There are only a few books I’ve been compelled to read several times over. Among them is British author P.G. Wodehouse’s comic 1974 novel, “Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen,” wherein protagonist Bertram Wooster escapes the rigours of metropolitan life in London for a change of air; once in the English countryside, amid the meadows and livestock, absurdity ensues. To give you some flavour, in one memorable storyline, a racehorse named Potato Chip falls in deep love with a black cat and can only race if his purring beloved sleeps with him in his stall.
I had not thought of this particular romance for years, until I arrived at Chetwyn Farms’ newly opened guest cottage in Prince Edward County with my eight-year-old son, my husband and my mom, and felt as if I had tumbled into the pages of a Wodehouse book. One feels immediately that there is a refinement and whimsy to this place, a sort of measured mayhem, not only an appreciation of life’s absurdities, but also a rare, and refreshing, pursuit of it.
At Chetwyn (Welsh for “little cottage on twisted road”), tucked in the tiny community of Hillier, alpacas are leisurely grazing in the pastures, some napping under the trembling shade of a magisterial aspen tree, a summer breeze gently ruffling the animals’ topknots, while fluffy country clouds overhead look somehow like they, too, have been loomed from alpaca fleece.
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Alpacas, members of the camelid family, are somehow comedic in their own right, with their cartoonish silhouettes and bouffant hairstyles and inquisitive, soul-boring stares. “There is something Seussian about them: the way they look, the way they behave,” says Ted Pickering, who co-owns the place with his wife, Shauna Seabrook.
The writer's son, Leo, feeding one of the resident alpacas at Chetwyn Farms.
Olivia Stren
It’s all greenness and deep quiet here, animated only by birdsong. When I remark on the beauty, Pickering offers: “Yes, there is a calming quality to a view like this. But sometimes you open the gate and all you see is work, work, work.” I realize work — mine or his — is the furthest thing from my mind. “We do paint the romantic illusion that no work is involved.”
The couple seem to have cast themselves in the roles of alpaca farmers almost by happenstance. “It was accidental,” Pickering insists, delighting in the, well, twisted road of his own life.
When they bought the barn, they resolved to buy a couple of alpacas at a farm, thinking of the yarn for Seabrook, a knitter. “We knew absolutely nothing about them, other than the fact that they produce beautiful fleece. So, we came home with five after that initial visit,” he says casually, as though they’d stepped out to buy socks, not a quintet of South American livestock.
Now they have 20 alpacas, a rescue dog, three barn kittens and three geriatric horses (one of them is blind). “We really don’t have the room, but when you love animals, you lose your senses,” he says. The shortest visit here is a mood-lifting experience and a persuasive argument to lose your senses. “We’re both dreamers,” Pickering says. (He is also, now, president and chair of Alpaca Ontario.)
Dreams, of course, are laborious to realize. But the magic of Chetwyn is how all of the labour is out of view. “It’s like this is a big set. And this is our theatre. Except we do it all! We’re the stage directors and we also do the lighting and the set building,” remarks Pickering.
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A farm stay here invites you into the fantasy of country life. Upon entering the turn-of-the-century Loyalist farm cottage (where the couple used to live), we are greeted by an intensely delicious lemon cake, and a jar of strawberry rhubarb jam (both freshly prepared by Seabrook).
LI-ALPACAS-AUGUST12 alpaca Uploaded external by: deCarufel, Laura
Brooke Stephenson
The whole place is an exhale-inducing study in cosy bucolica: all wide-plank wooden floors and rustic-chic breadboard, beds dressed in patchwork quilts, a claw foot soaking tub, and giant picture windows overlooking the alpaca-promenading pastures. “This is not a VRBO,” Pickering says. “You are our guests.” And as guests, we have access, as much or as little as we want, to the actual work behind the scenes.
We decide to assist Pickering with evening chores. This mainly involves bringing the alpacas and horses into their stalls for the night, watching the fluffy herd munching to the strains of Schubert. (Classical music is always playing in the barn; these may well be the most erudite alpaca on Earth.) On that note, Pickering shares another dream: “We want to put on an opera in the field over there. My first choice would be ‘Aida,’ and we would cast alpacas instead of camels.”
The writer Olivia Stren and her son, Leo, with their new alpaca friends
Olivia Stren
On another occasion, we help to feed the alpacas in the field, an activity I can only describe as euphoric. There are pictures of my son, Leo, giddy with delight, surrounded by alpacas and literally applauding — at the absurdity of it all, or for all of life’s twisted roads? Back in Toronto, and reflecting on our travels, I feel ready for an encore.
Olivia Stren stayed as a guest of Chetwyn Farms, which did not review or approve this article.
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