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From the office to the alpacas
Published June 8, 2009
After a long and successful career in corporate America, Chuck Thomas came to a realization one day. He just couldn’t take it anymore.
“I came home to my wife and said, ‘I just can’t go back there,’” recalls Thomas, who spent his career working for the Coca-Cola Company and its suppliers. “There was nothing wrong with the company. They treated me well, but it just wasn’t in me. It wasn’t the work I wanted to do anymore.”
So with their son and daughter grown, Chuck and his wife, Leigh Thomas, decided to sell their home in San Antonio, move to the Hill County and embrace a rural lifestyle.
For more than five years, the empty-nesters-turned-ranchers have been raising alpacas — a cousin of camels and llamas — on their ranch in Medina. The move has led to a successful business and proved liberating for the couple.
“Now that I think about it, I guess it is a little bit like ‘Green Acres,’” Chuck Thomas jokes, referring to the 1960s sitcom about a husband and wife from New York City who move to the Midwest to become farmers.
The couple stands behind the barn house looking out over their herd of about 30 alpacas and remember how it all began.
After initially exploring the prospect of opening a summer camp, the couple settled on alpaca farming after they heard about the animals from a friend. Alpaca’s are indigenous to South America and first brought to America in the 1980s. They are prized for their fur which is a softer, premium substitute for wool.
But because the animals are still rare in North America, there was a learning curve for the couple. With a self deprecating smile, Leigh Thomas remembers how the first three breading females they bought turned out to be sterile.
“We ended up having to buy three new animals, only we did our homework the next time around,” she said.
And they have since gotten the hang of ranching, earning a profit and raising prize-winning animals at their property, named Hill Country Alpacas.
They run the whole operation by themselves with only the help of a 100-pound Maremma sheepdog named Lucca, who sometimes acts more like an alpaca than a dog.
The midlife career switch has completely changed the couple’s day-to-day life.
“My husband used to go to work every day in an office. We lived in the suburbs. Now we’re taking (alpaca) birthing classes,” said Leigh Thomas.
And of course there was city-to-country culture shock — living on a back country road, with the nearest grocery store 25 miles away and cell phone reception hard to find. But this couple gained a lot more than they lost.
“It was a big change,” said Chuck Thomas. “The kids thought we were nuts. But this was easily the best decision we could have made.”
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