About Us

Adrian and Jo Stewart both spent their formative years on working farms so they were by no means strangers to farming when they started breeding their first alpaca farm in the Cotswolds, England.

Photo: Jo Benson & Adrian Stewart

Adrian Stewart was born and raised in Skipton, Yorkshire, England. The town started life 1300 years ago as a sheep farm. The Anglo-Saxon words 'scipe', meaning sheep, and 'ton', meaning settlement, became Skipton. As a schoolboy, the sheep farms of the Yorkshire Dales lay to the north and to the south the woolen textile mills of Bradford and surrounding towns including Saltaire, the village created by Sir Titus Salt from the profits of his alpaca enterprise.

Adrian's family have been involved in sheep farming and textiles for over 200 years. Adrian and his wife Jo bred huacayas on their alpaca farm in the UK for a number of years before moving to Oregon in the summer of 2004 to establish Mulberry Alpacas, Alpaca Farm. In January 2005, Adrian was elected president of the State of Jefferson Alpaca Association (SOJAA). The purpose of the State of Jefferson Alpaca Association is to unite the alpaca breeders of Southwest Oregon and Northern California so as to promote the alpacas within the area. You can find a more detailed biography for Adrian Stewart here.

Jo Stewart was born and raised in a small village near Nottingham and spent much of her childhood helping out on three of the family farms. As a lifelong vegetarian, animal welfare and respect has always been foremost in her philosophy. She has never lived in a home without cats and dogs and is now extending her animal handling techniques to camelids with great effect on her alpaca farm.

Jo is keen to become a Practitioner of Camelidynamics under the guiding hand of Marty McGee Bennett and was an attendee on the 2004 inaugural Practitioners workshop. The concept of high levels of animal care in handling are integral to the success of Mulberry Alpacas.

Together, Jo and Adrian bring a wealth of experience to their alpaca business and at the same time know the challenges of starting from scratch in the North America marketplace having just done so themselves on the Mulberry Alpaca Farm. What other breeder has this amount of experience yet still understands the challenge of starting an alpaca business?

Mulberry trees and Alpacas – what’s the connection?

In the 1850’s when alpaca fibre was first processed commercially to worsted by Sir Titus Salt, he described his new lustrous fabric as “alpaca - silk for the price of wool”…
Silk, like alpaca, is an animal fibre. Around 3,000 BC, about the time the Incas were enjoying the benefits of domesticated alpacas, the Chinese became the first people to understand how to raise and manufacture silk. The mulberry tree was cultivated to provide food for the silkworms. There - that is the connection between mulberry trees and alpacas!

We invite you to browse through our website, we are constantly updating and adding to our website. So please check back often and contact us for any questions you might have. Thank You, Adrian & Jo.