One of my mom’s friends here in North Carolina told her about Crystal Pines Alpaca Farm. We made a visit there today and it was really worth the time we spent. It is a working alpaca farm, with lots of other animals too.

The kids really had a fun time and I think we all learned something. The alpacas were extremely friendly and used to seeing people. As soon as we walked into the pasture they came right over to us. Ian was a little afraid of them, and I couldn’t convince him to feed them. Emma thought they were cute and she enjoyed feeding them.

Alpacas don’t have any top teeth, so they really can’t bite you. If you just hold your had out they use their lips and just scoop up the food. They are really soft and like having their backs rubbed. They explained how they shear the fur, and showed us how they hand spin it into yarn. We saw some of the products that the farm makes with the Alpaca fur like sweaters, hats and a few finger puppets. We bought Ian a really cute hat for the winter.

After we saw the Alpacas we got into the gator tractor and went for a drive to see the other animals. They had a lot of different varieties of chickens. They had a type of chicken that they called the “Martha Stewart Chicken” because they lay colored eggs. We were hoping to see some of the colored eggs, but we only found one brown egg.

They had one cow, Daisy, who was a Zebu cow. She was so cute, and incredibly friendly. She followed us all around the farm. At the end of the day on the way home in the car I asked Ian what his favorite part was and he said “Tickling the cow!”.

We all had a really nice time, and I would recommend anyone in the area visit the farm.