Allison Whitacre

What a cool project! and certainly a large undertaking.

The nano will help you a lot, I have found the e spinner a critical ingredient in a speed project like this. I broke down and invested in the EEW 6.0, and it's been the best value of my fiber arts journey so far. The 8 oz bobbins, namely, enable me to pack a lot more in at a time.

I still have my original nano, which I use for small quantities of luxury fiber or quick little spins, just because the portability cannot be beat! My treadle wheel doesn't leave the house anymore- too precious and difficult to transport.

I've even found the EEW 6, packed in a large cooler bag with the battery pack and fiber, works a treat.

Looking forward to see how your project works up! Did you mention what breed Miracle is? Gorgeous sheep.  I love the luster of the longwools, and their silky handle of fiber. A cloak is a perfect use for that wool.

I am not a Saxony wheel expert by any means, but I do see the flyer appears to be broken (the piece with the hooks that guides the spun single onto the bobbin). Antique wheels are often a headache for those who do not specialize in them, and because of their wide variation in pricing you can easily get swindled by someone who is selling it as an antique decoration only. Often these antique wheels will go upwards of 200 dollars, for which price you can find a used working wheel through craigslist, facebook, ravelry, etc.

Or, if you want to learn to spin, there are some nice inexpensive drop spindles out there. many merchants I know sell beginner learning kits too.

Antique wheels are cool, and certainly have their merits, but I usually avoid them because, hey, I'm not savvy enough to repair them.

I have definitely seen it done, in my opinion I would think a down type breed like Dorset or maybe Cheviot would do best as these are naturally very lofty springy fibers. Are you planning to make the filling removable? I would suggest it so that should the wool compress or felt, you can pull it out to re fluff. And also, as wool is quite absorbent, so you can wash it again as needed. If you do add buttons or a zipper to the pillow to make the filling removable I would actually test it without even carding the fiber, as it will retain the most air and 'loft' that way. Just be sure to scour well and then fluff apart with your hands.

There's more than one way to use wool for filling, for sure!

Short answer, yes you can compost all those weeds! Chop em well and mix them in.

Long answer: use caution. Some weeds (we're looking at the ivy family here..) will somehow continue to grow even when buried into a pile. Baking them in the sun for a day or two first greatly helps prevent this. I love and hate my ground ivy. It's short so doesn't tend to bother my established plants, and the pollinators love the prolific purple flowers, plus it is super easy to pull up since it has a very shallow root and runner system. However, it takes a LOT of work to kill it. It's very hardy. My process is to pull it, spread it out on a tarp in the sun for 2 days, then add it to the compost pile. I immediately pull any very dedicated starts of it from the pile and repeat.

For some reason until recently I never thought about the most obvious way to keep Angoras cool in summer- give them a haircut! keeping their wool short will undoubtedly help them keep cool and less prone to heat stress. rabbit poop is wonderful stuff, I particularly like that it comes in pelleted form already so I can easily dress the plants. offer shade and maybe a cold bottle adn they should be fine. in winter we made a kind of greenhouse by using fence posts and some plastic sheeting to drape over our existing rabbit cages- it stays about 50 degrees in there!

In my opinion, raising Angoras is worth it. I will be starting my program this fall post-pandemic mess...

That said, I am a fiber artist with 10 years of working with fiber animals under my belt. I'm already well versed in fiber raising and prep for top dollar wool. Angoras, depending on the breed, produce anywhere from 2-4 lbs of wool a year. Averaging 8 dollars an ounce, that's around 500 dollars. 8 dollars is a lower end price for Angora fiber, for wool that may not be as clean, sound, or strong. At the top end, for show line wool, I have seen it as high as 14 an ounce. Mind you, no one really wants to pay that when you can get comparable stuff in the 10-12 dollar per ounce range, UNLESS you find a good market of spinners who know their stuff.

Angoras are not a suitable meat breed. They're compact and rather small under their wool, and producing wool constitutes an entirely different type of diet for them than you want for meat rabbits. (They need more roughage to help pass and prevent wool blocks)
Permaculture wise, Angoras really do not fit into a self sustaining system. They are a designer breed that reaaaally needs special care. The folks I know with Angoras brush every day or every other day. This is in a wire cage system. In a colony I am not sure how Angoras would fare. Personally, I feel it would negate the purpose of raising them for pristine wool, but I could be wrong.

I'm also really good at going overboard, so I totally get ya!

I also tend towards just sowing extra of the old seeds. Most folks throw em away anyhow, so I figure whatever comes up is already doing me better than most.
Some seeds last longer than others, I think lettuce and flowers are more finicky and tend to only keep a couple years, but it has been a while since I read about it.

Someone gifted me a bag of old cat grass seeds and I thought I would be ingenious and sprout them for the rabbits.. well, despite being 7 years old they sprouted, but my patio chicken got to them before I did. she's the same one who nicked my dozen apple seedlings. darn her.

good luck and let us know how they grow!

I absolutely love organ meat. Maybe that sounds macabre.. oops.
Fun fact- Organ meats are nutrient powerhouses. I don't mean like kale and spirulina and other fad foods. I mean like elixir of life type foods. Organ meats from all animals boast concentrated levels of B vitamins, minerals like zinc and manganese, iodine, copper, selenium, plus fat soluble vitamins. (They have some of the highest vitamin D levels of all foods!)

Most cultural recipes do them the best justice, if you want a culinary exploration of it, but I must admit that my unrefined palate most prefers the liver breaded, fried, and served with white gravy or regular old yellow mustard. Many folks swear by BBQ for the hearts. They have a street food in Jerusalem called the mixed grill which is, in essence, organ meat grilled with onions and spices and served in a pita.

If you aren't exactly ready to dive facefirst into a plate of sauteed organs, they also do well tossed into the stock pot with the carcass to make bone broth. As do chicken feet (sounds totally weird in our bubble wrapped palates here in the Western world, but believe you me, no 'ethnic' market is without chicken feet or offal. we tend to throw away the most nutritious and flavorful parts of the animal. all it takes is a good plate of liver and onions or ham and beans made with the pork belly and you will be a believer.

Planting perennials/shrubs/trees now has the advantage of allowing the plants to get some good root growth before the dormant season in fall/winter.  

Also I had a laugh at "Who has that much organic material lying around?" Just take a look at my chicken coops, various compost piles, mulch areas where all the dead brush gets tossed.. and the enormous pile of leaf mold from about 5 yards on my street, my neighbors love dumping all their trimmings and leaves down at my place. They are all organic anyway, so why not?

Because I've nearly covered a 52X52 ft garden in less than 2 years. That's why not. Permaculture has an addictive quality. "I can use this!" just works its way into everything.

Double dug works well, but in my opinion is more work for most folks than is worth. I got comparable results from my lasagna/layered beds. All of that was shadowed by the mighty hugelkultur.. but talk about a project. Definitely requires organic matter.  Prepping the direct area you plan to plant in is your best and most economical option probably. I did this with good success for years.

In all honesty I looked at the various DIY versions of heat mats.. I didn't think it warranted my efforts personally. For 11 bucks on amazon, mine has hung in for at least two years running for about 2 months. (I start a LOOOOT of things lol)
11 dollars. works for me. mine does one tray of 50 cells at a time. (the rapid rooter tray is my all time fave. it's SO much easier and seems to work way better than conventional starter mix and water. could be me though. it is pricy but definitely worth it if you intend to do some particularly finicky plants. my vervain and ashwaghanda seeds are laughing at me right now...)
the brand I have is called Seedfactor. if you look it up on amazon it should pop up for 10.99. good luck!