Pine Needle Farm

My dream has come true after 9 years!  I have my own cashmere dehairing machine!!!  Now I can process mine and other people's cashmere into cloud ready to spin, or process further at another mill.  This has been a dream of mine ever since I got into raising these wonderful creatures.

   Since there aren't many of these machines in use in this country, and I am the only one concentrating exclusively on cashmere, that I know of anyway, I expect to be happily buried in cashmere for the rest of my life. 

  I am getting everything all set up and organized gradually.  The machine came a month early, so I don't have a building built for it, it is in the corner of the hayshed now.   I was trying to get a little loan to build a real dehairing room for it, but no one will loan me any money without collateral, so I am going to have to build walls around the machine where it sits now, dehair like crazy all winter, and get something built next year.  Not the ideal situation, but I can make it work.  I am feeding mostly round bales of hay this year, so I don't need every inch of space in the shed, I think this will be okay for this winter.  As long as I am warm and dry while working on the cashmere, that is all that matters.  It will be tight quarters, but it will work.  I am just so excited to have the machine here!

     Now that I am dehairing cashmere full-time, I won't be doing the Farmers' Market anymore.  I'll kind of miss the interaction with people.  I've met a lot of nice, interesting people through there.  But, one door closes, another one opens.  Onward and upward I go! :-)