http://www.woodworkersworkshop.com/store/Small_Saxon_Spinning_Wheel

It’s several hundred dollars cheaper to buy the plan than to buy a pre-made one (at least the once I glanced at anyway). That actually does sound fun.

Now you just need some children to help run the farm and then you’ll have your own self-sufficient community with no need for outside contact.

Good point. My nephew, Adam, is a working toward becoming a journeyman meat cutter, so I could always pay him to handle sheep until I was up to it. (Generally lambs actually, meat from adult sheep is called mutton.) I have a leg of lamb in the freezer that he butchered a couple weeks ago. I plan to smoke it on the barbecue Moroccan style. Yum! Pigs are much harder to butcher, and then there’s all the smoking and curing for hams and bacon. Adam is planning on building a smoker for this, but until then we can always hire out 4-Star Meat Co like my brother does for his pigs.

I’m pretty sure PETA advocates vegetarianism. That’s not my viewpoint.

Actually, spinning your own wool would be pretty cool! I’ve looked at some plans for spinning wheels online. It would be a neat woodworking project. Unfortunately, Robin has yet to try soap making or candle making (for which she has all the supplies) so I might not be able to drum up any interest from her on this subject. I probably shouldn’t admit this, but I’ve used Robin’s sewing machine more than she has too.

So how are you going to process the sheep and pig? That’s a lot of more involved than chickens, right?

It seems like we have a budding PETA member here…

Maybe you’ll be able to spin your own wool and stop buying ready-to-wear clothing as well.

We helped my brother’s family last summer clean about 10 chickens. Not pleasant work, but I think it’s important that people recognize where their food comes from and how it’s treated. The supermarket insulates people from far too many of the ills of our food production system.

We plan to add sheep to our property some time in the next year. With sheep, chickens, and an occasional pig we should be able to stop buying meat from the supermarket entirely.