Medina’s Agriculture students use alpaca fibers for dryer balls
Provided photo: (Left to right): Freshmen Zaric Boyce, Joe Cecchini and Zachary Fike work with alpaca fiber.
Press Release, Medina Central School
MEDINA – Medina High School’s Agriculture Exploration class has taken on a cool project by making dryer balls out of alpaca fiber.
An alpaca is a species of South American camelid and is very similar to a llama. The school district’s farm has several of the animals and Agriculture teacher and FFA advisor, Todd Eick, thought it would be a great project for his students to make all-natural dryer balls.
The balls are a friendly alternative to chemicals on fabric softeners and dryer sheets that reduce static and wrinkles.
“Most of the students in the Ag Exploration class are in 8th and 9th grade and have been spending class time skirting alpaca fibers,” he says.
Skirting means cleaning out vegetation from the fibers.
“We make the dryer balls out of the skirted material and the waste that is picked out is either turned into mesh balls for bird nest makers or put into our compost bin,” Eick said. “It is a zero waste project.”
