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Getting Started - Facilities
and Fencing
Farm Layout
The first thing we did was to walk the property and start a "To Do" list.
We were fortunate to have become friends with experienced alpaca breeders, Paul
and Kelly Zan ella
of Spa Alpacas. Kelly was a huge help in advising us how to best use our
resources. I would strongly suggest that anyone
unfamiliar with farming and farm layout should attend workshops that discuss
this aspect of the business. Also, talk
to other alpaca farmers who have been in business for a while. Find out
what seems to work best for them. Learn from their mistakes and successes and
apply their wisdom to your farm.
The "To Do" list included some
pretty substantial clearing and excavating.
We had years of overgrowth that needed to be removed so
that we could view the fields that would become our pastures from the house.
This was important for aesthetics as well as for
security. We had lovely rock walls bordering the fields, which were buried under
a 30-foot swath of
weeds, trees and brush that we wanted to uncover. We needed to be able to
clearly view the property
around the entire fenced areas so that we could be watchful for any predators
which might wander through.
We hired an excavator and set to tearing away all the undesirable
growth outlining the pastu res.
It was exciting and somewhat startling to see the changes taking place. There
was definitely a swan emerging from the ugly duckling.
The reconstruction project started in the
summer of 2002 and didn’t
officially finish until the summer of 2003. That is, if any project on a
farm is ever officially finished...
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