Winter work
The farm is ringing with hammer blows and, as our son memorably phrased it at the age of two, “dat sound of scwewing.” The new sheep shelter is going up in the north pasture! We are very lucky to be able to call in the experts when it’s time for a building project; my parents ran the local building supply throughout my childhood before selling the business to focus on architectural drafting (Mum) and fine woodworking (Dad). Even a simple shed project like this one is prefaced with professional elevations and thoughtful engineering. And I’m grateful that this intrepid pair, who built their first home deep in the island woods with their two pairs of hands in the space of a week more than forty years ago, will still turn out to scale ladders and set posts and brace up beams and rafters with a lifetime of construction know-how I can’t hope to match.
This new shelter will allow us to use the highest, driest, least productive piece of the farm as a winter holding area for part of the flock. It will keep the animals out of the mud, which is important for their foot health, and it will prevent them from compacting vulnerable ground in the better areas of pasture.
Once element of this project that tickles me is that we get to repurpose metal roofing salvaged from the Clarks’ old barn in Beaverton Valley. Mr. Clark was my ninth-grade science teacher and used to breed Arabian horses. He let me board a horse at his farm and work with one of his young mares while I was in high school, so I used to ride from this barn nearly every day. I can get a bit sentimental about old barns and hate to see them torn down, even though I recognize that once the timbers are failing there’s no economically reasonable way to save them, so it makes me glad to feel a little piece of this one will live on in my sheep field. We have just enough panels to do the job.
It’s a busy month for San Juan Woolworks, too. The first runs of our Haven and Selkie lines have mostly walked out the door with visitors to the farm, so I’ve been hustling to finish skirting the spring clip fleeces and deliver them to Abundant Earth Fiber so Lydia can make us more yarn this winter. I’m happy to report that I trucked 65.3 pounds of North Country Cheviot wool down to the mill last week. I’ve also agreed to share a booth with my friend Emily Tzeng of Local Color Farm & Fiber at the Vogue Knitting Live event in Bellevue next March. We’ll have a new yarn line to unveil that I’m very excited about, but it will be our first time presenting this tiny company to the world beyond Oak Knoll Farm, so the butterflies are stirring already.
Meanwhile, a rainy day is a good day to dye, and there have been plenty of them lately. I’ve been using our soapstone cookstove to simmer pots of black walnut and avocado, adding color to skeins of our Shearing School Special finewool. These will be in the shop in the next few days, so please be sure to subscribe to our newsletter or follow @sanjuanwoolworks on Instagram if you’d like immediate notice when they’re on sale.
Shearing School Special in natural white, marigold + polypore, walnut + avocado, and Japanese indigo