Upon deciding to relocate to Central Oregon, we inspected many outstanding properties to purchase here in the greater Bend area. Some were turnkey, others would require work. Well to say the least, we are glutens for punishment! We decided on a grand property with a “lot of potential”! It existed in an ancient river valley and is about 137 acres in size. It had one home at the time, one small barn, a few over run pastures, no fencing to speak of and about one hundred acres of it was unruly and old alfalfa being harvested by a neighbor. But, it has water, lots of water! All you need in the desert, to make things grow is water. And so we started.
The first thing we did was limb up the 300 or so Juniper trees around the buildings. We then dug a couple of reservoirs and added an underground irrigation system. We built a home for Jerry. Simultaneously we were building on to the existing barn and erecting a second barn which we termed the “ag building”. In this barn we host our offices, our guest suite, our fleece room and of course the alpacas. We also created a spot to store some of our hay. We began fencing. Creating large and small paddocks, a series of runways and “Honeymoon Lane”, our version of herdsire row. The fencing continues to this day. We began turning the overrun pastures into a virtual golf course. The neighbor has even called to ask if he could set up a tee time! This task has taken seven years and we feel that we have finally established the fields where we would like them to be for a while. On many of these fields we now harvest our own hay and we have even begun selling it to other alpaca ranchers. We built a third very large barn to store that hay.
In 2007 we added the “Alpaca Boutique”. The Boutique keeps its own page on this website, so we will not say too much about it here. However it should be acknowledged that The Boutique is a focal point of the ranch and that much energy goes into it daily.
The ranch has become a show place here in Central Oregon and we now host sizeable events here. We enjoy sharing our little bit of heaven with those who have never known the alpaca. We have never ceased in our amazement of all the places we have been, the people we have come to know, and the beauty we have cherished all because of the elegant creature known as the “Alpaca”.