Just down Vail Road in Yelm, slightly beyond the “Mackey’s” convenience store, more than 40 alpacas spend their days grazing, playing and having their fibers turned into luxurious products for people to enjoy.
La Vida Alpaca and Tahoma Vista Fiber Mill, the alpacas’ home, also offers tours for community members and alpaca enthusiasts.
On Saturday, Sept. 28 and Sunday, Sept. 29, the local alpaca ranch welcomed community members and people interested in learning about the animals to its farm to celebrate “National Alpaca Farm Days.”
Jean Van Effen, with La Vida Alpaca and Tahoma Vista Fiber Mill, said the annual event invites community members to find an alpaca farm near them for an educational experience. She added that National Alpaca Farm Days is sponsored by the National Alpacas Owners Association and that farms can choose to participate or not.
“We voluntarily participate in this and open our doors to the public to learn all about alpacas,” Van Effen said. “Participants [learned] about Huacaya and Suri alpacas. We’re one of the rare farms that has both types. The participants get to see and touch both types.”
Van Effen said Huacaya and Suri alpacas are native to South America. She said the animals can be found primarily in Chile, Peru and Bolivia in the high Andes Mountains.
“They were all imported into the United States between 1984 and let’s say 2002,” Van Effen said. “We stopped importing, so all of our alpacas are domestic now. They’re members of the camel family. They’re little camels.”
Van Effen said visitors got to feed and touch the alpacas, in addition to visiting the fiber mill to learn how the alpaca fibers are processed into “luxurious products” such as yarn, hats, scarves, mittens, insoles and rugs.
She added that alpacas are great animals for “novice” livestock owners as they’re easy to care for, easy to handle and “generally” personable to be around.
“I did not grow up with a livestock background, and I’m very comfortable handling them,” Van Effen said. “They’re good for the land because they have soft pads with toe nails. They don’t tear up the land.”
La Vida Alpaca currently has 37 resident alpacas with four “guests” currently staying at the farm, which visitors got to meet during Alpaca Days.
Van Effen said La Vida Alpaca provides the animals with hay and water, and they also get alpaca pellets, which provide them with needed minerals not found in local soil.
In addition to La Vida Alpaca, Tahoma Vista Fiber Mill operates on the same property and processes alpaca fibers and converts some into products sold throughout the Pacific Northwest, and even to Massachusetts. Van Effen said the farm and fiber mill operate as the collection point in the Pacific Northwest region for the New England Alpaca Fiber Pool.
“There’s not enough of these mills in the world to process all the fiber, but we’re a really small mill,” Van Effen said. “We’re what we call an artisan processing mill. We specialize in small batch processing, so we do one piece at a time.
“Farms from all over the Pacific Northwest send their alpaca fiber here, and then we package it up and it goes off to Massachusetts,” she added. “They get their fiber into production that way. We’re really dedicated to getting fiber into production.”
Linda Steadman, with La Vida Alpaca and Tahoma Vista Fiber Mill, provided an in-depth explanation of the process that takes place at the fiber mill.
“The process does take a lot of time. We just keep plugging along,” Steadman said. “It’s fun. It’s so much fun working here. It’s challenging, and it’s tiresome. It’s hard work, but there’s nothing like it.”
She said after fibers are collected from the farm’s clients or from its own alpacas, they’re placed into a tumbler.
“It’s like a big bingo cage that goes around and gets a lot of the dirt out,” Steadman said. “Then we bring it to our sinks for washing. We have two sinks that have soap in them, and a third for a rinse.”
After the alpaca fibers are rinsed, they’re placed into a “soak and spin” machine. After a thorough wash in the machine, the fibers are placed onto a drying rack to be dried overnight.
The next day, the fibers go into “the picker” machine, which straightens out and pulls apart “clumpy” fibers.
“It comes out really nice and fluffy. We call this our cloud machine,” Steadman said.
Once the fibers are done inside the picker machine, they’re brought to the two carder machines — donned “Frank” and “Sally May.”
“The carders just pull the fibers through on different sets of drums and it straightens them out. When we process them, they’re easy to work with,” Steadman said.
Once the fibers are complete with the carder machines, they’ll go to the twister machine where Steadman said the fibers are pulled tight in order to “make things out of it.”
Van Effen said that La Vida Alpaca and Tahoma Vista Fiber Mill offers tours year round, which includes an in-depth presentation on the mill, as well as information about the alpacas inhabiting the farm.
“We can tailor the tour to who you are and what your interests are,” Van Effen said. “Say you want to own alpacas, we’ll give you a little bit of a different tour than someone who comes from the city, has no intentions of owning an alpaca, but wants to learn more about them.”
To learn more about La Vida Alpaca and Tahoma Vista Fiber Mill, visit the farm’s website at www.TahomaVistaFiberMill.com, or call (360) 894-1273. The farm itself is located at 15631 159th Lane SE, just off Vail Road in Yelm.
