We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Joey Tracy a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Joey thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

Becoming a small farm owner and fiber artist and the results of a pandemic and being a crazy animal lover. I just needed a day to myself. The original plan was to spend a night in a hotel, all alone. Being a larger expense than necessary, my husband offered to take me to an alpaca farm for a tour. I love animals and had never met an alpaca. A great compromise for my husband and for me.

It was love at first sight. I loved everything I saw and heard about these gentle animals. By the end of the night, my husband was drawing up the plan to turn our shed into a barn. I dove head-first into studying everything I could learn about alpacas. Less than three months later, our first four alpacas were delivered.

Obviously, transforming the shed into a barn, filling it with hay, and purchasing our animals was a little more costly than my first plan – overnight at a hotel. To offset the cost, I agreed to find a way to use the boys to earn enough money each year to pay for their food. You could say that I really put my cart in front of the horse here because I had no idea how to use alpacas to make money.

During the first year of having our alpacas at home, I learned so much about the industry surrounding alpaca farms. We’ve earned money from introducing them to visitors, selling their “beans” (poop), and discovering the art of needle felting.

Never, and I’m not exaggerating, never have I had an artistic ability. But for some reason, I have been able to use needle felting to create some very cute items. As soon as I started posting what I was making, people started ordering. And, I have been working from orders since then. I rarely have time to create any inventory of felted figurines because everything is sold before it’s even done.

The most satisfying part of our small business is that it is one hundred percent based on our love of animals and the hobbies we enjoy. My husband does the bulk of the farm work while I take silly pictures and videos. Farming and sharing our animals is a family affair. It is the most chore-filled-fun ever!

Joey, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Fluffig Alpacas LLC and our boys are named after my Swedish heritage. Tomte, Sven, Albus, Sitka, Snorri, and Munch make up our entire herd. We run a backyard farm where we welcome visitors to enjoy our alpacas. Visitors feed the boys treats, learn about alpacas, and can handle or even walk one. We’ve hosted brunches, birthdays, back-to-school events, etc. Our visitors have been families, extended families, friends, couples, youth groups, children’s groups, and curious neighbors.

Fluffig Alpacas has a great variety of alpaca products available on our website and at farmers’ markets, craft fairs, and friend-farm events. The boys make one of our popular products themselves! Alpaca poo is also called alpaca beans. The beans are a soil conditioner that augments any plant, indoors or outdoors. It’s known for its gentle nutrients and how it helps hold and distribute water.

Our most popular items and number one seller is our needle-felted figurines. Using inspiration from stories, cartoons, and holidays, I create figurines of animals, scenes, and well-known characters. Custom orders have stretched my practice to things I’ve never even heard of before. It is so fun to see a loose piece of roving become a special item. Every year, I make a few dozen of my Holy Family figurines for Christmas. Gnomes, bears, bees, and Nintendo characters are also customer favorites.

We have even more handmade alpaca products available – hats, scarves, gloves, shoe inserts, dryer balls, etc. Alpaca fiber is the best fiber to keep you comfortable, warm, and dry!

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

During our first year of owning alpacas, I would take our products to sell at a local farmers’ market. The market was every Saturday evening and started in the heat of the day. But, I was determined to earn enough money that summer to buy a year’s worth of hay. So, we’d pack up our things and set up every single Saturday. In the middle of the summer, my family was in a car accident and I was injured. Being down one vehicle and not fully recuperated, I could not attend the weekly farmers’ market for a month. A month away was going to reduce my sales by a third! I felt frustrated and was probably grumpy on market days that I missed.

We spent a lot more time at home that summer than usual. During that time, I created my first Holy Family needle-felted figurine. The Holy Family is easily my favorite piece and the most popular piece. As soon as I posted it online, I had enough orders to more than replace the sales I missed at the farmers’ markets. Even better, this was a way I could earn money and not be out in the heat of the day all summer long! Because of this situation, I had the time and interest in stretching myself to discover what I could create. And, now the bulk of my “farm time” and farm income is from needle-felting.

Learning from what worked well for us during our first few years as alpaca owners has given us opportunities to focus on what is successful and do a little less of what isn’t as popular. We take what we learn and experiment. Like throwing spaghetti to see what sticks. This Christmas, we are hosting our first large event. It’s been a lot of work but fun to see how it is coming together. If it goes well, we’ll make it an annual event. This is our experiment year to see what works and how to make it better for us and for visitors in the years to come.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

Luckily, there are people like me out there in the world who also love animals. Because of that, when they see our farm visits advertised, it piques their interest. Our small backyard farm offers an intimate and unique experience for visitors.

Our farm has had success by being an Airbnb Experience host. Once visitors see how much they enjoy their visit, word-of-mouth has been a great source of customers. Our farm visits are also on our website and advertised on our social media.

When visitors arrive, I ask them how they heard about us. Their answers are almost always different! A friend told them. They saw us on Instagram. One guy said he was looking at the home for sale near us and saw our house tagged as Fluffig Alpacas on Google maps.

It’s hard to say that one avenue has been the most lucrative. I don’t spend a lot of time babysitting every posting or ad we put out there. But, I consistently share who we are and what we offer. I believe that’s where our success comes from.

Contact Info:

• Website: fluffigalpacas.com
• Instagram: @fluffigalpacas
• Facebook: @fluffigalpacas
• Other: TikTok @fluffigalpacas