Farm Fresh Blog

With the addition of the Navajo Churro and Jacob sheep, my interest in spinning wool has grown to the point of obsession. I'm fascinated with the idea of taking the fiber from my own sheep, processing it, spinning it into yarn, and dying the yarn with natural dyes. Ultimately I want to weave cinches and saddle pads, but for now, the mysteries of the wool itself has captured me.

Dear Friend Sue in Wyoming walks me through a lot of this, but phone conversations have their limitations. I've been reaching out to local fiber fans, but in my neck of the world, 'local' can be pretty far away. I've dearly wanted to find likeminded craftsmen (craftswomen) in my area.

So like everything in my life, I just threw it to the wind, and told myself that when I'm ready, God and the wind will blow in my teacher, and of course, I continued to obsess on the internet. YouTube is my friend. Still, the computer can't replace hands-on experience. I'm a firm believer that everything works out for a reason, and so yesterday's change of wind was no surprise.

I walked into the post office to mail some soap and saw the counter lined with assorted packages of yarn products and envelopes. (I'd just like to take a moment to give a shout out to our local post office. The staff there is the most helpful, patient, group of people you could ever ask for, and being from 'Small Town Ameria' I fear they don't get enough recognition.)

Anyway, back to our story: At the end of the table was a young woman mixing and matching packages to envelopes. She looked exactly like I look when I'm trying to mail soap to customers. Products and packages are everywhere.

I asked, "Oh! Are you a yarn person?!"

She happily informed me that yes, she was a Yarn Person, and yes, she SPINS!  Well, knock me over with a feather, or a lock of wool. It turns out that Ambrosia is a spinner with no sheep. And I'm a sheep person who wants to learn to spin! Oh! Pennies from Heaven! Since her local (65 miles away!) yarn store closed, she's been tossing around the idea of forming a group of likeminded crafty women. Woohoo! That's exactly what I've been looking for. Well, I'm not exactly crafty yet but I am likeminded. (Unless you count making goat milk soap as crafty, then in some circles I'm crafty.) Things fell into place like puzzle pieces and there is a satisfied happiness to that. We chatted so long that Other Half, who was waiting in the truck, was beginning to wonder if I'd been kidnapped.

And perhaps I have been kidnapped. That's what farms do. They kidnap you, brainwash you, and absorb you into the Borg where you are their servant. It happens so slowly that over the years you're not even aware you're falling down a rabbit hole. You start out with a few horses. That requires fencing. Then, because you hate chemicals and any hard work which leads to sweating, you add goats to help clear brush around the fences. Since you now have half-wild meat goats, you need help controlling them, so you add Border Collies.

Soon you start breeding and selling goats. And since you have no idea how to train Border Collies, you take lessons with someone who has sheep and dairy goats. You fall in love with sheep and thus you add meat sheep to your goat herd and note they are more profitable than meat goats. In a very short time you have fallen in love with dairy goats, goat milk soap, and cheese and so you switch out your meat goats for dairy goats. You pat yourself on the back because now you need less goats per acreage and you get more profit, so you have the false illusion that you are in charge of the farm and not the other way around.

Your love of sheep begins to lean toward fiber sheep so you lust after a unique breed with a colored history, because naturally you can't do like smart people and choose a breed of sheep that would be easy to find in Texas! Lo and behold, you stumble across a local rich person herd dispersal and acquire a ragtag band of fiber sheep of your desired breed. (and some extras) You know absolutely no one close by who spins or raises any breed of fiber sheep but that doesn't slow you down. The internet is your friend, and like the sheep that fell in your lap, you are convinced that if you trudge onward, the right people will blow your way too.

And that, dear friends, is how you find likeminded people while in the rabbit hole, people who don't trot out a caution flag, but share that same crazy gleam in their eyes, people who have yarn spread out all over the post office.