Career change!

[sienamystic]

Is it wrong of me to want to give up my tres glamorous life in a non-profit in order to retire to a farm and raise alpacas? natalieann, you'd come with me and process their wool into deliciously soft and beautifully dyed yarn, would you not? eccentricartist, you'd come help me shovel alpaca poop, right?

Comments

[apis-mellifera.livejournal.com]

Of course I would!

Can we have a few sheep, too?

[sienamystic.livejournal.com]

Serpently! I have added one for you. Much better than keeping them on your balcony.

[lasa.livejournal.com]

I'll design for you? (I already do for some people who have done exactly that.)

[sienamystic.livejournal.com]

Perfection! The commune gathers power...

[shaoliang.livejournal.com]

I know someone who actually did this: http://mrs_figby.typepad.com/blog/

AND she lives on an island and has to take ferries to get places. So jealous.

[sienamystic.livejournal.com]

Guys, you're giving me Very Bad Ideas.

[swooop.livejournal.com]

Goats. We must have goats. The right type of goat gives great wool, woman. And I am familiar with rural living. I'll grow the veggies. And the poop can fertilize the gardens. And I'm *extremely* insulted you didn't invite me. Hmph.

[sienamystic.livejournal.com]

I am truly sorry! We definitely need your skill with gardening, since I am cursed with a black thumb. And we might need Herself along to help with goat wrangling.

I am adding an angora goat just for you.

(Lord, they are much, much cheaper than alpacas. Maybe we should start with goats.)

[swooop.livejournal.com]

(Lord, they are much, much cheaper than alpacas. Maybe we should start with goats

I am telling you, goats rawk. Alpacas are a bit pricey, but they'll pay for themselves really fast, you know. You buy two girls, breed them, sell a baby, and they're half paid for. They also are quite adaptable. And yeah, I actually have looked into it. I have all this land, you know.

If we're in the right area, there might be a market for cut flowers as well. If the goats don't eat them. But I refuse to mess with roses. We'll have to find someone else to do that.

[sienamystic.livejournal.com]

eccentricartist spent a long time working for a nursery - we'll leave the roses to her, if she's so inclined...although I think she's more of a hostas and herbs type. AND she's been wanting to run a bed and breakfast and is considering becoming a CPA, so we'll have somebody to crunch numbers. She's off at Celtic Classic for the weekend, so she's not here to object to my volunteering her (heh heh heh).

A regular alpaca costs about 15K - a PRIZEWINNING alpaca can fetch about 40K. We need investors to put up some AlpacaCapital for us so we can get this thing off the ground.

This thread is a great excuse to keep saying Alpaca, which is very entertaining indeed. Alpaca alpaca alpaca.

[elys84.livejournal.com]

15?!?! You can't even ride it! For 40K I could buy an extremely nice warmblood winning at 4th level nationally and 3'3 A circuit!

Speaking of which, how about horses? I could train them :)

[sienamystic.livejournal.com]

eccentricartist already asked for horses, which I'm fine with - although I haven't ridden a horse in ten years, and not seriously in fifteen. (note to self: make icon of my old horse, Jake.) We can offer trail rides, training, and lessons!

And you might be able to buy a nice warmblood for 40K, but would that horse have won a ribbon at Alpacalooza? I think not!

[tenebraeli.livejournal.com]

I'm in... and I vote for goats as well, not to the exclusion of the others. Not to mention the wool, they give milk, make baby goats, and can clear large areas of pasturage that have become overgrown simply by eating their way through it. And they are cute.

For what it's worth, I have some farm experience... know how to feed chickens (and hypnotise them), geese, goats, and turkeys. Have actually helped with the annual turkey kill for thanksgiving. Takes a really big funnel.

I'm not too familiar with gardens, although I can learn to weed, and although I haven't woven anything since kiddie days, I still want to.

I can bring to the table a lifelong experience of living on the edge financially. I know where to get Government cheese, I know which charities will give out free clothes, and I can survive in an uninsulated shack through winter (with snow), with a bed made of one sleeping bag and two blankets.

Keep me in mind. *g*

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

know how to feed chickens (and hypnotise them)

Do you really do it by putting their beak to the ground and drawing a line out from it??

[tenebraeli.livejournal.com]

Well, that might very well work, but the method taught to me by my step brothers when we were all seventeen was not the kindest. I'm a little embarassed about it now.

First take chicken, grasping both legs firmly in one hand.
First slowly, then building up a little more speed, begin to swing the chicken in big overhand circles as far as your arm will reach.
Don't, of course, do this to the point where either you or the chicken are hurting.
Put chicken down.
Chicken will sit there for several minutes with goofy expression on its face.

Like I said, I'm not proud. But on the plus side, I did manage to tame a gosling, with out any overhand swinging, so that by the time she was full grown she would follow me anywhere, knew her name, and would snuggle with me. Never did manage to get her house trained though. *g*

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Well, it's an appropriate time of year to remember it - that sounds a lot like the old Jewish tradition of scapegoating on Yom Kippur. (Yes, it does involve swinging a chicken around your head. No, I am not making this up. Go here, scroll down to Yom Kippur, and look for the bit about kaparot. No, no one does this anymore.)

[sienamystic.livejournal.com]

The goats have a strong lobby! Well, it's ok - they are very entertaining to look at as well as having good fleeces, and indeed they do clear out brush very nicely. Every good commune needs a skilled technician in the art of chicken hypnosis, so consider yourself duely added to the list.

[lasa.livejournal.com]

I own about an acre of cleared land? Is that enough to start? ;) That goat is too great not to have in my backyard.

[sienamystic.livejournal.com]

Apparently, you can keep about five or six alpacas on an acre. And, um, while I was sort of poking around alpaca farm websites, I found somebody mentioning that you can usually fit three alpacas into the back of a minivan.

Is it not a great goat?

[lasa.livejournal.com]

And I have a minivan! It'll only take two trips to populate my acre!

I'm quite amused by the thought of alpacas in my back seat.

Ah, yes...

[dakiwiboid.livejournal.com]

I believe that one of these snugglies shows up in The Llama song as "not a llama"! If you do it, I'll come and shovel poop in exchange for a sweater, or perhaps, if I have a house by then, take away some poop to compost, if you'll let me have such a valuable commodity. I mean, you may need to heat your ranch with the waste heat from the compost heap.

Re: Ah, yes...

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Ha. I was wondering where an engineer would come in. Maybe I can bring my copy of the Real Goods Sourcebook and try to figure out how to convert that compost to heat, not to mention the passive solar, gray water, and wind generation systems.

Re: Ah, yes...

[sienamystic.livejournal.com]

Perfect, because while I will cheerfully shovel poop, I have no idea how to use it once it's in a big pile. I haven't ever had a proper compost heap, just a pile in the back where we dumped lawn clippings and pretended it was composting.

[eccentricartist.livejournal.com]

wow I've certainly figured a great deal in this thread since I haven't even said anything yet. Yeah, if I get that accounting cert then I'd be happy to do the books, but I refuse to deal with roses. They don't like me and they're pissy little plants anyway... like an annoying little brother "aw, gee guys, c'mon tend me! please! guys!!"

so, I'm up for accounting and gardening (hee veggies! poTAtoes! yaaay) plus I would not be averse to relearning to ride well enough to give lessons. and I know how to compost :) not how to use it for anything beyond making compost, granted, but that's a good start. and my friend the Dish lives on a sheep farm, so she can inform me in that arena.