While Mindful Maker Co will be a worker-owned co-operative manufacturing center in the Shenandoah Valley, while we get off the ground we may outsource certain aspects of production to local (within North America) established companies or facilities to help manufacture specific components until we fully get off the ground. One of our long term aims, when it is sustainable, is also to enter the world of textile manufacturing – rope, batting, felt, and fabric – utilizing locally sourced raw materials.

Currently, the rope for the leaf tree trunks is our highest cost— closely followed by the cotton batting and loose weave burlap we use in the leaf covers.

Where we are in the Shenandoah valley puts us in the heart of a large range of agricultural industries. One of these industries is a hemp grower that produces CBD and THC products, leaving the short and long hemp fibers (the parts of the plant that are used for textile manufacturing) to be used by a facility that’s prepared to process those materials and manufacture any of the variety of products you can create with hemp!

For now, we’re doing some small experimenting with old style textile manufacturing to familiarize ourselves with the process and preemptively prepare for when mindful maker is ready to expand into such a valuable industry. The picture is of the first set of hand carders made by the Leaf Tree inventor