There were always meant to be alpacas

From the start, when we first hatched this idea of buying a house with several acres of land, we intended to keep alpacas.

We hit the ground running. We remodeled the kitchen and bathrooms. We repainted the interior. We got rabbits. We learned about the orchard. We got a cat, and chickens, and more chickens. We put in a huge garden, and spent many hours freezing and canning produce. We got a cider press and a food dehydrator and a spinning wheel, and we learned to use them.

Then complacency set in. We fell into a comfortable routine of pruning trees and mowing grass and feeding rabbits and collecting eggs, and never worked on the all-important fence that we needed to hold alpacas. Weeks went by, then months, and years, and, for a variety of reasons too complicated, numerous, and just plain illogical to mention here, the fence never happened.

Until this summer.

I'm not quite sure why, but, with a little instigation from my brother, Tom and I were able to make some progress on that fence. Then I saw an ad on Craigslist for alpacas--and I had a goal. After 6 weeks of somewhat steady (but slow) work, we had a fence...

...and a source for the critters. Just this morning we drove to the neighboring county and brought back our boys, who seem happy to explore the huge grassy pasture. Yea! We're alpaca owners finally!