Alpacaville

Jen’s just told me about Island Alpaca—an alpaca farm on Martha’s Vineyard. Their website has a Live Alpaca Cam! Jesus, how awesome is this?

When she’s on the phone, at work, she opens the Alpaca Cam. It’s provides a peaceful, soothing view whilst dealing with the sometimes chaotic and stressful events of the workday.

Alpacas as calm-me-down meds. I like this.

Here’s my idea—Jen and I will adopt a few alpaca. They’re social beasties—they get lonely. Having no fewer than three is strongly recommended.

Given that Valhalla is densely populated we’d have to keep a minimal sized herd. They like to have about an acre of land but we don’t have anywhere near that much space. If the town and our neighbors agreed though, maybe could have them graze out on the grass verge at the seawall. The benefit for the city is that our alpaca will keep the grass short so there’d be no need to mow. The plus for our neighbors? Plentiful visual Valium. Everyone wins!

Also, it occurs to me, our tall fluffies would enjoy the fuck outta Nut Island (a peninsula off our peninsula). There’s so much space and wild flowers up there. Bonus, a GREAT view.

We could build a small barn for the tiny herd in our yard. I bet Cake and Skitter would enjoy visiting with them too. 

Alpacas get to be, close to, four to five feet tall (top of head) and 110 to 190 pounds. Big but not as massive as llamas which can grow to, as large as, five to six feet tall (top of head) and between 250 and 400 pounds. That's BIG.

Alpacas need minimal care (but do like attention) and to keep them healthy they are normally vaccinated and wormed twice a year, and their toenails are trimmed 2-3 times a year. (source)

Minimal care is good.

These sweet babies are shorn once a year. We could transform their fur into yarn ourselves (which we would then sell) but I’m not exactly in fine enough shape to do this. The nearest places to get this done for us would be in Putney, Vermont or Barrington, New Hampshire. Close enough.

So, a mini herd of alpaca would be soothing AND possibly provide a bit of income. SO. MUCH. WIN! Below are some shots from the Live Alpaca Cam. Yur welcome!

and one llama