New Year, new beginnings

Over the last year or so, the Powers That Be have been trying to push my family to where we need to be. Which is, apparently, running a farm raising alpacas, goats, chickens, bees, and trying to provide as many of our own needs as possible. We have decided already that this will mean producing our own beer/cider/wine, and learning to make soap.

The journey began in September, 2009 shortly after we had relocated to Richmond, Virginia from Dallas, TX. I attended the state fair with my children and another homeschooling family. At the fair, I talked to Tara from Yellow Rose Alpacas of Virginia at some length. Alongside of learning a lot about getting into the alpaca business, which was something we had talked about doing for a while already, I learned that she was also a homeschooling mom. so we instantly had something in common. I took home lots of pamphlets and literature on starting an alpaca farm, showed it to Andrew. We decided to start working on a 'five year plan' to get him out of his corporate job and get us on a farm. And all that literature got filed away (in the vertical chronological file on my desk.)

The following spring, a friend had a Pampered Chef party and invited me to place an order. which I did. Now, I have been a consultant on and off for the last ten years with the Pampered Chef, and I started thinking about how much I missed doing that, and how we could really use the extra money and I contacted the PC home office requesting a local consultant contact. A couple of days later I got an email from a consultant saying she would love to help me restart my PC business here in the Richmond area. The address looked familiar...I riffled through my vertical chronological file on my desk to check and make sure I was correct...yep. It was Tara from Yellow Rose Alpacas. Huh. Small world. I called her. We talked about PC, and we talked about alpacas.

The other thing we had been talking about doing for some time was starting a sustainable intentional community, and about this same time we had a couple of other families who were interested in going in with us on this venture. We began looking at properties. Some of them very LARGE properties, and we went on an wrote up a contract with Yellow Rose to purchase one bred adult female alpaca, and two crias from her herd.

Unfortunately, our attempts at forming a community with that group of people at that point, did not pan out, but at least we got kickstarted with our alpaca business! We renewed our lease at our current property for another year and decided to start looking at other properties in the spring, since we would have to give notice to our current landlords by June 2011.

And then December came and stepped up our timetable. So many things have happened all at once. My husband, Andrew, was laid off from his corporate IT job at the beginning of the month. We look at this as the universe saying "what are you waiting for? get off your bums and go live your dream!" And a friend who raises chickens and sells their lovely eggs invited us over to her place to see how they had put together their chicken tractor.

We started off the new year by meeting with a team of realtors on New Years Day to begin an earnest search for cheap/short sell farm property that we can buy outright and not have a mortgage to deal with. And yesterday, January 2nd (which was also Andrew's birthday), we went to Home Depot and bought supplies to build our chicken tractor. We will get that done this week and within the next two weeks we will become the guardians of three Rhode Island Red hens. (we like them because their gender is linked to their color so roosters are easy to tell apart and weed out if need be. Roosters are scary and you don't want more than one at any point, really anyway.)

Our expecting alpaca mommas are all doing well, and we expect babies in May. At that point, I hope to have our land purchased and run-ins and fencing up so we can bring home Angel Lily (our adult female) and her cria right away. The other two babies will join us in the fall, after they are weaned. We are also hoping to purchase a Great Pyrenees puppy or two and a couple of milk goats from Yellow Rose later in the year.

Andrew is busily studying permaculture design and sustainable farming practices and will be our plant guy. I have to admit to having a black thumb and am glad there is someone with a passion for growing our main food supply.

As a bonus, my eldest son and his girlfriend, who are currently living in Minneapolis, are intending to move in with us and help us run this operation. They plan to build their own home on the land at some point in the future using Earthship (packed earth/recycled materials) building techniques. I look forward to watching them grow as a young couple, and watching our farm grow!

2011 is looking to be, if not the easiest year for us, certainly an interesting and exciting one! Bring it on, universe!