Sandvox Website Profile: “Southern Shorts”

Our website shares information on our commercial Tunis sheep flock including breeding stock, market lambs and wool or fleece for sale to local buyers. We also share family and community interests related to kids activities, hobbies such as woodworking and backyard poultry, and our local food for kids backpack program. From time to time we will add short stories about life in the south and include a for sale page with a range of items and equipment primarily related to farming or rural life.

Our sheep business depends on customers who appreciate local grown lamb produced on ewe's milk, local grain, hay and pasture. We also sell breeding ewes to folks wanting to start or expand their own flocks. We hold back our best fleeces for sale to handspinners and crafters who work with wool, roving or yarn. The family and community pages are intended to share activities with anyone who shares our interest in woodworking, story telling, food for kids, hobby poultry and rural life.

In 2005, we decided to re-introduce a commercial sheep operation to our farm. We selected the Tunis breed because it is a heritage breed once common to the south. Ewes are heavy milkers and exhibit heat and parasite resistance. Tunis lamb has a very mild flavor and our repeat customers are very loyal. Tunis wool is excellent for spinning with a light cream color, medium to long staple, excellent crimp and a 56 to 58 spinning count (24-30 microns).

Our friends and family were blown away by the new web site. They asked how long it took to create and who we hired to design it. We could only laugh and respond that anyone with a message to share, photos to drag onto a page, and a desire to provide a great interface with the world can quickly and easily build a site with Sandvox with only a minor investment of time and money.

Sandvox offers a great selection of designs which is an advantage but also poses the difficulty of selecting which one to use! We wanted a design that imparts an open atmosphere with light neutral colors that reflect our appreciation of nature and a rural farm life. The sidebar option provided space for 'side notes', photos, or extra menu listings. And best of all, it's only a click or two to change the design which is a cool way to vary our site over time offering a new perspective to virtual visitors.

A feature that we found a little limiting was the default menu bar beneath our page header. It's cumbersome to include more than about seven pages. This required more secondary and tertiary pages than we originally planned. However, by taking advantage of the side bar, we are able to insert easy to see and click links for various pages on our site and we can customize these for each major section of our site. We really appreciate the flexibility that Sandvox provides folks who are not programmers.