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The Alpaca Dream—Just plain fun! By Nicole Carter From the time I was very small and my parents raised Angus cattle, to their shift in the seventies to sheep and an Icelandic pony, to chickens that somehow survived living in the woods in the eighties, animals always been in my life. In the nineties my husband Greg and I became what we called pseudo-farmers—we had a menagerie of ducks, chickens, turkeys and pigs. (The only thing as fun, by the way, as hosing off a herd of alpacas on a hot day is dropping a half dozen mallard ducklings into a bathtub full of water.) Eventually most of the birds died of old age, fox or raccoons. We shifted our focus to building a house on our farmland in Pownal and ended up dismantling an 1828 Cape in midcoast Maine, moving it 50 miles and re-erecting it. Maybe some day we'll actually finish renovating it. In the fall of 2004 I heard about the New England Coastal Classic. I went with a friend to see what happens at alpaca shows. From the first hum I was hooked. We walked all the aisles and I talked to a number of breeders about the animals, their care, what they did with them, and how much fun they were. I went home and said to Greg, "We need to get some alpacas." He rolled his eyes—for months after we moved from Freeport to Pownal he would go to our old house after work daily to round up the ducks we'd left behind to feed and put in for the night. Once we found a couple to "adopt" them he announced he was retiring from animal care. But now, after about 48 hours of me monologuing about how perfect it would be to have alpacas, he agreed to think about it. We began visiting local farms and he quickly gave my plan the green light. Little did I know he had a secret plot to finally justify buying that new John Deere. We decided to start with just a few fiber males to test if we'd truly want the lifestyle and to be tied to their welfare 24/7/365. But during a visit to Andes Farm to look at geldings, Greg was attracted to a little fawn female cria. "You have a good eye," Morelia told him and caught the baby for us to look at. She was so beautiful, so spunky and so soft, we had to have her. We hemmed and hawed—already we were abandoning the plan and making an impulsive, emotional buy! But there was no going back. We bought our first female and started a new plan—purchase two more bred dams. A few months later we found our package. But instead of two it was four, and they weren't proven but maidens. Our new herd was all half-sisters, so we rationalized with mostly siblings and cousins it would be smart money to get a jr. herdsire for future breeding. Again we had veered from the "plan" and we were up to nine alpacas. 
Fast forward to 2007 and we've made it through breeding our five maidens and the arrival
of their cria, dystochias and all. Still owed some breedings from our package purchase, we
contacted the farm our girls came from and learned they were dispersing a herd of seven females
and a herdsire—were we interested? After two years of ignoring our business plan, of
course we were.So here we are, with twenty plus alpacas and an awesome LGD that keeps us awake at night. We've had six cria born on the farm with a couple more to go, and some of our alpacas have moved on to new homes. Greg works out of the home and I found a job at a multi-media publishing company just two miles from the farm. If I don't show up at work in the morning they assume it's a cria, I'm taking a vacation day, and I'll eventually resurface. There's still much to do—add pastures, build a main barn, start our farm store, create hay fields. It's all on the list. It's hard to believe sometimes the way one thing fell into place after the other. And despite our inability to "stick to the plan," our farm mission remains the same—breed reasonably priced alpacas for quality conformation and fleece and help other landowners and animal lovers realize the dream of small farming. We are living our dream. We've had highs and lows and learn from each one. I could write a book on what the books don't tell you. And one of the most rewarding things we've found is that the breeders in our neighborhood are always ready to help and support us. Andes, Copperwoods, Longwoods and Royal River farms—they're all on speed dial and the only way we can ever pay them back is by paying it forward to other new breeders. Alpaca farming is truly what we were meant to do and it's just plain fun! |
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