Celebrating over 20 years in the alpaca industry!

2004-2025

The Farm

In 2001, we purchased a 123-acre defunct dairy farm in Cazenovia, New York. The farm, which dates back to the early 1800’s, had been void of livestock for many years. The barn was empty and crumbling, with saplings growing into its’ foundation and old, musty hay rising to the rafters in the hay mows. The former pastureland was outlined with barbed wire and overgrown with weeds from years of neglect. A 60-foot silo rose from behind the barn like a lighthouse in the ocean. Anyone with half a brain would have walked away! But we fell in love with the old farm.

From the start, we knew that we wanted to return livestock to the farm. We were looking for animals that would be easy to raise and gentle on the land. Having two young children at the time, “family friendly” animals were a must. One day we stumbled on a nearby farm that raised alpacas. We researched these Dr. Seuss-looking animals for two years before finally purchasing our very own alpacas in 2004.    

This year we are celebrating our 20th year in the alpaca industry! Our farm shows no resemblance to the property that we purchased many years ago. The barns have been cabled to reinforce them against winter winds that howl up the valley, barbed wire has been replaced with alpaca-friendly woven wire fencing and the silo felled in a Jenga-like fashion by a father and son team using only sledgehammers to remove the stones supporting the silo’s base.

Our alpaca herd has gone through various changes over the years as well. We saw our herd size grow from 2 to 45 alpacas, and then streamlined to our current number of 20 when our children left the farm to pursue their own futures. We have recently added a farm store and are now producing homegrown yarns, roving and products from our herd. In the spring of 2024, we will be offering personalized tours by appointment. Please contact us if you would like to schedule a personalized tour or to visit our farm store.

The Herd

We purchased our first bred female, Ivory, in 2004. Although we had some livestock experience, alpacas were an entirely new thing for us.  The first year was a bit rocky (Ivory ended up delivering her gorgeous female cria via C-Section at Cornell University’s Vet Hospital!), but we were fortunate to have a wonderful mentor farm that that helped guide us through the ups and downs.

Over the years we slowly handpicked alpacas to add to our herd. From the very beginning we believed that the females in a successful breeding program were as important as the herdsires, so we choose our foundation females carefully. And while you will find colored alpacas in our herd, our primary focus has been, and will continue to be, breeding exceptional white huacaya alpacas with bright, heavy shearing, uniform fleeces.

In addition to our annual evaluation of physical traits conducted at shearing, we use scientific data to track fleece traits for every animal on our farm.  You can find current and historic histogram and AOA EPD results on our website under each animal’s listing. Also included are results and scores from halter and fleece shows (especially the testing results from exciting new IFA fleece shows).  While it takes time and money to obtain this data every year, we feel that we owe it to our clients to provide them with this information. There’s nothing more frustrating than looking at an alpaca sales listing online, only to have outdated (or altogether missing!) fleece data. And by using this data internally, we have seen substantial improvement in each new generation that we produce, which is one of our primary breeding goals.

Today our herd consists of a solid group of genetically diverse foundation females, bred to herdsires that we have handpicked to complement their fleece and conformation traits. Being an intentionally small farm, we know each of these alpacas individually and we take great pride in the crias born on our farm each year. At the end of the day, there’s nothing more satisfying than watching these crias pronking around the pasture while their moms quietly graze nearby.     

We are excited about the future of our industry, and our place in it. If you would like to join us, please give us a call and let us know what we can do for you.