Icelandic sheep in farm funding competition!

Hey Permies-
I wanted to ask for your support in a funding competition based out of Seattle, WA.  We are the ONLY farm in the competition, most of the businesses are traditional retail or services.
Before I get into our background, I just wanted to let you know that your vote is FREE, it is IMPORTANT, and you can vote again every 24 hours!

Here is the link to our video presentation, and the voting page.  You don't HAVE to watch the video, it won't run automatically for those with low bandwidth.

This link


Lydia's Flock is an Icelandic and Shetland farm located just outside of Bellingham, WA.
Our starter flock of Registered Icelandic Sheep of 4 ewes and 2 rams was purchased in 2010 from Alderwood Ranch, on Whidbey Island in Puget Sound. These sheep carry some of the best genetic lines from across North America. Over the last 9 years, we have grown the genetic diversity of our flock by adding rams from the Midwest whose sires reside in Iceland...

As shepherds, our top priority is the contentment and optimal health of each and every sheep on our farm. This means humane, ethical treatment with lots of attention and affection, no matter if retained on the farm for breeding stock or slated for the table. We firmly believe that the happiness and overall well-being of our beloved sheep flock is vital to the success of our farm.

You can also visit us on Instagram or at Lydia's Flock!

I didn't know that sheep could move that fast!

Grass farming indeed!

I can't stop smiling - that's a lovely video. Thank you for all you do, and should I ever move somewhere where I'm allowed to have sheep, I'm hitting y'all up.

Still smiling...

This is a little bit about Lydia's Flock:

Our starter flock of Registered Icelandic Sheep of 4 ewes and 2 rams was purchased in 2010 from Alderwood Ranch, on Whidbey Island in Puget Sound. These sheep carry some of the best genetic lines from across North America. Over the last 9 years, we have grown the genetic diversity of our flock by adding rams from the Midwest whose sires reside in Iceland...

As shepherds, our top priority is the contentment and optimal health of each and every sheep on our farm. This means humane, ethical treatment with lots of attention and affection, no matter if retained on the farm for breeding stock or slated for the table. We firmly believe that the happiness and overall well-being of our beloved sheep flock is vital to the success of our farm.

You can also see them on Instagram!

This link is used to vote for them in the Business Impact NW Pitch Competition.

This link is used to vote for them in the Business Impact NW Pitch Competition.

And I think you can vote every 24 hours. Stuff that ballot box!

Oh! The live pitch event at Westlake sounds like fun! Business Impact NW

Thank you Dave-
I realized how sparse my post was...I was out in the garage getting ready to head out on a hay run.
You filled in all the details, quick research!
And yes, you can vote EVERY 24 HOURS.  We could use the votes, I don't want to get beat by a Vegan cheesecake!
Please feel free to repost and share that link to our video page anywhere you feel is appropriate.
We're currently working with a couple farms incorporating permaculture with sheep!
Jared

I've voted for you. Icelandic sheep are lovely.

Thanks, Kate.  Send more friends our way!

I've edited the subject line to help people know a bit more about this and hopefully vote for your sheep : )

Thanks...so hard to do self- promotion when you work a job that requires your hands...

Voted! I'm interested in getting shetlands in a few years (when my kids are a bit older, and I'd love to learn more about what you're doing, especially as you're almost in my neck of the woods!)

I'm going to try to mention you in the dailyish tonight--hopefully that'll get you some more votes!

Nicole Alderman wrote:Voted! I'm interested in getting shetlands in a few years (when my kids are a bit older, and I'd love to learn more about what you're doing, especially as you're almost in my neck of the woods!)

I'm going to try to mention you in the dailyish tonight--hopefully that'll get you some more votes!

Thanks!  I appreciate that!

Have you guys thought of writing a book about raising sheep for fibre and milk in a permaculture/regenerative way? I would LOVE to read such a book! I think such a book is very much needed in the world right now!

Nicole Alderman wrote:Have you guys thought of writing a book about raising sheep for fibre and milk in a permaculture/regenerative way? I would LOVE to read such a book! I think such a book is very much needed in the world right now!

I agree. We need permaculture sheep books!

Kate Downham wrote:

Nicole Alderman wrote:Have you guys thought of writing a book about raising sheep for fibre and milk in a permaculture/regenerative way? I would LOVE to read such a book! I think such a book is very much needed in the world right now!

I agree. We need permaculture sheep books!

Maybe that's what winter is for...

Voted again!

Nicole Alderman wrote:Voted again!

Just need a couple hundred people to do that every day!

Well, I'm surprised there hasn't been much of a "bump".  I think people have gotten burned out on Instagram when I post every day.  I figured "the daily-ish" hits a lot of people.  Maybe if I was giving something away...

jared strand wrote:Well, I'm surprised there hasn't been much of a "bump".  I think people have gotten burned out on Instagram when I post every day.  I figured "the daily-ish" hits a lot of people.  Maybe if I was giving something away...

Maybe if you made the first post clearer, with some video or photos as well it would help?

Right now it's a bit vague about how it all works, what you are doing, and that it's free to vote, that you can vote every 24 hours, and so on.

Here is my crowdfunding thread from last year: https://permies.com/t/94982/critters/Backyard-Dairy-Goats-book

I gave lots of information and tried to make it all very clear.

The dailyish was really good for my crowdfunding, I don't think I would have even got to 100% if it weren't for the dailyish and the Permies community, and I was so grateful for the help that I put pie on the back cover and gave Permies a huge thank you inside the book.

To help things along, thread boost and tiny ads can easily be purchased for very reasonable prices, and doing this also helps to cover the costs of running this wonderful website. Here's the link for tiny ads: https://permies.com/dx5

jared strand wrote:Well, I'm surprised there hasn't been much of a "bump".  I think people have gotten burned out on Instagram when I post every day.  I figured "the daily-ish" hits a lot of people.  Maybe if I was giving something away...

The readers here respond well to people who contribute to the community prior to asking for help.

Take Kate for example.  She needed help with her excellent goat book so she participated in a give-a-way and event to become better known in the community.  She dedicated a week to answer questions on the forum and her quality posts helped improve her visibility in the community.  When it came time to ask for the community to help her, they leapt at the chance because they knew who she was and it was simply returning the favour.  And if her book was half as good as her helpful posts, you knew it was going to be great!  

There are lots of ways to contribute to the community.  Permies runs in the red.  Thread boost is a great way to promote your stuff while earning 'credit' among the readership.  

jared strand wrote:Well, I'm surprised there hasn't been much of a "bump".  I think people have gotten burned out on Instagram when I post every day.  I figured "the daily-ish" hits a lot of people.  Maybe if I was giving something away...

We work really, really, really hard to keep the dailyish from being spammy. We want the 30,000+ recipients of the email to get cool, free information about things they might be interested in. We're all volunteers, and we love that permies is a place full of free information and support for people. There is never any obligation for people to click a link--they click it if it sounds interesting for them, and I hope they like what we send out and tell us what we can do to improve. The dailyish is FOR permies and from permies.

I think Kate and Raven both have some great advice. When Kate came on here to post about her kickstarter, she had probably the same amount of posts as you, and was really new to permies. But, she was became part of this community and showed just how much she knew and her good intent.

I went and dug back through the dailyish archives, and this is what we sent out to talk about her kickstarter:

All this week, we'll have a goat expert, Kate Downham, answering questions in the Goat and Sheep forum! She's has a kickstarter for her new book, "Backyard Dairy Goats: A Natural Approach to Keeping Goats in Any Yard." Come say, "Hi" and pick her brain with your goaty questions.

https://permies.com/t/94982/Backyard-Dairy-Goats-Kickstarter


And check out her kickstarter!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/706848724/backyard-dairy-goats-book-quickstarter?ref=cb955o

It let people know about her and her knowledge, and people really responded to that! We funded her Kickstarter!

I love how permies is such a special place. It's a place full of intelligent people who value community. If they see and understand something or someone worth supporting, they do so with open arms. I truly hope that people enjoy the dailyish, and never feel any pressure to buy or click anything, but that the things in the dailyish are something they are interested in and want to click. It might seem silly that we all keep talking about permies as a community, but it really and truly is. The most beautiful expression of that, I think, was when Travis was leaving due to his health conditions, and we all pitched in to give him and his family a Christmas present. He never asked for anything, just gave continually of himself and helped so many people. We're a community here, and there's a lot of strength and beauty in that!

I think it’s hard for people managing an email list to find the right balance between promoting things and not being spammy. A lot of emails I get from other lists I ignore or unsubscribe from because I get fed up with constantly being asked to buy things, but I almost always read the dailyish because I can find out about interesting threads and projects from it, and when something is promoted, it’s done in a way that respects the reader and isn’t pushy. To have your campaign included in the dailyish is an honour that not everyone gets - if there is too much stuff being promoted in the dailyish, people might start reading it less, so it’s not as though just anything gets promoted in there.

Thank you to everyone that makes the dailyish email so good!

jared strand wrote:Why can't I edit my initial post?  I can edit the last post I made, but no others.  

The edit button disappears after a time.  Some sort of mysterious algorithm.  

To edit old posts, use the report button on that post and mention to the moderator why you want to edit the post.  If the moderator thinks it is a good reason, they can temporarily add the edit button back.  

Note, you don't need to know HTML.  We generally have that disabled as default.  here are some tutorials on how to glitz up your posts.  If you need someone to do it for you, some of the staff here offer paid services for making posts and threads more marketable.  It's not cheap, but I suspect one of them would be happy to be paid in sheep.

To keep this thread on topic, this post and the post above will disappear in 2 days.  If you have any further questions about how permies works, please ask in the tinkering with this site forum.