Cas-Cad-Nac Farm Turns 25!

I swear that we’re not still here just for the hoody/t-shirt collection that inevitably comes with our farm’s 25th anniversary. I kid, mostly. That said, the list of things either of us has put at least 25 years into is a reasonably short one: I have been someone’s son and brother for 50 years (ta-dah!), I have been married to the amazing woman I share my life with for 26 years (though she’s tolerated me for 32), and then coming in only third on that list has been our time as the owners and operators of CCNF. If you had told me on my 20th birthday in ’91 that by 2022 my then-girlfriend and I would have been the owners of a 250+ head alpaca farm (and have two adult sons to boot) for 25 years, I firstly would have asked you what the heck an alpaca was…and then I would have promptly laughed you out of the room. I mean, really?

To put this all another way: by this time next year, I will have been breeding alpacas for more than half of my life. In a time when a global pandemic has ravaged the world, it seems only natural to look at it all through lenses such as that. In a business where, at least here in the United States, the average age of most alpaca breeders is somewhere well north of 55, this gives us a unique position of both relative youth and real institutional memory. We hold some pretty strong opinions both about how to properly run an alpaca breeding operation (from breeding selection, to husbandry, to customer relations, and everything in between), as well as the direction of our industry in general and what we would and would not do differently both in the past, present, and future. And quite frankly, it feels like we’ve earned those points of view honestly: suffice it to say, we’ve seen some things along the way, and we’ve got genuine skin in this game. While a small number of alpaca operations are our equals in terms of time spent in the industry, they are admittedly few and far between, to the point that we can count them on two hands for sure and possibly only one.

So good job, Lutzes (here, have a shirt), but what now? Well, after two years dominated by self-imposed pandemic-driven isolation, let’s start our 25th year with hopefully getting back to a more normal footing in terms of events we would like to attend in person. Though overseas sales have been relatively steady over the past couple of years, domestically, there is no better way to market one’s breeding program than in person at a show or auction. And there are entire generations of animals born here in ’20 and ’21 that most of our fellow US breeders have still never seen. Assuming the world is not on fire (again) from a public health perspective, we’d certainly like to change that this coming spring, at the Futurity if nothing else.

The other piece of big news driving us forward at present is that as of two months ago, we have a new Farm Manager in the excellent form of one Mr. Arlis Cummings, Jr! Though the learning curve is a little steep in certain places, a Texan and former working cowboy that once trained a wild mustang to be his saddle horse is not apt to ultimately get flustered by much that an alpaca herd can throw at him. Though big transitions are always challenging with an operation of our size and scope, we are super excited that Arlis and his wife Kimber are here on the farm with us now. The good things that cascade downstream when everyone (present company included, he says sheepishly, while writing his first blog post in over two months) on a team is doing their job and pulling their weight are almost innumerable. The past couple of years have been bruising at times for many reasons, but we fight on and press forward with a real sense of optimism now. As ever, damn the torpedoes.

In the short term, we have begun the process of weaning our 2021 crias. Halter training inevitably follows in the weeks ahead as we also put our divination hats on, trying to discern the early and most likely new candidates for the spring show teams. We also have to select our auction candidates for the Futurity Sale in April and the Parade of Champions auction in May. The point being that there shall be no moss growing underneath anyone’s feet in the months ahead, but more on all of that later. Be well, take care, stay safe, and we’ll be back again soon with more hijinx from the side of our mountain.

Follow me on Twitter at @CCNFAlpacas and on Instagram at ccnfalpacas. You can find also find and follow Cas-Cad-Nac Farm Alpacas on Facebook here.