Alpacas - Breeders - Haute-Vienne
We are Yvonne Gardner (le chef) and Nigel Ashton (her minion) who decided in 2008 that we quite fancied entering the wonderful world of alpaca ownership following a visit to a summer 'open day' at an alpaca breeder living near us in the beautiful Meon Valley in Hampshire.
Having been enchanted by these creatures we signed up for some courses with them and needless to say felt an irresistible urge to evict some moths from the wallet and buy into this lifestyle. We started with three geldings (castrated boys), one pregnant female and an older non-breeding female with a few health issues for us to learn from!
As tends to happen in life one thing leads to another and slowly more alpacas started to appear in our rented fields as more breeding females were purchased and babies (called Cria, Spanish for creation) were born......damn, I think we're hooked now!
L'élevage d'alpagas Limousin France
Around this time we were both feeling that a change in direction was called for, getting fed up with our jobs, Yvonne as a horticulturist at a large garden centre, the horticulture was fine but was spending more and more time on the admin. and paperwork rather than the plants she loved and for me, with over thirty years as a motorcycle mechanic was feeling that it could be time for a new adventure as well.
Let’s go farming alpacas then! Yvonne was brought up on a large mixed farm in Sussex rearing pedigree beef, sheep and a milking herd before studying agriculture at Sparsholt college in Hampshire before diverting to horticulture, that's why she's 'le chef' in this enterprise, although I was dragged up in the lovely New Forest riding and working with horses from an early age thanks to my parents, I soon switched to mechanical horsepower as a teenager so Yvonne's farming knowledge far exceeds mine......... but I'm quite good at fixing things when they break, so it seems to work out ok really.
Moving swiftly on because you will be getting bored by now if you are still reading this, we had just helped a friend move to France and the cheaper prices and what you can get here opened up a whole new idea for an adventure....... teach the alpacas French and off we go........so from 2011, here we are in the Haute Vienne, a little part of the 'France profund' with a farm full of marvellous alpacas you can come and see, some of whom are on the website here, enjoy...........