CO-OP PEOPLE
Robbie and Carrie Davis have built a solid business out of fleecing their customers.
Spinning yarns
STORY AND PHOTOS BY DAMAINE VONADA
W
hen a young woman approached Robbie and Carrie Davis about making the yarn for her wedding shawl, they readily obliged. The brideto-be wanted the yarn to contain fleece from a specific alpaca, so they created an alpaca-silk blend especially for her. “She’ll use our yarn to weave the shawl herself and eventually will pass it on as a family heirloom,” says Carrie. “That just gives me chills.” Robbie and Carrie are Butler Rural Electric Cooperative members who operate a fiber mill — America’s Natural Fiberworks (ANF) — at Blessed Criations, the 11-acre farm near Oxford where they also make their home. A cria is a baby alpaca, and the farm’s name was inspired by the couple’s years of alpaca industry experience.
8 OHIO COOPERATIVE LIVING • OCTOBER 2021
They acquired their first alpacas in 2006 and soon began breeding and showing the animals at fairs with help from their son, Jessie, who is now 20 and an aviation technology student at Sinclair Community College. Alpacas don’t shed, so Robbie and Carrie became adept at shearing. Soon, breeders began to hire them to shear, and the couple noticed that shaved fleece was usually discarded. They opened the mill in 2012 to convert raw alpaca fiber into yarn or felt. Carrie learned to card and spin by hand, and Robbie, who had been an ironworker for 20 years, quit his job to tend their fledgling cottage industry. As word about the mill spread and orders increased, they wanted to expand, but banks balked at lending money to a mill. That’s when Kim and Brad DeLaney, of Ohio’s KB
