November 28th, 2023, Our Rocketdog Winter Coats are for sale

This is Rocketdog Rockford Rhoades in last year's coat. 

About four years ago we got tired of buying dog coats at the feed stores. Their coats were okay, but they never really worked easily and usually broke down in a year. So we started messing around with making our own. It took a while. . . .

The first attempt used reclaimed parts from all of the older coats and a used cheapo Singer sewing machine bought on Craig's List. We had received a nice "picnic" blanket from a client some years earlier and this had a nice flannel side and water resistant coating on the other. The results of that first effort were good at first. But we hadn't counted on the totally destructive nature of Basset Hounds at play.  They shredded their new coats in just a few days. The best part was that as they tore the black waterproof layer the red flannel layer showed through. Our Hounds look like the victims of an axe murderer.  But the basic design of the coat was good. Re-using strapping to hold the thing together got us into the warmer months despite the horror show. We resolved to solving the problem before the next Winter came.

We found a nice Buffalo Print at the fabric store and I bought new straps and buckles and laid out a pattern based roughly on the previous year's effort. The result was a good coat, though a bit smaller than we liked. And though we have changed the pattern a few times, and changed the way our coats were made, those early attempts are still working fairly well. We use them for our guests or use parts from them to make new coats for our dogs. But the process got easier and the coats came out better nearly every time we made one. 

Two  years ago we decided to sell our Winter Coats to those people we knew who had  adopted our puppies. So we began letting them know we had coats available and sold a few. Then last year we let a few more people know about what we were doing and  we sold a respectable number of our coats around Christmas. It seemed we had a good thing going after that.

Don't click here

This year we sold as many on our first week as we had in the previous year once we let people know about it. But this presented some new problems. Shipping them cheaply had to be figured out. A box to send them out it had to be found. We had the coats pretty well settled, but the details needed worked out. And we did it. But while we worked out the plan we found that one of the steps, the part where we put the parts into the box the coat would eventually be shipped in, offered another possibility. So we began thinking about selling the box full of parts to those interested in sewing their own coats.

We had to come up with instructions. And then we had to find a way to handle the increased traffic. But eventually we got it all working. Today I put out the first advertising for our expanded Coat project.  We're selling four sizes of Ready to Wear coats and Do It Yourself Coat kits, along with an option to make Coats and Kits for other sized dogs on an ad hoc basis.  We have a good way to handle the transactions securely and now all we need is for about fifty customers to show up and participate. 

Creekside Farm has always been pretty wide open as to what we would eventually become as a business. Coats may or may not work out. But the journey is the thing. We have out first really good product and it is being sold to the public. There's really no telling where this may go. But we're looking forward to getting there. 

If you need a coat. Head on over our Rocketdog Bassets Blog.

November 12th, 2023 Late Fall in Effect

Not too surprisingly, Fall landed on Creekside Farm on time and completely within one week's time. The rains started about mid-October, just as the leaves began falling , and it hasn't stopped since. We've had three days of relative dryness, but even those three days had rain in the darkness of late night.  And about ten days ago, just as October ended, the trees all turned Golden-red as leaves began raining down and covering everything like snow. So while the place is a real mess, it's a beautiful mess. 

Our Pirate Organic Flag
So far nobody has noticed it

Occasionally the sun peaks out from behind the clouds for a moment and you have to stop and appreciate the colors. The small windows of sky are bright blue and the sun reflects off of the recently fallen leave, washing everything in the bright yellows and reds of the recently fallen leaves that haven't had time to turn brown and grey. It is really quite beautiful. But the bad weather has us staying indoors quite a lot more than usual. The gardens look like hell. Decaying plants are everywhere, covered in leaves or not. We had a hard frost for three consecutive days at the beginning of November which killed off nearly all of the plants in our Garden rows and the stuff remains where it fell. 

Part of our farm plan is to do something called "Chop and Drop". This is where we use the plants to feed the soil by composting in place. The idea is to chop the plants off at ground level and leave the roots in place. Any of the nutrients not used in making fruit is recycled back into the soil. We haven't been out in the muddy gardens to do much of the chopping, but the frost did quite a lot of making the stuff lay down so it will rake up nicely when we do get out there to work. Following the chopping, our plan is to layer on a few inches of leaf compost to protect the soil from rain and ice erosion. Something we still need to do. 

We have taken in four or five truck loads of leaf debris this year, about a hundred yards. Last year we took in four hundred yards and used most of it to build garden rows and we don't need as much. But even if we needed a lot more we wouldn't really have room for it. After we moved the tiny home to behind the Farmhouse we don't have much room for piles of compost back there. So we are putting the leaf piles out front of the house this year and there isn't nearly as much space.  It makes it much easier to bring the truckloads in, and much easier to take the stuff into the gardens too. 

Moving the tiny home into the back and splitting it into two parts has really improved how they are being used. After the move we sealed up the eight foot hole which served as a pass-through between the two halves with a sliding glass door making it a nice, but tiny, apartment where our son is living. We put another sliding door in the similar hole in the second half and now it has become the "Dog House". After the move I built stairs onto both halves and we painted the exteriors before the rains started last month. 

The New Dog Bed
in the new Dog House

The Dog House is rough, but after we built a ten foot by three foot raised platform inside for a dog bed, and put a heater under it, our hounds are very happy to sleep there. We go out every evening after dinner and spend an hour or so cuddling them. We also put a wireless web cam in there and a small wireless television for entertainment. It's cozy and looks great from the outside, but we still need to re-do the interior with drywall and new flooring.  So we're on hold for money. But the bad weather and lack of capitol haven't completely stopped progress.

We are still harvesting potatoes. On one slightly less wet day a few weeks ago we pulled two hundred pounds from four rows. A month or so back we took another hundred pounds. Now there are five rows remaining and we are running out of space to store spuds. But the quality and size of our potato crop is very good. No-till gardening is high in micro-nutrients and so our potatoes have excellent flavor and texture. They are a delight. 

In between rain storms, we have finally begun pouring concrete steps and decking under the porch surrounding the Farmhouse. So far we have two steps and about eight linear feet of decking. Pouring concrete is hard work, but we ought to have a full set of entry steps in a week or two. What there is now is so much nicer than the ad hoc wooden sets we built to satisfy the building inspector last year. We had bought a large amount of bagged concrete then, but hadn't found the time to mix and form the stuff until now.  I'll put up a picture when the thing is finished, until then it is sort of a mess. 

The New DIY Rocketdog Coat Kit

In other news we thought our girl hound Laffee Taffee was having a litter of pups near Halloween, but it turned out to be a dud. Only one puppy took, and it did not thrive, so Taffee and Clarke will get another try in Spring. Our Rocketdog Winter Coat has sold relatively well this year. Our hounds love theirs and orders for the coats are up quite a bit from last year. We are adding a sew-it-yourself kit to the line-up this as we work to increase sales without increasing labor. We are using a pretty good set of marketing tools that Square.com offers and will even have gift cards for sale there this year. Time will tell, but gifts and other products are a part of our longer termed growth plans.

We fully expect a drying trend to happen some time soon. Last year was pretty wet, but there were times when we could go out and clean stuff up. We still need to get the Greenhouse up and running. The heating system we have in there needs a bit of work, but the Greenhouse doesn't get much planted until late February, so there's time still. Despite the weather, things are going along pretty well here and we're looking forward to next Spring.