Alpacas and Sustainable Agriculture

The boy herd at work April 09

We're serious about finding the pathways to sustainability working with alpacas!   That means there are diverse ways to success, not just one  "Silver Bullet".   One of the features of sustainability is the elimination of waste.  No more waste products, so everything becomes food for the next crop.  We all need to shorten the pathways of our feedstocks, so all our inputs come from nearby.  Then we harvest our crops  using minimum energy.  We've diversified our outputs, so we now offer:

  1. breeding livestock
  2. raw natural (world-class!) fiber and fiber products such as rovings, yarns and alpaca socks;
  3. eggs from chickens in our pastures,
  4. pacapoo for local farms & gardens and now vermiculture earthworms for the highest quality soil nutrients.  

How it all works together is the secret of sustainable farming.

On our farm, the boy herd works for us in several ways.   Here's the boy herd hard at work grazing out the weeds and grass that we otherwise have to mow in May.  Alpacas eat weeds!  Ours love meadow knapweed, one of the pest invasive weeds of Josephine County.  Please contact us if you're thinking about getting into alpacas for fiber, and we'll send you our newsletter about the value of gelding alpacas.  We also have a "Alpaca Fiber Farm Business Plan" that can help you work out the financial side of your alpaca farm business planning.

All of the herd contributes to Pacapoo production, which we sell on the local market to farmers and gardeners serious about increasing food production.   As of March 2010, we've now moved our Pacapoo into worm production or vermiculture.  By producing worms at commercial scale right here on the farm, we can increase the value of our "manure product" and reduce our carbon emissions with less cost for transportation and labor.

Our boys shear world-class fiber, which we process into world-class textiles for the fashion industry.  Suri fiber is a hot item in the hand spinning and knitters markets; in fact, we can't produce enough of it!   The world needs more suri fiber-producing farms, so if you're interested in making money with your land, consider raising suri alpacas.

In the Illinois River Valley, the new IV Food Coalition created the 1st IV Farm & Garden Festival in Sept 2009.  Here's the link.  In 2010, the 2nd IV Farm & Garden Festival will be held on Sept 11th at Jubilee Park in Cave Junction.   We hope you'll attend!  Be sure to stop by to see the alpacas, and learn more about Alpacas & Sustainable Agriculture.