Greetings from Suri Network
What have you been doing in 2024? We have been busy with halter and fleece shows, educational events, shearing, preparing fleeces for product, birthing crias and so much more. Sometimes amidst the hustle and bustle in everyday life we forget to step back and appreciate the blessings. Take time today to reflect on what you have achieved and what the next steps should be for your farm, breeding program, mentorship, and succession plans. Ask how you can help other Suri breeders and maybe even how you can be more involved in the Suri Network. We would love to have our members become more involved and help us to create a stronger Suri community.
What’s Happening at Suri Network:
2024-2025 Suri Network Board Elections
The 2024 Election results are in with 50% of the membership voting. The new members will be serving 3-year terms beginning August 2024. The officers for 2024-2025 will be announced at the Suri Network Annual Meeting in August. Liz Vahlkamp and Beth Sheets will be leaving the board due to term limits, having served 2 terms. Please take a few minutes to welcome Chris and Leslie to the SN Board. We would also like to thank Cathy Crawford and Scott Shelhart for taking the time and effort to run for the board.
Annual Suri Network Board Meeting
The Annual Suri Network Board meeting will be held as a zoom meeting on August 21st, 2024, at 8PM EST. Please mark your calendars and join us.
“September With Suris” – Webinar Series September 2024 - Mark Your Calendars
This September, join us for 3 Wednesdays for our new webinar series, “September with Suris”. All webinars will be at 8PM EST. Information for sponsoring one of these webinars will be coming soon.
Here is a summary of what we will be presented.
Week 1-September 11, 2024:
5 Rules of Marketing and Sales - Making the Most of Openherd by Joe Preston of Openherd.
Have you ever wanted to learn more about maximizing your Openherd account? Joe will share his insights on marketing and sales, along with how Openherd can be leveraged for maximum benefit. By following his 5 rules for marketing and sales and utilizing Openherd’ s platform effectively, you can maximize your marketing efforts and drive sales for your business.
Week 2 – September 18, 2024
Want to breed for a specific fleece colour? Understand your animals’ genetics by Kylie Munyard B.Sc. (Hons) PhD.
Kylie is an Associate Professor of Genomics & Bioinformatics, in a combined teaching and research role and is also the Director of Graduate Research in the Curtin Medical School at Curtin University in Australia. Kylie is enthusiastic about sharing her research on genetics with the alpaca community to help them apply it to their own herds.
Week 3 – September 25, 2024
Story of Two Fiber Pools – Lessons Learned and What to Consider by Nancy Lindemood and Liz Vahlkamp
In 2023, Nancy helped organize the Kentucky Alpaca Association’s first regional fiber pool project with a goal to produce high quality local alpaca socks, at a competitive cost and attractive profit margin, while also educating members about fiber traits and processing. Liz put together a fiber pool in 2023 to allow Suri growers to offer commercial products, made from their own fiber, in their farm stores. Both ladies will share what they have learned and what to consider when doing fiber pools to create products.
PurelySuri Magazine
PurelySuri magazine – Have you received your magazine? If not, please contact the Suri Network office. You do not want to miss this issue with so many interesting educational articles. Thanks to Dale Davis and Laurel Shouvlin for all their efforts to publish this magazine.
Membership
If you have not renewed your membership, please take a few minutes, and go to the website to renew. The Suri Network is constantly working on ways to create new tools for education and marketing for our members.
S.H.I.P. (Suri Herd Improvement Program)
Shearing is over. It is still not too late to schedule your S.H.I.P. classification. Your Suris can still be evaluated after shearing. The classifiers will simply evaluate your alpaca’s noodled fleece as well as its conformation.
What other program can provide a qualitative evaluation of 16 key classification traits (8 conformation and 8 fiber traits) on each of your Suri alpacas? Upon completion of the individual assessments the classifier spends time discussing the information collected with you. S.H.I.P classification affords the opportunity to discuss and sort the data according to expressed individual farm goals, both current and future. All S.H.I.P. classification scores are stored in a specific S.H.I.P. database.
Consider scheduling a S.H.I.P. classification now. One of the classifiers can help you select the timing depending upon your shearing dates. Click on the following link to learn more about S.H.I.P. https://surinetwork.wildapricot.org/SHIP
The Suri Network Fleece Show
Our fleece show immediately followed the AOA National Fleece Show at the Boone County Extension Office in Burlington, Kentucky. This facility is wonderful and free! The timing and location also provided economies with transferring fleeces between shows and sharing judging expenses. 222 fleeces were entered, and your amazing support provided numbers high enough to achieve championships by gender and color in all color groups except multis, which still had a gender combined championship.
As always, we are indebted to our sponsors and volunteers for making the show possible. Without them, the show simply could not happen (upcoming eblasts will recognize them). Thanks to Dawn Browning our unflappable Show Superintendent and her awesome assistant, Show Super Buffy Bernard for keeping everything incredibly organized. Thanks also to Show Superintendent Judy Schroeder for receiving all the fleeces at her house and passing them off to us after Nationals, and thanks to her husband Charlie for dealing with all the boxes in their garage, and 3 Show Superintendents in his home for 10 days while Dawn and Buffy bunked at their lovely home.
The Fiber Arts, Skeins, and Spin Off entries have all been sent to California to Judge Maureen Macedo for her evaluations. We look forward to getting those results in September.
Lastly, a grateful shout out to Diana Timmerman and Amanda VandenBosch for judging the show. Having two senior judges allows us to host 2 apprentices, and this year we enjoyed having Joanna Najbar from Poland and Heather Thordarson from Oregon as apprentices. This fleece show is an exceptional learning opportunity for both apprentices and the volunteers, and all were excited about how much they saw and learned with the incredible entries that were presented this year.
The awards presentation is now available for viewing on the Suri Network YouTube channel with a link available on the fleece show page of the Suri Network website!
Fiber Committee and Suri Simply Stunning Brand
The Fiber Committee has spent many hours updating our resource directory. Look for this to being available for your use in the 3rd quarter 2024.
Liz Vahlkamp held six “Sip and Share” for groups to discuss blending Suri with other fibers, crocheting, felting, knitting, weaving, and spinning. If you want to learn more go to our website to listen to these discussions. It was a wonderful time to learn from other artists using Suri fiber.
Just a reminder to take a few minutes and listen to Liz Vahlkamp and Laurel Shouvlin who were featured speakers on Long Thread Medias’ Long Thread Podcast – Spotlight Episode. Feel free to visit https://longthreadmedia.com/podcast.
Share ways that you have used the Suri Simply Stunning signage and hangtags and videos. We want to learn from our members.
Time to Reflect
Many of you have probably never met our office manager, Cindy Grigg, in person, but you have probably spoken with her a time or two. Cindy is the person behind the scenes who helps keep the Suri Network running smoothly. Sadly, Cindy lost her mother to cancer last week and we are certain that our membership would like to know and keep warm and comforting thoughts of condolence in our hearts for Cindy and her family.
The SN Board
Beth Sheets – President
Liz Vahlkamp – Vice President
Nikki Griffith – Secretary
Laurel Shouvlin – Treasurer
Karen Ball - Member at Large
Randy Brealey – Member at Large
Candy McMahan – Member at Large