No Job, But not just sitting on my Bum either.

I was thinking that maybe my last entry made it sound as if I was just sitting around doing nothing. Well, to be honest I have been busting my rump at several different partnerships and businesses over the past 5 or so years.

My first endeavor was taking care of my mother's then husband's race horses. I had to feed, water, muck stalls, and actually walk one of them by hand. I don't know if you've ever walked a race horse, but it is not an easy task. It's actually quite scary, especially at 4am. I dreaded walking that horse. She was so mean and hard to handle. On top of the devil horse, I had to unload and stack the 50 pound bags of feed and the huge 80 pound bales of alfalfa/timothy mixed hay, which of course had to then be stacked in the barn. Unfortunately (because of the money not the tasks involved) this "job" ended a few months after it started. Racing horses is a costly business and it is real easy to run out of money when your horses aren't winning, as was the case here.

Have you ever found yourself looking for a way to make a living without having a "job"? I have several times in my life and I found myself at yet another crossroads. After spending so much time on the "farm" and in the barn I thought farming might be a good way to go. I had read Joel Salatin's book You Can Farm and thought "we live on 3 acres and have a huge barn, I should farm." I did a little preliminary research and alpacas jumped out at me. So, I wanted to start an alpaca farm and turn their hair, also known as fiber, into yarn and even turn the yarn into clothing and accessories. I had planned on adding value as Joel talked about in his book.

Then the bad news hit...after visiting a few alpaca farms and pricing them, I found out they were darn expense!!! Like $10,000 for one female and that was on the low end of alpaca prices. It would cost nearly $100,000 to get a small "herd"(1 male and 2 females of good stock). Well that pretty much ended that idea. BUT I was also doing some research on spinning and knitting and crocheting. There were other animals that had fiber to use...sheep, goats, llamas, angora rabbits...and they were much less expensive.

Sorry, gotta run, 18 month old to chase. Check back, I'll tell you more.