HISTORY 1

Rick first became interested in alpacas on January 31, 2001, when he picked up a brochure in the Romney Public Library. It described the Almost Heaven Guesthouse and Alpaca Farm in Augusta, WV, a few miles away. When he got home, he called the owners, but they weren't home. He contacted the Alpaca Breeders and Owners Association to obtain a Breeders' Guide so he could find out whether there were other breeders in our area. When the guide arrived, he called several breeders and arranged to visit their farms over the next few days.

Although he visited several alpaca breeders within a 3-hour driving distance, he continued to call Almost Heaven every day, and never reached anyone. Further, his calls were never returned.

Before he went too far with his investigation, he contacted our local veterinarian to find out if he had any experience with alpacas. It turned out that he was the vet caring for the Almost Heaven herd, and he gave Rick instructions on how to get to the farm. Rick went out there the next day and was impressed with the cleanliness and opulence of the place.

He continued to visit breeders, and eventually took me with him to visit Ore Hill Alpacas , another well-kept and clearly expensive operation. We liked Cleve and Bev Fredricksen a great deal, and decided to buy our herd from them. They gave us the names of new breeders who had purchased animals from them, and we called them when we got home. Unfortunately, we were unable to reach either of them. One telephone number was a fax number and the other people were on vacation in the Galapagos Islands.

But we still wanted to find out whether there were other owners starting from "scratch" - on a shoestring budget. We wanted to find someone who was relatively new to the business, who had just started their herd, and who was not backed by enormous financial resources.

Finally, on Saturday, February 10, the Ciszewskis of the Almost Heaven farm contacted us. They had been on vacation since January 29th, which was why they hadn't contacted us, but they invited us to visit them the next day.

On Sunday, we drove over to the farm and met the animals. They were so much more friendly than the alpacas at the Fredericksen's farm - at least in part because there were so many fewer of them. The Fredricksens have about 130 animals, while the Ciszewskis have about 14. With so few animals, it's easy to get "up close and personal" with each of them.

On Tuesday, we drove up to see Vision Acres (no web page). These folks just started their farm last fall, and while they have 40 acres of marvelous land, they had to build all their fences and shelters themselves. They have a tractor, though, and a barn or shed, which gave them a head start on us. Their huacaya female, Biscuit, was a real pet. She is the first alpaca that came to us and insisted on being petted and touched. We fell in love with her immediately. She had a little suri weanling for a companion, and the suri was a bit shyer, but if she was close to Biscuit, she'd let us pet her, too. This picture is of Biscuit and Terry.

After seeing all these lovely farms, we weren't sure we'd be able to pasture alpacas on our property. We live on 8 acres on the side of a small mountain in the Appalachians, and it seemed to us our land might be too steep, tree-covered, and rocky even for alpacas. The pictures here are of our land before we started to clear it. Click on the images to see larger versions of them.

It was clear that the majority of, if not all, alpaca owners started with financial resources we couldn't even begin to match. If we were going to raise alpacas, we'd have to start with unusable land and no money. So how could we do it?

Our first task was to convince a bank that raising alpacas would be profitable. We developed a business plan that we first took to the people from whom we wanted to buy our herd. We wanted them to tell us whether our assumptions were correct. They thought our assumptions and numbers were reasonable, and we took the plan to the bank on February 14th and applied for a loan. The bank officer said we'd need an appraisal on our property, so we resigned ourselves to waiting for that to happen.

Our second task was to clear the land. Even before the bank appraised our lot and approved our loan, we wanted to get started on that. We'd leave all the trees that were 6" in diameter or larger except the oaks. Acorns are toxic for alpacas, so we decided to take down all the oaks that had been missed by the clear-cutters who had stripped the land before we bought it. The images below show the initial stages of our clearing efforts. Again, click the images to view larger versions.

Finally, it was time to choose our herd. Initially, we had planned to buy from Ore Hill Farms, but since we planned to "pick the brains" of the Ciszewskis to find out how to do this business, it seemed only fair to buy our herd from them instead. It was hard to call Cleve and Bev and beg off our agreement with them, but they were very understanding and let us go, although I'm sure they were disappointed in us. But we're really glad we changed our minds, because we have been real nuisances to the Ciszewskis, and that would have been so hard to do with Ore Hill folks, who are over 3 hours away. This description of our alpacas was adapted from the description given to us by Bill and Lee Ciszewski of Almost Heaven Guesthouse and Alpacas :

SOBATA	Sobata is a true black huacaya female who consistently produces high-quality crias. Her last two, Sarai and Elijah, are excellent examples of her ability to produce the finest animals. She was born January 9, 1996, a Chilean import of Achacollo Coco (Dam). She is currently bred to Almost Heaven's Katahdin, and is due July 2001.
SARAI	Sarai is a real charmer! She has lovely, true black, huacaya fleece and big, beautiful eyes. Her conformation is stunning and she is inquisitive and curious. Her dam Sobata has been a great mother and we believe Sarai will be able to produce great crias as well. She was born March 21, 1999, by Acero Marka's Raven out of Sobata De Achacollo. Sarai is currently bred to Almost Heaven's Katahdin, and is due August, 2001.
REBEKAH	Rebekah is just full of energy. She is white and has really beautiful, dense, crimpy fleece with maximum coverage almost from nose to toes. She was born November 18, 1999, by Acero Marka's Bobby out of Acero Marka's Camilla and will be ready to breed by late Spring, 2001.
SHEBA	Sheba is a beautiful, rich brown, with great conformation and luxurious fleece. Her even disposition and calm demeanor are traits captured from her mom (DDM Allante) and dad (Almost Heaven's Katahdin). She was born September 8, 2000, and will be ready to breed by Spring, 2002.
SHILOH	Shiloh is the yearling offspring of a blue-ribbon winner (Macusani's Majesty) and a gorgeous brown dam (DDM Allante), and looks every inch a winner himself. He is a dark fawn, like coffee with cream, is very regal and has marvelously fine, soft fleece. Born August 17, 1999, he was judged as having excellent conformation at the AOBA 2000 show, and he's a sweetheart as well. He'll be ready to breed by Spring, 2002.
Click on the image to see a larger version of Shiloh, our herdsire-in- waiting.
Shiloh
One of the things that puzzled us was how folks made money on alpaca fleece. There didn't seem to be much of a market for it. We discovered that the fleece is shorn from the animals and delivered to the Alpaca Fiber Co-op of North America , who for a fee will send the fleece to Peru, South America to be processed into finished Alpaca products, which the co-op members could then buy with the points they were given when they sent in the fleece. The members had to sell the products themselves, though. There were no clues as to how that might be done, but people were doing it, so we knew it was possible. By February 14, we had joined the Alpaca Owners and Breeders Association and MAPACA , the Mid-Atlantic Alpaca Association. We signed a contract for our herd, and we have the land about a quarter cleared. We almost signed up to take two of our alpacas to a show in April to see if we could garner some ribbons for our own farm, but we realized that in order to tranport the alpacas, we'd need a sort of horse-trailer, but a specially modified trailer in which we could transport both gear and animals. We're holding off on signing up for the show until we find out whether we can get transport for the beasts. By February 25th, we were getting very antsy about our loan. We went to see the the loan officer, who told us that he couldn't lend us the money using our house as collateral, because we're starting a business. He could have told us that when we first applied for the loan, and saved us two weeks of waiting! He'll have to get an associate from some organization that guarantees such loans to look at the paperwork and decide whether or not his firm would guarantee it. That person was supposed to get back to us today, but hasn't done so. On March 5th, the bank was no closer to granting our loan than it had been two weeks earlier. The loan officer still hadn't heard anything from the guarantor - they hadn't even looked at our paperwork yet! So we went to another bank and filled out all their forms, and they said they'd be back to us no later than 10AM on Friday, March 16th. The land is almost entirely cleared off now - it looks like such a lot of property! It's only a 300 x 300 foot square, but it looks a lot bigger than that. We've left up most of the birch, beech, maple, dogwood, hickory, chestnut, pine, and spruce, but it's really cleared things out a lot to take down the oaks. We called out a forester to make sure we weren't doing anything really dastardly to the land, and he said it's as well that we're taking down the oaks, because the Gypsy Moths are killing them. Taking them down is better than having them fall on us, he said. So now we're looking for someone to buy about 2 1/2 acres worth of downed oak... got any candidates? Most of the lumber mills around here don't think that's enough wood to bother with, but it sure looks like a lot to us! Next   Copyright © 2003, A Pacapacas. All rights reserved. For questions about the website, contact apacapacas@apacapacas.com Home  |  Site Map  |  Top