It has been a year and a half almost since I wrote the last post. New, amazing things are happening for us — life-changing events that I couldn’t have in a million years predicted. If you’ve been following us on social media or talking to us recently, we are starting a textile mill — and you already know all about it. If you are new to the Gealach Fola family, welcome! I am committing to being more socially engaged this year and will be providing regular updates here in addition to social media.
If you’ve been wondering about us the last year and a half, life has been a whirlwind. Here’s a high level overview of the good and the bad, in case you want to catch up. We’re focusing on the future — but the lessons we learn help us guide that future in a better direction. I think it’s important to be transparent about the failures and challenges too.
Some Challenges of the last year and a half
Victor and I both had a variety of injuries. We took significant financial losses from food customers backing out after we already invested everything on our end to produce what they repeatedly verbally committed to buying (Lesson learned: always get it in writing, even between “friends” who reassure you over a period of many months that they’re committed). I had some sort of mystery sickness that had me intermittently bedridden. The humidity and weather conditions culminated in a perfect storm of parasites devastating flocks across the state of Maine — and we took major livestock losses too, despite repeated veterinary interventions and following all of the management best practices. Even our beloved kitty, Aisteach, had to have surgery (he’s since recovered!) and got diagnosed with HCM (which is thankfully not progressing at this time!).
Transformation
We needed things to change. So we started to work on things one by one and get them turned around. We first focused on sorting out why I was sick. We rehomed our quail and rabbits — they were a major contributor for my feeling unwell (turns out I have allergies I didn’t know about).
Rehoming the bunnies was devastating for us — Vic and I both loved how cute they were, and we spent time not only grooming them for their fiber and spinning it, but also just giving them a lot of affection and spending time with them. We still miss them and while I lament that we can’t have them in the future either (or process any angora rabbit fiber!) I am grateful for the experience of having them, and for how my health has recovered since then.
We scaled back our food production, no longer providing to restaurants and co-operative grocery stores so that we didn’t get burned again. We focused on getting our finances healthy and spending the time (while we aren’t at work) doing what we love — working with beautiful fiber, making art, and caring for our remaining animals. Perhaps most importantly, we focused on getting to know the people around us and engaging more with our community — making wonderful friends and meaningful connections.
Looking Ahead
I really believe this year is going to be the best one yet on the farm. Kidding season is right around the corner and soon cute baby goats will be running around. It’ll be warm enough to plant the flax before we know it.
We’re still working on taking apart the mill and transporting the pieces — my next blog post is going to be all about where we are currently at with it — and it’s really demonstrated what an amazing group of friends and community we have.
Everyone has been so kind and helpful, working to help us make our dream come true in different ways. It’s also helped us expand our community to meet people we didn’t know before — especially on Ravelry, where people kindly invited us to share our progress and even requested we make a gofundme so they could help us on our journey.
We’re even starting to get some products ready for sale. We’re working on botanically dyeing organic wool lace weight (18/2) yarn and packaging up superfine merino combed top — and even dyeing wool sock yarn too.
I’m working on an online store so that we can sell things, but we will also have products for sale in person at H&H Mercantile and Belfast Fiber Arts starting in March. We also plan on attending Fiber Frolic this year — Please come to our booth, we’d love to meet you!!
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