Tag: update

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The Path Forward

Hello everyone!

I wanted to provide an update on how things are going. We have been exceptionally busy, dyeing yarn and preparing roving to sell in order to raise funds for the mill building and vending at events — as well as working, farming, planning the mill facility and operation.

We have selected the site and started clearing it. Vic also put in a road from the driveway to the site and has started putting in the parking lot. We will be getting gravel delivered in the next few weeks to complete it.

View from the edge of the future parking lot, towards the mill site.

View from the same point, towards the parking lot and driveway (entrance to the main road). Barn with red roof is approximately 12′ x 24′ for reference — the 24′ length is the view shown. The parking lot is going to be able hold about 20 cars, based on initial plans, and will extend into the vegetative area.

View from the driveway towards the parking lot and mill site.

After the parking lot goes in and the site is finished being cleared, we really have no more progress we can make on the mill until we raise enough funds for the building. The funds we have raised so far through our gofundme, vending at Fiber Frolic and New England Weavers Seminar, and from online sales has helped defray some of the costs of the gravel — which will be delivered in the next few weeks. Thank you so much to everyone who has supported us and helped us get this far. It really means the world to us.

We are also excited to announce that we will be converting our fiber arts studio, located in the parlor of our house, into a brick and mortar storefront so that we can have a more permanent place to sell our products. We have scheduled the grand opening for October 11th. In addition to fiber and hand dyed yarn from our farm and the closed Jaggerspun factory, we will also be selling yarns and botanical dyes from other Maine farmers and hosting classes and events. A general overview of our offerings:

  • Hosting Free little craft library in our parking lot — just like a little book library, but crafting themed (craft books will be welcome, also!)
  • Yarns, fiber and warps hand dyed on the farm
  • Yarn produced by other Maine farms
  • Maine made fiber blending equipment
  • Fiber available by the ounce or braid
  • Blend your own batt in the store on our blending boards, if you don’t have one!
  • Small equipment rental
  • Vintage silk kimono fabrics
  • Kromski spinning equipment and rigid heddle looms
  • A large variety of Lacis specialty products, from tapestry looms to bobbin lace and kumihimo supplies.
  • Small classes, workshops and events
  • Lunatic Fringe Yarns — Silks, Silk-metal blends, and mercerized cottons.
  • Lantern Moon and Chiaogoo knitting needles and crochet hooks
  • Knit and crochet test needle library containing the following lines:
    • Chiaogoo Twist Reds
    • Nova Platina
    • Lantern Moon
    • Karbonz
    • And more!

Lastly, if anyone has any input or advice, we are always happy to hear from the community. Thank you, and I look forward to seeing you in the near future!!

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New Transition

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind. It took 3 more trucks and a 7 ton flatbed trailer to get (almost) everything that was left home in the last two weeks. There is one more flatbed of equipment left to move — the pieces require heavy machinery due to their weight and dimension, so we are waiting until the resources become available to move them — which will take us to a total of three large flat bed trailers and seven 26′ box trucks for the move. It has been an intense journey so far — Vic lost over 30 lbs in six weeks from how hard he was working, taking everything apart and moving the(very heavy) pieces around the mill building so that we could expedite getting them onto the trucks. The two largest machines we got, the spinner and plyer (with a combined footprint of about 100′ by 15′), were located on the fourth floor of the mill. We were very lucky that there was a freight elevator, which was about 8′ wide — most pieces fit in there. Only about 120ish individual pieces were too large to fit and had to be carried down the stairs one at a time.

This sounds like a lot, but it’s a small percentage of the pieces. There were literally thousands of individual parts and at least ten thousand fasteners by the time it was all dismantled. The pieces are in our barn now; walking in there is pretty difficult due to the sheer volume of items. We have the technical manuals for the machines (which have assembly and parts diagrams) and lots of photos of the disassembly process to help guide us in reassembly once we get the building built to run the equipment in. We were initially planning to do an extension on our barn, but it has quickly become apparent that a new standalone building closer to the road will be better for logistics in the long run. While we save up money and raise funds, we’ll be spending our “spare time” individually sorting all of the fasteners into labelled bags — the speed with which disassembly was required, due to the deadlines, didn’t allow for sorting them as we went.

I would definitely characterize this as the most difficult thing we have done since we got out of the military. While nowhere near the longest we have had to be apart (our first two years of marriage were spent with the Pacific ocean between us, due to the needs of the Navy and our country) it certainly didn’t feel any easier. It has also been extremely rewarding — we have made a lot of meaningful connections and learned so much so far. I am really looking forward to the future.

We botanically dyed our first batch of lace weight organic wool (18/2) yarn during this time too, which will be for sale. Vic delivered the first half of the batch to H&H Mercantile today after he got off work. We’re still working on reskeining the rest, but I love how the colors turned out — despite our stove running out of gas right after all the dye was in the pots! Luckily, we have a wood stove that we finished installing a few months ago, so we were able to heat everything to the appropriate temperatures to set the dye. The hand-painted ones turned out paler than expected due to this, but I think they are beautiful regardless!

We will be working on dyeing and packaging yarn, and packaging roving, every weekend for the foreseeable future. We have registered as a vendor for Fiber Frolic (Maine’s premier fiber festival!) at the end of May and will also be attending NEWS (New England Weavers Seminar) in July with our very good friend Alice from Belfast Fiber Arts.

I hope to get our online store up and running as soon as we have enough product ready. After the stove fiasco, I want to make sure our colorways are consistently established before setting them up for sale online. One to three 600yd skeins of matching, limited edition botanical colors is beautiful and inspiring .. But perhaps not the most desired for consistency’s sake.

Thank you so very much for your attention and for caring about what we are doing. We’ll post again soon — and in the meantime, we hope to hear from you!

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Moving time!

I am so excited to announce that Vic has finished taking apart the rest of the equipment and we are now able to focus solely on transporting it home to the farm! We expect all the remaining parts to fill two 26′ foot uhauls and a flatbed trailer.

After 234 hours of actively turning wrenches and weeks of living apart to get the work done while keeping the farm going and my career on track, we are so close to no longer needing to be separated anymore and I am so happy I do not even know what else to say!

For those who want to see, here are photos of most of the remaining parts (we have already brought home three 26′ trucks and a 25′ flatbed before now, for the other machinery):

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A New Leaf

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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