MATT PETTY

I attended college to become an accountant and soon found out that bean counting was not for me! I went to Cornell to Restaurant Management school, then the University of Houston and studied Hotel Management, and then on to Retail Management courses all over the place. I owned various businesses, from restaurants, to hotels, to card and gift shops, to automotive restoration, and oversaw all aspects of the businesses including marketing, finance, inventory control, and employee and customer relations. For 30 years I dealt with lots of employees and had lots of stress. Little did I know it was all to get ready to enter the alpaca business!

What a change. Now when I go to work I get a cup of coffee and head to the barn or to the office in my pajamas. The stress is gone, the alpacas see to that. What a wonderful way of life! You cannot help but fall in love with them. I wish I would have made this decision ten years ago. I now travel around the country transporting these wonderful creatures and get to meet some of the finest people on earth, alpaca people. An alpaca farm is a great place to raise your family and grow your assets. Take the time and go visit an alpaca farm – you will soon see what I am talking about.

JULIE PETTY

I love my job. Never did I dream I’d be raising alpacas when “I grew up”! Seems like it might have been something God had planned. When I was little, we raised Irish Setters. We always had huge litters and had to help bottle feed those puppies. I loved it and practically lived in that dog pen! Maybe that’s when my love of animals first began. People that come to visit and listen to me talk about alpacas say they can tell I love them and have a passion for what I’m doing. What a gift!

I am wife to Matt, mother to Adam, Aaron, and Abby, step-mother to Libby, step-mother-in-law to Charles, and step-grandmother to Keandre’, Zavier, and Leila, and grandmother to Clayton. I graduated from Ashland College with a degree in Clothing Fashion Merchandising. I moved to Durango, Colorado to “find myself” and spent the next four years in “God’s country” where the sun shines most every day! My favorite job (for awhile) was working for Durango Cookery where I managed the office, and was involved with the marketing of the products we sold—I also skied a lot!

Though I said I’d never live in Ohio again, I met Matt (on a blind date) and we were married! We owned Hallmark stores and I did the bookkeeping for the stores in our home for the next ten years while we raised our children. We sold our house, built two more, moved, rented, and moved again. The birth of our third child and the growth of the stores put me “over the edge” as far as trying to do the work at home and my “career” at Petty’s Hallmark came to a close

There were a few “off” years and in the Fall of 2002, we plunged into the alpaca business! What a journey it has been. I often tell people that half the fun has been all I’ve learned – about things I never knew I’d need to know! I hope to explore the fiber end of this business much more – I have learned to spin, and felt, and dye, and knit. It is very rewarding to actually deliver the baby and raise the animal that produces the fleece for the items in our farm store! I love sitting in the pasture on a warm day just watching the alpacas and I love sitting in the straw when the barn is bedded for winter just observing. There is a peace about being with these beautiful creatures that God has blessed us with – it just doesn’t get much better than this!