S5 E9: The Story of Gealach Fola Acres with Vic & Amber Mazza

In this episode of the SweetGeorgia Show, Felicia Lo speaks with Victor and Amber Mazza, founders of Gealach Fola Acres, about their transition from military service to becoming first-generation farmers and textile producers. They share their experiences in the Navy, their deep passion for fibre arts, and the challenges they face within the local textile industry. The conversation touches on their vision for the farm and mill, including their plans for fibre production and building community through the creation of a local tartan. They also talk about acquiring and restoring mill equipment, emphasizing sustainability and the importance of supporting local farmers.

Takeaways:

• Victor and Amber are first-generation farmers who founded Gealach Fola Acres in 2022.
• They met while serving in the US Navy in Japan.
• Amber has a long-standing passion for textiles, starting with crochet at a young age.
• Victor has always dreamed of a self-sufficient homestead for fibre and food.
• The couple aims to process local wool and bast fibres at their mill.
• They are addressing the challenges faced by small farmers in the local textile industry.
• The acquisition of mill equipment was a significant milestone for their business.
• They designed a community tartan to unify the local heritage and families.
• Their farm spans 81 acres, mostly wooded, with plans for fibre trials and production.
• They actively engage with the community through events and social media.

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

Thank you.

Speaker 02: 0:06

Welcome to the show, Victor and Amber. I'm really, really excited to chat with you both today. We learned about you a couple of months ago as we were kind of like looking on the internet because we was looking for information about tartan weaving. And I was preparing a class for the School of Sweet Georgia about tartan weaving and discovered that you guys had designed your own tartan. And then that sort of led to other articles that I'd read about how you had also started a mill and a farm. And so your mill and your farm is called Gealafola Acres. Is that right? Yes. Fantastic. And it looks like you founded the farm back in 2022 and you're both first generation farmers. Is that right?

Speaker 03: 0:50

Yes.

Speaker 02: 0:51

Fantastic. Can you tell me a little bit about what your life was like before 2022? Like what sort of was your story before leading up to starting this mill and this farm?

Speaker 03: 1:04

Yeah, I would say that we had kind of a long and multifaceted life experience before that because we were both in the military, U.S. military, both in the Navy. That's how we met. So we were both stationed overseas in Japan. Yeah, we were four deployed. So we met there. I guess that's kind of like the beginning of our story, I think almost about nine years ago, together at least.

Speaker 02: 1:25

Okay, nine years ago, you guys met in Japan. Whereabouts in Japan? Yokosuka. Which area is that? It's like an hour and a half south of Tokyo. by train. Okay, fantastic. Did you both learn how to speak Japanese too?

Speaker 03: 1:39

Yeah, I used to be actually quite fluent. I still collaborate because we both work outside of the farm as well. I'm actually an enterprise services engineer. I actually still work with some of my Japanese colleagues for a similar job function.

Speaker 02: 1:57

Tell me a little bit about sort of like you were deployed overseas, you were in Japan, you both worked for the Navy, you were both in the Navy, and then you met there about nine years ago. And then what sort of sparked your interest in wanting to start a farm and a mill? Like, do you have any experience in this? Do you have any background in any of it? Or how did this come about?

Speaker 03: 2:21

Well, so for me, I never really considered having a farm to be honest, but I did always love textile. So my grandmother actually taught me how to crochet when I was eight. I learned how to do Irish lace in particular. That's like what I started with. I actually wasn't allowed to learn on like normal size yarn. I had to learn how to do lace. And it was something that I actually really like still. And it kind of became a rabbit hole for knitting. I think maybe four years ago, I started that. And five or six, we started spinning and weaving. And at the same time that I was learning how to crochet, she actually taught me how to make garments as well. So I've been making garments for maybe 22 years now. And so I just had a fascination and a love and an obsession with all things fiber. So that's where I think the fiber portion of it kind of came from. Victor, I'll let you speak to it more, but he always told me he wanted a sheep farm.

Speaker 00: 3:27

So I had always wanted to have a small homestead that was completely self-sufficient for fiber and food and a couple of other products as well. That way I could have as close to independent from the fluctuations of the market as you could get was my goal.

Unknown: 3:44

Yeah.

Speaker 00: 3:44

And then I've been weaving for four or five years and spinning about the same time and trying to get into that aspect of it. And I've been working on pattern drafting and garment making for about the same time. That way we can reach a point where eventually we're going to be able to go all the way from grass to finished garment. And that's kind of one of the things that we're really driving towards here on the farm. is the ability to go that entire chain, that entire process without it ever leaving the farm.

Speaker 02: 4:16

That's incredible. Grass to garment. I love this concept. Can you tell me a little bit about where your mill is? I don't think we brought that up. Where's the mill located? Right

Speaker 00: 4:28

now, it's a huge pile of parts. We just finished moving it up here earlier this year. So the entire barn is stacked about five feet tall with parts piles from all the equipment. Eventually it's going to be here on the farm. We're actually going to be building it closer down towards the road. That way it's closer to services. It's closer to the, there's a fire hydrant right there. You know, the practical aspects of having a textile mill and trying to provide security for building and access for facilities, emergency response, parking, stuff like that right off the road. But that's where it's going to eventually be is just kind of down in the front yard.

Speaker 02: 5:08

Fantastic. And this is located in Maine, in Searsport, Maine. Yep. Yes. What sort of drew you to Maine? Are you both from Maine originally or no?

Speaker 03: 5:20

We had never been to Maine, either of us ever in our whole lives. When we moved here and we actually bought our house sight unseen, I think a little over three years ago now. Yeah. But basically, I'm originally from California. And when I got out of the military is when the fires, they've always been bad, like my whole life, but they were getting worse and worse. And so when I got out, I was kind of like, I would like to live somewhere with more water. And his dad was in the Navy. So he grew up moving every three years his whole life, basically. So... When we got out, we were kind of like, where are we going to go? So we actually tried North Carolina for a while. Another place I'd never been when I moved there. It was too hot. I don't like it so hot. I prefer like if it never got over 65, I'd be pretty happy. So we were there for a couple of years. And then basically I was like, this isn't really working for me. So what we did is we actually did research on every single state in the country. about the taxes the laws the things we cared about quality of life like different amenities we cared about like being close to the ocean and and outdoors things um and maine was the winner out of all like the weighted categories and so we just bought a house and moved here

Speaker 02: 6:44

amazing bought it sight unseen and just like picked the spot based on characteristics of the state that's That's great. I love that you did all that research about it. So tell me about the farm. How big is it? What kind of animals are you sort of raising here? What sort of encompasses all of your activities on the farm here?

Speaker 03: 7:05

Yeah, so we have about 81 acres. It's mostly wooded, though. So I think only about five of it is cleared. Our first year, we actually did a fiber trial with five different types of sheep. And we had alpaca and angora goats from O'Hare and angora rabbits as well. So we did kind of like a fiber trial to see which ones we liked the most. And ultimately we had a couple of like really top ones, but the ultimate winner for me was definitely the Angora goats because I just am obsessed with mohair. So I think it's really beautiful. I love the luster in particular of mohair that like wool just doesn't have. I think alpaca was a close second and we do plan on, hopefully getting more alpaca in the future. But I think really our biggest products from producing a fiber perspective on the farm will be mohair on a relatively small scale. And then we're actually the most interested in bast fibers. So we've been growing linen for the last couple of years, flax for linen, rather. And so we plan on curating our mill and our production on site mostly for linen production and then also on the wool side of the house doing custom processing for all the local farmers and anyone who wants to send their wool in to get it turned into yarn. Yeah,

Speaker 02: 8:31

I love mohair and I love the idea that you're also going to be working with fiber from the local farmers as well. In Maine, are there not like more spinning mills and there's a lot more industry there, is there not?

Speaker 01: 9:00

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 02: 9:49

So for, say, for the farms that have 30 or 40 in their flock, and then they're sending it to a small processor to try to get it processed into yarn or fiber, if there's no one to take over that overflow, then what would happen to all that fiber? What happens to the wool? It gets composted

Speaker 00: 10:13

mostly. The national wool prices at the wool pole are cheaper now. than the cost to ship the wool. So if you're sending it to like a regional pool that just buys the raw wool, you're actually losing money on postage. So a lot of the times it gets composted, gets used for garden beds, mulch under grape vines and trees and things like that. And then people also do like small scale hand spinning, hand processing of their own fleeces. But most of these people who are farming work other jobs too. And you only have so many hours in the day. So they don't get to process the whole of the fleeces from their herd. They only get to process a percentage of it. Yeah. If they can't get it to a mill.

Speaker 02: 10:59

Absolutely. So then you're kind of like fitting in in the middle, hopefully, and then like helping with the smaller producers. And then, you know, for the people who have more fiber than a smaller mill could handle, then you're sort of in the middle taking care of some of these farms and these folks, right?

Speaker 00: 11:13

That's the goal, yes.

Speaker 02: 11:15

Fantastic. Do you need different equipment to handle sort of the wool versus handling the flax to process all of this?

Speaker 03: 11:23

Sort of. Yes and no. Definitely yes. And also kind of no. So the spinner that we got is antique, but was still being operated. And so it doesn't have any other than the motor has no electronics at all. And it was designed in a time when the gearing ratios would allow you to do a lot different length of fiber. So we don't know the exact year of it. There are some patents on it from the fifties, but if you, I have a manual, I think it's from 1917 for the company that produced it. And a lot of the parts are actually the same as the ones on our machine. Cause even the, there aren't even springs, it's actually 50 pound counterweights. So it's like heritage type equipment. So, but what that means is, It was designed to be able to be more broad because as technology advances, things become more and more specialized, right? Just like jobs and doctors and things like that. So this one is actually much more versatile because of the mechanical nature of it. As far as the preparation from fiber or from fleece or from flax, there are different types of equipment that you need, but most of it involves... aligning the fibers and then spinning from roving, right? It's just the stuff before the alignment of the fiber that's different really.

Speaker 02: 12:53

Okay. Okay. Now I did have a question about the mill equipment that you're describing, the spinning equipment that you're describing right now. Is this the equipment that you brought over from Jagerspun or is it different?

Speaker 03: 13:08

It's from Jaegerspun, yeah.

Speaker 00: 13:09

So the spinner is one of the pieces of equipment that we brought over from Jaegerspun, and it is, parts of the machine match the 1917 manuals, and then parts of it have the newer patents as well, where stuff has been added onto it over the years. But it's really a great piece of equipment. Like Amber was saying, it's all mechanical. There's no computers, there's no anything else. But that allows it to adjust substantially, yes.

Speaker 02: 13:35

Can you describe a little bit of that process? Because I don't think everybody knows that you sort of, you absorbed a lot of this equipment, right? Can you talk a little bit about that story?

Speaker 03: 13:45

Yeah, definitely. So basically after our fiber trial and everything else, it became apparent very rapidly that, especially with a job, but even without a job, we would never be able to spin all the fiber we produced manually, right? With our spinning wheels, like it's just not going to happen. And we're friends with a lot of other farmers because we're part of the farming community. And, you know, everyone has the same sorts of challenges where they can't really spin all of their fiber. A lot of it just gets composted. We're all kind of upset about it because it's a beautiful product that we're passionate about and we love. And at the end of the day, it's getting still a valuable use, right? Because mulch and compost is important, but it's not the same when you have that like fiber love, right? Yeah. So, anyway, I got a quote. I think it might have been a year or more ago now from Belfast Mini Mills. They make like the mini, like smaller cottage industry type spinning equipment. That's what most of the mills here that are servicing the small farms use. And for the whole setup, it was like over a quarter of a million dollars. Mm-hmm. And that's not the kind of capital we could ever have, um, for that kind of a venture. And so anyway, it really like kind of hurt me in my heart because I was like, ah, this dream is very out of reach. It's probably never going to happen. Um, and then when I found out that Jaeger's bun was going out of business, um, First, I was kind of just sad, like the rest of the community, because they provided a lot of great yarn. We bought a lot of their yarn for weaving, right? Historically. And so I didn't really think about the equipment until like January-ish.

Speaker 00: 15:41

And then she was up at night thinking about how she really wanted to have this happen. And she thought about Jaegerspun and how they'd gone out and was like, I'm going to call them and see what they're doing with their equipment. So she, she called Jaegerspun and Jaegerspun's like, well, we sold the equipment with the building to the person who bought it. And we don't know who you would talk to, but here's their phone number. And so Amber called them and the lady that she talked to was like, well, that's a good question. I don't know. Here's the president of the company's phone number. Please email him and ask. So that's, that's what she did is she emailed him and was like, Just like, what are you doing with the equipment? Do you have any plans for it? And he's like, well, if you want to come look at it, please do. And she asked him, well, do you have any idea what you might want for it? That way we can figure out if it's even worth us going down there and looking at it. And we were told that if we could get it out of the building, we could have it. So we basically had to pay the transport cost, which was still a lot of money. um we spent probably 30 000 transporting it in u-haul trucks um but it uh took me a little over five weeks to take it apart um we moved a hundred maybe 105 000 pounds of equipment from uh down at the mill in sanford up here to the farm so it was a long five weeks but

Speaker 02: 17:12

But to get the equipment without having to pay additional for the equipment, just the transportation costs, that's

Speaker 00: 17:18

incredible. It is. Chinberg Properties was the developer, and they were incredibly generous with it, and they were incredibly helpful the whole way through the process. Even at the end there, we had some beams that were not going to go down the stairs or in the freight elevator because they were 15 feet long and 1,000 pounds apiece. And so what they ended up doing is they actually ended up opening one of the walls and craning them out for us down to the truck. That way we could actually take the whole machines. And that's the kind of stuff that they were doing the whole time we were there. Anytime I needed an extra set of hands or something, the guy who was on site was more than happy to help. Can't say enough good things about their generosity and their willingness to help get the equipment back into a productive state. The president of the company was actually very clear that it's one of the things that that's their preference to do when they get old equipment is to find someone who's going to use it, going to refurbish it, going to return it back to the local economy as something that's going to move the area forward. Because if they couldn't find somebody who was going to do that, then the equipment was just going to go straight into a landfill, which would have been really sad on a lot of levels, but also incredibly expensive. because you have to pay based on weight and based on the cubic volume of space that it takes up when it goes into a dump. And that would have been really painful. From the perspective of, I mean, 105,000 pounds of steel is going to take up some space.

Speaker 02: 18:46

No, I was just saying that that's incredible that the people who bought the building were able to basically give you the equipment that was inside and that it would have cost more to get rid of the equipment than to keep it. And I think... I have a couple of girlfriends and I who we talk about, like we have this little fantasy about driving around Canada and rescuing all of the looms that people don't want and bringing them back and then restoring them. But this is like way bigger than picking up a weaving loom. This is picking up an entire spinning mill and bringing it home and then putting it back together again, restoring it. How have you learned how to use this equipment? Where did you learn? Where did you learn the process of working all of the equipment? Were you able to contact the Yaggerspun folks?

Speaker 00: 19:34

So I got some help from a couple of people who had worked there for a while. A lot of it is my background. I did industrial construction before I joined the Navy, and then I did engineering work for the Navy. And the Navy does not believe in throwing away working equipment. So a lot of it is older high-end equipment that has just been kept in top shape for a very long time. And so I was able to use that experience to kind of figure out where things went and how things worked. And then one of the guys who had worked there for almost, I wanna say 40 years almost, Mike was extremely helpful in helping me figure out the couple of spots I got stuck on. And he just really was, incredible one is I would get stuck and I'd take a picture of it and text it to him and be like, what do you do here? And he would be like, oh, you need to move this pin that you're never going to find unless you know it's there kind of thing. But so I got help from them on that and then the background experience. And then maybe what, three weeks in, maybe four, we actually found a vendor on eBay who had the manual for the machine. And he actually had the manuals for all of the equipment in the building at a very reasonable price. So we contacted him and got all the manuals. And then I was breeding them in the hotel at night when I couldn't turn wrenches anymore for the day and then going back in the morning and turning wrenches more.

Speaker 03: 21:02

There was also a tech library at the mill that has like all the diagrams and parts and how they go together with the assemblies too. We also got those.

Speaker 02: 21:11

It's amazing. Now, I know that people are going to ask because... There's a lot of weavers who love, love, love the Jager Spun Zephyr yarn, myself included. I have a whole bunch of my stash. I love it. I'm afraid to use it now. I think that people are wondering if you will spin those sort of classic Jager Spun yarns still.

Speaker 00: 21:33

The biggest trick with Zephyr is the silk content. A large part of what we're doing is focused on this continent, especially the local region, and trying to, like, get the resources that are already here. If we can find a local or even a regionally local or honestly anywhere in the general vicinity local person who is going to produce silk, we would be interested in running the silk wool blend, but we do not as a farm have the capacity to really put the kind of hours in you would need to run a silk farm. Other than that, importing silk is going to get I mean, it's already expensive, but it's going to get more expensive as things progress. And there's a lot of demand for silk generally. So it's going to be very difficult for us to do like Zephyr in particular. What we will probably be offering instead of a silk wool blend is like a mohair wool blend or an alpaca wool blend, and maybe even a linen wool blend and a mohair linen blend. So not necessarily Zephyr, and its its current incarnation is 50 silk just because that would be a huge undertaking to run a silk farm especially here in

Speaker 01: 22:51

maine

Speaker 02: 22:53

I think that all of this is actually really interesting to hear because it's kind of like the evolution of what this sort of antique equipment can produce. And so with new ideas and with new passion and like all this energy, and then plus you have so much experience in the background and you're both spinners, you're both weavers, just all of this culmination in creating something new for the community so that weavers will maybe have a different kind of yarn to weave with, you know, in the coming years and things like that. I think that that's something that's really exciting to look forward to. Very cool what you guys are doing here. Now, if people are wondering how they can help you or support you, support the farm, like where can they go to find more information about all of this? Where can people come and find you?

Speaker 03: 23:42

Yeah, there are a couple of places. So firstly, we do have a website and I actually just launched our store. I have to add more things to it. But in addition to the machinery, we also got about 4,000 pounds of merino roving. Um, and so what we're doing with that is we're selling it to try and raise funds to put in the building. Um, we also did get some yarn. I say some yarn with some hesitation because it's actually quite a lot of yarn from the factory that was either totally completed or it was, um, like in progress and mostly singles, right? But I think we got like, I don't know how many pounds, 700?

Speaker 00: 24:29

Probably 1,200 pounds of yarn.

Speaker 03: 24:33

Of yarn. And it's all primarily white. And so what I'm doing or what we're doing, because we're both doing it together, is we're actually botanically dyeing all of the yarn that we got. And we're selling that as well. And we're going to be at Fiber Frolic and some of the local festivals, but primarily it'll be through our website. And then before we had more time to invest into kind of trying to get everything from the mill put together and packaged because it's kidding season. I have all these baby goats running around. We also did start a GoFundMe because people actually were really excited and reaching out to us on Ravelry and asking us to make a Ravelry group, which we also did. We have one for our farm. where I've kind of like been blogging and like documenting a little bit of everything. And we did start a GoFundMe as well.

Speaker 02: 25:26

Fantastic. So we will link to all of those and we'll let people know about all of those as well. Now, going back to my very first question that I had at the beginning, which is about the tartan that you designed. Can you tell me a little bit about the process of how you designed this and what it was for and the meaning behind all of this? This is a very cool project.

Speaker 00: 25:46

So we did our own tartan when we got married, combining her heritage and my heritage and blending it into one family tartan for us. And that's kind of where it came into play initially in our lives. And then one of the things that, one of the reasons we did the Searsport tartan is we actually really love it here for starters. And it's kind of a gift to the community. because of the heritage of the town so at one point if you were a blue water ship captain in america you had a 10 chance of living here in sears port it's a little higher than that actually but out of the almost 300 captains that there were in america 33 of them lived right here in this town um so there was a huge shipbuilding heritage and a huge naval well not naval a huge merchant marine heritage um And so what we did is we looked at the historical records of the town working with the Historic Preservation Commission here in town. And we have a historic society as well. And then the Penobscot Marine Museum. And then we worked with the Penobscot Marine Museum and we looked at old maps of when the town was founded and kind of pulled all of the names from there that were connected to the shipbuilding community and the ship captain community. and went through and found everybody who had Scottish and Irish heritage and went through the registry of tartans in Scotland and actually pulled all of the tartans for everybody who would have been a part of the town when it was founded and went through and blended them all to create the Searsport tartan. So it's actually almost a marriage of the founding families of the town who were part of that seaborne heritage. um that we've compiled and turned into a tartan and it's been registered with the the registry in scotland as the official town tartan now um so that's kind of how the project came into being is we wanted to to give this thing to the town that would be used to kind of unify the whole community because even if you don't have the traditional heritage and a clan tartan of your own now this town and kind of what it's grown into has a tartan and so by being kind of a part of the fabric of the town and then letting everyone have that it kind of helps unite the community or at least that's that's what we really hoped for when we did it was to provide that sense of family in the community

Speaker 02: 28:23

that's an incredible gift an incredible gift to your community um yeah i mean like in in learning more about tartan these past uh those past couple of years and things like that just uh Discovering how much people identify with, you know, it's funny because it's like it's colors and it's stripes and it's pattern and it's assembled together, but something about it makes people feel so proud to be able to have this thing that ties them all together. So I think it's amazing that you've created this thing that's blended all these families together, blended together the history and the heritage of your chosen place. It's great.

Unknown: 29:00

Yeah.

Speaker 02: 29:01

So thank you both for joining me today for this conversation. It's been really, really interesting learning more about your farm and your mill and all your plans. I think it's just, it is really very, just amazing. admirable to see all of the energy and all the enthusiasm that you have for starting something new, for creating something new from the ground up. And that you're learning all of these things and then using all this experience and a lot of this passion to create something new. So I'm very, very excited to see where this all goes in the coming years. If people want to come and find you, where is the best place that they can go and follow all the things that you're working on? Should it be Ravelry or your website or social media? Yeah.

Speaker 03: 29:42

yeah yeah so our website and Ravelry and we have an Instagram and a Facebook as well so and if you just look up our farm name um I don't know of another farm named quite like ours so it

Speaker 02: 29:55

should come right up fantastic and can people come and visit you in in real life people can come and see the farm and

Speaker 03: 30:03

yeah we have a contact us form on our website and we do sometimes schedule tours And we're also going to be at a lot of events. So we'll be at Fiber Frolic this year. I'm also going to go to news. So we're going to be at a couple, that's New England Weaver Seminar. We probably know, but just in case anyone else doesn't know. So yeah, please feel free to reach out.

Speaker 02: 30:26

Fantastic. Thank you so much. Thanks to both of you for joining me today. Thank you.

Speaker 00: 30:32

Thank you. Thanks for having us.