We bought new alpacas this winter, bringing our herd up to five. When we had the three new boys loaded in our Honda Odyssey, the sellers asked us casually, "Oh, do you want their fleeces from the last three shearings?" Well, yeah. Even though the van was full of alpaca, we packed in the ten garbage bags of fiber that they had been storing. What a bonus! When we got home and the new alpacas were settled in the pasture, I started sorting through my bounty. The first step wa

Every year, when I burn the season's orchard prunings, I watch the piles of flaming foliage and smoldering embers and regret that all that heat will be wasted. Every year, around February or so, I run across feature articles in the newspaper or on the radio about making maple syrup. "That would be fun," I think, "but it takes so much energy to boil down the sap." Sometimes the most brilliant ideas are also the most obvious. Last winter, I read Stalking the Wild Asparagus, th