Our Sheep
We started out with four sheep and have had as many as 100. Currently, we have around 20 in our flock. They are used for their wool and their meat. Our sheep graze in the pastures and eat produce and fruit that has gone to seed, is starting to go bad, or has touched the ground - the stuff we can’t sell to people. As a result, our sheep eat really well.
The Corriedale Sheep
This reliable, multipurpose wool is a pleasure to spin, knit, crochet, or weave. Its long staples and well-defined, even crimp provide loft and elasticity and make it an excellent hand spinning wool. Within a single fleece, the wool tends to be consistent in length, crimp profile, and fineness. Locks are normally rectangular and dense, with flat tips. You can comb, flick, card, or spin from the locks. Cut the staples in half if you want to card fiber that is on the long side for woolen preparation. Corriedale is easier to spin than many wools of similar fine-ness, and is fairly easy to find in yarn form.
Effect of dyes:
The whites take dye well; the grays and browns can be overdyed.
Best uses:
If you want to make sweaters, socks, pillows, blankets, and other household textiles, this medium-soft, resilient wool is ideally suited to the task. For felters, it's definitely a wool to experiment with.
Origin: New Zealand
Fleece weights: 10-20 pounds (4.5-9 kg)
Staple lengths: 3"-6" (8-15 cm)
Fiber diameters: 25-35 microns
Natural colors: White, gray, brown, black
Our Sausages
In the early years, we had to sell a whole lamb to a customer due to regulations. The Island Grown Farmers Cooperative was started in 2002 as an effort to develop butchering access to small farmers in the San Juan Islands. The goal was to preserve an island way of life as well as the historic island farmlands and eliminate the need to haul livestock off the island.
Real estate development was eating up farms on the San Juan Islands and those trying to make a living were finding themselves competing with corporate farms and processors while struggling to overcome the added costs of operating on the islands.
By creating their own Farmer-owned cooperative, they could better control the farming process from the beginning of the animals’ life until it was sold to the consumer. 80 farms in the San Juan Islands, Skagit, and Whatcom counties now use the IGFC mobile slaughter, USDA inspection, and product wrapping and package services.
We were part of the early membership in the IGFC as one of the founding farms. Without this service we would have stopped raising sheep years ago. The lambs are born in the early spring and are butchered in late fall and early winter. The sheep graze in our pastures. As the season progresses they get to share in the bounty of the garden and orchard. Veggies going to seed, grape leaves, fruit, you name it they get to eat it. Nothing goes to waste.
Slaughter happens here on Orcas Island. The meat is then taken to the IGFC site at the Port of Skagit in Burlington to be made into sausage. It is packaged and frozen there. Then we get to go and pick it up and bring it back to the orchard for our customers to purchase.
