Friday afternoon, I went with my mom to pick up our first sheep from Hobby Knob Farm.

Since we don’t have a trailer, we used my mom’s minivan to bring them home.

This is no easy task, as sheep don’t understand the whole “hop in” concept.

(if these pictures are shaky, it’s because I am laughing SO hard)

Once in the van, they calmed right down and gave one look back to their former farm.

I was intimately involved in getting them OUT of the van, so there aren’t any pictures of that. (Imagine me holding onto the leash, trying to talk the sheep into jumping down).

Once they were out and into the yard, the youngest one (we haven’t decided on a name yet – I call her Shera (Princess of Power) and the brothers call her Baby) started munching:

The older one, formerly named Itsy Bitsy, is decidedly UN-itsy. My 8 year old brother promptly renamed her Fatty Maddy.

At her age, she deserves more respect, her official name is Madeleine.

Shera/Baby is still a lamb (born this spring) and is 3/4 Cotswold, 1/4 Border Leceister with a super curly fleece. Maddy is 4 years old, always twins and is a Shetland/Romney cross.  Her fleece is the first I ever worked with (last fall!) and it is just lovely and fine and squooshy.

The girls were sheared (shorn?) last week and I’m going to get started on their fleeces this week. If you want some of their fiber, let me know in the comments!

The ladies will be living at my mom’s house, a short drive my place. I go over there a few times of week to babysit my little brothers, so I’ll be taking care of them a few times a week. I just came in from wrangling them, right before writing this!

If you’d like to weigh in on the Shera/Baby debate, let me know in the comments! What do YOU think we should call her?

From the moment I got the directions “just past the big red barn”, I was delighted with this farm visit. Mom and I piled into the car and took off towards Asheville for a day of fun: Rammings Farm for a few fleeces, downtown Asheville for Jamaican food, EarthGuild for dyes and The Chocolate Lounge.

We got a bit turned about on the way to the farm, but the visit was worth it. Jennifer and her family live in a restored farmhouse and “for fun” they keep a flock of heritage breeds of turkeys, chickens and various fiber-y animals.

The fiber-y animals include very friendly angora goats (they make mohair),

a bold cashmere goat,

and some shy Jacob and Romney sheep.

The Jacobs are the smaller guys with horns, while the Romneys have black faces (Angora goats are in the foreground).

All of the animals are protected by this sweet dog (I completely forgot his name) who prefers the Angoras to the sheep – he’ll let the Angoras eat first and only when they’ve had their fill will he allow the sheep to come close to the food!

Jennifer  keeps a small flock which she doesn’t breed and raises them as naturally as possible. When her stash of fleeces and roving began to overwhelm her, I was happy to visit and take some of it off her hands!

I picked out a Jacob fleece, an Angora fleece, 8 oz of mill-carded roving that’s a mix of her Romney and a neighbor’s alpaca and 4 oz of cashmere roving. If you’re part of the LocalSpun Club (currently closed) you’ll have received either yarn or fiber from the Jacob fleece. Tomorrow I’ll show you what I’ve made with the cashmere!

On a muggy Friday evening last month, Jay and I had the pleasure of visiting Hobby Knob Farm in Weaversville, NC. Shepherdess Elizabeth met us on her big back porch, where she was working on a fleece, cleaning out the grass as it sat on a big screen door.

Elizabeth gave us a grand tour, past the guard llamas that were being groomed for her daughter’s upcoming 4-H show and up to the sheep on a leash.
Yes, a sheep on a leash (a very long leash) in the yard! I knew then that I was gonna love this place!

The flock of sheep all live in several huge fields and are rotated throughout the day. When we arrived, Elizabeth put out some feed in the chicken yard and the sheep (and their constant companions, the llamas) came running.
As cute as the sheep are, that chick in the above picture, might be my favorite – she looks like she’s wearing pants!

Hobby Knob is focuses on heritage breeds of sheep: Jacobs, Cotswalds and some Shetland crosses.

The fiber I got from Elizabeth is a blend of her wool and mohair with local alpaca. It dyes beautifully soft colors and spins so easily, so smoothly!

This yarn was dyed with the leftover Easter Egg dyes and spun to a heavy worsted weight. I named this first skein spun the fiber I got at my farm visit after Elizabeth!

At Maryland Sheep & Wool, strolling through the sheep barns, I came upon a table with some business cards, a skein of yarn and a bag of wool. As I plunged my hand into the wool (ecstasy!), the farmer approached and he and I my mom began chatting about his sheep. It took me about two seconds of admiring the sheep

and fondling the wool before I pounced on it! I was thrilled to learn that Wit’s End farm is just a few hours from my house, in rural Virginia. When I returned home, Jay had purchased the first of the season’s strawberries. Inspired, I pulled out the local wool, and dyed it in “local” colors.

Strawberry

I set aside 4 oz of fiber to sell and quickly spun up another 4 oz:

Strawberries, already sold!

A few days later, the leaves outside my office door inspired me to dye the rest of the wool:

Leaf

This fiber has been an absolute dream to spin with and serves as further proof that buying direct from the farmer makes for the most satisfying spinning experience!
If you want to find local farmers, search Local Harvest, or just google “sheep farm ___ (your city and state)”. If you know of any great local farms, please share in the comments!

My mom and I left Friday morning for Maryland, stopped at every coffeeshop, ice cream booth and bathroom between here and there, and arrived 6 hours later in Frederick.
We failed to take a single picture in which we didn’t look like death, so you’ll just have to trust me – we had a great time! Frederick is such an adorable town, with a great range of shops. Our perennial favorite is Muse, where each got a little handmade book from YeeHaw Industries to use a trip journal. We enjoyed fantastic sandwiches at Cafe Nola, where the waitress was knitting and was also going to the Festival!

At the festival, we got down to goat picking:

Mom & a sweet Pygora

and farmer meeting,

These lovely Rambouillets belonged to Wit’s End farm and produced this:

from the American Cormo Sheep Association, which had the nicest, most helpful lady farmers working!

Merino from Cloverleaf Farms

It was a fun, exhausting day, but I ended up with just what I wanted and needed! You’ll be seeing that Rambouillet roving, dyed this week, in the next few days.

Click to see more info

These are just a few of my favorite photos from this year Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival. Tomorrow I’ll be posting my own photos and acquisitions!

I’ll be here all weekend.
And on Saturday, at 11:30, I’ll be at the Ravelry meet-up, hoping to (finally) meet Lolly!
Will YOU be there? If so, drop me a line so we can meet up!

PS. The shop will continue as usual, anything purchased Friday – Sunday will be shipped on Monday (which is the usual way it goes)

When I first started looking for sustainable and responsible fibers to spin, dye and knit with, I mostly focused on organic cotton and recycled materials (mill-ends, recycled sari silk, etc). As the world has become more ‘green’-minded, I find it’s easier and easier to find organic wool and natural-grown cotton. What it’s not so easy to find, is proof that this is sustainable or assurances that these products really are the best I can do. The more I’ve learned, I’ve begun to redefine what I consider ‘sustainable and responsible’. Reading Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Mineral impacted my thinking on supporting the local agricultural economy (and I’m blessed to live in an agrarian area). So, too, did learning that very few people in this area grow sheep for wool, due to its low market value and local alpaca farmers can get more for their crop if they send it to South America to be spun and knit. This excess transportation (fuel) and energy and the fact that the area is losing the community that is built around supplying each other with what we need, has honed my focus on finding local suppliers of fibers. I will still buy mill-ends, recycled fibers (like bamboo and soy) and other things I can’t get locally. But what I can buy here, I will.

It was with this commitment that I sent emails to 10 Tennessean (and a few from VA and NC, since I live near the border) fiber farmers. The first I heard back from were Chuck and Nancy from Silver Thunder Alpacas. Jay and I scheduled a visit for a Saturday afternoon. The drive to the farm was beautiful and the alpacas themselves were more than we could have hoped. Nancy and Chuck entertained all of our (even silly) questions. In the two hours we were at the farm, we learned more about the industry and care and lifestyle of alpacas then we could have imagined. We petted the alpacas, hugged the ones that would let us and gushed over the fantastic guard dogs.

Afterwards I purchased some brown roving and later spun into this week’s Ross & Rachel yarn.

I have a lot more photos of the farm, and hope to share more as I get to know these and other local farmers better.