| Suri Network News |
Fall 2017
|
The Suri Herd Improvement Program classifiers have been hard at work in 2017, putting their hands on over 180 alpacas from ten ranches so far this year. There's still room and time for your farm to participate this fall, or book your spring date now to ensure the timing that works for you. For more information on SHIP, please visit the SHIP website at www.suriship.org, or contact Cindy Grigg at the Network office to schedule your classification. New this Fall - a Product Auction to Benefit Suri Network and its MembersYour board is hard at work planning a new fundraising event for this fall - a charity auction featuring products from Suri Network members. It is intended to showcase member products in front of a wide audience during the busy holiday shopping season, both in hopes of raising money for the Suri Network and of driving customers who don't win an item directly to member stores! Look for more information on this exciting opportunity soon.Advertising for PurelySuri is open!It's almost time for a new issue of PurelySuri, and we need your advertising dollars to go to print. The good news is, we've reduced the cost of ads for members and non-members alike, across the board! For example, a business card ad is now only $50 for members, and since PurelySuri is also published on the web with live links - your ad is seen by many more people than the Suri Network membership.You should have recently received an email with a link to the new advertising rates; you can also expect a call from the office in the next few weeks inviting you to advertise. We hope you will - we can't wait to get PurelySuri, with its wealth of information on husbandry, history, fleece, and more, out to you! Update from the PDC...
Fall is almost here! I love it when the seasons change. My favorite change in seasons is from summer to fall. Summer is energizing. It is often packed full of activity and community events in the sun. Fall brings a welcome change with cooler temperatures and often a time to slow down and reflect. The highlight event of our 2017 summer was Suri Symposium! It was an energizing event! If you were able to attend I am sure you would agree that the Symposium was packed with more ideas and information than was really possible to fully digest in 3 days. The speakers challenged us in so many thoughtful ways. An important message was considering our “why” and how to connect this to a living breathing business plan. We learned about the importance of putting our fiber into production and how to maximize profitability. We even learned about the important nature and properties of soil! We spent many evenings and breakfasts networking and even had a wonderful evening of playing with our wonderful Suri fiber. Educational opportunities like this are powerful, but can often become lost as we return home and go about our very busy lives. Information becomes more accessible and impactful when we return to past educational experiences and re-visit our notes. I strongly encourage everyone to take some time this fall to return to the notes you have gathered this past year at events like the Suri Symposium, an alpaca show, or fiber festival. It becomes even more impactful if you can gather with some breeders in your area to discuss and collaborate ways that you can take your business to the next level. So start brewing the apple cider and invite a Suri neighbor over. Learn from each other, create together, and break bread as a community. Here’s to the changing of seasons, hoodies, evening fires, and a time to reflect of all of the educational opportunities we have experienced this year. |
President's Letter Hello Suri Network Members! We hope you all had a great summer. The Suri Network had a very busy summer with our headliner event the 2017 Suri Symposium and All Suri Fleece Show held in beautiful Loveland, CO on August 3-5. The Symposium, with its industry leading speakers and events, generated lots of positive buzz from the attendees this year: “The Symposium was awesome. Thank you to everyone who organized it, your hard work showed. I learned so much and I can't wait to start applying what I learned. The speakers were all wonderful.” “What an amazing group of industry leaders that were on hand to deliver their message regarding the many aspects of raising alpacas and helping you find your "why". Thanks to all involved putting the Symposium together, as first-time attendees we were blown away. Hats off!!” The All Suri Fleece Show, judged by respected senior fleece judges, had a record number of fleece entries at over 240 with color champions by gender for most colors, making this the largest and most competitive suri fleece show in the country! In addition, we had cottage fleece, spin-off and fiber arts competitions. It was an amazing collection of outstanding suri fleeces and products for our Symposium attendees to see and learn from. The Board offers a sincere thank you to everyone who helped make the Symposium and Fleece Show a success - our sponsors, speakers, auction item donors and auction bidders and winners, our volunteers, fleece and fiber arts competition judges and superintendent, and our Symposium and Fleece Show participants. The Suri Network Board of Trustees election results were announced at the Symposium. Jennifer Hack, Nancy Lindemood, Michael Alpert and Deb Christner are your newly elected board members. The board was expanded from five to seven members this year.
I want to extend a big thank you to our past 2016-17 officers and especially to Jill McElderry-Maxwell, who served as President, effectively leading the board and organization forward this past year. We expanded the board committees and encourage involvement from all SN members in continuing to make the Suri Network the best breed organization possible. Please contact me or any of the Board committee chairs if you would like to serve on any of the committees. We welcome your involvement and input! President, Suri Network 2017 Summer Symposium Recap 
Well, the 2017 Suri Symposium and All-Suri Fleece Show is in the books! Hopefully you were one of the fortunate ones to attend this excellent educational experience in beautiful Loveland, CO. We had a wonderful and diverse cadre of 19 nationally recognized speakers sharing an inordinate amount of valuable information. If you weren’t able to attend this year’s event, please be sure to mark your calendar for August 3 and 4, in 2018! Some of the wildly popular annual events during the Symposium included the Fiber Fun Night hosted by the Product Development Committee, the Live Auction which yielded over $16,000 this year, and the networking amongst fellow suri owners, vendors, and speakers. Last, but certainly not least was the All-Suri Fleece Show! Suri owners outdid themselves this year and knew which show was a “can’t miss” event for 2017. There were over 240 entries in the fleece show, including possibly the largest number of Cottage Fleece entries, and of course Spin-off and Fiber Arts and Skeins. It was especially gratifying to see large numbers of juvenile and previously sheared yearling fleeces in the show - more than half the yearlings entered had been sheared as juveniles! The show reached level III status and almost all colors were split by gender! We attribute much of this success to having the excellent senior judges of Jude Anderson and Amanda VandenBosch for the Fleece Show, Stacy Heydt for the Spin-off and Wini LaBrecque for the Fiber Arts and Skeins. The Suri Network Board of Trustees would like to thank all attendees and all that contributed many hours to organize and volunteer to make this year’s a magnificent Symposium event! Fleece Show Results Yes, they're here! If you weren't able to attend the Symposium in person, your wait is over - see all the Fleece Show Results here.
Jim Barker and Judy Steele Awards The well deserved winner of this year's Jim Barker Suri Network Ambassador Award is Patty Hasselbring, former Suri Network President and current AOA Board Member - congratulations, Patty!
And the recipient of the first ever Judy Steele Suri Network Creativity Award is Donna Rudd - congratulations to Donna for inaugurating this prestigious award!
|
|||||||||||||
