Luxury has a name, and it is alpaca. For centuries, buttery soft, silky cloth spun from the fiber of alpaca was the mark of Incan royalty and was treasured more highly than the gold that would fuel European lusts. As the royals and priests fell victim to the European invasion of the 1500s, only a remnant of their alpaca herds survived.
Three centuries later, Europe rediscovered the alpaca’s luxurious fiber, and it became a favorite of British royalty. Soon, its favor spread to the fashion houses of the continent, but it wasn’t until recently that alpaca began to be imported into the U.S.
Laurence ’75, ’86 and Donna (Clyburn) Binder ’76 discovered alpacas while visiting the Houston rodeo and livestock show. Looking for animals to raise on their newly acquired property south of Navasota, they had considered cattle and horses but felt it would be hard to break into the established network of breeders.
The decision was sealed with a kiss—well, three actually—as Donna experienced the cautious curiosity of the alpaca and the gentle “alpaca kiss.” They were looking at what they thought at the time were llamas. One approached Donna and put its lips to hers. “I didn’t know what to do. ‘Laurence,’ I said, ‘there’s a llama on my lips. What do I do?” Donna said. “He said, ‘don’t make any threatening moves. Just stand very still.’ And it backed away. Then its pen mate needed to see what was going on. ‘Laurence, there’s another llama on my lips.’ After this happened for the third time, a lady across the way said, ‘I think you’ve been chosen,’ and I said, ‘I think you’re right. The question is, by what?’ That’s when we learned that they were alpacas.”
In 1997, they began one of the first alpaca operations in Texas, Bluebonnet Hills Alpaca Ranch. Today, it is home to approximately 75 alpacas, and offers sales, breeding and boarding. While Texas is a far cry from the bitter chill of the Andes, they have found successful strategies that help the animals thrive. And, if things do go south, two local vets are experts on alpacas, and a camelid authority is on faculty just up the road at Texas A&M.
The Binders’ award-winning animals are a part of the alpaca registry, a database of suri and huacaya alpacas that includes DNA records. The fiber of the suri is fine and silky and grows long enough to touch the ground if the animal is not sheared. The fiber of the huacaya is shorter and coarser by comparison, and, although it looks like sheep wool, it feels to the touch more like cashmere. Both types of Alpaca fiber are remarkably lightweight, strong, lustrous, high in insulation value and resistant to rain, although they lack the lanolin found in wool. Most U.S. alpacas were imported between 1984 and 1998, when the pedigree registry was closed to further importation, which helped preserve the value of the animals. Typical prices range from a “pet-quality” animal at $1,500 to $2,000 to show-quality breeding females from $12,000 to $22,000 and sometimes higher.
“We had planned to have the business up and running by the time we retire, but it has happened far more quickly,” Donna said.
“Starting out can be scary,” she said. “We started with money from our retirement accounts. I told Laurence that ‘if I’m going to have to work until I’m 110, I’m going to be so grumpy you’d better not die ’cause I want you to be here to listen to it.’” Fortunately, the hard work is paying off. She attributes their success to helping their customers begin their own enterprises by going the extra mile to ensure they are ready for their new charges and, if they run into unexpected challenges, doing all they can to keep them on the path to success. “We’re not going to let you fail,” she said.
The Binders say getting into the alpaca business isn’t just about making money, it is also about making friends. “There is a real sense of community,” Donna said. “While there is competition, it is among friends. We realize that our breeding decisions likely played a role in their success. I’ve gotten teary when some of my customers beat me in the ring.”
Shearing time is a community event, akin to an old-fashioned barn raising, as alpaca owners gather from throughout the region known as the “Alpaca Capitol of Texas.” Twice a year, the Binders host seminars for people interested in learning about the alpaca business, and friends meet at shows around the state and nation.
Reared in Houston within two miles of each other, both Laurence and Donna attended Pearland High School, yet it wasn’t until their college days that the two met. That encounter involved a lot of drama—real drama.
Laurence already had two years of college under his belt at Lon Morris College in Jacksonville and was preparing to continue his studies in theater arts at Southwest Texas State his junior year. He was keeping busy doing what he loved as director of Pearland’s community theater troupe. Donna was hired to direct the music for the productions, and collaboration began.
Donna was already attending Lamar, majoring in applied music in piano and had taken a number of education courses. Her high school choir director was a Lamar graduate, and it was through her that she met Hurbert Kaszyanski, a much-loved music professor at Lamar. “He was able to get more out of me with kindness and his gentleness,” Donna said. “I would have jumped over the moon for him.”
Laurence transferred to Lamar as a theater education major in the middle of his junior year. In August, the two were wed. Laurence student-taught at Beaumont French High School and then taught 10 years at Austin Middle School. After graduating, Donna taught three years at Central Junior High in Nederland.
“During this time, we owned a florist shop in Beaumont and were part of Imagination Concepts, a Beaumont acting group,” Laurence said. The acting group performed dinner theatre and other shows, including a standing booking at the Beaumont Petroleum Club. It involved a number of Lamar theatre students. “We did Godspell, and I think we did all the Neil Simon plays,” Donna said.
Then, Donna was diagnosed with Menieres Disease, which left her with permanent hearing loss affecting some frequencies. The unexpected challenge would end her music career. She went back to Lamar to get her elementary certificate and taught at Cathedral in the Pines. Laurence earned a masters in educational leadership at Lamar while teaching in Beaumont.
Their first child, Keith, was born in 1984 and soon whetted his academic teeth as a Baby Red Bird at Lamar’s Early Childhood Development Center. Soon afterwards, the family moved to the Houston area. Son Kevin was born in 1987. Kevin came to Beaumont in 2004 as a student in Lamar’s Texas Academy of Leadership in the Humanities, from which he graduated in 2006. He is continuing his studies at Texas A&M with an eye toward economics. Keith was preparing to enter A&M as a junior when he died in 2005. Both sons found expression of their love of music as founding members of Texas High Life, Keith on drums and Kevin on bass. The band’s second album, Yellowbird, is a tribute to Keith.
Today, Laurence is assistant superintendent of secondary instruction for the Cypress-Fairbanks school district, the third largest school district in Texas with 101,000 students. He has been at Cy-Fair for 23 years, first as a teacher, then director of instruction, and as an assistant superintendent for the past three years.
Donna continued her career in education after moving from Beaumont, first teaching sixth-grade classes in middle school, working a part-time split position as she reared Keith and Kevin. During this time, she completed a master’s degree in counseling at Prairie View A&M. Her research there on low socio-economic-status learners led to a counseling job in the district. She later taught junior English in special education, but, after five years, “the business got so big and so demanding that I knew we had to rethink this,” she said.
Four years ago, she learned of a position at Cypress Ridge High School requiring special education teaching experience, counseling experience and signing experience—all qualifications she had acquired—for a counseling position for the deaf and hard of hearing cooperative. “Nine districts send their children to ours,” she said. “That job had Donna stamped all over it.”
Today, whether they are working with the youth of Houston or surveying the frolicking alpacas overlooking the ponds and wide-spreading oaks of their acreage, they find a quiet satisfaction in hard work and enjoy the luxury that is country living.
