For the past three years, Lyle and Sue Baskin have worked hard to bring their new dream to life.

At their first try at the Alpaca Show at T. Ed Garrison Livestock Arena in Clemson, all three of their new baby alpacas took either first or second in their categories.

It was an indication of how far the two and their farm have come.

Alapacas of Riverside Farm is a small farm in Clyde, N.C., just west of Asheville. The Baskins moved there when life got too complicated.

After living and working in Miami, Fla., for most of her life, Sue Baskin had had enough.

“You could never relax,” she said. “My husband was driving 45 minutes each day to work. I was working all the time. There just wasn’t any downtime.”

After a back injury, Mrs. Baskin just wanted to get away. So, the couple bought a house on a piece of property in the mountains of North Carolina. In a year, another 2 acres opened up across the street from them.

“We thought, if we don’t buy this property, someone is going to come in and build a house right in front of ours,” she said.

But they needed a way to pay for the investment.

That’s when they found out about alpacas.

Native to Peru and Chile, alpacas produce a coat that is used in South America as a soft, warm fiber.

But in America, the animals are bred to produce more alpacas.

“They’re prized for their fiber. It’s just as warm as wool, but it doesn’t have the lanolin and it doesn’t have that hard, scratchy feeling to the fiber. It’s virtually impossible to be allergic to it,” Mrs. Baskin said. “When there are 500,000 in the U.S., someone will open up a commercial milling operation to process their coats, we’ve been told.”

Right now there are about 100,000 alpacas in America, said alpaca breeder Dan Radulescu of Smoky Mountain Alpacas in Stuart, Va. It will take another four to five years to reach the 500,000 goal.

“Right now a baby brings in much more money in the market than the fiber does,” Mr. Radulescu said. “But here they were looking at 60 percent fiber and 40 percent confirmation or the build of the animal. They are following the Australian contests. There, the large shepherds are changing from sheep to alpacas because they are easier to care for and the fiber is more valuable.

For the Baskins, alpacas were a natural choice. Healthy, easy-to-care for animals, they are accustomed to the mountains, and more of them can occupy less space, a cost-saving measure for the couple. The couple sells not only the baby alpacas, but also their dung to a local organic gardener.

Mrs. Baskin said they do whatever they can to make up for their $100,000 investment into alpacas.

But, there is something they have gotten from the animals that money can’t buy.

“These animals have made me well,” Mrs. Baskin said. “When we moved here, I couldn’t walk. We had to buy an RV to get me from Miami because I couldn’t sit down. … But now with all the walking up and down the mountains to take care of them, I am healthy again.”