Yesterday afternoon, we held our third annual Sierra Foothills Wool Pool. Sponsored by UC Cooperative Extension, our wool pool is a way for small-scale producers to get their wool marketed. Since its inception, my friends at
Roswell Wool have been incredibly supportive. Mike Corn, owner of Roswell Wool and immediate past president of the American Sheep Industry Association, has made sure that small producers like us have a way to market our wool. Ian McKenzie, a Kiwi who spends half of each year in the American West (and the other half in New Zealand), cheerfully works with us and with other small-scale sheep producers in the foothills to get our wool packaged, shipped, and sold. And even though we're extremely small fish in an exceptionally large pond (we shipped somewhere around 1,000 pounds of raw wool yesterday - total US wool production is somewhere close to 25 million pounds a year), Mike and Ian always make us feel like we're all in this together - regardless of the size of our operation.
As a small-scale producer, we often rely on the infrastructure that exists because there are also large-scale operations in California. The vaccines, medicines, and feedstuffs we use are available because the California market is much larger than our 100-ewe flock. Ian McKenzie spends the spring and early summer in California because there are semi-loads of wool to be shipped; his small flatbed trailer load of our wool is a drop in the bucket. We're fortunate to be able to harvest (and sell) our lambs at Superior Farms in Dixon (just 65 miles down Interstate 80 from our home place) - the largest processor and marketer of lamb products in the U.S. Superior Farms operates in Dixon not because we have 75 or so lambs to sell in Auburn; rather, they are centrally located to handle lambs from the Imperial Valley, the San Joaquin Valley and from the Delta. I definitely realize I'm riding on the coattails of my larger-scale friends - woolen coattails, but coattails nonetheless.
And yet small-scale producers like us - and like my friend Robin Lynde of
Meridian Jacobs, and Spencer and Melissa Tregilgas of
Free Hand Farm, and Lloyd McCabe of Dixon - add value to the sheep-raising community as well. Many of us are active on social media, educating our neighbors (and the neighbors of our large-scale colleagues) about sheep production, the benefits of sheep grazing, and the value of wool. Some of us sell rams to larger operations, providing an infusion of new genetic material. Many smaller operations are early adopters of new management systems and new technology; some of us hold workshops to help educate a new generation of sheep ranchers. And some of us, one day, will transition from small-scale to large-scale production.
One of the things I appreciate most about my chosen avocation is that most shepherds are humble by nature. As I've written before, nobody goes to Boot Barn looking for sheepherder clothes; cowboy clothes, on the other hand, are a fashion statement. In the West, many of those who have continued in the sheep business are the descendants of immigrants (or immigrants themselves). Many of us have always relied on other people's land to graze our sheep - lease arrangements like mine are the standard rather than the exception in the sheep business. Regardless of how large (or small) our sheep operations are, there is a sense
in the sheep-raising community that we're all in this together!
No comments:
Post a Comment