Welcome to Gathering Wool, Glen Tamarack Farm’s Sheep and Fiber Art Blog (with sheepy, wooly subject matter and a few essays, poems, and recipes thrown in)! I have just redone our whole website in Word Press and hope it will be informative for you and easy to navigate!  As I have more time to work on the website, I will try to bring in archives from my former blog, Glen Tamarack Farm Sheep and Fiber Art, but for now, I will just post what is happening on the farm in the moment.  I spent a lot of time this summer in our improvised wool room sorting wool to send out to Zeillinger’s Mill in Michigan for sock yarn, which will then be sent by them to Northland Woolens in MN to be knit into machine washable wool-blend socks.  It will take 10 months for the yarnand knitting, but I am already excited about getting over 150 pairs of socks back to wear, give as gifts, and sell some day!  You can see in the photo I look somewhat dazed with all the sorting.  It is unusual, but I am nearly caught up with washing and sorting, very little raw wool in storage right now.  That will change in early October when we get some of the lambs and sheep sheared prior to slaughter–fall is a sad time for us to say goodbye to old friends in the flock.  Downsizing for winter must be done for feed, space, and health of the flock. 

We had the rare privilege of hosting Sue Thwaites, British Shetland sheep breeder and MSSBA’s 2018 fleece show judge this past Monday and Tuesday.  She kindly assessed our flock while here.  We asked her to be brutally honest, and her vast experience and expertise was extremely helpful for setting flock goals and making compatible decisions.  Thank you, Sue;  we hope to visit you and your flock in England some day.  We loved having you here and showing you around!