Discuss: A Share in the Shear

Nice. If grazing ruminants were used in more places in urban parkland or roadside buffer zones, etc. we could eliminate the use of thousands of pounds of pesticides annually, and that is in reality eliminating poisoning ourselves and our children in those instances. Every little bit helps.

Inspiring. Wishing Susan well

And I agree with Nori’s comment - I think that farming and grazing inside our urban areas will be a central part of the way forward.

This is a completely misleading article that is not very accurate.  You do a great disservice to the cause of sustainable agriculture by painting such a unrealistic and distorted picture of farming. First of all,  she is hardly ” one of New England’s most successful sheep-and-goat farmers”  Not even close.  Figure it out:  she has 60 animals, avg. net yield of wool of 6 lbs each, at her avg. retail price of $75/lb. is a gross income of $27,000, and that is before the costs of feed, vets, carding, spinning, packaging, marketing and retailing, much less the cost of breeding stock, gas and equipment, such as her truck, shovels, and barn.  And this is best case - not all of her animals yield wool - lambs, etc. She is not even making minimum wage. Free grazing hardly makes a huge difference.  Its a nice hobby for a NYC executive who wants a new lifestyle selling ultra premium wool to knitters but is not a realistic model for any kind of sustainable agriculture.  It is a major task for us to reform our agricultural system so that it is more sustainable.  Lets not trivialize the effort by putting forth these fantasy examples that that have no aspect of reality or viability.

David makes a good point, let’s not make this story into a fairy tale.

But I don’t think that enough of the facts are in for such a cut and dried assessment.

For example, I am not sure that “her avg. retail price of $75/lb” is either a real, or the relevant measure. It sounds like sales are by the “skein” which I take to be an inexact measure. Also the CSA aspect makes it hard to asses the business model from afar.

It sounds to me like Susan may have found a niche for herself. It is OK for a start up to run at a loss as it ramps up and it is definitely ok for a “NYC executive” to invest in her own start up business - her losses after all might have been much worse in the stock market.

Also, it sounds to me that she is walking the walk much more than if this were a hobby.

Can she make a real living from this? I don’t think it is out of the question.

Could someone inspired by her story raise sheep in the Bronx and sell skeins of high end wool in the Union Square Market? Perhaps.

Is there other, hard nosed, sustainable agriculture work which MUST be done? Absolutely.

I came across a quote some years ago, and unfortunately, can’t remember who it originated with, but it was this: “Never discourage progress, no matter how small.” Why attack someone who’s doing something positive, just because it might not make her a millionaire, or just because it doesn’t fit some preconceived idea of a successful business? Perhaps if we all had some small thing we could do that at least put us back in contact with the earth itself in some way, we’d at least feel better about things in general and ourselves in particular, and something good could actually happen. So, maybe there’s an air of contemporary mythology here, but it doesn’t merit attack or complete dismissal. It is what it is, and apparently, Susan is happy doing it. That’s got to count for something.

David, I’m a stickler for details the article reads “more than sixty” and how do you know Susan is not acquiring/raising the herd to larger numbers. You can run quite a few head on 300 acres.

Sustainable farms are not beginning farms.It is the same with any business, it is rare for any business to make a profit in the first five years let alone the first year.

Thanks so much for the encouraging comments. David, I agree with you. If your assumptions were correct my farm would be a “fantasy” example. But you’re off on several points.

Our animals- the breeds and the individuals- shear much higher than you’ve estimated. Our flock is growing all the time (we have upwards of 80 animals now; more half of those are bred females). Angora goats are shorn twice a year and their kids are shorn at six-month-old.

But most importantly you’ve assumed that I am trying to run a farm on a single income stream. In addition to our CSA, we retail our yarn at farmer’s markets in an affluent vacation area. Your estimated retail price per pound was extremely low. I buy high-quality fleeces from other farms at a fair price to supplement our own fiber.

We sell yarn online, introducing new colors every 8-10 weeks. This creates a constant cash flow.

We also developed our brand and logo with an eye towards merchandise sales. T-shirts and tote bags are sold online and at several Island shops.

We started a daily blog so that my shareholders can keep up with the animals. As the blogs popularity grew I was able to sell ad space.

Our agritourism component is called Shepherding Camp. Visitors can pay to come and stay on our farm for a week or a weekend.

We started the Martha’s Vineyard Fiber Fest. In it’s first year the festival drew knitters and spinners from as far away as California and Texas.

The fantasy, David, is that any farm can be sustainable selling a single product and without doing as much marketing as farming.

I can relate to Susan Gibbs.  I am an organic farmer with a Type A personality.  I’m not sure which development came first: my desire to farm or my personality type.  There’s always something to do on my idle-not farm. Generating creative ways to manage a shared landscape is a hand-shake deal if you incorporate local communities.  Keep up the good work!