Origin Wool

Thanks for the shrooms Druncle ! Such a soup I've made!

Oops, I forgot to put the apples in with the broccoli... Fried chicken and sauvy b on a Friday night.

Yet another indirect benefit to targeted grazing- the LGDs eating the gophers.

When Primm Addison-Lloyd was a puppy, erm, baby space raccoon.

Grazing under a cherry orchard.

Astra's little ewe by Ariodante.

A guy was trying to sell me a ram one time, saying that the ram would "move my program forward."

Mira. 🤌🏼 We don't want our breeding programs to go "forward." We need them to go backwards, to better sheep, better shepherding, better impact on the land, better quality meat (including flavor and micronutrient density), better efficiency via reduced inputs and labor, just better.

Like I always say, the way forward is behind us.

Finished grazing one block and moving into the next. Eat faster, budbreak is coming!

Excellent episode with my boi -I'm still a oenological neophyte, but this translates perfectly into the stockmanship, forage and range dialects that I speak. Also, I think Adam 's idea about grazing with rabbits (or guinea pigs) in micro-vineyards like my suburban vigneron is a brilliant idea. Plus it's good meat grown in your own backyard, literally. ;) Cheers to you, good sirs.

First day out from under vines!

This was 8' tall blackberries last year.

Running between firs for cover and vines for feed as the bipolar weather's mood swings.

I love bowls. And serving people from them.

Lamb roasted. Tortillas toasted. Más o menos. Let's gooooo!

Oh, she's a pretty little thing!

Love me some

So you think you're cool, but are you as cool as Primm? She put the "extra" in "extraterrestrial."

When the lawnmower kicks a rock into your sliding glass door. Make lemonade? Or like Bill Johnson says, "when in war, create." Beauty for ashes.

Mrs Hughes Junior with a little ewe this morning too!

Behold . When the grazed regrowth is already almost ahead of areas that haven't been grazed. ;)

Blog post. Más o menos.

No barns, no grain, no problem! And she'll eat you if you try to grab that lamb. :)

One of my favorite ewes and this daughter of hers both dropped ewe lambs. Excited to see what the rest of the maternal family produces.

Build maternal families in your flocks/herds and linebreed. The outcross to complimentary sires. The weird focus on "improvement" and "sires are half your herd" and keeping a young flock are so destructive. Your sires are from your dams. They create your future dams. Your dams are vastly more than half your flock. They are your flock. Sires compliment them (or not.) "This sire won this trophy," or "this sire was champion blah-blah-blah." You can't eat ribbons. And if he has no history or consistent strong maternal heritage, he won't pass that to his daughters.

Your best rams are representations of your best dam families. I feel a flocking dam pun coming on... 🤭

Masculine rams with big butts, big guts and big nuts, gentle disposition, expressive eyes, wide horns (eat the polled and half-polled stuff before it can breed.) Feminine ewes with big bellies to hold lots of coarse roughage, low to the ground, wider not taller, abundant, soft fleeces, easy keepers on forage alone, unassisted outdoor mothering, protective, prolific, ample milkers, easy to handle (not too tame or too wild), elegant like a deer. Lambs with protective birth coats who immediately latch onto a tit and grow like wildfire to be ready to slaughter in the late summer or breed in the fall.

We're in a unique position as shepherds to have flocks that are totally regenerative and a bet positive to the environment and local food and fiber systems, communities... Or also consumptive and extractive as pets or perverse exhibition objects, or status symbols or what have you. We absolutely have to reconcile our paradigm with original design- animals and plants and fungi, etc are not soulless automata. God made the universe and all it contains, and said it was good. We just can't one-up that.

My almonds and cherries are going for it.

She may have been born just plain white trash, but Fancy was her name.

Here's your one chance, Fancy, don't let me down... 🎸 🎶 🐐

My good girls.

It was cold so it decided to wear wool. Like they say at Kaos,

Speaks of Colorado, ravaged for oil, water, resorts, recreation, subdivisions, Hollywood and Nashville stars, old money, new money, Democrats and Republicans ra**ng and pillaging.

Where we were horsemen, now there are equestrians in tight plastic pants and plastic helmets. Where we were stockmen there are now statues of sheep in shopping centers where sheep once grazed. What was stirrup-deep grassland is bare soil, cheatgrass and sagebrush. What few cows are left are draft stock instead of beef stock, so efficiency, quality of beef, maternal characteristics, docility are all gone. There are more car collections than milk cows. There are more dope dispensaries than family gardens. Green, in a pig's eye.

And it's no different here in Oregon, except it rains and there aren't wolves yet. And there is no oil. Thank God for that. So it's agrochemicals giving people cancer instead of drilling and fracking. Care for some Benzene in your coffee? What, mutagens and carcinogens not your speed? Think of the Coloradan family next you're at the gas pump or putting down that synthetic fertilizer behind your tractor. Watch the soil blow away from the grass seed fields in the fall or watch the soil wash away from under the filbert orchards all winter... Six of one.

We have to do what we can within our realm of influence to fight the devastation. If it's just changing how we shop or how far we drive or how we farm or... Little things make big differences.

A friend gave me this wheel the other day. Spent most of her life since 1977 in a closet. Got her all polished up and spinning some Targhee/Silk/Bamboo blend on her. I'd have to look an see who the roving came from- I think we won it as a door prize at Oregon Flock and Fiber. It's not as fancy as the wheel my mom gave me, but it is a super nice little wheel. Órale!

A warm Bern.

Natural colored wool is pretty amazing. No single sheep is the same, colors and patterns and wool style vary between individuals, which makes every fleece unique, which in turn makes every yarn lot unique every year. It's like terroir in wines.

When we grade color lots after shearing, we blend larger yarn lots of similar colors. Sometimes black and grey wools sunbleach to beautiful burnt browns, and this often shows up in warm tones in grey and black yarns. These beanies reflect those warm tones, even with the cool grey and black pigments in there too.

Some people see them as cooler or warmer toned, and we think that is awesome!

Need a gift idea?

Check out our solid natural-colored, ribbed Shetland beanies!
https://www.originwool.com/store/p/ribbed

Factoid.