Meet the Modern Farmer: Alicia Adams

Alicia Adams’ luxurious alpaca wool scarves, throws, and baby booties retail at tony Manhattan stores like Barneys New York. The backstory is far less glamorous.

In 2006, when the designer and her husband, Daniel, left Munich for the promise of a simpler yet still sophisticated life in New York’s Hudson Valley, they settled on a rundown 1790 homestead with 80 non-manicured acres. “We’re hands-on people,” she says. “We cleared overgrowth from the fields and built the barn from scratch.”

The couple also chose rare Suri alpacas over hardier, more common Huacayas – a smart market decision that ratcheted up the degree of difficulty. “Here I was with three young children, and I had to care for these odd animals, feed them, give them shots,” recalls Alicia, who educated herself by traveling to the breed’s native Peru.

Currently a mother of four managing a 200-head herd, she’s not immune to doubt: “If it’s pouring out and I have to clean the barn, I think, Whoa, you could be sitting inside somewhere with a goldfish. But then the alpacas look at me with those big eyes and long eyelashes, and I go, OK, it’s fine.”