Alpacas Pure and Simple About Our Farm

Owned by the husband and wife team of Leslie Eckhart and Steve Hardy, Alpacas Pure and Simple is located in sunny North Florida in historic Monticello. We specialize in high quality, well-bred, colored Huacaya Alpacas with ever-increasingly luxurious fleeces.

As the first alpaca farm in Florida's "Big Bend" area, We are committed to selling healthy stock to new & existing breeders, and luxurious fleeces to spinners, weavers and fiber artists. Our customers are treated to top notch service and support with the raising of their alpacas and utilizing their fiber. We are always increasing our knowledge of alpaca-related topics so we can share with our customers.

Why Alpacas?

After many years of hard work, we decided that life was just too short to spend it indefinitely competing in the now all too common “rat race”. We wanted more for us and our children. We wanted our own land and homestead. We wanted our own Monticello or Peacefield!

Solution: Alpacas!

So now, each night we go home to a relaxed country atmosphere where we are greeted by the sight of our lovely alpacas grazing or pronking. Often, our two beloved Great Pyrenees livestock guard dogs are waiting in the driveway or at the gate. Nothing has been more satisfying!

About Our Alpacas

After many nights spent online researching alpacas, we selected our first foundation females with diversity of lineages in mind. As true animal lovers, our emphasis is on our alpacas’ total welfare.

We carefully match our Dams and Herdsires to improve the fleece of each cria (baby alpaca), striving for lower micron counts, increased uniformity and longer staple lengths. We know, the happier and healthier our alpacas are from proper care and nutrition, the more luxuriously they will grow their fleeces.

In 2008 we entered three of our herdsires into the FABA Fleece show, and knew at last that our hard work to build a herd of quality fiber alpacas was paying off. MMF Peruvian Aladin, our own beige male, won third place in his age class for Huacaya Light. Our medium brown colored MMF Peruvian Jibari came away with second place in his age group for Huacaya Dark. And our pride and joy, MMF Peruvian Troy (see picture above), our white fleeced male, won first place for his age in Huacaya Light. He also won Reserve Champion for all age groups in Huacaya Light. We were so proud of our three boys.

Looking back we realize that this life choice to raise alpacas has brought along it's share of challenges as well as rewards, but we knew that this is what we wanted to do and stuck with it. So now we are the thriving Alpacas Pure and Simple ranch, and are committed to helping our customers grow their herds and realize the wonderful life choice raising alpacas truly is. So feel free to contact us with any questions or comments you may have regarding all things alpaca, as we would love to share our expertise and discuss with you our love for this way of life!