Rebecca on saving sheep within the industry
“We’re definitely not trying to further the industry, right. And in a way, sheep have been domesticated forever. So , it’s a history of as I was describing the ancient times, I think, very beautiful relationship, but it’s definitely kind of anthropocentric they’ve been, or not kind of a lot anthropocentric in that they’ve been bred for certain qualities. Sometimes they think they’re skinny legs, and they’re big bodies, which creates arthritis problems as a result of, you know, hundreds and hundreds of years of breeding for certain qualities, especially meat. So there is an awkwardness to be participating in something that, you know, it’s not wilderness, but don’t get me started on that, since I spent a whole course questioning what wilderness means. But, you know, so we are participating in something that has a complicated history, including a capitalist history, a colonialist history, and you know, all of that. But by mostly taking sheep who otherwise would meet a bad end, either turned to meat or ewes who would be put in constant production producing more babies, that would primarily be lamb. I feel like we’re, we’re saving lives and sometimes getting back to the whole climate change discourse, there are times when I’m like, I’ve been working on climate change since the late 80s. It feels very discouraging. It’s a kind of different discouragement that my students feel, which is what are you leaving us and I’m like, I’ve been working on it. And so just being able to save some lives, it’s like, okay, if that’s my legacy, you know. And even if I never write another book, although I really would like to, maybe about sheep, I’m okay with that.”
Lee on how slowing down with weaving
“I’m very interested in design and pattern design and textiles, any kind of textiles. But it’s hard for me to rush I find, certainly before the holidays, when everybody wants my little hand towels, I get kind of crazy, cranking them out, that’s not, I don’t make my best work that way. And as I get older, I want to, I just want to keep getting better at what I’m doing. So I’m trying to even slow down a little bit more. And just, instead of bringing a lot of work to shows, bringing better work to shows. And people have responded to that, I’ve been able to sell some high end blankets and things like that, that have a lot of thought in them. So people have responded to my increased design and artistic thought. So that’s, that’s been really heartening for me. I want to keep going in that direction.”
Sam on industrial models of sheep farming
“And I think there was also a big drive John Nopper was part of it. And I went on some trips, where they were trying to promote this, Cornell called the star system, which was sort of trying to plug sheep into sort of the high production industrial model, where you eat lamb five times a year, and it’s very intensive, very resource intensive very much on the model of like pork production or chicken production or going on with dairy now and just really trying to industrialize sheep production to produce a consistent supply of lamb year round lamb. Sheep are seasonally in estrus. In other words, they generally will only come into heat in the fall to lamb in the spring, that’s their, the way, they get their younger generations so there was an attempt to try to bring in some different genetics to allow you to be on the star system. If you’re if you’re interested, there’s a woman that posts on YouTube, her name is Sandy Brock, and she’s in Canada. And she manages her flock on this sort of looks like the star system to me, and it’s very industrial very much inside all the time. Animals never go out. They’re constantly you know, they’re on very high diets, you know, diets and, and very different than the way sheep have been raised for a long time. What do you think about that, do you think that’s a good option? Well, I mean, my I, I’m tend to be, we’re not an organic farm here at Shelburne farms, but I tend to take a sort of a different view that we’re better off trying to work with nature. And we’re better off trying to understand sort of the natural systems and work with those rather than trying to impose our, our ideas. I mean, I’m not a great fan of industrial agriculture. I’d like to see animals out grazing. I think sheep are really well adapted to our climate in Vermont, our grass and our grasslands. We don’t feed any grain and never have to our sheep our sheep are one hundred percent grass fed, and we have trouble with them getting too fat. So they’re , I don’t know, feeding them a lot of grain, and I don’t, I just don’t see how that you can, how that works. But no, that’s not how we manage our sheep.”
Carol on industrialization of textile industry
“I’m sad that this, that basically our wool industry has been shipped overseas and now here we are opening LL Bean catalog and buying sweaters that are processed with our wool, or some of our wool that’s been shipped to China and, and been processed on equipment that was here. But it’s, it’s not the whole picture. There’s green mountain Spinnery in Putney which is thriving. And at the sheep and wool festival I was just the vendor at, they were just brightening and their display was beautiful. They have a wide range of types and colors and thicknesses of yarn for different purposes. So they seem to be doing very well and they’re still here in Vermont. There are small mills that come and go. It’s challenging, because they’re competing, bigger mills from like Frankenmuth and Zeilinge in Michigan. But as far as me personally, I am about as far from the industrialized world as I could be, because most of my clothes come from thrift stores. You know, and I make some things and I remake other things. So I think there’s just a huge amount of waste in the clothing industry.
Hilary on farming at at successful scale
“To me, it feels like we’re, our farm in the way that we do it is pretty unique. In the fact, sense that we sell our meat, despite all of it direct to consumer. And we’re for that sort of system, a fairly sizable flock, a lot of people once they get closer to 100 are starting to sell a lot of just live lambs and just moving a bunch of animals out. And I think it’s mostly because of labor, like it takes a lot of time, to get the animal slaughter and find a market for it, and that kind of stuff. But for us, we started so small and just slowly increased and maintained our customer base over the years, that we’ve really been able to make a lot with our small flock, sort of getting the highest dollar value for the labor that that we’ve put in. And we’ve really maximized on our systems. And we’ve made them really efficient as far as our grazing, because to intensively graze a large flock is really time consuming or can be so we’ve tried to really make that piece efficient to avoid parasite issues, and which has allowed us to certify our flock organic and that kind of stuff. So I think, to me, it feels like it’s a really unique model of sheep farming right now. But I think that more people could do it pretty easily if they knew how.”