Joe Phelan, once a banker, now an alpaca farmer in County Wicklow, Ireland.
K2Alpacas began as an hobby idea and a bit of fun to fill my retirement time with an activity, I’m not one to sit idle. I’m afraid that concept did not materialise as now I have a full blown wall to wall alpaca farm and am loving it.
I’ve embraced all aspects of alpacas and I love to see the impact these wonderful animals have on everyone.
We have our Alpaca & Prosecco walks which started as a way of the boys earning their bed & board.
We have organically grown into all sorts of activities, we have a Kids Alpaca Experience, we love the Therapeutic activities we do and the results we see, we visit Schools, Creches and Care Homes and many more.
The Weddings are fun and in doing all these activities we work from the alpacas’ welfare backwards so that they enjoy it too. They work at most three days per week we work seven.
In order to maintain this balance we built and opened seven very comfortable self catering cottages on the farm where guests can relax and enjoy the alpacas around them.
One aspect of the farm is of course the fibre and I remember contacting UK Alpaca 10 years ago, it doesn’t feel that long, to discuss fibre. We are still supplying fibre today and we love to get the yarn and socks back to sell in our Farm Shop. The superior characteristics of alpaca makes them very popular. The range and quality is excellent. Who knows where we will go from here, but be certain we will enjoy the journey as we go.
