 |
|||||||||||||||||
 |
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Retirement to a fulfilling life breeding alpacas By Morelia Candia It was in the beautiful fall of 1998 when my husband Gil and I started looking for a place in Maine, as we were getting ready to explore a more peaceful way of life and enjoy some sort of retirement. I had worked as an MD for 30 years and after the last of our daughters departed for college, a change of pace was overdue. We found large pieces of land available in Maine, mostly former dairy farms, at very reasonable prices. After seeing an Alpaca Owners & Breeders Association advertisement in a magazine, we considered alpacas as a way to put the land to use. Following very little research, we bought two females and three babies, and boarded them until we had a place ready for everybody in Maine. We moved to Auburn in September of 1999 and our alpacas followed a month later. Soon after that we bought Paco, the alpaca guard dog. All the pieces fell into place like magic, making the transition very easy for us. Remodeling the house, constructing the barns, and preparing and fencing the pastures was done with no problems under the surveillance of a contractor friend who fell in love with our project. After seven years working with alpacas, that famous "alpaca fever" is not going away; it grows only stronger when they get close and I can feel their sweet breath on my face, or when I sink my hands in their silky and warm fleece while hugging them. Even just watching the herd carrying along humming or quietly grassing, time stands still and I am enveloped in a feeling of wellness that I cannot explain. 
We now have close to 50 alpacas. We breed them to produce that "perfect alpaca" with all
the attributes that I love; such as harmonious and pleasant conformation, dense, fine, shiny
and crimpy fiber, gentle and sweet disposition and a proud stance. When we started we wanted
dark colors, but that is not so important anymore when the beautiful whites came. The road to
our goal can be very interesting and full of wonderful surprises, like when we breed a couple
of alpacas selected to produce a dark colored cria and we get a gorgeous little white baby instead.It is a new career for me and gives my husband Gil a chance to come home from work to a totally different environment. He unwinds by mowing the fields, helping me with the afternoon chores, or swimming in the half-acre pond by the house. If we were to choose the most gratifying moments on the farm, we would have to pick two. The first is marveling at a newborn baby: watching its first wobbly steps, the bonding with its mother, that first sip of mom’s milk, the welcoming into the herd by aunts, siblings and friends, the first dash to the fields following other babies and all the beautiful "firsts" that follow. The second is seeing the alpacas playing in the fields on clear evenings: running as fast as they can just to get to a stand still for a second or two and start all over again, now pronging and jumping sideways, like defying gravity, doing the sundown dance. Gil and I are looking forward to many more years of alpaca farming, and to developing the end products of this business as we work with the fiber. All this is not only for fun; the alpacas provide an additional income to expand the farm right now and a successful business for the future when Gil retires from his job. Retiring means a very active way of life for us, doing what we like most: raising these lovely alpacas. |
|||||||||||||||||