With the hustle and bustle of the holiday season hard on our heels, we wanted to take this opportunity to pause for a moment and reflect with gratitude on the myriad gifts we have received from our flocks this past year.
The sheep is nothing if not a giving animal. Their gifts are perhaps most readily visible in the fiber we receive at each spring shearing and in the meat and pelts we harvest each fall from our lambs, but their gifts run deeper than that.
Our sheep give us a way to care for our families, our community, and our environment. The organic practices we employ, coupled with rotational grazing methods, the sheep’s manure, and their hoof action, replenishes and rejuvenates our local soils. They allow us to support our families while living a life in sync with nature’s rhythms - a life full of real work with tangible results and innumerable rewards. Our flocks enable us to provide opportunities for many members of our community as well - our herders, shopkeepers, dyers, weavers, instructors, and the local artisans who sell their handcrafted creations through our physical and virtual storefronts.
The sheep also give us the gift of expressing our creative selves as makers: a gift that our community of fiber artists all share through our wool and yarns. Weaving, spinning, knitting, felting, and more - all these fiber crafts create joy, not just in the final product (and its recipient!), but in the creative process itself. As we practice our handcrafts, we nurture our souls and our best selves shine through in our work.
The gifts of the sheep are simple, but joy they bring is endless.
