Welcome to Lucky Acres Farm

We are small but we are growing

Lucky Acres Farm is the home of the Gloria and Joe Williams, Stephen, Niki and Lily Schaffer. We are a small alpaca farm located in the upstate of South Carolina. Please come for a visit, we love sharing our country life style with others. Located half way between Charlotte, NC and Atlanta, GA in Townville SC.

We are just 3 miles from I-85 at exit 11. Take route 243, go 1.5 miles. Turn left onto Milford Road (the second left), go 1.5 miles. At the stop sign, go straight. This is our shared driveway. We are the log cabin on the right.

Miss Scarlett and Miss Mammie are the latest addition of security on our farm. We had learned about a fellow alpaca breeder who had lost six of her alpacas to a neighbor's dog attack. We also knew that several other alpaca farms had donkeys to protect their herd, so we brought home two. They are a wonderful addition to the pasture. Miss Scarlett is very friendly and Lily can feed and pet her anytime. Miss Mammie is not as hands on, but loves to "sing" to us whenever she sees us outside. The donkeys and Gracie, a very large horse, are in the far pasture from the house. Then the next pasture is our group of our young males and geldings. Our older males or "herdsires" are in another group not as far away. Our girls have Mr. Pebbles our big llama in their pasture for protection from preditors. Now we sleep a little better at night knowing that we have done all we can to protect our alpaca herd from preditors.

Our shearing on Sunday, April 14th, this year, was a very busy, tiring and good day. Sunday's weather was perfect, low 70s and we had just the right number of visitors. Often we celebrate Joe's birthday on shearing day. All are invited to attend. You need to wear old clothes and plan to get dirty. We will have lunch, cold drinks and snacks for all. Please call ahead to make sure there has been no change in plans - 864-903-1856. One year we were rained out and had to reschedule. The alpacas have to be dry to shear. Alpacas are on the mat less than ten minutes with all their needs taken care of such as hair cuts, toe nails trimmed, annual shots given, and dental work when needed. They are so funny to watch after when they see each other without their fleece and the first time it rains on them.

This is the best time to purchase fleece straight off the alpaca of your choice. For anyone intrested whole fleeces or any part can be available.

We then clean, or skirt the fleece as it is called and send it off to the mill to be made into roving and yarn. It is kept as the individual animal's product all the way to selling it in skeins with their picture on it. The leftover fleece is then made into a farm blend so as to get the most use of the fleece as possible.

Joe took this picutre in early April showing most of our alpacas, girls in one pasture and the boys across the fence. We really liked how it shows so many of them. If you look close you can see the equines in the lower pasture. All that is missing is the goats and they are not in the picture. Spring time is a wonderful time on the farm with new grass growing nad new crias pronking. Time for flowers to bloom and to plant the vegetable garden.

Sometimes the little ones are so playful that they get the older ones to going with them. We were blessed with the last 2 of our little ones being female. It is a pleasure to watch them grow into beautiful healthy strong alpacas.

These are Tabby's daughters Tessie Snowhite with her new cria Thunder and Tabby's new daughter Tulip.These two little ones were born 3 days apart and are always together. It is very hard to tell them apart but Thunder has a very small brown spot on his back. This is Tessie's first cria and she had no problem and is an excellent mother. Tulip is a very nice alpaca, both were sired by Patton from Carrell Farms.

Both of these births were in the afternoon, very unusual for our farm. We were concerned about the late hour, but both seem to be doing very well. I think perhaps it was because of all the rain showers and wanting to give birth when the sun was shinning. It is a great joy to watch them all playing in the pasture.

We were asked to participate in the first time upstate SC farm tour for the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association. We were very happy to do so and Joe made this picnic area for guests to enjoy. We had a wonderful day and our guests said they did as well.

It is a pleasure to try to bring a positive experience for anyone who is interested in learning more about our farming way of life. Many families were taking advantage of this experience and visiting the farms on the tour. This has become an annual event and we find it to be our best "open house" weekend.

The SC National Heritage Corridor sponsored a bus tour that visited our farm as part of the "Apples and Alpacas" tour. We have been fortunate this year to have several bus tours make a visit to our farm. We love having people come to see the alpacas and educating them about our lifestyle. We serve refreshments and give them a visit with the animals. Everyone said they had a good time and were extremely complementary in their comments. I hope they all enjoyed the experience and will come back to visit again.

We often have school groups visit the farm. We enjoying taking them on a walking tour of the pastures and gardens. They enjoy touching a cria and tasting what ever food is in season at the time. It is amazing to me that some children do not know that fruits and vegetables are grown from the ground. One child said that her Mother gets peaches in a can. It is wonderful to see their smiles when we give them cookies and lemonaid. We are often told that it is the best they ever had. These visits give us great pleasure.