A Statement of Intent, Part #2: Snowmass Elite Legend

Given that we have known each other for less than a decade, we have quickly amassed quite a history with our friends Ryen and Ursula Munro of Tripping Gnome Farm. Though the professional and the personal don’t always blend well, we feel very blessed that in this case they have. There are times of the year when phone calls bounce back and forth several times a day between the two farms (TGF is in Freeport, ME in case you wern’t aware). Often times the calls have an actual purpose, others it’s just to harangue one another.  This is great for us. I’m not really so sure how that all works out for them? In any case, when we met several years back we just made a nice connection. Regardless of coming from very different backgrounds Ryen and I seemed to share a fairly similar worldview and definitely have the same sardonic sense of humor, something which has come in handy perhaps more often than any of us could wish for in a perfect world. Ryen and I also made the drive to Salt Lake City together a few years ago for Nationals. Whether 70+ hours together in a truck sealed our friendship or he is still just suffering from some form of Stockholm Syndrome is I suppose again open to interpretation?

On a business level we first sucked the Munros into closer ties with CCNF in 2005 when the North American Alpaca Stud (at that time a partnership between Snowmass Alpacas & CCNF, now wholly owned by us) was selling Legacy Gold.  Though we had gone into that auction with great trepidation we were nonetheless intending to sell LG when he went up on stage. Regardless of intent, as the record shows fate intervened and Jen and I ended up electing to take a pass on a rather significant pay day in favor of a new partner in LG (the Munros bought Snowmass’ half) and paying our part of the sellers commission, which that day amounted to 25K.  It was also Ryen who helped us a year later (bidding for us this time as we were not present) when Snowmass elected to put up their half of the entire Stud at their ’06 sale. Needless to say that though there was never any doubt about the Munro’s character in any case, those two events earned them our unfettered trust. If there was ever a shooting war we would definitely want Ryen Munro on our side.

So that’s the basic short and dirty version of Cas-Cad-Nac’s and Tripping Gnome Farm’s shared history going into this year.  As of January 2010 we happily co owned three major Herdsires with TGF: the aforementioned Snowmass Legacy Gold, Snowmass Incaaccoyo Star, as well as LG’s best son, CCNF Archangel.

We had however been eyeing another male together for some time though. In point of fact for the better part of two years. Though we have by no means gone out of our way to advertise it, it is certainly not a closely guarded secret that TGF and CCNF were, as a team, the underbidders on Snowmass Matrix this past February. At the time of this year’s Snowmass sale we were current and former (TGF & CCNF respectively) partners with Snowmass Alpacas, both with considerable genetic material from that program in our barns and pastures. What that meant from a strategic perspective for each of us is that we had a pretty good idea of how to plug a Snowmass Quechua son’s genetics into our breeding programs. The genetic math was largely done for us. He made sense. Up to a certain price. Granted, the last time we were an underbidder on a major Herdsire it was April of 2000 and the animal in question was 4P Legacy. Obviously that story ended up working out just fine, in fact undeniably better in the long run and I think we can safely prognosticate that that is true in this case as well…

Though I have alluded to it over the past couple of weeks here and there in blog posts and the news has been hiding in plain view on Snowmass’ web site for months: we are officially the new co owners (along with Tripping Gnome & Snowmass) of Snowmass Elite Legend. We are deeply grateful to Don and Julie Skinner of Snowmass Alpacas for agreeing to sell part of their amazing boy to us. Amongst SEL’s many notable credentials he was most recently the 2010 Futurity Light Herdsire of the Year. Though he was not the new male we started out the year thinking we would be breeding to in 2010, to say that we are psyched at the potential he represents would be a mighty, mighty understatement. Though he is not being offered for outside stud service, Elite Legend will be here on the east coast bouncing back and forth between CCNF and TGF until July 2011 when he will then head back to Idaho and his birth farm for a year. As Keith & Mick said, “You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, well you might find… you get what you need.” Indeed.