Our Beginnings - Heart's Desire Farm LLC

Our Beginnings

Our story starts out much similar to other breeders. We had been talking about some type of livestock to raise on our small farm. We saw an article in an airline magazine describing the lifestyle and financial rewards of breeding alpacas. With our interest totally piqued, we could hardly wait to return home and get on the internet to find out more. We scheduled our first farm visit that week with Ernie Kellogg and Barbara Bramlette of Double O Good Alpacas in Gainesville, Virginia and that started the ball rolling. We fell in love with the Alpaca, being immediately attracted by their beauty, their calm and gentle nature, and those sweet faces. We were pretty enthusiastic in our search for knowledge. We joined AOBA, read everything we could get our hands on, visited almost every web site on alpacas, talked of little else and visited 12 farms in two months.

I could say that's just about where the similarities end. Someone we had met on one of our visits phoned to say a well-known and respected breeder with some of the best animals in the country needed to sell his herd for various reasons. Five days later we flew to Portland, Oregon and met with Mike and Julie Safley at their Northwest Alpacas Ranch. As with every breeder we have met so far, they were very gracious and hospitable. We saw first hand that their alpacas were top quality as was evidenced by the blue ribbons that went all the way across a huge room and back again. (By the way, the ribbons came with the alpacas and if you come for a visit, I would love to show them to you!) I saw the famous and truly amazing Hemingway, whose son, the equally stunning and blue ribbon winning Antonio, is now one of our Herd Sires along with 3 absolutely knock-out Accoyo males. I particularly enjoyed listening to the stories of Peru and Mike's conversations with Don Julio Barreda and his awesome Accoyos.

We decided that this was an opportunity we could not pass up and we soon became the proud owners of this magnificent group of animals. We couldn't have imagined in our wildest dreams that this would be how we started out! We believe in the future of the alpaca industry and are very excited to be a part of it. We have been blessed with our heart's desire.

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