As our children were reaching their early adulthood, Mike and I started talking about our retirement and how we would like to spend our “golden years”.  Neither of us could imagine that a typical retirement would be fulfilling for us. We both had extensive careers and had done a ton of volunteer work along with being highly involved with our children’s sports while they were growing up. We looked at a few different working retirement models, but nothing seemed to fit us just right.  Then the summer of Covid we went to an alpaca farm and fell in love with these amazing animals. That summer our backyard conversations started with joking about becoming alpaca farmers and by end of summer it started to form into an actual plan.  During our research we stumbled across Oak Hills Alpaca Farm who mentor new farms and started an invaluable relationship with Mike, Heather and Ruby Candler.  With the help of the Candler’s, we drew up business plans, took courses on alpaca husbandry, and bought a small herd.  

Our biggest hurdle was selling our house as we went on the market right at the tail end of the pandemic boom, but after 6 long months we finally sold our house in Clarington and began our search for our dream property.  That search found us a beautiful 65 acres property in Prince Edward County, and we couldn’t be happier.  So here we are with the house mostly renovated, a new Amish barn built and a herd of 20 alpacas on site.  

We have so many dreams for our beautiful property, we are honored to be stewards of the land and we are committed to responsible sustainable farming. We are reaching out to environmental experts to aid us in learning how to preserve the wildlife and plants on our property.