St. Nicholas Ranch was born during a period of insomnia. In August, 2003
I was uncertain about our future and unable to sleep. Bill, my husband, was getting older
and the physical stress of the construction industry was taking its toll on his body. We
were concerned about retirement.  During one of those long, sleepless nights, I saw a commercial on television about the Alpaca industry. I immediately went to the Alpaca Owners and Breeders [AOBA] website and began my research. I broached the subject with Bill about three weeks later. Armed with reams of articles I began to talk to him about the possibility of starting a ranch of our own. At first he looked at me as if I had finally gone over the edge. But I kept talking. When I told him about the tax advantages of Alpaca ownership I had his undivided attention. He began to like the idea. Before long we visited several local alpaca ranches. We went to a seminar. We ordered copies of the past two years of Alpaca Magazine. We crunched numbers like crazy and came up with our original budget and a business plan. In November, 2003 we bought our first two alpacas, both female Suris named Natasha and Knightlight. Natasha had a cria [baby] by her side, Nicholas. It was love at first sight for us. We could not believe how cute he was. Natasha, Knightlight and Nicholas lived on the ranch where we purchased them until our facility was ready. When it came to designing and implementing plans for the barn, Bills years of construction experience paid off big time. He spent hours with pencil and paper designing the layout. By January 2004, we had a state- of -the- art facility. Our barn included plumbing and electricity. We had two paddocks, catch pens, feeders and automatic waterers installed. Bill did all the work himself! We learned an incredible amount throughout the process and continue to improve our facility.  We
are getting ready to start phase two now that we have received last years tax refund! Our
initial investment allowed us to claim enough in the way of deductions to get back a huge
portion of the taxes we had paid on our primary sources of income.In late January 2004 we researched and purchased our guard llamas. We decided on a mother/daughter pair of animals, Tara and Copper Penny. The day we brought them home was one of our happiest days. Tara had a bit of a hard time settling in that night. It was the first time in her life she had been away from her mother and the ranch she had been born on. She hummed and paced and I worried. The next morning we went back to the ranch where we had purchased her and bought Tara’s sister, Chiquita and her daughter, Angelina. We brought them home that day. The new, larger herd settled in immediately. We were finally ready to have Natasha, Nicholas and Knightlight delivered in February 2004. Bill and I spent hours watching them. Our dream of having a ranch of our own was now a reality. |