Our grazing flock produces climate-beneficial, no-kill wool. It’s delicious for knitting, felting, and spinning. The fleece from our primitive-breed sheep has unique characteristics, quite different from domesticated sheep that have been bred for particular characteristics. Our little sheep are close to the roots of the evolutionary sheep tree all the way through, from their intelligent, problem-solving, curious personalities to the characteristics of their wool.
We have white and black sheep and hope to soon have brown ones. The flock produces enough fiber for our homestead needs, and to sometimes give some away to friends. We don’t sell our fiber.
Climate Beneficial
Our wool was awarded Climate Beneficial Wool certification through Fibershed, an organization supporting regional fiber systems that build soil & protect the health of our biosphere. Each year, to keep this certification, we continue with the application of carbon farming practices with the land and with the flock.
Through rotational grazing, our fiber flock helps reduce fuel load and build wildfire resilience on our farm. Grazing makes a positive carbon farming contribution not only to our land, but also, to the watershed, the region, and the planet. Through caring for our animals and our land, we are building positive connections that ripple out in wide circles.
No Kill
We choose not to harvest sheep for meat and breed only for specific reasons so that we do not have “excess” animals that need to be culled.
We respect other people’s choices to raise meat animals, but just can’t go that way here, ourselves, with our sheep flock. Sometimes we euthanize if that is the compassionate choice.
Kinship
Our ways of exchanging energy with the animals build committed and trustful relationships. We communicate with our animals and they communicate with us; we cooperate and love each other every day. These relationships now proceed from a sense of *being a family.*
So we choose different ways to experience value, ways that build on their life processes rather than on their deaths. The greatest value the animals add to our lives is the joy they bring. What a privilege: *they* include *us* in *their* flock. But, beyond this spiritual gift, they give in material ways as well.
Amy likes to handle the primitive-breed, climate-beneficial, no-kill wool and feel the kinship at all stages:
- Brushing the sheep
- Picking vegetative matter out of the sheared fleece
- Sorting sheared fleeces by fiber length
- Choosing what kind of yarn to create from the fleeces
- Working with handspun or mill-spun yarn
- Exploring fiber processing and crafts on a small scale in the home
- Gifting this special fiber to friends who enjoy the material and its energy
But she leaves the shearing to professionals.
Shearing
Shearing is challenging, physically and mentally. It’s the province of the young and the strong. It helps to have an expert doing the work, like Lora Kinkade—on Instagram, @loralouk—shown above, shearing Spiro.
While there may be occasional nicks and cuts, for the most part, no sheep are injured in shearing.
There is a perniciously false rumor being spread on the internet that shearing is bad for sheep. The opposite is true. Without shearing, sheep are susceptible to severe illness and death through fly strike. Shearing and hoof trimming are part of a shepherd’s responsibility in providing care.