I may have mentioned, I love fiber.
It was a good thirty years between my first
experience with knitting and my falling headlong into the world of fiber. In
those thirty years, I spent a lot of effort on my education, my career, and
more recently my family, but very little on fiber. Virtually no one in my
circle of friends and acquaintances did fiber. On the off occasion that
I knit a sweater, I was an oddity. My friends would squint and oooooo briefly,
but in truth I rarely shared the information. I worked in a profession
where time spent on hobbies really meant only one thing - time spent not
working. Ugh.
When I finally threw in that particular
professional towel, it was not entirely an accident that I came to the Midwest.
I left Silicon Valley, where orchards and farms and backyard chickens were
fading memories, and selected a job in a community where agriculture was still
part of the culture. I wasn't thinking specifically fiber! or sheep!
or even weaving!, but I was thinking cheap land! farms!
animals!
The vast majority of my California colleagues were
aghast when I announced that I was leaving -- and for the Midwest no
less. Most of us had spent our entire professional lives trying to get
to California, not away from it. I only told one close friend that agriculture had any role at all in my decision. I didn't even tell my family. Instead I just reminded people how much a house in Silicon Valley cost and left it at that.
Shortly after I resigned my job I got a call from a
colleague on the East Coast offering me a position there. She'd apparently heard the
news.
No, I said.
She couldn't quite believe me.
I'm already committed, I
said.
Well, in a year or two, when you wake up in the
Midwest one morning and wonder how you got there, call me, she said.
Sigh.
What does this have to do with craigslist you
wonder?
Well, it's now five years later and one morning
this week I woke up -- still in the Midwest -- and I did not wonder how I came to be there. No, instead I did what I always do these days. I skimmed the farm ads on craigslist while I drank my coffee. And on this particular morning I spotted an ad for a flock of eighteen Black
Welsh Mountain sheep.
Black Welsh Mountain sheep! I said to
myself, I gotta see those.
So I contacted the guy. (Over the internet of
course.)
He emailed me back. He was at work, but his wife
was at home and could show me the sheep if I wanted.
Absolutely, I said.
I called the wife and arranged to visit that
afternoon. They were an hour away on the other side of the city, but no matter,
I was just thinking rare sheep for sale!
The farm was not what I expected. I've talked to a
lot of sheep farmers around here lately and most of them are old-timers.
This though was a gentleman's farm. The house was a restored pre-civil war mansion
with some old barns and just a few acres parceled off from the surrounding
area. It was lovely, lovely, lovely, but it hadn't been a working farm in a
while. In fact, the husband worked at Chase. A finance guy.
The wife was a little befuddled that her husband
had volunteered her to show me the sheep.
They're my husband's, I really don't do much with
them.
I asked her if she and her husband came from
farming families.
Well, I did, but we only had a few cows. And maybe
ducks. No sheep.
As she walked me over to the field where she
thought the sheep might be I asked her why they were selling the flock. She made some vague reply that ended with something
that sounded like, We thought we'd try cows.
The sheep were not in the field. She thought maybe
the shed. As we approached the shed we found a tiny, inky black ewe lamb, maybe
all of 4 lbs, stuck in the fence alongside the gate. It was bleating for its
mother, who was nowhere to be seen. The wife picked it up. This one was a
surprise. She's only a couple of days old. We lost another one just like
this earlier this year. It got stuck in the fence too. I wondered how long this
lamb would have been stuck if I hadn't arrived.
We found the lamb's mother in the shed with the
other sheep and reunited them. The lamb panted and its mother circled around
it. The rest of the flock headed back to the field.
Too late, I asked if any were friendly enough to catch.
She didn't think so.
I explained that I was really interested in the
fiber and I needed to be able to touch them.
I looked around and saw nothing but wide open
space for the sheep to run.
Do you have some grain? I asked.
No, I think we're out.
How about a chute? I tried.
No, but she thought maybe she could close the gates
and trap them in the field. In fact it turned out the field had openings that were
not even gated. I wondered if this was the first time she'd noticed.
We followed the sheep out into the high
grass.
We traipsed around in circles for a while before I
thought to ask about the fleeces.
Have they been sheared this year? I tried.
Oh, sure.
And do you have any of the fleeces around? I pushed.
Oh, no.
No? I repeated.
No, we threw them all away.
I think I may have gasped.
Nobody was interested in them, so we had to throw
them away. Nobody really wants the meat either. Everybody wants those big,
white lambs. Though, we've eaten these and they're alright.
As I circled fruitlessly around, I noticed her
texting on her phone. I assumed she was asking her husband for help.
I changed tacks and asked about shots and general
health issues.
I don't really know. You should talk to my husband.
Well, what about registrations? Do you know who's
related to whom?
No, you really should talk to my husband.
This went on for a while longer. I asked questions.
She denied any knowledge. Eventually, she turned to look at the house.
Here come my daughters. My youngest loves the wool
and I thought maybe she'd kept some. I texted her to bring it out.
I saw a young girl, no more than 7 or 8, climbing
over the fence with a dark wad in her hand. It was wool. She brought it to her
mother.
She wants to see the fleece. Give it to her, her
mother said.
I told her to throw it away, but she ignored me. The wife said this to me in that conspiratorial way that mothers use to talk to each other. The one
that really means, You know how it is. Kids don't listen to
sense.
She continued. Every year she hoards some.
She just loves wool.
The little girl stretched out her hand and gave me
the small, fuzzy mass.
Thank you, I said.
Finally, some sense, I
thought.
I spent several minutes talking to the little girl
about the wool. She knew the sheep were special because of their color. She
also knew that people made yarn from their wool, but she wasn't sure how. I
pulled a lock out of the wad and drew the fibers long. I twisted them around
with my fingers and doubled them over on themselves. I held out the loosely
plied string in my palm and showed it to her.
There. Yarn, I said. That's how it's
done.
She never took her eyes off of me.
In the end, her mother made her give me her whole
stash to help me decide whether I
needed a Black Welsh Mountain sheep (or two or eighteen). The girl winced, but
did not object too strongly to having her wool taken away. I am sure she has
been roundly informed that her fascination with the wool is silly.
Maybe she'll grow up to be a financier like her father. Maybe she'll end up in
Silicon Valley in a high stress job, without a sheep in sight. Maybe she'll love that life. But
right now, as a child, she's a kindred spirit. A lover of fiber.
As for this flock of rare, somewhat endangered, sheep? They were
healthy, I'm pretty confident, though I never actually caught one to inspect up
close. I don't think people are lining up to buy them. I do fear they will
end up butchered for meat. I've spoken to the husband who is willing to negotiate a
very low price for the flock, but we all know even a free animal is not really
free and eighteen sheep, even little ones, is a lot of sheep. I did bring the wool home and spun it. It was neither fine nor super
coarse, though who knows which part of the fleece I got. It was also a little
crispy which makes me wonder how much nicer it might be with fleece-specific
management.
I'm still thinking about whether I need a couple (or all) of
them.
