Farm in Maine raises and shows alpacas
WEST BETHEL, Maine - When Mo Libby calls, Sunday Punch, Airglow, and Eureka answer. So do White Heat and Top Gun.
Sunday River skiers might recognize those as trail names, but to Libby, they are among the alpacas she and her husband, Jeff Erickson, raise on a 30-acre valley farm framed by western Maine mountains and fields.
Sunday River Alpacas is a hands-on agricultural experience where visitors can interact with those mammals native mostly to Peru, or run after chickens, or feed dry cat food to monster trout. A small woodsy farm store on the property offers the handcrafted work of area knitters, Peruvian-made garments, and the fiber, roving, and yarn taken from the resident alpacas.
Libby, a former office worker, and Erickson, a systems architect, stumbled into alpaca breeding during a Maine fair visit about five years ago. The farm opened in 2005, and Libby soon found herself hosting schoolchildren, offering workshops at a Bethel camp, and displaying the animals at local events.
Visitors are greeted by Barker and Aurora, two friendly Great Pyrenees dogs used to keep predators - bears, coyotes, dogs - away. Libby, also called the "alpaca lady," introduces the boys and then the girls, separated in barns. She shows an alpaca mouth noted for teeth only on the bottom, and answers the most frequently asked question: Do they spit?
"They spit sometimes," she says. "Only if they are irritated or don't like what you are doing."
In the barn's basic workroom, Libby prepares grain for feeding, weighs the alpacas (kids like getting on the scale, too), and dispenses monthly preventative shots. Guests feed hay to the alpacas and catch one of the wandering golden comet and bluish-hued, egg-laying anconas to stroke their soft feathers.
A few steps away is a trout pond with hidden "piranha trout," a term Libby coined. Grab a handful of dry mix and cast it out to see the feeding frenzy. For the finale, empty the bucket's contents and watch the trout swarm.
A visit is also an alpaca education. Cousin to the llama, the alpaca is raised primarily for its fleece and weighs between 100 and 200 pounds. Libby raises more than 20 members of the huacaya breed characterized by its fluffiness. The other breed, suri, is known for its dreadlock-style appearance.
After about an 11-month gestation period, alpacas produce offspring called crias in spring and fall. With coats of white, black, gray, and brown, there are 22 natural colors for their fleece. The herd is sheared annually in spring. The raw material that comes from alpacas is called fiber. Libby sends it to a fiber mill where it is prepared into strands of roving and yarn for weaving, knitting, and crocheting. Top-grade fiber comes from the animal's blanket or body area while second-grade is sheared from the legs and neck.
Bags of the fluffy fiber are in the shop, each labeled with the name of the alpaca, the date it was sheared, and the yield it produced.
So for knitters and spinners who also ski and snowboard, it's possible to craft a hat, courtesy of Top Gun, and wear it schussing down a cruiser in winter.
Marty Basch can be reached at marty@martybasch.com.
