 The next six months is where it got really busy, Sherry & Tim bought a three-acre home on Fox Island, which is located on the crest of a hill overlooking the Puget Sound and Mount Rainer. Tim prepped the Gig Harbor home to sell and Sherry and Dad worked at narrowing down the prospective herd possibilities. Dad was looking at the Alpaca Magazine one day and said he found the sire that he wanted to buy. Dad’s request was “Premier's Absolute” which had already sold at the 2006 Futurity for $150,000.00. Dad did not realize he had such good taste!! July of 2006 we purchased our first alpaca, (Rose Marie), a rose grey female that was due in a few days and would be rebred in 2006 and rebred to Dad’s dream alpaca, Absolute, August 2007. Rose Marie surprised us on July 13 with a male which, we named after Dad, General Leslie James (LJ). LJ is our mascot and appears on our farm logo!
Dad sold his house and moved to the ranch during December of 2006. The winter of 2006 was not conducive for a retiree 86 years of age to move to the state of Washington after living in California for the  past 68 years. Unfortunately Dad became ill in February and passed away May 30, 2007. It was because of Dad that we went forward with this business and we thank him everyday. We really hoped he could have had one full summer on the ranch with these beautiful animals.
We are raising alpacas for a change in life style and profit. Our goal is to create a herd of genetically profitable alpacas not just in the show ring but also as a viable fleece industry. Thanks for visiting our website.
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We love our new adventure! In January of 2006, Sherry & Tim spent the month assisting Dad with his recovery from a stroke in Thousand Oaks, California. Dad had talked about moving to his home town in Kansas to start a goat farm with his 90 year old brother and now that would more than likely not happen. On the drive home from California we passed a sign that offered three free Llamas, as long as you provided the transportation. That was enough to get us thinking about Dad’s future and what we wanted to do for our future years. As we talked, we thought Dad might be interested in moving to the beautiful northwest and joining us on a small ranch. During the research, we discovered that if we changed our sights a little – like Alpacas’ instead of Llamas, it could become a profitable business. Over the next several months we continued our research into the business aspects while keeping Dad supplied with several articles, books and interesting propaganda to read. June, 2006 we made an agreement with Dad to go forward as partners in our joint venture, Fox Island Alpacas.