Camping at an Alpaca Farm in Montana (Feeding Alpacas + seeing a newborn!)

For the last five days we've been exploring the beautiful state of Montana. We've seen glaciers and waterfalls, swam in a crystal clear lake, stood in all the mountains, and eaten delicious huckleberry treats. After a super fun day hanging out with Dan and Erin, two new friends and Montana locals, hiking the Rocky Mountain Front and attempting to fly fish, we are driving south for a very cute and unique adventure. We're currently heading to a town called Belgrade, Montana which is near Bozeman because... We are going camping on an alpaca farm! There is a service called Harvest Hosts where wineries, breweries, farms, museums, and golf courses will let self-contained RVs and vans stay on their property for free in exchange for supporting their business. We've wanted to sign up for Harvest Hosts for a while now, but we've always talked ourselves out of the yearly fee. The regular membership is $80 a year and then the one that includes golf courses, which is the one I want, is $120 a year and it also includes some other perks as well. But two of our subscribers, Alyssa and Rick, very generously gifted us a Harvest Hosts membership. So a humongous thank you to them. That was so freaking nice and we are so excited to experience some really cool local businesses around the U.S. We're about to pull into the farm. The views from all the way from Augusta to here have been just incredibly insane. It's been an awesome drive. So one thing that it's good to know about Harvest Hosts, and specifically this one, is that you need to request to be able to stay in advance. So we reached out a couple weeks ago asking if we could stay tonight and they sent us a text message with some instructions to find our spot. So hopefully we'll find it pretty easily. Turn in and go through the gates and shut it behind you. Oh my gosh, there they are! They're so cute! This one's screaming and being chased. So we're staying at Sentinel Ranch Alpaca Farm, which like we said earlier is located in Belgrade, Montana, which is close to Bozeman. They have two different areas you can park in if you're an RV or a van. They have the area kind of close to the barn at the front, which I believe is where all the female alpacas are. And then where we are right here, which is the back area, it's a couple neighbors right here. And that is where all of the male alpacas are. So we're walking up from the van where we parked our camp spot to the gift shop and where the staff are. And we're hopeful that they're going to give us a little tour of the farm here and show us what it's all about. They are so cute and they have like huge human looking teeth. Yeah. And they just smile like... I love it. Look at that alpaca face. They're just like circling us, staring at us. I can't stop laughing. Their teeth are so funny and they have like really bushy hair on their eyes. They're so funny. This is so cool. All right. I'm feeding the alpacas some grain. I'm a popular lady right now. You want some? I feel his teeth. You want some Noel? You want some? Hi guys. Hi. Oh my goodness. So we're in the nursery area and there's tons of babies. This one was born on August 2nd. So just seven days ago, I think. They're bringing in a fresh born baby. Just born probably minutes ago. Wow. So when the babies are born, all the moms want to swarm in and check it out. So the gestation period for an alpaca is 11 months. We are headed back to the van and we just got done with our tour of the nursery of the alpaca farm. Everybody is so freaking nice here. So nice. They'll spend so much time talking to you about anything and everything. Answering all your questions. It was so cool because we knew we probably would get to feed the alpacas and pet them. And I had heard that sometimes you can see newborns. And we got to see some pretty new alpacas that are like a week or a week old. But we did not expect to see one that was, I think literally was just born and they carried it over there. Just bringing it in. Like it was still, it sounds kind of gross, but wet. And you can see like a little bit of blood almost on the mom and the baby, but that sounds gross, but it was even cooler to see that. Because it just shows you like how real and recent it was. And we got to watch it take its first steps. They did kind of have to help it because it was kind of struggling to get up. Yeah. Let me think of that song that's like, I get knocked down, but I get up again. Like it just kept flopping. I'm glad to see it. Yeah, they usually get up within like 15 to 20 minutes, but he was kind of struggling or he or she. It was a she. Pink collar. And then they kind of had to help it figure out how to nurse and stuff, but she was starting to get the hang of it when we left. It was great. They just let us stay there and just watch the whole thing happen. Yeah. So then we went to the store. The store was fun too. And we got some goodies. We got ourselves some socks because my hiking socks keep getting holes in them. So I was in need of a fresh pair. And there's actually, so this is made out of the, it's not the fur, the fiber. The fiber. The fiber from the alpacas here. And the guy that gave us the tour was telling us how much better like this fiber is than wool. Than wool. Yeah. They said if you have some kind of fabric on your skin that you want it to be alpaca because it wicks better than wool. It's cooler and it's stronger than wool. So it's kind of, it's better in many ways. Breathable, I think. More breathable. So he said wool is great for suits and things like that. That's outside of, you know, not immediately on your body, but if it's something on your skin, alpaca is the best way to go. So we're going to be hiking in comfort now. We are taking a bit of an alpaca break to make some dinner. We always make the same three to four meals. So we are switching it up tonight. So we found a recipe from this blog called Fresh Off The Grid. They make just simple like one pot meals that are great, like for a campfire or camping, things like that. We've never made one of their meals before, but I've always followed them on Instagram. So I'm excited to give this a try. It should be pretty good. We're going to make African sweet potato and peanut stew. And we'll give you a little glimpse of all the ingredients here and get cooking. We're having a wild moment right now. If you watch our vlogs, you know that we love barbecue and we love our meat. And guess what? We are trying a vegetarian meal here. So it's, yeah, I don't even know where to start. I got all these ingredients. So I guess the base is there's a, we have a vegetable broth, has sweet potato. You throw in kale towards the end. There's diced tomatoes. You've got garlic, a little bit of peanut butter, garbanzo beans to kind of hardy it up. Throw a little bit of onion in there. And then I think a lot of the flavor comes from, it's supposed to be New Mexico style chili pepper or chili powder, but I could only find the hot Mexican style chili powder. So that's what we're going to go with. It sounds pretty dang good, huh? I'm super excited about this recipe. I think the Fresh Off The Grid couple actually modified a recipe from another food blogger called Oshi Glows. And I think we came across this recipe during our time in Austin quarantining. We wanted to make it, but we just never did. So today's the day and it's going to be delicious. I hope. I mean, can you really go wrong with peanut butter? I don't think so. No. It's kind of sounds like a weird combination, but peanut butter makes everything better. So I think it'll be really good. All right, dinner is ready. I'm very curious to see how this tastes. I know Adam's snuck a few bites to test to see if like the chickpeas and stuff. Yeah, only to test if the chickpeas are warm enough and if the sweet potato is soft enough. Everything's good to go. So I've got a slight teaser taste of it, but I'm really excited to give it a full go. Oh man, it smells super unique, huh? Yeah, I don't know how I would describe the smell. Like there's not one element that like really stands out to me. It smells good. It's just I've never smelled anything like it before. It's hard to describe. Careful, it's going to be hot. Yeah, A plus. That is really good. It's really good. That's super good. It's similar to the smell. I don't really know how to describe the taste besides just good. Yeah, it's got like a little bit of sweetness to it. I'm not really sure what from. It's not the peanut butter because there's no sugar in it. But it's just it's really hearty. The chickpeas give a good little bite. Sweet potatoes are nice and soft. Yeah. Yeah, the hot Mexican chili powder gives it a little. Kind of like a almost like a roasted kind of like. Yeah, it's a roasted chili, smoky, smoky flavor. Yeah. Yeah, it has lots of good different textures in it. The kale is kind of a unique texture compared to the sweet potatoes and chickpeas. I'd say it's like a nutty, smoky, just really fresh flavor. And I've been wanting to eat more chickpeas and they're really good. Yeah. This is awesome. Good job, chef. Good choice. It was your choice. Teamwork. Yeah. Makes the dream work. Something I think we forgot to mention earlier is just how gorgeous this area is. There's mountains there, there, there, there. Everywhere. All the way around. It's so pretty, especially now because the sun's setting and everything's glowing. It's just gorgeous. And we're here at sunset. The little newborn baby alpacas in the nursery supposed to get a little rambunctious and playful at sunset. So we're going to go check them out. We're back. This is the baby that we saw this morning that was born. That was your first day. Did you have a good first day of life? You're looking cute and fluffy now. So as you kind of mentioned earlier, their teeth are like... They only have teeth on the bottom. Yeah. They only have teeth on the bottom. Some of them are just so tall and it looks like they're coming out of the top. They're huge. I think they were saying that the older they get, the more their teeth show. Is that what they said? I think so. I'm not 100% sure if that's right. Makes sense. But yeah, some of them are like real teethy. Baby alpaca update. They started to get a little more rambunctious as we were hanging out a little bit and as we got out of the pen, I guess, to give them their space to... To gallop. Yeah. So they started jumping and like kind of... Getting some air. Yeah, bumping each other and getting air and running around. Super cute. We could sit there and watch them all night. We did not want to leave, but y'all, look at this sunset. Sunset is incredible. Oh my gosh. The craziest thing just happened. When we were walking back over here, we ran into the guy that we saw at Lake McDonald when we were paddling around that recommended we go to Pole Bridge. We went to Pole Bridge. We got this hat. We gave him a shout out on that vlog. Yeah, we gave him a shout out if you go back and look or if you saw that vlog. So weird and crazy. It's just crazy that we ran into him in two very specific places, not even right next to each other. Yeah, this is hours away. Within days. Wild. But it's getting a little dark. We're hearing some coyotes out there. So we're going to head back to the van. But we were told earlier that the stargazing out here is incredible and it's such a clear night. It's a very clear night. So things are looking good and we've been wanting to do more night photography. So we're going to stay up for a bit until it gets dark and then hopefully get some cool shots. This camera is probably not going to capture it well, but we're going to try to get some photos. So we'll keep you posted on how it goes. All right, let's go find the Milky Way. Seeing tons of stars, but no Milky Way yet. So I downloaded this app called PhotoPills to hopefully help me see where the Milky Way is. This is like a night augmented reality. I don't really get how it works, but it looks really cool. We're going to test it out and see if it's accurate. We're seeing so many shooting stars and I think I found the Milky Way. You can see it with your eyes a good amount. And I think I just got my first photo of it, but I'm going to keep trying to get a better one. The first time we ever saw the Milky Way was in Bend, Oregon. The weekend we actually decided that we wanted to do the whole van life thing. And it was like, it almost made me cry. It was so magical. So if you've never seen the Milky Way, definitely add it to your bucket list. I hope these photos turn out so we can show you guys. This is really cool. All right, I'm going to upload the photos I got to my computer so we can check them out, edit them real quick and see if they're any good. We're definitely beginners at this. So we have a lot to learn, but I think I got some good stuff. I did a super quick how to edit Milky Way photos and Lightroom tutorial so I could figure out the more proper way to do this. Look at this photo. That is before and that is after. Impressive. Dang, it's pretty dang good. When you were showing me the photos outside, I was like, yeah, it's pretty good. Unfortunately, we just packed up and we left all of our new alpaca friends. This was our first Harvest Host experience and it set the bar very, very high. I don't know how anything will ever beat this and the cuteness. So we wanted to give another big thank you to Rick and Alyssa for gifting us the Harvest Host membership. We cannot wait to use it. We actually have another one booked in a couple weeks that we're really excited to show you guys. And if any of you guys have an RV or a van and you want to sign up for Harvest Host, when you become a member, you get a refer a friend discount. So we have 15% discount code. We'll put the link below so you guys can sign up and save some money. But even if you don't have a van or an RV, you can come to Sentinel Ranch Alpaca Farm and actually tour it. I believe Monday through Saturdays, they do tours for the public. So definitely come check them out, buy some socks, support their business. They are really great people. But unfortunately, it's also going to be the end of our time in Montana for right now. We had an amazing time fly fishing, hiking, glacier, alpaca farms. It's just unbeatable. The mountains, the scenery is just incredible. So yeah, we're going to really miss this. It's probably one of our, it definitely is one of our new favorite states. We just absolutely love it. So what's next for us? We are headed to a new state and we cannot wait to show you guys around. Uh, this vlog might get a little x-rated today. I think we now know what these noises are. Oh God, there's one running towards us. He has one tooth, it's just like dish. Watch the poops. Oh man, I gave up on not stepping in the poop a long time ago. Sorry, there's a moth in here that I'm trying to get.