Greg's family has farmed this hill above the Ohio River since 1835. Forty-one acres in New Richmond, twenty-three miles east of Cincinnati — close enough to drive out for an afternoon, far enough that the loudest thing here is the herd.
“What's an alpaca?”
That was Greg's first question. It was the fall of 2005, and Lori had come back from Michigan with the news that her dad had bought one.
So we started driving. We visited farms, asked a lot of questions, read everything we could find — and somewhere in the middle of all that, fell for the animals themselves. We bought our first five in the summer of 2006. They boarded elsewhere for a year while we got the fields and fencing ready, and in the summer of 2007 they finally came home.
In 2008 we left a loft downtown and moved into the family farmhouse. We've been out in the barn every morning since — thirty or forty minutes with hay and grain before work, and again at dusk. We both still hold day jobs. We do this because the work is quiet and the animals are glad to see you.
Greg and Lori Wahl.
Thirteen seconds
In the spring of 2017 a tornado came through and took the back off our two-hundred-year-old barn. Thirteen seconds, start to finish. Nobody we called would touch the repair.
So we took the barn apart and built the shop back on the stone foundation it had stood on. The metal off the old roof is the back wall now. The shelves are its floor joists. The counter you pay at is the red siding off the front. There's a kitchen at the back where we wash and dye fleece. It opened that Halloween weekend, three times the size of the shop we lost — and made almost entirely out of it.
One shearing a year
Every spring a crew comes down from northeast Ohio and the whole herd gets its haircut in a day. That fleece is the reason for all of this. It becomes the yarn and roving, the mittens, the stuffed animals — and wherever we can, the label still carries the name of the animal it came from. The Chocolate Chip yarn really is Chocolate Chip. You can meet her.
Everything made from our own herd is gathered here.
And what we choose
One farm can't grow enough fiber to fill a store, so the rest we buy — and we're particular about it. Our scarves, throws and sweaters come from a handful of makers we’ve worked with for years. After two decades around these animals we know what good alpaca feels like in the hand, and nothing goes on the shelf that doesn't.
Warmer than wool. Softer than cashmere. Doesn't itch. That's the whole pitch — the rest is just alpacas being alpacas. Liberty kisses you hello, Prudence wants her back scratched, and Maribelle will not eat unless she's eating in the right spot.
Come say hello
The shop travels to craft shows through the fall, our goods are at The Collective Boutiques in Cincinnati year-round, and the farm opens for the Fall Open House and on Sundays through the holidays. Plan a visit — the alpacas are always home.