More Details

Let's start filling in some of the blank spaces. I'm working on the business plan, and will post details from it as they become available for public consumption. The basics are these:

I'm the plant guy, the IT guy, and the permaculture guy. Tiffany is the animal person, and will deal with the alpacas, chickens, goats, and whatever else we have, including directing the construction and maintenance of their housing, feed storage, fencing, and whatever else they need. Liam is the beekeeper, and will be working with a couple we know from the First UU Church to get our hives established. He'll also be doing some of the construction, learning Earthship methodology in the process. Lucki is our marketing director and general roustabout.

Our products will divide into three major lines: alpacas, apiary, and agriculture. Some of those will cross over with each other, such as the alpaca yarn being dyed with woad and indigo that we grow (organically and sustainably) on-site. We'll have ancillary lines, such as my maille, and whatever other crafts people decide to pursue.

Today I am working on gathering money for the project, closing out my 401k and pension plan, working on completing the business plan so that we have it to present to loan officers, and seeing what sort of loan and grant opportunities there are for a beginning family farm. I've added a Paypal donation button to my own blogs (tarliman on Xanga and crankygeezer on blogger), and will be assisting Tiffany in adding a donation button to this blog, so that people who want to kick in a buck can do so. We're also talking about doing a Kickstarter video, but that's going to have to wait until we have land tat we're making an offer on, so that we have something to show people other than pictures of alpacas (although Tiffany would probably say that pictures of alpacas are enough). We need to go out to Yellow Rose, the farm we're sourcing our alpacas from, and shoot some video of their herd, especially Angel Lily, whom we have purchased, and the girls that are carrying our cria.

So that's the state of the state, as it is, Tuesday, January 11th, 2011.