Cat on how fiber art activities engage kids with sheep
“But we also incorporate sheep into our fiber arts activities in the farmyard, school programs, special events. It’s an incredible thing to share and so cool to see people’s eyes light up when they see that they can make yarn in like seconds, you know, it just like manifests right in front of their eyes like magic. And it’s really great to have, one of my favorite activities is giving out a basket of our sheep’s wool dyed in every color of the rainbow. And having a sheep out, so the kids can be petting the sheep and checking out the wool. And then coming over and looking at the wool in the basket and maybe putting together props or picture cards of the sheep to sweater process. You know we’ll talk through how the sheep is shorn, the wool has to be washed because, you know, you’re always able to wear it right off the sheep it’s gonna be very greasy and might have some manure in it might have some scratchy hay in it, so you have to wash your wool. And you can dye it any color of the rainbow using natural dyes from plants, or you could even use food coloring. And then of course, it has to get brushed out so it transforms into this fluffy cloud that’s ready to be spun into yarn. And then from there, we can learn to knit or crochet or weave it into an entire outfit, but usually we have just enough time to make yarn bracelets. And so it’s a really fun activity. And we basically turn the kids into spinning wheels with, if you could picture a piece of metal clothes hanger bent into a J shape. And the kids spin their, spin their J hook, and we create enough yarn to make bracelets or necklaces. And they’re colorful and it really gives the kids a sense of if we had more time together, we could just make this massive ball of yarn and make all kinds of things with it….I would say making, spinning wool into yarn bracelets might be in my opinion, the most favorite activity of children at the farm because one you get to take something home. I always try to make it and that gives them opportunity to meet the animal in which the wool came from and kids, they love arts and crafts you know, a majority of the time they’re they really look forward to creating something and again it’s, it when you’re spinning yarn it, I don’t know how to explain it except that it feels kind of magical. And yeah, so they just really enjoy being able to create something almost on their own and take that home”
Don on how he incorporated his flock into teaching Environmental Literature at Middlebury College
And I said, well, I’ll do it if I can do it in the spring term, because that’s when we have lambs born on the farm. And I’ll try to construct the course so that I can integrate the lambing activity into the syllabus. And, John, of course, said that sounds pretty great. And that’s, well, this course usually has 50 students give or take a few, and I wanted to have a situation where every night during the three weeks of lambing season, we could have two or three kids from that course, from that class, spend the night in the barn. And I wanted to have an excellent chance of lambs being born every night for three weeks. So for that reason, we increased the flock to 100 ewes. What was it before? Maybe 50, or 60. And we also built in the barn, an office that hangs down from the rafters is that space that can be heated in, there’s beds there and a couple of comfortable chairs and good lighting, so the kids could sit or sleep up there for one night, and look out the glass wall over the barn floor and see if anybody was in labor. And I figured that I can teach kids enough about obstetrics using one discussion section with a newly born live lamb that I would borrow from a neighbor, to show them the obstetric possibilities and what to do about them. That I could stick him in the barn and they would, you know, be at least competent to see if she was giving birth. And if they were if they didn’t, couldn’t figure out how to help or when to help they could come wake somebody up and we would be there. And I also was smart enough to understand that in this body of literature that we call nature writing, the family farm, usually 19th century version of the family farm is presented again and again as like a model of a harmonious relationship between humans and the natural world. That’s the metaphor that most of these writers have to work with. So that I could take students behind that metaphor, and give them a place to stand in considering and evaluating it, that nobody else could. Initially I had, my skills as a lecturer were like, I had no idea how long 15 minutes was you could see kids nodding off, saying when is this gonna end, but I got good at it eventually. And this this course allowed me to have a full time job at the college with, you know, not all the benefits of the tenured person but my God, for somebody who has a BA in philosophy it was you know, it was pretty good. I would get sabbaticals occasionally and, and the reputation of this course spread to the point where kids would hear about it when they came for their campus tour and admissions interview. And kids were coming to Middlebury College because they wanted to take this course, where you can spend a night in this guy’s barn and deliver lambs. Which is crazy, because it’s one night, out of four years. And it just shows how hungry kids were and are for anything that’s real, you know, just. And then when registration came around, there’d be like, you know, 100, applicants for this course, in which I wouldn’t have more than 50 people, and people would complain to the President, and so forth. And, you know, I came to Middlebury College to take this course and I can’t get in, because I’m not ES major or something. So, at that point, whether I was raising sheep, profitably or not, it didn’t matter. Because I was getting paid so much money by Middlebury College, to have a flock of sheep.”
Tammy on why she enjoys teaching people about fiber and farming
“The community of followers and the Patreon community are mostly people who, I would say, first off care about animals and care about the environment. And then there’s a good percentage of them who are makers, that are interested in this product we make on our farm, this ply that we make. So they all are seemingly, like this community, through this community I have met so many interesting people that are, I don’t know, I’ve just met so many interesting people. And I think it’s a bit that, has to do a little bit with that our values align. And so it’s easy to talk about things and learn about each other when you cross that hurdle. And, and so I educated my kids, you know, for 10 years while I homeschooled them, I had wanted to be a teacher when I was younger. It wasn’t in vogue to go to school to be a teacher because there was a glut of teachers on the market at that time. So we were all sort of steered towards business, which is what I studied in college and got a degree in marketing. And so, you know, I think that being able to teach is a passion. And when I was, you know, kind of timed out of picking it up as a profession because I chose to homeschool my kids and then here I am with a farm and the kids are up and out on to higher education or whatnot. And then I’ve got the infrastructure and I’ve already been farming for about 10 years, so I have the know how. So I turned that into my career, but I was able to continue teaching because it was so important to educate people about all of these different things about like, sustainability where you know, fiber is concerned and where slow fashion is concerned and then teaching people about the animals and animal husbandry and diversity with breeds as well as endangered and threatened species and there’s just so much that I’m learning all the time. And I love being able to share that. I also love that other people are interested to learn it”
Carol shares an anecdote about kid’s interest in learning about fiber
“People will say to me, they don’t know of any spinners. And I say to them, I only know spinners. And neither is the whole truth. But, but yes, I know a lot of great many spinners. And I see parents, encouraging their children and bringing them to me. And I’ve done a lot of work in schools as I mentioned earlier, and and I see interest on the part of teachers who brought their, their classes to me when we had sheep, and to me in my studio and for me in their school. But are we doing enough? I don’t think so. Because I mean, in Waldorf schools, there’s a lot of study with wool and silk and natural materials. But I think more would be better because children calm down when they’re handling fiber. One example was a little, an 18 month old boy who came with his family, several siblings. There were seven family members. And I was doing a demonstration at Billings Farm Museum. And they were trying, they said we have to go home. But he would not let go of the handle of the Drum Carter. And so literally his body was now parallel to the floor because his father was trying to bring him home. But he was crying because he didn’t want to stop. So that’s just one tiny example at a festival “