Verlore Vallei Alpacas is a sustainable alpaca farm, fibrecrafts studio, guest house and open-day venue (the latter two still under development), located in a secluded valley on the banks of the Elands River, behind the Dinokeng Game Reserve.
Superior stock
We aim to breed superior quality Suri and Huacaya alpacas – with a special emphasis and dedication to promote and preserve the rare Suri. Breeding decisions are primarily aimed at combining the best possibilities in positive inheritable genetic traits, and visual, hands-on – striving for perfect conformation, lustre, lock and crimp quality, low microns, limited guard hairs, and above all, retaining the lovely and diverse natural colour range alpacas are known for.
We understand the importance of all-white fibre to facilitate processing alpaca fibre in large mills, but as preventing the loss of colour genetics represents a major part of our objective, we process all our own fibre, and as a result we are planning on setting up our own mini-mill in time, to process even limited quantities of special colour batches. This is also essential when processing Suri fibre, as these beautiful, spirited and regal animals are still very scarce in South Africa, and processing their fibre certainly poses a challenge here. There are no mills geared up to handle Suri fibre in South Africa, and as a result, many would-be breeders are passing up the opportunity to raise these feisty yet elegant animals. We are one of the largest active breeders of Suri in South Africa.
Verlore Vallei Alpacas’ motto: “Let’s not breed to suit the mills, let’s put up mills to suit our breed!”
OUR OBJECTIVES
- Promoting the breeding of Alpacas, and preservation and breeding of Suri in particular.
- Preventing the loss of colour genetics, in both Suri and Huacaya.
- Producing quality alpaca fibre, with perfect lock, lustre and crimp quality at the lowest possible microns, to obtain the true softness of natural alpaca fibre.
- Processing our own fibre to be able to breed all colours and all patterns, no matter how small the various coloured batches turn out to be.
- Creating a socially responsible and sustainable business, in sync with the environment.
- Creating employment for the local community, teaching skills in this sector of the industry.
- Providing our customers with 100% natural colour fibres with incredible fineness and handle, and the advantage that only true eco-friendly fibres can offer.
- Dyeing of fibres, where projects require colour other than nature’s alpaca palette, is mostly done with natural dyes or with ecologically-safe Oeko-Tex compliant dyes.
- Raising awarenes of the importance of saving the genetic pool of the many endangered rarebreed fibre animals all over the world, before it’s too late.
- Teaching hands-on skills to a generation that has mostly lost it’s connection to Mother Earth, and no longer knows the pleasure and feeling of accomplishment one can get from creating something tangible using your hands. This includes animal husbandry, raising fiber animals among others, living a sustainable life, shearing and processing fibers manually, spinning, weaving, lacemaking, knitting, crocheting, felting, sewing, and even food preservation.
Shearing:
We currently shear, process and spin our fleeces ourselves, the old fashioned way, but as part of our mission, our long-term plan is to ultimately establish an alpaca-specific or at least a small batch fleece processing facility (mini-mill) for Gauteng on the farm, where the focus should be on KEEPING and actively PROMOTING the variety in NATURAL fleece colours, with a major emphasis on processing Suri-fibre.
Dyed fibre:
For those moments in life where a real splash of colour is needed, it is always possible to lend a helping hand with lovely natural dyes like indigo, madder and marigold, to name just a few. For more repeatable colour results, acid dyes can also be used.
Fibre processing: Raw fiber is first skirted, picked, then washed, dried, and picked again. Then it can be carded on drum carders, hand carders, or combed into top. These processes are very time-consuming, as it is all done the old-fashioned way, by hand.
Hand-combing to prepare top
Here, the washed alpaca fibre was combed and then dizzed to create this lovely top in a very light cream fawn – ready for spinning into next-to-skin garments. Top is available in all of the natural alpaca colours, and subject to your needs, can be overdyed and blended in a range of colours too.
Top is literally the cream of the crop, and it is worth noting that about half the weight in fibre ends up as wastage when top is combed, as every tiny bit of anything that doesn’t conform to the perfect longest fibres are removed. You are literally left with the best of the best, the top! So now you know why Top also comes at a top price!
Dyeing, Blending and Carding
Here, alpaca was dyed and blended with natural white alpaca and silk for special effect. Then it was rolled into a rolag, ready to spin. It can also be spun straight from the carded cloud, as can be seen below.
Madder-overdyed, hand-carded royal alpaca and silk fibres, such a delight to spin, it was easy to forget to move the bobbin spacer…
A word of caution – if you want to order dyed and blended fibre, please order enough for your project from the start, as dye lots and blending WILL differ!
Natural dyes like madder root has a mind of it’s own… And even the natural alpaca colours differ in different parts on the same animal, and also becomes darker year after year, so the same animal’s fibre will not be exactly the same next year!
