Explaining why you want to move to the country and buy alpacas to friends and family isn't exactly the easiest thing to do. Especially for us. Our friends are devoted urbanites and our families are devoted suburbanites. Generally speaking, they don't agree about anything, except that we were clearly out of our minds to move to a farm and buy livestock (of all things!)

We can't totally explain it either--ten years ago we would have laughed ourselves silly at the thought. But success in business and technology fields comes at a cost to your soul and we wanted a place where we could relax and refresh and craft a different future for ourselves. So we contemplated a whole range of things like moutain retreats, life abroad, and, why not, country life.

Sometimes serendipity counts as much as planning and our turning point was Kara's trip to a local petting zoo with the kids. Among other things they had llamas--and they were totally cool. But we couldn't quite get past the what-do-you-actually-do-with-llamas? thing.

Enter the alpaca. Cute, manageable, valuable, and no troubling end-trip to the dinner table. They fit perfectly with Kara's lifelong love of the fiber arts and Greg's entrepreneurial spirit.

After several months of research (on the Internet, of course), we felt committed enough to visit several farms and shows. The animals practically sell themselves, and a few months later we bought our first alpacas from Dan and Felice Gromek, owners of Gromek Farms Alpacas and all-around great people.

Kara & Greg with our first alpacas--Princess Aurora (Rory) and Dulcie's Chanticlair (Claire). Our daughter Margaux explores alpaca food preferences (yes to hay, no to animal crackers)