Raising alpacas in a place of rest

David Kabbai and Amy Alyeshmerni flank Venessa, who now has accepted Amy into the family.
David Kabbai and Amy Alyeshmerni flank Venessa, who now has accepted Amy into the family.

-61st in a series-


Exit 40, SR 79 North, Descanso, California ~ Alpaca Ranching

By Donald H. Harrison

Donald H. Harrison
Donald H. Harrison

DESCANSO, California – While operating his DaMar Plastics business in San Diego, and later El Cajon, David Kabbai often dreamed of living a quieter, simpler life, somewhere  where the air is clear, the nights are starry, and where he could raise gentle alpacas for their fleece.  Seven years before he retired, he purchased a 14-acre ranch in this eastern San Diego County hamlet, whose name translated from the Spanish means a “rest” or a “break.”

A rest or a break was just what Amy Alyeshmerni needed. Her real estate consulting company specializing in shopping center leasing took her on fast-moving business trips all over the country, and one day, after watching her sister undergo medical treatment for breast cancer, she had an epiphany.  If the disease had interrupted her life instead of her sister’s, would she have lived the life that she really wanted?  When a cousin called her and said there was a guy, who raises alpacas, whom she should meet—a Persian Jew, like her own father (both families left before the Iranian Revolution in 1979)—“I said, ‘A what rancher? Set it up! ‘ I thought if it was a man who cares for animals, he would have the right moral center that I was looking for, and I was totally right.”

Alyeshmerni gave up her consultant company, and took a job as a leasing manager with Westfield Shopping Centers, and is now focusing on the redevelopment of Horton Plaza Shopping Center in downtown San Diego, about 40 miles away.  Although she was a “city girl,” who grew up in the Jewish neighborhood of St. Louis Park, Minnesota—a suburb of Minneapolis—she fell in love with Kabbai and his bucolic life style.  She is also very fond of the alpacas, especially one named Venessa, who at first considered Alyeshmeni to be a rival for Kabbai’s affection.

“It took a while for her to accept me,” she recalled.  “When I would stand next to David, she considered David hers—she thought she was David’s girlfriend—and when I first came on the scene she would come right between us and push us apart.  She was literally jealous of me.”   Subsequently Venessa could see that “there is a connection between me and David, and now we’re okay.  Over time, I won her over.”

Venessa is one of 65 alpacas at the Kabbai ranch, some of them owned by a friend who also is in the alpaca business.  Alyeshmeni’s man “who cares for animals” also owns 11 chickens, one rooster, two female cats, and two Anatolian Shepherds, the latter being very large guardian dogs that protect the alpacas against such backcountry predators as mountain lions, bobcats and coyotes.

One of the dogs is named Tika, and the other, not yet full grown, is Caleb.   When Caleb reaches adulthood, Kabbai told me, he will weigh approximately 155 pounds and will be a formidable opponent for any mountain lion that might consider alpacas a potentially tasty treat.  “He might get hurt in a fight with a mountain lion, but he will outweigh the lion by some 30 pounds.  Rather than jump over our 8-foot fence and encounter two large dogs, a mountain lion would prefer to go after somebody else’s chickens.”

Tikka keeps watch on some of her alpacas
Tikka keeps watch on some of her alpacas

Originally, said Kabbai, Anatolian Shepherds were brought to the United States from Turkey.  “They are trained by herders to think for themselves.  They are problem solvers. If there is a problem that has to do with the animals, they will solve it on their own.”  At the Kabbai ranch, that tendency has manifested itself in chasing crows away from the alpaca’s water supply, and in saving an alpaca from drowning during the rainy season.

One day while Kabbai still was working at DaMar Plastics, “it had been raining all day, and we have a ravine that was clogged up.  There was an alpaca there and Tika, standing up to her neck in water in the ravine, kept putting her head under water to pick up the leaves that were clogging the ravine and throwing them behind her… just to save that alpaca.  She must have done that for an hour; she did not give up.  When I went in with a shovel, she stayed out until the ravine’s water level went down, until she knew that the alpaca was safe, before she went inside to dry off.”  Alpacas are taller than the Anatolian Shepherds; at the time of its rescue, that particular alpaca was in water “up to its belly.”

Alyeshmerni said the Anatolian Shepherds “will do anything they can to guard what they consider to be their territory” and its occupants—whether those be alpacas or human children.  “Tika taught the (human) babies next door to walk,” she added. “They would crawl around and grab ahold of Tika’s hair and as the baby would stand up, Tika would stand up too. As the baby took a step, Tika would also take a step. As baby would sit down, Tika would lie down next to the baby until it was ready to get up again.  Tika is incredibly intuitive.”

Crimped fleece from an Alpaca
Crimped fleece from an Alpaca

There is money to be made in the alpaca business, which Kabbai conducts under the name of Atlas Alpacas. The best part of the alpaca business, he says, is that it doesn’t result in any animals being slaughtered for their meat or for their hides.  Once a year, the alpacas are shorn of their fleece, which, depending on its softness, density, and its crimp (the number of bends per unit) can sell for $8 to $10 per ounce.  From 65 alpacas, Kabbai said, he can realize between 350 and 400 pounds of fleece.

Kabbai and other U.S. breeders are working hard to produce alpacas whose fleece is well crimped, very soft, and as appealing to the finest clothing manufacturers as the fleece now produced in certain South American countries that is sold to top-of-the-line Italian clothiers.

Male alpacas with top quality fleece potential can sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars, while females sell for considerably less, Kabbai said. That is because less than one percent of alpaca males qualify for breeding, whereas a much higher percentage of females are considered suitable.

Another market for alpacas is people who want them for pets – who, like Kabbai, enjoy watching them graze as the sun is setting behind the western hills.

Kabbai has family in La Jolla, where he grew up after migrating to this country from the Iranian capital of Tehran, and, likewise, Alyeshmerni has family in Los Angeles.  Respectively the two families are members of Congregation Beth El in La Jolla and Sinai Temple in Los Angeles.  The couple enjoys family reunions for the various Jewish festivals and alternating Shabbats.

Still, compared to La Jolla, Los Angeles, or St. Louis Park, Descanso is well off the beaten path for Jewish life.  In the back country areas of Lakeside, Harbison Canyon, Alpine, Descanso, Guatay, Pine Valley, and Laguna Mountain, there are isolated Jewish families, most of whom, like Kabbai and Alyeshmerni are animal lovers.  Every once in a while, usually by serendipity, they find each other and compare notes about what it is like living on the frontier of Jewish life.

This need to find people of similar backgrounds who know a challah (Sabbath bread) from a kallah (bride) was an element in the friendship that formed between Kabbai and the late Bob Howard, a Pine Valley resident who was the son of a Catholic mother and a Jewish father.

“When I moved up here, he was very helpful,” Kabbai recalled.  “I didn’t know anything—for example, the drinking water here comes from 200 feet underground.  I didn’t know anything about wells, and he helped me set up.  I had no real idea what ranch life was about. Because he was half Jewish we spent quite a bit of time together.  He was much older, 70 something years old at the time, so when we had to move him out of his house to a smaller place, he stored his belongings here. Sometimes, he would come over and go through the things, and he found letters that were written to his father from Europe.”

The letters were from two different families, both desperate to get out of Nazi Germany and Austria.  In the first, dated February 2, 1939, Dr. Emilie Bondy of Vienna said of her husband, Dr. Emil Bondy: “Since August 1938, ie, since half a year, he is in prison in a concentration camp. When he will get free we must leave the country and we do not know where to go.  I am therefore addressing myself to you with the request if it would be possible for you to help us.  If you would be so kind and give us the possibility of going to U.S.A. by sending us affidavits we would be immensely thankful to you.  Once arrived in America, we surely would not trouble you anymore.  My husband, a skillful and expert doctor of medicine, will certainly find an occupation very soon.  As for myself, I have studied Anthropology at the University of Vienna, and have published scientific works; I hope to get in a short time an employment in a museum or institute. … I beg your pardon for addressing myself to you, but there is really no other way left to me.”

The second, dated June 3, 1939 from Vienna, came from Ernst Katscher, an attorney who said he was born in Moravia on  Nov. 27, 1881, the son of Jakob and Henriette (Horowitz) Katscher.  His father owned a brewery and later a factory before the family moved to Vienna where Katscher received his law degree.  “The change of affairs in Austria, however, as well as the introduction of the race-laws forced me, like all the other Jews, to give up my profession, whereby I lost my means of living and the fruits of 26 years hard work. In this way I undeservedly got into distress and there is nothing else to do for me but to build up a new existence abroad. I hope that with the aid of friends in America, I shall succeed in doing so, especially, as I am a bachelor and thus need care only for myself but not for a family as well.”

Both letters were written to Howard’s father, whose surname also was Horowitz, in the hope that some family relation could be assumed.

Kabbai and Alyeshmerni were touched by the letters and took them to Yad Vashem on a recent trip to Israel, where they were logged and entered into that Holocaust Museum’s extensive collection.  Thus far, the couple has not been able to learn what the fate was of the Bondy and Katscher families.

“These letters are heart breaking when you read them,” Alyeshmerni observed.

“Amy and Bob would sit and talk for hours about this stuff,” said Kabbai.  “His father was in the garment business and because I was getting fleece, he was interested, and he would come here and spend hours staring at those animals out there.”

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From SR 79 exit turn left to Riverside Drive, which will become Viejas Drive, and then left at River Drive.  Atlas Alpacas is located at 9718 River Drive.

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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World.  You may contact him via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com