Once upon a time there were two Cape Cod people who skiied, hiked and partied in the Mount Washington Valley and who dreamed of retiring there someday and having a little acreage, some dogs, a horse and, of course, Ragdoll cats.

Well, life ain’t no fairy tale, and the ‘retirement’ came a little early!!  What to do when your company of 27 years merges with another and moves their office two hours away from you?  At this mid-point of your life, you certainly don’t commute the four hours round trip!  You grab the package they offer, sell out your condo and your house and buy a farm in New Hampshire!!

When ‘early retirement’ happened to Lana, Dick was very willing to support the speeding up of the ‘dream’.  But Lana felt that there should be something other than a horse in the pastures of this potential farm.  So during thesummer of 2000 they went to the Barnstable County Fair on Cape Cod to check out goats.  At that point, Lana had already officially ‘retired’, but knew she had a year of ‘consulting’ left with her old company.  Time to find the right animal and the right farm.  So to the Barnyard show they went to listen to the explanation of the various goats.  And what did they find?  An adorable non-goat animal with a poodle cut, humming softly with it’s friend.  Experienced alpaca people will guess the end of this story…

Yes, we were stricken with alpaca-fever.  We read all the literature available from the alpaca tent at the Fair.  We pored over numerous alpaca websites.  We subscribed to Alpacas Magazine (see www.alpacainfo.com) and ordered as many back issues as possible.  During the same time we travelled to the condo in N.H. and buzzed around with real estate brokers rather than skiing.  We looked in the Mount Washington Valley area of New Hampshire and also in Western Maine.  Luckily one can still find farms with open pastures there, but they are getting more and more scarce!  Pastures grow in fast when they are not used!  Luckily for us, we found our dream farm in a beautiful small town south of Conway.  The barn was readily adaptable to alpacas and there was enough pasture for a beginning, with much more potential with a little work.  The next step was to visit alpaca farms to learn more.  We visited a number of them and learned a lot from each one.  We also attended the Alpaca Festival put on by the New England Owners & Breeders Association (www.neaoba.org).  This was a great learning experience as many New England breeders were there and there were also some very educational seminars going on.  Alpaca people are so friendly and want everyone to join their lifestyle!

By the year anniversary of seeing our first alpaca, we were once again back at the Barnstable County Fair.  There we found Apricot and Cinnamon with their breeders and started down the path to purchasing our foundation herd.  Lana moved full time to the farm shortly after, with Dick soon to follow.  Lots of posthole digging, well-drilling and fence-building later, we were ready for our girls.

The ending of the story is that Foss Mountain Farm came into being as an alpaca farm and Ragdoll cattery with a host of other animals to keep it fun.  (Go to ‘Other Farm Folks’ to see the rest of the crew.)

Come see our menagerie and the beautiful views we have of the western Maine mountains.