Selling My Crafts - Gayle Bone's Story
I'm Gayle Bone and I own and operate Square Hole Ranch and Kestrel Illustration & Fine Art Studio.
We started out with Angora goats six years ago. I spin, crochet, needle felt and wet felt different products. Wayne, my partner, weaves. We were frustrated by not being able to buy the quality of fiber that we needed to make our fiber products so decided to try raising the Angora goats. That turned out to be very profitable with raising our own fiber and also the sales of the goats.
We decided to explore other fiber animals and found that llamas are economical to feed and although we only shear them every other year, the amount of fiber that we get from each llama is very substantial. So llamas were added to the farm.
We also found that Angora rabbit fiber is very profitable because of the dollar amount we can sell it for even raw and it raises the value of our other fiber products where we added the rabbit. Among the fiber products that we sell are: fleeces (both raw and washed), roving (dyed and natural), handspun yarn (dyed and natural), woven wearables and home accessories, needle felted purses and other items, wet felted bowls and other items and crocheted purses and other items.
We decided to add Nubian goats to the farm also to supplement any orphan Angora kids that we might have. We discovered the practically limitless products that we could make with the milk. The Nubian milk has a very high fat content so everything made from it is very rich. This includes all edible products (milk, cheese, ice cream, etc.) and also the soaps, lotions and creams that we make. We are unable to sell any of the edible products that we make because that would entail having a Grade A facility and that's just not what our focus is here. But we are able to sell the goat's milk soaps, lotions and creams. All are extremely moisturizing and have other healing ingredients included such as lanolin, emu oil and shea butter.
We have a different way of marketing - most of which is word of mouth.
To get our name out there we joined The Mountain & Valley Wool Association of which I am currently on their Board of Directors and also their Data Manager. I volunteer every year to demonstrate different ways to process fiber at the New Mexico State Fair's Sheep to Shawl exhibit. We participate in a yearly fiber tour where several different fiber farms hold open houses and allow the public to come and visit the farm, see our
To market our fiber we also go to fiber festivals where we have a booth set up. The goat's milk products are displayed at several local retail stores, hair salons and feed stores.
we had for sale. The word got around as to what we raise and have. Now we have waiting lists for the kids and crias every spring. We try to keep our costs down so I do all the book keeping and also do all of the shearing myself.
If you have any questions on our business please contact me at: gogobone59@q.com.
Thanks and good luck to you.
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