God Made a Farmer – Best Superbowl Commercial 2013

I know that alpacas were in the Lincoln car commercial, and they even showed a baby alpaca for a split second in the humorous Kia “Space Babies” commercial (about 17 seconds in). It’s always great for alpacas to be featured in “mainstream” media. There are still lots of folk who aren’t familiar with alpacas and even more who confuse them with llamas…I’m an alpaca ambassador all the way.

But nothing could have prepared me for the ad that stole the show during last night’s Super Bowl – if you’ve ever had the slightest interest in farming – it will give you chills. The Dodge Ram ad featuring Paul Harvey’s piece “On the Eighth Day God Made A Farmer” moved me and made me sit a little taller, proud to be a farmer. Enjoy and share with a farmer you love.

Alpacas On CBS Sunday Morning

Click here to watch a wonderful video about raising alpacas from CBS Sunday Morning. I watch this show every week, and boy was I surprised to see alpacas cropping up on it. The story is warm, cute, and friendly. Just like alpacas.

We have been offering an Alpacas 101 class (like they show in the video) several times a year for the past ten years. If you’d like us to let you know about our next class, sign up for our newsletter in the top right corner of this page. You can also watch for it on our events page.

I loved the part where Mo Rocca say you always remember your first herdsire. Leave a comment below and tell us what was your favorite part of this video.

Road Trip to Montana for Alpacas

The scenery was certainly gorgeous on our road trip, and we were able to continuously avoid bad weather on our trip. We drove almost 4,000 miles to Montana to pick up 34 of our alpacas and bring them back to L.A. (lower Alabama). We purchased the Windy Ridge alpaca herd last year. It took awhile for my professional transporter husband to return from Iraq and for us to arrange the time (and gas money with diesel at $4/gallon!) to make it out there to get them.

I have to admit that when Jim (above) told me that we would be driving 14 hour + days, I was a bit skeptical as to how much fun this trip was really going to be. “I love him, but do I love anyone so much that over fourteen hours a day in a truck is FUN? I mean, won’t we get sick of the whole thing rather quickly?” I wondered to myself.

To my great delight we actually had a marvelous time! We have so much fun just hanging out together. It was nice to have some alone time sans children, though we did bring our dog, Sebastian.

I may have had a little more fun on the trip than Jim because he caught a cold, but it was way better than we had even hoped. Jim and I visited, and I read and played games and movies on my Kindle Fire. It’s hard to believe that I never got bored. Stiff and chunkier from road food, yes. But not bored.

The worst part was when we forgot to get off I-10, and we wound up in downtown New Orleans’ Mardi Gras traffic the Sunday before Fat Tuesday. Other than that unplanned detour we had smooth sailing the rest of the time.

The alpacas fit snugly in our big trailer, and Southbound they went. In the coming days I will be posting some more pictures of them and listing some of them for sale. They are really beautiful animals and we are so happy to finally have them all home.

What are your favorite ways to pass the time on a road trip? Leave a comment and let us know how you keep from getting bored on the road.