“Alpacas are like teenagers, they herd together and they follow one another. You can’t force things with alpacas any more than you would with teenagers and they don’t like being closed in. Just like many teenagers, they have a gentle, sensitive nature.”

Alpaca yarn is used to make soft sweaters, hats, and gloves.

Evelyn Simons and Mickey Wright of Jemez give a warm smile on a cold day.

Aspen Ridge Alpacas

—Margaret M. Nava, Signpost

For many, retirement is a time to quit working, move to a warmer climate and take up golf. Not so for half-sisters Mickey Wright and Evelyn Simons. In fact, they did just the opposite. After spending most of their adult years as teachers, they built a cabin, bought some alpacas, and started a whole new life high in the Jemez Mountains at a place they call Aspen Ridge Alpacas.

It all began in 1997 when the sisters heard about a weekend seminar about alpacas being held near their home in southern California. Evelyn, a retired Special Olympics coach, recalls the experience. “We spent a weekend camping and learning about alpacas. We had lunch in the middle of a pasture with alpacas all around us. It was intoxicating, to say the least. We said, ‘we could do this,‘ so we decided to retire in two years and start an alpaca ranch.”

Having grown up in Los Alamos, Mickey was familiar with the Jemez area. “My stepdad built the first house on Thompson Ridge in 1969. He and my mom commuted for three years to Los Alamos. The roads were not maintained, there was no telephone, just CB, and when it snowed, they had to plow their way across Valle Grande to get to work at LANL. I spent my summers and Christmases here.”

Once a high school teacher, Mickey started building a small cabin in 1979. Her sister Evelyn joined the effort in 1981. Every summer, they spent at least a month working on the cabin. Although they hired people and recruited friends to help, the sisters did a lot of the work themselves. Following the seminar, they bought some extra property. “It was all virgin forest. We knew it would have to be cleared for the animals, so we got to work cutting trees, clearing slash, and loading everything onto a trailer. When that first tree went down I said, ‘What are we getting into?’ I was doing the Die Deutsche Sommerschule (German Summer School) in Taos and when that was over, my fellow students and friends helped dig and get boulders out of the way. A friend of mine from the Sierra Club came out from California and worked on the cabin foundation. It just kind of grew each summer until the cabin was finally finished. In January of 1998, we purchased our first alpaca, a pregnant female named Cariñosa. Now we have fourteen.”

Smaller than llamas but larger than wild vicuñas, alpacas are a domesticated species of South American camelid. There are two types: Suri alpacas have long, silky hair that bunches into dreadlocks and Huacaya alpacas have short, crimpy hair that gives them a fluffy look. Unlike llamas, they are not bred as beasts of burden but for their fiber. While similar to sheep’s wool, alpaca fiber is warm, not prickly, and contains no lanolin, which makes it hypoallergenic. Often mistakenly referred to as wool, it is sorted into twenty-two distinct colors, ranging from blacks and browns, to whites, fawns, and subtle shades of maroon, peach, and gray. Alpacas are generally sheered once a year and can provide as much as twelve pounds of fiber per animal. The carding, spinning, and weaving of alpaca fiber is similar to the process used for wool and the finished yarn is used to make everything from sweaters, ponchos, and scarves to hats, gloves, and socks.

Mickey thinks there are a lot of similarities between alpacas and teenagers. “I probably would have been a better teacher if I’d have had alpacas earlier. Alpacas are like teenagers, they herd together and they follow one another. You can’t force things with alpacas any more than you would with teenagers and they don’t like being closed in. Just like many teenagers, they have a gentle, sensitive nature. They make sweet humming sounds and have cute little smiles and big, brown eyes. They are so gentle, a two-year-old could run around and not get hurt. Our Anatolian Shepherd dogs might lean against someone or knock them over but the alpacas would never hurt anyone.”

Aspen Ridge Alpacas is located in a remote area of Sandoval County. Aside from experiencing the animals, visitors can hike or cross-country ski at the Valles Caldera National Preserve, fish at Fenton Lake State Park, or soak in the nearby hot springs. Mickey believes there’s an almost spiritual feel about the place. “We’re off a scenic byway and in a national forest. We have a lot of artists, writers, and knitters stay overnight in the rental cabin we call the Alpaca Barnhaus. There’s no telephone or cell phone service, and there are no distractions from the outside world. We get a lot of snow up here in the winter but visitors can go down the road a mile or two and get out of it. And our summers are absolutely beautiful. It’s cooler up here than in Albuquerque or Santa Fe and we don’t get a lot of bugs. We’ll have four new crias (babies) in May and we’ll be shearing in either late May or early June.

We would love to have everyone come up to meet our wonderful animals and learn a little bit about farm life.”

For further information and directions to Aspen Ridge Alpacas, call Mickey and Evelyn at (575) 829-3312 or visit aspenridgealpacas.com. For information about renting the Alpaca Barnhaus, visit www.vrbo.com/21722