About us
Our story
farm
In October 2001, we left France with our 3 kids (Dominique, Denis and Sophie) to come to Canada.
As many immigrants, for the beginning we lived in Montreal in an apartment. Then, with Fanny’s birth coming soon, we moved to a house in suburbs.
But we always dreamed about space.Then, we began to search for a bigger house with a garage and a garden for the kids.
We found our treasure at the end the summer of 2006. We bought an old dairy farm of 51 acres in Eastern Ottawa, situated halfway between Montreal and Ottawa. Viewing these barns and pastures, we immediately wanted to give life again to this farm and this is how we discovered the marvelous world of llamas and alpacas.
After having prepared our buildings and pastures, we were able to welcome our animals ( 8 alpacas and 4 llamas ) at the end of fall 2007. This summer, we will be pleased to live our first births ( 3 little alpacas crias and 3 little llamas crias ). We are really excited about that !!!
Who are we?
our family
The Ferme Bonne Mine is a family owned business where everybody works on the farm. On the picture, you can see my husband, Jacques Morin, and our 4 kids: Dominique, Denis, Sophie and Fanny, and myself, Isabelle Perdigal.
As we are at the beginning of our business, we are still working outside. Jacques is a truck mechanic and I am a programmer-analyst. Our kids help us after school.
Jacques, who is a restoring genius, repairs all the machineries, buildings, fences, feeders, etc... As you can imagine, he is never bored.
As for me, I look after the rest: animal care, marketing, making some products, etc... Our kids help us a lot and we really appreciate that.
Our additional staff
Yogi
Our dog Yogi joined the family in December. He is really nice with the animals as he is really cool ( roly-poly ).
our barn cats ( Andarielle, Toufou )
Our barn cats: they hunt mice and pigeons. They work so well that we don't have to put any toxic products for killing harmful animals.
Malicia
Our kitty, Malicia, hunts outside too.
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Our daily work
halter-train
Llamas and alpacas are easy care animals.
In the morning, I go to the barn or I look in the pastures, just to check if all is fine and that there is enough water and hay. For some of them, I give some cracked corn.
In the evening, with kids, we give them hay, water and grains ( especially in winter ).
On Sundays, it's the barn ( "boxes" ) cleaning : we take out the old hay and their poop. We clean water bowls, put some clean straw and fill the hay feeders.
We also halter-train them.