Senior Delivery Manager Lesya Kushnir and her family moved from Kyiv to a village in the Carpathians, where they started an alpaca farm. Now the IT professional combines a full-time job at an international IT company with farming.
Senior Delivery Manager Lesya Kushnir and her family moved from Kyiv to a village in the Carpathians, where they started an alpaca farm. Now the IT professional combines a full-time job at an international IT company with farming.
Lesya Kushnir worked in investment companies for about 10 years. After the birth of her third child, she decided to change her field of activity and moved to IT. She started as a Project Manager, and over time she moved to more technical roles. In total, she has been in IT for 5 years.
For over 2 years, in addition to her main job at an international IT company, Lesya and her husband have been developing the alpaca farm «Khitra Staynya» on the border of the villages of Richka and Yavoriv in the Ivano-Frankivsk region.
The idea to start my own business in the Carpathians originated in 2020-2021, at the height of Covid.
«Then the company sent me to work remotely, the children switched to distance learning, and my husband just quit. That is, we stopped being tied to the city,» Lesya Kushnir said in an interview for DOU.
The farm is located on land where several generations of Lesia’s family have lived. It was an inheritance from her grandparents.
The family moved to the Carpathians from Kyiv, where they had a well-established life and their own large apartment.
Initially, the idea was to build houses for rent on the site, which eventually changed to an alpaca farm.
«I always wanted to have animals and wherever I went, I tried to find farms. I can’t explain why, but I have a great love for such places. I remember once in Iceland we stopped to live in a stable. It was in a field, there was not a soul around, only horses. The sensations were incredible. It’s a special energy. When we realized in February 2022 that we were staying in the Carpathians, I, without thinking twice, took an alpaca farm off the dream shelf, and we set about making it happen,» says Lesya.
After research and visits to other farms, the family brought an alpaca from Poland in May 2024.
«And it was very difficult to organize. I joked that it was the longest delivery process in my career as a Delivery Manager. In total, it took about a year. There was a lot of paperwork, and most importantly, communication was very unusual for me,» says the IT professional.
In 2025, they plan to open the farm for visits in two formats: without accommodation (just visiting) and renting a house for living on the farm.
Now there is a zone of houses on the territory, which is remote from the main area where the family lives. And between us is a common space, where the farm and pasture with alpacas are located.
«I work in the classic sense of full-time, from morning until night. When I go on a business trip, all the work falls on Maksym. Sometimes we bring my grandmother to help,» says Lesya about combining work and the farm.
Currently, Lesya does not need to travel to the office often: the Ukrainian office was closed with the start of the full-scale invasion, currently there is only a coworking space where employees can rent a place and work, and the company pays for it. Lesya goes on business trips several times a year, a maximum of two or three times. Usually to Sofia in Bulgaria, less often to Boston in the States.
«I joke that I’m making a career in mountaineering and I don’t plan to stop. I find it very interesting. It’s cool to watch how stereotypes are broken in life: you can’t grow if you have children, or if you live in a village, or if you do something other than work. But in reality, you can be a mother and a wife, build a career, raise chickens, go to Boston, and even have an alpaca,» says Lesya.
There are many other plans and ideas in the future: to build more houses, increase the number of alpacas and their breeding, start making wool products, and maybe even start a YouTube channel.
Супер! Однак, вода на фермі — це половина успіху, особливо в птахівництві. Якщо поїлки криві або постійно течуть — проблем не уникнути. Тому мені зайшов розділ VADA поїлки для птиці. Там видно, що обладнання підбиралось з урахуванням реальних умов, а не “для галочки”. Коли система напування працює стабільно, ти реально менше паришся і більше контролюєш інші процеси.