Flo laughed. "No. Not that kind of rabbit. These are angora rabbits. They have marvelously soft hair; you spin it with wool." Then, seeing Clara's expression. "It's true. Here, I'll show you." She fetched a scarf made from merino wool and angora hair.
Clara felt the scarf. She rubbed it on her cheek, while Flo explained about plucking the fur from the rabbits and the other steps in making the incredibly soft, warm scarf.
"It's like a warm cloud on a sunny day," Clara said enthusiastically.
Flo smiled "What a nice way of putting it. The problem is it takes a lot of rabbits. Feeding them and housing them; the bucks have to be kept in separate cages or they fight. We don't have enough room." She turned the blender on, and waited for the margaritas. While they were blending, she salted the rims of three glasses. After pouring the frozen concoction into the glasses she set one each in front of Mary Lee and Clara, then slumped into a chair. "We have angora rabbits and can make angora yarn but not enough." Flo sighed "They're rabbits. They breed like rabbits but keeping them cared for is labor intensive and we don't have the labor. Keeping the colors separated is going to get kind of dicey, too."
Clara looked up from stroking the scarf. "Flo," she said, a bit dreamily, then took a drink from her glass. "My son Egidius, just yesterday, was telling me about a marvelous invention. A franchise, he called it. I understand your keeping this to yourself. It is very valuable but there are poor women in all our villages. They need work. Can't something be worked out?"
"Huh." Flo was confused. "I'm not keeping it to myself. At least I didn't mean to. I'm not real sure what a franchise is. Not in detail." She shrugged. "And I don't really want to know, to tell the truth. If it's like the franchises uptime, well, anybody who owned one got inspected and had people coming around making sure they were doing what they were supposed to. I don't have the time, or the inclination." She stared into her glass. "Mostly, I bought the rabbits and sheep to try and coax Jen to come live in Grantville when she graduated. Probably silly of me, but I'm a mom, you know. Now . . ." Flo drained her glass. "Now I'll never see her again. Every time I see one of her friends, like Noelle, I choke up. Yeah, the rabbits are probably going to be a moneymaker, but that wasn't what I had in mind." She stood and gathered the ingredients for another batch of margaritas.
Clara was staring at Flo in surprise. "Then you would not object to selling the rabbits?"
"No." Flo shook her head. She didn't seem to notice Clara's sudden intensity but Mary Lee did.
"Not all of the village women would be able to pay in advance," Mary Lee said.
"We can work something out," Flo assured her. The sound of the blender stopped conversation for a minute or so. "I'm not trying to keep the damn things secret," Flo said. "I could sell them on spec." At Clara's look, she explained. "Sell them to people who would take care of them, then pay me what they owed later. Jeez, Clara. The sheep are enough to keep me busy. The rabbits—well, they're rabbits. I've already got too many." Flo prepared another set of glasses and served the drinks.
"Mary Lee, did your church do the Heifer Project? You know, where you donate animals?"
"I've heard about it," Mary Lee said, after she'd licked a bit of salt from the rim of her glass. "I always thought it was a good idea."
Flo reached for a pad of paper and made a note. "I don't think anyone has started one here. I'll get in touch with Mary Ellen at my church." She pointed at Mary Lee. "You get in touch with your pastor, too. And Clara can get in touch with people she knows."
"Heifer project?" Clara was clearly wondering what they were talking about.
"It was a program we had back uptime," Mary Lee explained. "Someone would donate a female animal to a family in need of food. In return, that family agreed to donate female offspring to another family, and then that family would do the same. Of course, it'll be a bit different with the rabbits."
"That's what we'll do, then," Flo said. "Sell what we can . . . say twenty dollars for a breeding pair. Give people a break. If they can't pay right away, we'll go for some interest, but not much. Donate the critters, if we have to. Johan will just have to suck it up."
Clara grinned at her. "Your husband?"
"Nah," Flo said. "My partner, I guess. He deals with the farm and the animals. And I think he's gotten a little too fond of the idea of getting rich off all this wool." She frowned. "There's no way we can keep up with as many animals as he wants us to. But the angora hair is pretty valuable, so we'll just do what you said. Sell them cheap, donate others. That way the hair gets harvested, the spinners make some money and we all have nice, soft clothes."