Alpaca Farm!

At the recommendation of a friend (thanks, Devan!) we took a trip to Eastland Alpacas last Saturday. It's a big farm in Mount Joy where they have lots of these gentle and beautiful (and surprisingly not stinky!) animals from South America. They give us a very warm wool and also make great pets, however you have to keep them in pairs at least for companions and they cost $6000 and up (for non-breeding ones...some of the others were in the $18-30k range!)

Eastland Alpacas help two open houses on November weekends, which I thought was such a generous offering to the community. We enjoyed the 4H kids showing us how they show their animals, taking a tractor wagon ride, browsing the farm store and feeding and leading the alpacas. It was such a fun, carefree morning without having to spend any money to make some wonderful memories. Thanks, Zurin family for all the time and energy put into those weekends! We appreciate it so much.

Susanna can't stop talking about Arnold and Winchester, leading them to their mommies and watching them eat grass :) She keeps asking to see the pics of the "commas" (which I think is a cross between camels, llamas, and alpacas...not too far off target).

Meet Arnold! They all seemed to love this patch of delicious grass.

The snow boots seemed silly when we left, but actually came in handy in the wetness!

Arnold close-up

lots of variety in color (Susanna likes the black ones)

This is Winchester.

Susanna went back to get Arnold again because we couldn't get Winchester to stop eating that grass. I was still holding him while I snapped this. He wouldn't budge!