Fiber as a way of life

Wool and natural animal fiber have played an integral role in most cultures around the world. Wool has been in continuous use to house, cloth, and decorate for tens of centuries. Wool has lent itself to the creation of great art, defined cultural identity and through its use, connects peoples to traditions and historical threads that are timeless. We are happy to share our passion for wool and for the animals that provide us with an endless supply of this beautiful and useful material.

Sheep and Humans: An Ancient Synergy

The lives of sheep and humans have intertwined since before recorded history. My encounter with these amazing creatures began only a short 10 years ago. I had always been a horse person and had/have several horses on our small farm. The farm was a bit too large to be efficiently managed by our equine mowers, so I approached a colleague of mine who had sheep to see if we could add some hungry grazers to help us use all the grass and hay we grew. He was happy to oblige and on a cold January evening in 2010, 3 lovely yearling Suffolk ewes bred to a Texel ram arrived on the back of a capped pick-up truck bed. After getting the girls settled in a horse stall freshly bedded with straw, with some lovely second cut hay to munch and a bucket of fresh water, we all went to the house to enjoy our dinner of home made black bean burritos and some apple crisp. I little comprehended the profound change in my life that was about to begin as I later peeked in on the girls in their new home, by now comfortably recumbent and contentedly chewing cud. Their dark soft and bright eyes searched my face as we made direct and prolonged eye contact. They seemed to be gauging what turn of fate their lives had just taken.

We named the girls Jill, Alice and Maude and all of our current flock of over 100 sheep are descendants of these 3 ewes. Of the three, only Maude remains with us today. She never fails to visit with me when I make my daily visits to the pasture to check on the status of the group. As I rarely take treats with me, I like to think that she is just glad to see me and to get a good “Hello” back scratch.

We started out thinking of our sheep as a source of food, but over the next couple of years, began to explore the possibilities of fiber. Since the sheep we had (Suffolk and Suffolk/Texel crosses) were not particularly renowned for their fabulous wool quality, I decided to try to create a more useful fiber flock by introducing fiber rams. True to the nature of our mixed up flock, our first ram was a grey Rambouillet cross ram we named Coco-Puff, or Rambo during breeding season! Coco Puff contributed his lovely silver grey and silky soft, lustrous long fiber to his offspring and our fiber quality now owes a lot to this lovely ram who has since passed over the Rainbow Bridge. We have also added Finn and Cormo rams to our flock and now have a fiber artists dream flock of fiber types, colors and textures.