A day with Rolly

10:30am-1pm (2.5hrs)

As I drove up the steep and windy road, I saw a field of purple sheep and knew I was at Rolly's (all the sheep have coats on to keep their fiber nice). My first day at Fox Hollow Farm started out with some research and planning. Over a cup of tea, we went through a list Rolly had made of all the things - sheep, alpaca, and fiber related - she does on the farm: the daily chores like cleaning the barn, occasional tasks such as administering antibiotics and trimming toenails, and the never ending work of skirting, washing, carding, and dying fleeces. 

We headed down to the big house for the internet, and spent some time absorbed in research as Rolly presented me with a fountain of names of people to contact to see other types of farms and fibers and information; from who's the friendliest angora farmer to what all those sheep are doing out by the airport.

Fun Fact(/tangent):  the fields of hundreds of sheep you see all around Lane county are not actually sheep farms. As a matter of fact, I don't know if there are actually any large wool farms around here; I believe Rolly told me that most sheep in America are used for meat, not wool. Other people get sheep for silly reasons like to train their Boarder Colly and other reasons other than to have sheep for the sake of having sheep - to have sheep for wool, or meat, or milk, or because they are strange and wonderful animals.... Anyways, those are GRASS farms that bring the sheep out for a couple months at the right time of year to trim down the grass to the optimal level before sending the sheep away again, sometimes over the mountains, and letting the grass grow back again, thicker than ever to harvest seeds or roll up. I knew the Willamette Vally was full of grass farms, but I was so confused when I looked around and saw all the sheep no one was talking about or doing anything with. This makes more sense now.

Well, now that I've taken your breath away with that revelation, I will get on with my day. Back up to Rolly's little workshop we hiked, and there we went through some of the stashes of fiber - wool that needs carting and skeins that need dyeing... and maybe to be scoured a few extra times for good measure and to get any puppy slobber off. To prepare skeins for dying, Rolly takes five at a time - enough for a good sized sweater - and soaks them in cold water over night. We made up three buckets (five skeins each, 15 skeins total) and left them to sit as we went on with watering and cleaning. 

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Rolly scrubbed out one of the water bowls as I collected moss that had fallen out of the trees. Rolly and her husband had collected a large wheelbarrow full for a friend who uses it for natural dying. On one side of the driveway is a large field with all the female Romney sheep and alpacas, and two electric and metal fences and a driveway away are the few male alpacas and sheep in a much smaller pen. For the winter, the sheep and alpacas are kept in small pens close to their barns, but in a few weeks when the grass is just a little longer and the weather is staying good, the large grassy fields will be opened up for grazing and the barns will be closed up. In the mean time, the animals still get to come in to the barn and that means daily cleaning. Rolly says they used to use bedding, and just kept adding more layers until it got so thick that Rolly's husband would take three days to clean it out. Now the floors are bare with smooth mats down instead and it takes half an hour to an hour probably to shovel out the barns each day. The manure is taken across to a field that is slowly sinking in to keep the low spots filled up. 

My general impressions so far:

1. Mostly women are interested in fiber farming 

2. Fiber farming is generally a cottage industry, artisan sort of operation, with hand dyed and spun yarn on a small scale

3. Some time is spent each day tending to the animals, with full days spent a few times a year doing bigger projects such as sheering, vaccinating, and breeding. 

4. A lot more time must be spent on the more tedious aspects of processing fiber from fleece to a final product

5. While this could theoretically be a profitable endeavor, fleeces start piling up and it would take serious dedication to keep up with them all 

6. Money often comes from breeding rather than sheering

7. You must love the animals more than the desire for money

8. Most farms are either named off of the street they are on (eg. Fox Hollow, McTavish, Bailey Hill...) or something cute (eg. Ewetopia, Hum Sweet Hum...)

9. Alpacas don't have lanolin (and Shetland sheep don't have much) so the electric shearers need a lot of oil and even still sometimes get too hot to use