Of course, this
being America, it wasn’t going to be long before someone thought of “Alpaca
Farm Days” when our local alpaca farms,
with names like Hy-Haven and Smiling Moon, have an “open house” aiming, no doubt, to get punters interested enough to fork out for some pricey
alpaca socks. Last Alpaca Farm Day I
couldn’t resist. I set out for Never Ending Alpaca Farm , Jerry and Kathy
Scutt’s place near us.
“That name?” chuckled Jerry, who started the farm after he retired, “Know
how it happened? When we were setting up, it was a hundred dollars for this and fifty
dollars for that and my wife said,’ Is this ever going to end?’ Not a conventional fairytale then, though the Scutts’ 33 alpacas were charming. My favourite was “Evening Star”, jet black, with a curly top-knot, long, thin neck, long eyelashes and curiously long cloven hooves. Kathy struggled to hang on to two frisky youngsters, her arms clamped grimly round their necks, urging me to dig down into their fleecy flanks. “Like sticking your fingers into a deep-pile rug isn’t it?” It was. Three-week-old baby alpacas nosed around us. Alpacas hum – it’s the only sound they make. They hum to bond with their babies, who recognize their mother’s sound. They come in brown, black, beige, white, patchy – and grey, which is mostly good for socks. The Scutts shear the alpacas themselves, a complicated operation involving strapping them to a table. The lazy way is to hire a couple of beefy Australians for a day – yes, they even come out here. The Scutts agree that the alpacas are low-maintenance – coming from the high Andes, they have no problem with the harsh western New York winters. “Evening Star will come in covered in a layer of snow which won’t have melted, she’s so well insulated – she looks like a skunk, black and white.” Humid summer weather, which we get here quite a lot, is another matter. They don’t like that much. “We have to set up cooling fans for them”.
The big bucks come with selling the animals, which are no longer imported and can go for thousands of dollars. One fabled male Alpaca (not theirs, said Kathy ruefully) went at auction for, get it, 675,000 dollars.
I didn’t get the impression the Scutts are really in this for big bucks. Few western New York farmers are. It’s more like love. Jerry has a part time job at the local farm market and Kathy is a teaching assistant. Jerry built his own barn and fences, carved his own signs. “Young people these days just expect others to do things for them. They should spend time on a farm, where chores just have to get done.” He seemed deeply contented with life, “I’m far from the rat race here!”
Under the autumn leaves, Kathy had laid out a pot of hot chili, an American staple, fresh local cider and coffee, it being a blustery sort of day. I lingered a little, savouring their unusual little rural fairytale and promised I’d be back.
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