Knitting woolen hats and mitts for sale at her alpaca farm in Matheson may be a far cry from her former life as an aircraft maintenance planner in the British Isles and Gabon, Africa, but Jo-Anne Burton wouldn’t change a thing.

“We had no idea about how to do any of it, and people said we wouldn’t be able to do it, but we did,” says Burton, who sells alpaca-wool products through Dream Acres Alpacas, co-owned with her husband, Gary.

“It just goes to show that if you want it bad enough, you can get it, so long as you keep pushing in the right direction.”

With Gary serving as an aircraft mechanic, the husband-and-wife team spent two decades travelling the globe, almost always working for the same employer.

Much of the time was spent working seven-days a week, in distant locations far from their families in Timmins and Sudbury. After deciding to “take time to smell the roses,” the two committed to moving back to northeastern Ontario in July 2007.

After debating taking on livestock like beef cattle and goats, Burton spied a random ad for alpacas in a farming trade magazine and, as she says, that was that. Having worked at an uncle’s dairy farm in her youth, Burton had always had a love of the land, and this seemed “a perfect fit,” she says.

The two soon snapped up a 140-acre property on Highway 101, located 15 minutes west of Matheson proper, just outside the Town of Shillington. After rebuilding the ramshackle barn and erecting an eight-foot-high fence to keep the wolves and bears out, the Burtons brought in a number of chickens and their first nine alpacas.

With four hours from North Bay’s Misty Haven Alpacas and seven from Bruce Mines’ Meadowview Alpaca Farm, all that was left was to “learn everything,” says Jo-Anne, laughing.

Making the shift from an aircraft maintenance planner to a farmer may seem drastic, but Burton says she’s found the transition to be surprisingly manageable. In particular, the learning curve was made much easier through the simplicity with which alpacas can be cared for.

Like cows, alpacas are ruminants, meaning they have multiple stomachs; however, they eat one-seventh of what a cow consumes, meaning a single bale of hay can feed seven animals.

Aside from grooming and general care such as tending to nails and teeth, the animals are fairly self-sufficient. This has given Jo-Anne the time she needs to learn trade skills such as spinning and weaving to prevent that work from being contracted out.

While there are other alpaca farms in the North, including one in Hearst and another in Matheson, most focus on breeding, something that holds no real appeal for Jo-Anne. With most trade shows held in southern Ontario, the additional time and travel required to attend and sell the bred alpacas would nearly defeat the purpose of having set down roots in the first place, she says.

Instead, Jo-Anne focuses on the production and sale of alpaca-related goods.

Shorn once a year by an outside expert, each alpaca can produce nearly 10-pounds of fleece. Some is shipped to specialty mills in Alberta in return for socks, while the remainder is made in the Burton home.

Since its inception, the farm has since added two males and three females for a total of 14, and one batch of shearing can produce as much as 20 toques, 15 pairs of mitts, up to 80 pairs of socks, as well as any number of blankets, scarves and other items. The lower-grade material unsuited for these items are instead sold as felt.

Much of what’s made is sold locally, mainly through word-of-mouth, though Burton expects this will begin to expand once the website is brought online this year. In particular, she hopes to emphasize the “100 per cent Canadian” aspect of her goods, as a lifetime of globetrotting showed her how most products came either from China or, in the case of alpaca goods, Peru.

In the meantime, Burton is happy to see the walk-in traffic from the convenience of being on the highway, with many coming in spontaneously to buy products or even just marvel at the animals themselves.

“These animals are so different-looking and cute, so they definitely are an attraction,” she says.