Episode 1: How it Started

My husband Greg and I marvel at the whole thing.

“I think we were sort of Pollyannaish. I think it’s beyond Pollyannaish,” Greg said.

“impulsive dreamers,” Lisa replied

“Yeah, there you go,” Greg said.

I think of it like this: see, there are these moments in life, I’ll call them YES moments. Hypnotized or not, they happen when we stumble across a really good thing and say YES.

Greg experiences these moments as overwhelm–where the emotion is so big you either have to shut it off and slink away or just follow it.  Just give into it. For me, it’s like being on an elevator, when it finally stops at your floor and there’s that slight lift. And your stomach doesn’t know if it is sick or excited. Either way, we both agree that these “YES moments” are a surprise–maybe even seem a little crazy, But I have to say, sometimes following your sense of “YES” is the sanest thing you can do.

Welcome to A Fiber Life. In this episode of A Fiber Life, I want to take you with me to the YES moments that started off our guanaco adventure. We are going to start at the river in Sacramento, attend a fiber festival and then go back in time, 33 years ago, to one of the sweetest Yes moments ever.

Our adventure starts, before we made our big life change, on the walking trails of the American River Parkway in Northern California.

These trails wind around massive rock piles that the miners left behind after dredging for gold… 100 years ago…

With the busy city of Sacramento just a few minutes away…this was the place I’d come to for relief each day, with my dogs.

I knew these trails like the back of my hand. They were a lifeline for me because I needed an escape from the demands of running my business, raising teens, and trying hard not to shrivel up in the triple-digit heat. The air was polluted, my schedule was crammed, but these morning walks offered a break from it all.

There was one place on the trail, it was a shortcut really, where I had to climb an embankment. Even when it was muddy or the rocks seemed slippery, I hauled myself up that rise–sometimes the dogs had to help pull.  I climbed for the feeling that I got at the top.

See, the view up there wasn’t really inspiring, but it was expansive. I could see the river in the North, and the pond to the West. I could see treetops and meadows. And, because there was nothing obstructed by housing or concrete or electrical wires or artificial anything, I always breathed it in. There was so much NO in my life at that time, and there on that crest, I could take in a little YES.

The “YES moment” there on the top was like a morning vitamin that I desperately needed to get through the rat race of my day.

It was good to have that little dose of yes every day, but when my husband Greg and I got really honest with ourselves, we realized that we didn’t want to live our lives working so hard to find “THE YES.” And, we didn’t want to feel like we needed to escape to experience something good.

Once I let myself hear that NO, other no’s started coming in loud and clear. I was done teaching and lecturing, I was done with all the self-discipline it took to achieve all the goals that I set for myself in my business and career that had started seeming like a drag.

So, we started a search for where to live and what to do.WE were like those sniffing dogs trained to find truffles–we didn’t know what we were going to find or where it was going to be, but we were very determined.

Our first big yes happened on New Year’s Eve in 2017. We were staying on Whidbey Island cause I had an idea that there were some “YES’s” there.

The cottage was over 100 years old and sat in the shadow of one of those classic porches wrapped, white-washed farmhouses. It was pretty idyllic. My oldest friend Jen and her husband KC had come to celebrate New Years with us. We’d had lots of wine and there was lots of laughter and love.

The moment came when Greg and I were standing in the doorway between the tiny kitchen and the cozy living room. I remember it so well, we were standing on the braided rug that looked like someone’s grandmother had made it when the cottage was still new.

The countdown started: “5, 4, 3, 2, 1…” and all of the sudden—the question was I had been trying to figure out “what am I going to do with my life…what are we going to do” finally had an answer.

It was: We can raise animals for their fiber and make stuff out of their fiber to wear. OMG

“Aha. And did you know how to do that?” my husband Greg asked.

“I didn’t know anything about anything. Other than that, it sounded like a good idea.” Lisa said.

“It turns out it was,” Greg said.

“I mean seriously. The how was not important, the WHAT was like—there we go, I got it. And so then I was all on board,” Lisa said

“ I didn’t need a map, I just needed to walk into it. I don’t know,” Lisa said.

“I was thinking the whole time that this was going to be sort of a backyard proposition. that this wasn’t going to be a lifestyle change. It was just going to be… and we were going to have a couple of animals in the backyard.” Greg said.

“It was like we didn’t set out and say, we are going to create this vision,” Lisa said.

“That’s right, I didn’t have one,” Greg said. They both laughed together.

“I certainly didn’t have any notion about the enormous shift in our lives that was about to take place. I don’t think I had that at all,” Greg said.

“I didn’t, absolutely not,” Lisa said.

After that New Year’s Eve, we felt like we had found a path, but we had no idea what the next step was. But the good thing is, Once you start feeling the “Yes’s” I think it’s hard to go back to the NO’s.

The next YES happened one day while I was on my lunch break. A Zillow notification pinged me and when I opened the listing my eyes got really big. As I scrolled through the listing pictures I couldn’t stop looking at the miles of fencing around pastures and the huge forest of Doug Fir.

The owner of the property was longtime fiber farmer Mary Donaty.

“You called within four hours of listing,” Mary said.

“We didn’t know what we were doing…did you know that?” Lisa said.

“You mean that you were green around the gills?” Mary joked.

“So Green,” Lisa laughed.

Finding Mary’s farm for sale was another yes. Once I showed the Zillow listing to Greg, he immediately called her realtor who offered to hold the property until we could fly up and see it that weekend.

“We land here, rent a car, we’re going down this dirt road, we don’t know where we are going really and we drive up to this place and it’s enormous. It’s overwhelming. There are pastures and trees and a barn and other buildings all over the place that I didn’t know what they were,” Greg said.

Remember I said Greg experiences the YES feeling as overwhelmed with big feelings? Well, here’s how he remembers it.

“The owner was here and she was showing us around and she was explaining everything. Describing what the place was and I don’t think I heard anything that she said the whole time. We walked around this place for 40 minutes—I was so overwhelmed with the notion and the feeling that this place wasn’t just a backyard. It was a real ranch. And that meant we were really embarking on some sort of life that I hadn’t really thought a lot about,” Greg said.

Clearly, this was a big YES moment for him! It was coming in loud and clear.

“I just followed the feeling of being swept away in this new way of living,” Greg said.

I had no idea what it was like.

Again, it was crazy because we’d never had animals, we were far from the homesteader type. I was leaving my job, I didn’t even have the right shoes. But we did it anyway. We followed the emotion, allowed ourselves to be swept away, and embraced another YES.  We bought the farm.

I should mention here that both Greg and I are information gatherers. We like to read reviews on products and ask a lot of questions of people who know more than we do. We’ve always thought through decisions–everything from which schools our children should attend to the best refrigerator for our kitchen. But, I guess, when you are busy following the YES’s, you just say things like:

“Okay—now we have a farm with miles of fence and a real barn and we own it and now we need animals,” Lisa laughed.

The next yes happened when Greg went to go find some animals. I was away at a writing retreat and we figured he could just go figure out which sheep we should start to raise for their wool. Sounds easy, right? Well, he discovered Dana Foss’s booth at Lambtown in Dixon, CA. And the YES just kinda flowed from there.

“She had a little portable corral in the back of it. I walked around and in the corral was an alpaca which I recognized—and another animal that I had seen videos and pictures of but never in the flesh,” Greg said.

“But it took me a minute to realize that the animal was a guanaco. It was Arwen. I was so overwhelmed by how beautiful she was. And her eyes. And I stood there for the longest time just staring at her. Then I walked back around to talk to Dana and I remember the first words I said to her was,” Greg said.

“You have a guanaco in there?” Greg asked and she said, yes I do. And I said can you tell me about it, I didn’t know there were any guanacos in the United States other than in zoos.

And so she started telling me about them. She told me she had a small herd of them. We talked about a scarf that she had that was pure guanaco. We talked about how many animals she had—I think we talked for 2-3 hours. At the end of that, she said, “you know, my husband just passed and I’m thinking of selling the herd. My heart just isn’t there to do this anymore.

And I looked at her and said, I would be interested in buying some.And when I said that it’s like I just knew. I mean, these animals aren’t even domesticated.” Greg said.

That’s Greg marveling at the YES again because really at the time he didn’t know what a handful these beautiful animals are to raise. He just lets himself get swept away.

“So when the offer was made to buy them, it was just like—I didn’t even question that I wanted them. It was so weird. I knew nothing about them.”

“I knew nothing about camelids really in terms of caring for them. There was just no doubt that would work for us. Isn’t that odd,” Greg said.

”It is. It’s amazing. I mean if you put the pieces together it sounds like we were hypnotized.” Lisa said.

I guess I’d like to add here–a bit about guanacos. So, it’s true, most of the guanacos that live in the United States are kept in zoos or private reserves. They are considered exotic animals–which is different from livestock like sheep or alpaca or llamas or all those kinds of animals. And, because they haven’t been bred for specific use like livestock–for their fiber or wool or meat, they haven’t been domesticated. This means they aren’t really interested in humans or human relationships or being touched. And that also means that they are difficult to handle. Their wild instincts haven’t been tempered. They startle, they spit, they kick and jump over fences. They are difficult to shear, hard to vet, and generally, grouchy animals to deal with. But we didn’t know that, did we? We were just following the Yes instead of doing our regular careful research.

“I do remember talking to you and saying, I didn’t learn that much about sheep. But I did find some animals I’d like us to buy. And you said oh. And I said this woman has guanacos. And you just said yes. I don’t think you even knew what they were,” Greg said.

“You said, let’s go see them,” Lisa said.

“Right,” Greg said

“And we went. And that’s when I—honestly—for me, the phrase was Oh—there you are. It wasn’t like how to care for them,” Lisa said.

“What do you feed them?”Greg said.

“What’s their pedigree, how old are they, do you vaccinate? All the questions that we know to ask now, we didn’t ask. I just said, Oh-there you are. And I remember standing at the fence and watching them stand around and chew. And their eyes. Was the most peaceful feeling I had felt in a long time and I was just like—oh, yeah. We want guanacos.” Lisa said.

“Right, and so we bought them,” Greg said.

I’ve thought a lot about this life change. I marvel at the fact that we did it. And I realize that Greg and I lived our child-raising years together with an emphasis on getting things done. We had our jobs and the kids’ activities, and it was rich with experience, but it took a ton of organization and staying on top of to-do lists. With 2 careers and three kids, we used to joke that our family operated like a well-oiled machine. That’s nice and all…..but again, as I said, it was all a bit too much.

I think when we get too far away from following the Yes’ or the emotion, it becomes painful and stifling.

The lucky thing for us was that we had a great experience with a special Yes moment to fall back. It kind of laid the groundwork for us so that when it was time, we remembered how following Yes moments could lead to good things.

“There’s one more yes moment I want to ask you about,” Lisa said.

“It has to do with the moment when we met, “Lisa said.

“That you and I met,” Greg said.

“Yeah,” Lisa said.

“Okay,” Greg said.

“I’m wondering if that moment has a similar feel to it, sort of the same saying yes,” Lisa said.

“You said three words to me and walked away and I just said, Oh my god, this woman is for me,” Greg said.

“Well, you know that I felt the same way. For me it was like, oh that’s the guy I was going to marry. I didn’t question it. There you go,” Lisa said.

I think it’s a beautiful thing if you think about how we started there.

“Hypnotized,” Greg said

“Hypnotized,” Lisa repeated.

And then, here we are having done that several more times.

“Pretty good huh?” Lisa asked

“It’s pretty spectacular,” Greg said.

So maybe, nearly thirty years later, we were finally getting back to this way of being–where we had to trust that impulse and just go for it like we did when we first met.

So, we want to hear about your YES moments. What wild choices did you make because of them and where did they lead you?

Thanks for listening to this episode about how we bought a farm..and how we followed our “YES Moments” to change our life to one that feels worthwhile. Next week we come out of our hypnosis and life gets real. This decision came with real crises and challenges. Tune in to see how we found our way through them.

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A very special thanks to Christine O’Donnell added Steve Kuzj of Bright Sighted Podcasting. They helped with everything, including script writing, editing,