After visiting a Christian conference in Flatwoods, West
Virginia in April of 2004 we fell in love with mountainous
pristine rural West Virginia. It fit the bill
perfectly. Still east coast so that we weren't out of
reach of family and friends, moderate climate yet a change
of seasons, and the number one feature for us was an
extremely sparse population.
By October of that year we had decided to return for a long
weekend "just to look around". Naturally, we bought
the third place we looked at on our first expedition.
We sold our beach house to fund our new spread, keeping our
main residence in Merritt Island, FL. We were
completely smitten with Monroe County and the near by town
of Union with their population of just under 500. Back
to our dilemma... How to earn a living?
After research and talking with locals we quickly ruled out
the traditional farm animals. They were raising Black
Angus cattle on our place when we bought it and quickly
learned that to make a go of it we'd have to have a couple
hundred head. The last thing we are looking for is to
become some big operation complete with employees and the
roads we'd been down before. That's exactly the stress we're
trying to avoid. Plus it's back breaking work,
then we discovered Alpacas.
I would
take up the sales and marketing study of these animals, stay
in Florida and keep my job for a time. Allen would
move to the ranch with our pets. (we could do a whole page
on our pets we call our "kids"...maybe later.)
The make up of the "crew" has changed somewhat since we've
arrived. Today we have five dogs; Ajax, Hank, Memphis,
Gabe and Jen, three cats;
Bob, Muffin, and Danny and a cantankerous 4' iguana named
India.
Allen would oversee the task of transforming a
cattle ranch into a home suitable for us and the raising of
alpacas.
As you've probably noticed
by now with the
Classic Alpacas links and
name all over our web site that in our research we met
and adopted a lovely English couple as our mentors in this grand adventure. If it were humanly
possible Gill and Gordon Ratcliff might be considered
as obsessive with their critters as we are. Since
we purchased from and agisted (board) our animals with
them for a time, they have had the unfortunate task of teaching us how to
handle, coral, assist with shearing, give shots too and
otherwise care for these lovely animals. We hope to
repay them someday by being able to pass along these humble
skills to other critter people that we might bring into this
business.
There is
always plenty to do – and plenty of satisfaction to go along
with it.
|
Mike and
Jacob feeding the boys |
Enjoying life with our alpacas.
|
Double "A"
Alpacas
