“You can’t rush a donkey,” says Andrea Parent-Tibbetts of Clover Brooke Farm in Hyde Park.
She’s putting a halter on Lee, a gray mini-donkey, while explaining how people sometimes arriving at the farm stressed out from a busy day are persuaded to slow down on a stroll with the adorable but strong-willed equines.
She hands me Lee’s lead rope and takes the one attached to Joy, the black donkey. We set off across the pasture, passing goats, sheep, llamas and alpacas. Clover Brooke is a fiber farm. Most of its animals are chosen for their long hair, which can be spun, woven and knitted — or it can be felted.
Andrea offers classes in fiber arts. Her husband, Dr. Mike Tibbetts, teaches beer-making.
The donkeys and llamas are available for walks, a gentle way of getting to know animals we don’t often encounter in daily life.
Each of the donkeys gets half a carrot before our walk. Andrea doesn’t give food rewards to the other animals, as they can become single-minded in their pursuit of treats, but the donkeys are mild enough to handle a small motivating reward.
Lee, her long, furry ears wobbling, takes the carrot from my hand and chomps vigorously. I give her a scratch at the base of the neck, where two dark perpendicular lines cross.
We set off on our walk, passing an enclosure where three baby goats are sheltered with their mothers. “These are Pygoras, a cross between pygmy and angora goats,” says Andrea. They have the abundant soft hair of angoras, and their small size makes them easy to manage.
The 45-acre farm was established in 1850 as a dairy farm. It was owned by the same family until Andrea and Mike bought the property in 2016. Andrea had been a school administrator for 30 years and was ready for a change of pace. While she runs the farm, Mike continues to teach at Bard College.
Despite having grown up in Maine, where her only pet was a cat, Andrea did develop a connection to fiber. “When I was working as an administrator, my therapy was to go home and knit,” she said. “I got a spinning wheel and learned how to spin.”
We are walking through the side of the farm where all the female llamas and alpacas are pastured. Earlier, we paid a visit to the males, which serve as guardians for the sheep, a job llamas have
practiced for thousands of years. “The llamas will chase off coyotes and once in a while domestic dogs.”
“That one looks like a sentry,” I observe, pointing to an alpaca alertly gazing outward.
“That’s Moe,” Andrea responds. She indicates a tall black llama striding gracefully across the grass, the long feathery hairs on his legs and belly fluttering. “That’s my daughter’s show llama, Dainan. Moe has decided Dainan needs guarding, not that Dainan seems to agree.”
Alpacas are generally smaller than llamas and more skittish, but Moe appears determined to look after the aloof and elegant Dainan.
At the end of a pasture, we lead the donkeys past Mike’s hop field, where he grows a critical ingredient for making beer. As a biologist, he is intrigued by fermentation and has years of experience with craft brewing. Students, often groups of friends, leave his classes with two bottles of craft beer each and the knowledge to set up their own equipment for home brewing.
Andrea’s classes include weaving, dyeing fabric using plant dyes, soap-making, creating loofahs from alpaca fibers, and other fiber-related projects. Home-school groups, school classes and youth groups are welcome to attend her workshops. Once a week, when kids from a local private school spend a few hours helping out with farm chores, she talks to them about sustainable and regenerative farming — which she also teaches at summer camps. Corporate retreats provide a soothing dose of rural life to business people.
The donkey walk takes us through a small wetland, and then we head back through the fields to the pasture where we started. After a final bite of carrot, we remove the halters. The donkeys, hoping for another treat, follow us to a cluster of tall llamas with fluffy coats. The two biggest ones, Essie and Tia, see us coming and step forward to say hello.
They are like giant cats, eager to be petted. And scratched. I sink my hands into several inches of thick, soft hair on Essie’s back and stroke the silky fur on the front of her long neck. At one point, she lies down at my feet, and I rub the area behind her ears.
Essie was adopted from a herd where she wasn’t flourishing, and when she first arrived she was aggressive toward people. When approaching an unfamiliar llama, said Andrea, you don’t look it in the eyes, but approach it by walking backwards. For months, backing up was the only way she could get near Essie, who would spit at her when scared.
“Llamas rarely spit at people unless they’ve been mishandled,” said Andrea. After consistently kind and cautious treatment, Essie became the friendliest llama in the herd.
The alpacas, meanwhile, are grazing nearby, avoiding us. Alpacas are usually solid-colored, and they don’t have the curving, banana-shaped ears of the llamas, whose hair is longer and less dense. Alpaca hair is warmer and finer, and it’s softer than sheep wool.
“We shear the llamas and alpacas once a year,” Andrea says. “In this climate, they are susceptible to heatstroke, and in really hot weather we hose them off with water.” She does much of the shearing herself, but some of the alpacas were rescued and are difficult to handle, so she hires professionals to shear them.
The animals on the farm yield 350 pounds of fiber per year. At a mill in Connecticut, the fiber is spun into yarn, which is sold in a shop in Clover Brooke’s renovated chicken coop, along with knitted hats, fingerless alpaca mittens, homemade soap, and other products created on the farm. Lower-grade portions of the fiber are felted into dryer balls, better for the environment than commercial dryer sheets.
Other offerings include stays at two Airbnb apartments, yoga on the farm, animal-assisted therapy, teatime with alpacas, goat walks, llama hikes, weddings, parties, photo and video shoots, and 4-H club activities. Visits to the farm, by groups or individuals, are by appointment only, through the website, https://cloverbrookefarm.com, or by calling 845-444-6066.
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