Way back, when my husband and I were young newlyweds, I read an article about llamas. They sounded like the perfect animal! Quiet, easy care, beautiful and regal, AND you could hike with them! The one problem was that we were living in a rented apartment -- a bit small for llamas. The clipping went into a drawer, but the thought of llamas stayed with me.

Fast forward about 6 years, 2 kids and a small farm purchase later. We were ready (so we thought) to bring 2 llamas home to the former horse barn that came with the property. After a steep but quick learning curve, we were llama-obsessed! It was 1992, and within a few months I had taken my first spinning lessons. Yet another obsession was born! Those first lumpy, chunky skeins were knitted for me into wonderful bed socks that finally wore out just last year.

Like potato chips, you can't have just one llama, or even two. It wasn't long before we were adding breeding stock llamas to the farm and welcoming babies and buyers. And our little girls -- who loved all things fuzzy and cute -- really didn't have to twist my arm very hard to add rabbits to the farm. Like our llamas, we started out with short-haired rabbits, but I soon became smitten with angora rabbits for their very spinnable fur. After trying several different breeds, my favorites have become Giant Angoras and colored hybrids.

Somewhere in there, we had the great fortune to hold a felting class at our farm taught by the queen of felting research around the world, Beth Beede. What an amazing start -- we had no idea the treasure we had stumbled upon! And, you guessed it, another fiber obsession was born. Alpacas were added to the farm about four years ago as we found ourselves wanting more black and white fiber to work with -- the most popular colors in fiber sales, and more commonly found as a solid color in alpacas than llamas.

I've continued to experiment on my own and take classes in fiber arts. Nuno felting, needle felting (although generally I leave that to my daughter, because I hate accidentally stabbing my fingers!), and various spinning techniques have all made their mark on our work and inventory.

Our farm has been such a blessing to us, our children, our foster children and the many people who visit us at shows or here at the farm. There just are never enough hours in the day to try all the possibilities!

We hope you enjoy the fruits of our labors.