farm for visitors to be able to take a bit of our farm home with them whether that’s in the form of some raw fiber, skeins of hand spun yarn or a finished products! This space will have a studio so we can process fiber, spin, weave, knit etc and have room to do all those things and leave room to hold small classes so we can teach others these disappearing artforms.
We’d also like to attach a small barn area to the side of this shop as it will be the future home for our males in 2022!