Diane is the shepherdess, fiber artist, maker, and educator behind Enchanted Forest Alpacas, a fiber-centered farm and studio located in Northwest Michigan. Her farming life began in 1982, when she and her husband Maynard, built a working farm in crops and dairy, a foundation shaped as much by education as by land. Diane holds a Master of Science in Nursing as a Family Nurse Practitioner and a Bachelor of Science in Dairy Science from Michigan State University. Maynard holds a Bachelor of Science in Dairy Science from MSU as well. In 2020, they made a deliberate pivot to alpacas, bringing four decades of agricultural knowledge and a lifetime of craft into a new chapter.
The fiber arts have been Diane's constant practice for fifty-four years, encompassing sewing, embroidery, hand knitting, machine knitting, and crochet. The past four years have deepened that practice into spinning, weaving, felting, and eco-friendly dyeing. Her formal fiber credentials include certifications from SUNY Cobleskill in Basic and Advanced Fiber Sorting, Grading and Classing, and from the Camaj School of Fiber Arts in Drum Carding, Wool Scouring, and Raw Fiber Processing, including the designation of Certified Scour Master. She has studied at the Camaj Spinning Extravaganza and the Sheepspotters Spinning School, and is currently enrolled in the Handweaving Academy and the Jane Stafford School of Weaving. Her business foundation includes graduation from Kara Law's Launched Business Academy.
Enchanted Forest Alpacas raises registered alpacas with a show record spanning 2014 through 2025, including multiple 1st place finishes, Reserve and Grand Color Championships, and walking fleece awards at Michigan International Alpaca Fest, the AOA National Show, Buckeye, RailSplitter, Wisconsin, Illinois, Heart of Virginia, Futurity, TXOLAN, MOPACA, and others. Diane holds membership in the Alpaca Owners Association, Michigan Alpacas Association, Rocky Mountain Llama and Alpaca Association, Pacific Northwest Alpaca Association, Handweaving Guild of America, Michigan League of Handweavers, Northland Weavers and Fiber Arts Guild, Sheepspotters "The Guild," Machine Knit Community, Knit It Now, and Michigan Fibershed.
The farm's work follows a single commitment: the full journey from animal to finished object, made slowly, with nothing left out.
The land came first.
In 1982, Maynard and I began farming in Northwest Michigan, in the particular rhythm of crops and dairy that requires you to understand time differently than most people do. You do not hurry a field. You do not argue with a season. You learn to read the things that are slower than you are, and to trust them. Maynard holds a Bachelor of Science in Dairy Science from Michigan State University, and I hold one as well, alongside a Master of Science in Nursing as a Family Nurse Practitioner. We came to the farm well educated and still found that the farm had things to teach us that no curriculum had thought to cover.
Running alongside that life, quieter but just as constant, was the fiber.
I have been working with textiles for fifty-four years. Sewing and embroidery and hand knitting and machine knitting and crochet, those arts that are sometimes called domestic, as though that word is a small thing, as though the domestic is not where most of actual life happens. I did not grow up thinking of these skills as a practice. They were simply what I did, the way I thought with my hands. It was only as I moved deeper into spinning and weaving and felting and eco-friendly dyeing, in the past six years, that I began to understand how much of a life could be held inside a single thread.
The certifications followed naturally from that deepening. Basic and Advanced Fiber Sorting, Grading and Classing from SUNY Cobleskill. Drum Carding, Wool Scouring, Raw Fiber Processing, and the designation of Certified Scour Master from the Camaj School of Fiber Arts. Study at the Camaj Spinning Extravaganza and Sheepspotters spinning school. Enrollment, currently, in both the Handweaving Academy and the Jane Stafford School of Weaving. Not credentials for their own sake, but because the more precisely you understand a material, the more honestly you can work with it, and honesty in craft is not a small thing either.
In 2020, Maynard and I made the decision that had been gathering for some time. We would pivot the farm. Not toward retirement in the ordinary sense of quieting down and stepping back, but toward something that brought the whole of our lives into one place at last: the land, the animals, the craft, the accumulated knowledge, and the desire to pass all of it forward to our children and grandchildren. We would raise alpacas. And we would bring the fiber all the way through, from the animal to the finished object, without cutting corners at any point along the way.
Enchanted Forest Alpacas was born from that decision.
The farm raises registered alpacas with a show history that spans 2014 through 2025, including multiple 1st place finishes, Reserve and Grand Color Championships, and walking fleece awards at Michigan International Alpaca Fest, the AOA National Show, Buckeye, RailSplitter, Wisconsin, Illinois, Heart of Virginia, Futurity, TXOLAN, MOPACA, and others. These are not ornamental animals. They are working partners, and the fiber they produce is what the whole enterprise turns on.
What comes from that fiber, currently, is this: 100% Alpaca Batts for hand spinners and felters who want a pure, single-origin fill. 60% Alpaca / 30% Clun Forest Sheep Wool / 10% Tussah Silk Batts for those who want a blend that adds warmth and structure. 80% Alpaca / 20% Tussah Silk Batts for those drawn to the luminous, drapey edge that silk brings to alpaca. Coming in the summer and fall of 2026: 60% Alpaca / 30% Clun Forest Sheep Wool / 10% Tussah Silk Socks, and Alpaca Duvets made from our own animals' fleece. Teaching programs in spinning, weaving, knitting, crochet, fiber processing, and alpaca care are in development for those who want not just the product but the knowledge behind it, the people who are ready to practice slow fashion not as a trend but as a lasting way of making choices.
The name holds its meaning deliberately. There is something that happens in a forest, in old growth and layered life, in a landscape that has been tending itself longer than you have been paying attention. You slow down. You begin to see what has always been there. We hope the fiber arts can do something similar for the people who find their way to this work: not just clothe or warm them, but orient them, toward the real, the slow, the made with intention and kept with care.
The fiber you choose is a form of stewardship. Of the land, of the animal, of your own body, and of the world that will outlast you.
We believe that is worth something. We believe it is worth quite a lot.
