Community-supported agniculture
Ok. I just made that word up. (‘agniculture,’ as in agnus — Latin for lamb — instead of ‘agriculture.’) Mountain Shadow Ranch will let you adopt a rare Cotswold sheep and, at the end of the year, you get its fleece. I love this idea. It’s like community-supported agriculture programs where, in exchange for a set amount of money, you can have baskets of organic produce delivered to your door. Imagine how many more people would be able to make a predictable and stable living from farm products if services like this one were more common?
Of course, it takes all the joy out of selecting a fleece from a big stack of gorgeous, wooly things, but that’s a small price to pay.