Part 2 - As Time Goes By...

We moved our three horses onto the property. My wife was in negotiation with a farm in Georgia to purchase and young Colt by the name of Two-Tone Chek. A "Medicine Hat" Paint horse to be our stallion that we would offer breeding to.

At one point during our time as a horse farm, we had four stallions on property that we offered for breeding. Amy at the time was also buying and selling horses with another farm in Scotland, CT.  The horse business paid the bills for a while but like any business, there are ups and downs.  It got to a point where people were giving away horses because they could not afford to feed them. We were constantly offered free horses.  At one point, we had around 20 horses on property between the stallions, mares and babies.  We boarded a couple Paso Fino's for a friend of ours. As the horse market began to tumble, we looked at other livestock in order to diversify. 

At that time, Alpacas began to become more affordable to the small farm.  In their early years, Alpacas were only affordable by the very wealthy.  A big plus to these animals were the tax advantages.  Somehow the powers that be were able to get a dollar for dollar write off on your taxes for Alpacas since they were new to the market and this was a way to promote them. 

We dove head first into the alpaca business and did very well. After a few years into raising and selling alpacas. Once a year we would have our animals sheered (shaved) and the good quality "fiber" would be sent out to make yarn.  There was also a small market for rug yarn where you would use your lesser quality fiber. We noticed that there was always a long wait from when you send out your raw fiber to when you actually got your finished yarn back.  Most Alpaca farms would have a small shop on their farm where they would sell their products.

I asked Amy how the mills do that process the fiber and if it might be a good business to look into. Less than a year later, we got the opportunity to purchase a used carding mill along with a picker and a rug yarn maker.  There are several other mill machines that you would have to add to this list in order to make regular yarn for clothing.  Since we only had enough money to buy those three machines, we decided to go into the Alpaca rug yarn business.  This turned out to be a good business.  Most mill owners did not want to produce rug yarn over clothing yarn.  At the time, a mill would charge around $26 a pound to process fiber for clothing yarn.  Rug yarn was only going for around $14 a pound.  So, to a mill owner that invested in the whole lot of machines to produce clothing yarn, it did not make sense to process much of the cheaper yarn.  For Amy and I, we only had the three machines that were paid for. Most mill owners had loans on their equipment. 

Once we started promoting our rug yarn mill, it took off. Every day we would get orders in.  The UPS and FedEx truck would be at our house constantly. This proved to be a pretty lucrative business to run out of our barn. Especially when Amy got sick and would not have been able to work. We had three employees with 2 shifts running the mill. Upcoming Post…Spinning Yarn.

-wf

Part 1 - The Early Years...

Welcome to the Wicked Farmer Blog.  I'm wicked in the New England sense, which means really awesome!

Through this blog I will document my experiences as a gentleman farmer in Connecticut and everything that it entails.  I bought my farm back in 1999 in a small town in Eastern CT.  I originally purchased 10 acres with a small Cape style house and an old barn.  The small house dated back to the 1890's and originally was a bunk house for the giant farm that once encompassed the property. The barn on the property dates back to around the same time. 

When I moved in, the barn had been set up for Oxen.  The half loft was low, about 6 feet from the floor.  I was going to use it for horses so I had to raise the loft up.  I also added a large three stall lean-to off the back and one on the right side. I more than doubled the size of the barn  to accommodate my 4 horses at the time.

There was also a smaller outbuilding, we called the "red shed".  Sections of it had a concrete floor but the main section had a dirt floor, which the previous owners had laid down a bunch of carpet remnants. When I was re-doing the barn, I had pulled up some heavy duty pallets that were used for the oxen to stand on. These pallets were bigger than normal and did not have gaps.  I arranged them on the floor of the red shed as a base for the floor. I was able to cover the entire dirt floor section with these pallets.  I then bought 4x8 sheathing and screwed them to the pallets which locked them all together. It gave me a pretty decent floor. This became my workshop. Of course this quickly became too small and I proposed to my wife to built a larger barn on an existing concrete foundation. There are three existing foundations on the property. There is a fourth one but it was so broken up from time, it can no longer be used.

After some hemming and hawing, my wife agreed to my new barn idea. I had never built a post and beam barn in my life. But, I wanted to show my parents and myself that I could build something by myself with little help.

Once I catch you up on the progression my farm took, I will talk about recent activities here and my plans for the future. I will also look at interesting new ideas for small farms. My goal is to be as self-sufficient as possible. - wf -