ERIN – Mimosa Springs Alpacas held Easter egg hunts and farm tours over the holiday weekend.
The farm, which has been operational for five years, has around 100 alpacas as well as other animals including sheep, donkeys, chickens and rabbits.
Owners and operators Michael and Anna Dehn live on the property and were pleased with the turnout.
Around 450 guests were in attendance over the weekend, searching for coloured eggs and learning about the farm through guided tours.
“Education is the focus of our tours,” Anna told the Advertiser.
“We try to have as many groups come through to see the animals as we can. It’s therapeutic,” added Michael, who is also the mayor of Erin.
“We run the egg hunts a little differently. We give the kids baskets with a coloured egg attached and they have to find their 12 matching eggs.
“That way we can have the young kids out at the same time as the older ones which makes it fair for everyone.”
After finding the dozen eggs corresponding with their baskets, the children exchanged them for a prize of their choice.
The Dehns have recently invested in a mill for the property to process the alpaca fiber and hope to expand operations as time allows.
“The mill is a big process. We have to set it up, learn how to run it, and then get into sheering. It’s a lot happening all at once,” Anna said.
“We sheer the animals during the first week of June. I’m doing all the training in order to be able to process and sort the fibre. There’s a lot more to the process than most people realize.”
Michael would love to host more groups, but it can be challenging when there’s so much work to be done on the farm. He hopes to be set up for tourism by June.
“We’ve been having an open house once a year and plan to get to the point of having more tours, but for now it’s really been about growing the herd and gaining experience working with the [alpaca] fibre,” he said.
“I’m hoping to do something for Mother’s Day … it might be a little too aggressive timewise, but it’d be nice. It’s a little easier to host one-offs like that as opposed to trying to do something every day of the week.”
The farm originally had a plum and apple orchard, and the couple will be adding an assortment of new fruits this year, including lingonberries, cranberries, and different varieties of elderberries.
“If I have my way, 10 years from now we’ll have a distillery on the property and we’ll be making fruit spirits,” Michael said.
Mimosa Springs Alpacas is located on the 4th Line in Erin and can be contacted at mimosaspringsalpacas@gmail.com or by phone at 416-629-9428.
