Longbranch Fiber Farm is located on the Key Peninsula of Washington's Puget Sound. The alpaca business started in 2000 with two alpacas. I never can remember how many critters we have but I do remember everyone's name!  We raise them for their wonderfully soft fiber, which is used to make a line of felted products. I remember the first couple years, I had a few pounds of fiber in a few colors and I was always scrimping with dyed fiber to make it last. Now that I’ve been at this a few years, I have stockpiled dyed fiber in hundreds of colors and it is like a psychidelic fiber artists’ fantasy. I find myself looking forward to shearing each year because I’m already planning what colors I’m going dye! I'm told by people all the time, they have seen the TV show Dirtiest Jobs featuring alpaca shearing. Here I am looking forward to spending hours clipping dust bombs so I can get my hands on more fiber!

Alpacas are from the Andes Mountains in South America. They are cousins to the camel but stand under five feet tall. They are very nosey animals who will remove all the tools from your box if you leave it out in the field while you are working. Alpaca fiber is softer, lighter and warmer than wool. It is often tolerated by people who have allergies to wool because alpacas do not have lanolin on their fiber. They have a tremendous range of colors from black, brown, tan to white, with every blended combination from silver-gray to rose-gray.

All of the products are grown, harvested and created completely on our farm. Look around the pages and see the array of fun things our alpacas are growing.

The links below are to stories from life on the farm.