White Barn Farm Sheep & Wool

Ulster County Boces Fashion students visit the farm

Wed, 30 May 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Ulster county Boces Fashion students visit the farm. Awesome group of young people, future eco conscious clothing designers!!!!! The coolest thing is that they came in a yellow school bus. # ulsterboces # futureoffashion # farmlife @ White Barn Farm Sheep & Wool

It’s happening!!!!!!!

Wed, 16 May 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Before long this yummy fluff will be gorgeous shades of Heaven 2ply fingering and Heaven 3ply light worsted / DK. Woohoo!!!! # farmyarn # handdyedyarn # cormo # knitlocal

Flowers of Scotland

Tue, 15 May 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Back in Scotland

Back in Scotland for the final days of my daughter’s journey at St Andrews. First stop, St Andrews Botanic Garden. My happy place. # ilovegardens # gardenlife @ St Andrews

Free Plant Dyeing Event

Thu, 20 Aug 2015 08:19:30 GMT

You will be amazed.

Plant Dyeing Event

Saturday, August 29th 11-2pm

Come experience the colors locked inside some of our most common garden plants. You will be amazed. I will be demonstrating several techniques and am happy to answer your questions.

Free

The Once A Year Phone Call

Fri, 20 Mar 2015 00:00:00 GMT

Once a year I make the call to my shearer, hoping that he’ll still be willing to drive the 3 hours to come shear my not so big flock. Aaron Loux is a special guy. He’s a young person who has chosen sheep shearing as a profession. Not only does he have a lovely way with the animals, he also has mad skills.

My sheep are foldy, if you know what I mean. They have lots of skin rolling back on itself. If your shearer isn’t skilled, the animals will come out all nicked up, polka dotted with blood. Luckily, this rarely happens. He’s also great at keeping second cuts to a minimum. They are bits of fleece that are too short to include in the spinning process. We definitely don’t want them.

Aaron is also special because he produces his own line of yarn from his own sheep, or fleeces he’s been given. It is crisp, down to earth, ‘farm’ yarn in natural shades of grey/brown. We are currently sold out. He’s developed a bit of a fan club. I’m hoping this blog post will put some pressure on him and he’ll send some more along!

There is nothing like throwing a big old fleece. In this case, I think we had about 12 pounds of fleece from just one of my males. Once it’s scoured and processed we might have 5 or 6 pounds of spinnable fiber. That’s about 5 ladies medium sweaters!

Once the sheep are sheared there is a little bit of a meet and greet thing that happens. They pretty much don’t recognize each other anymore and need a few minutes to get reacquainted. Once they’ve rebonded, they head out to the yard and share a hay snack. Oh, and by the way, if you are interested in raw fleeces, please contact the shop. They are BEAUTIFUL.