We recently connected with Katherine Hamberger and have shared our conversation below.

Katherine, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?

I get this question a lot. I spent years dreaming of owning a farm and coming up with different names for it. During this time my husband was going to law school. He’d come home and talk about what he learned and teach me different topics, and one phrase often came up: Black Acre. In law school “Black Acre” generally refers to a property. So for example, in a case, if a specific property was mentioned it was referred to as Black Acre. If you’ve ever gone through law school you know how difficult and trying it can be. This name came up a lot as we talked over the years. Once he graduated law school and passed the bar we were then able to move out to the country so he could practice law and I could start our homestead. We thought it would be very fitting to call our property Black Acre Farm.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I started my homestead journey in Denver when I won a chicken feeder from Manna Pro on social media. I then purchased some chickens, built a small coop, started selling eggs to my neighbors, and the rest is history. I had always wanted to start a homestead, but it was hard to do in the city. We had the opportunity after COVID to move out to the country and start a farm and we jumped on it.

On my homestead I raise many things. My main focus is raising fiber animals that I shear and spin into yarn or sell the raw fiber to spinners and weavers. Right now I raise Navajo Angora Goats and French Angora Rabbits. I show and raise AKC Anatolian Shepherd Livestock Guardian Dogs for my homestead and for others. When you raise animals one of the greatest threats comes from predators. Livestock Guardian Dogs help protect animals and property from unwanted intruders. I also raise goats, cattle and kunkune pigs to sell on a small scale. The last thing I do is make vinyl decal stickers. I have a large plotter machine with which I can cut custom designed decal stickers that you can put on just about anything.

I love making vinyl decals because it’s a way for people to express themselves and customize their items. I love making custom designs for homesteaders so they can label and organize their feed, show off their own logo or just add a little bit of creativity to their life. On the homestead side my goal is to follow sustainable conservation practices and help provide more natural products to people. We live in a world now where people want things immediately and cheaply, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s good quality or good for the environment. I’m trying to provide a source for people to get natural or small batch products without having to go to a mega-corporation.

I think the thing I’m most proud of is that I started my homestead from nothing. We moved out here in a 5th wheel on bare land with no infrastructure and now we have an operating farm.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

I built my audience on social media through consistent posting, content creation, and engagement. My advice is to just start! Even if you feel like you’re not good enough. Keep improving just a little bit at a time. I also think it’s important to engage with other accounts as well. I’ve made great friends and connections through social media just by commenting and following other creators like me. Everyone these days wants to go viral and have thousands of followers, but I think it’s more important to have a small community of engaged and like-minded followers that you can really connect with.

How’d you think through whether to sell directly on your own site or through a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc.

I sell some of my products (Vinyl Decals and Spinnable Fiber) online through Etsy. I think that Etsy has a lot of good things about it and a lot of not-so-good things about it. However, it is a fantastic platform for creatives to get started and push their products out to consumers who want to buy them. I’ve tried several other platforms and Etsy is the only one that helps you market your product to their audience. They also have a very large audience to begin with.

The challenge I have found with Etsy is that they charge a lot of fees for the services that they offer. You need to make sure that you’re accounting for that in the price of your products. They also have very high standards for their customer service including if you want to be a star seller on their platform. For example, if someone inquires about an order there’s a very tight turnaround in which you need to respond in order to maintain a star seller rating which can be challenging. Another thing to keep in mind is that there is a lot of competition on Etsy. Your listing photos, SEO, product descriptions and pricing need to be on par with your competitors.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.blackacrefarm.com
• Instagram: @blackacrefarm_
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/blackacrefarmaz
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNC38Vr7hAMHrVeVaB6QLjw