Butternut Woolens

It's with a heavy heart friends that I have to tell you I've lost the battle: I must sell the farm and close Butternut Woolens.

It's been a tremendous pleasure for me to explore the dyeing arts with you these last 6 years. The first show I did was the Spring Fiber Fair at Abernethy Grange. I sold $35 at that show, just enough to pay the booth fee. I was so excited that some people really loved my dye work! And how much I grew as an artist in those next years. Hours in the Studio Under the Porch after my little boys had gone to bed, experimenting with new colorways and new fibers, remembering beloved people and landscapes where I felt most at home.

It wasn't long until I had my own hand spinner's flock of selected Shetland wethers from prize winning flocks around Oregon: Lynn at Cedar Haven Shetlands in Estacada, Lois at Stonehaven Farm, and Susie at Misty View Farm. And of course, a very fine herd of German and German-hybrid angora rabbits from select breeding stock brought over from Germany. Thanks Leslie, Gail, Margie and the others at the International Association of German Angora Rabbit Breeders for bringing these amazing rabbits to North America. Thanks to to all of you who bought bunnies, it was you who paid the feed bills for all the other animals.

When I was young I lived with my extended family at Beartrap Ranch in southwest Montana. My grandparents lived in what we called the Big House, the new ranch house that was built in 1959 after the Hebgen Lake earthquake scarp ripped across the front lawn of the horsehair-chinked homestead cabin where they had lived. The Big House had picture windows facing the southern Madison Range and Hebgen Lake in the distance. From every chair in the place you could look out across the sagebrush to the navy blue, white-tipped mountains and see the glint of the lake. You could see who was coming up the 1/2 mile dirt road long before they got to the house. You could see the couple of dozen horses in the corral and lower pasture, see the forest just to the north where the cattle were pastured in the summer and when on any given day the phone might ring with the news that the cattle were out and Mom would saddle up a couple of horses and with my 10 year old aunt and baby brother, we'd ride out to round them up. To me, landscape, family and home are entwined, to lose one is to lose the others.

I guess what I'm trying to say is it's about killing me to sell this little 5 acre farm in the Land of Milk and Honey, where everything grows like it's in the Garden of Eden itself. It was a dream come true to live and work here and I thank all of you for your part in it.

Butternut Woolens will be at Black Sheep Gathering, Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival, and the Knitting and Crochet Guilds of America show in Portland this summer. I'll also be posting a lot of yarn and fiber on this web site. Check back every day or two, I intend to post and sell my personal stash of yarns, too, and I only collected the good stuff: Rowan, Mission Falls, etc. There will also be loads of books. Somehow I've got to get a 2400 square foot house, a 1200 square foot barn, a 800 square foot shop and a 200 square foot rabbit barn into a 2 bedroom apartment. I'm counting on your help! Then in October or there abouts, I'll hold a farm sale and you locals can come and get sheep feeders, hog panels, wool fleeces, tools, tractor, furniture, etc.

I'm taking all the fiber I've grown myself off-line, that includes Homegrown, Meadowspun, Rabbit's Foot and Targhee (not my sheep, but sentimental to me). I'm sure you understand how I have to keep these woolens for myself and my children as a reminder of this time in our lives when we were farmers. Instead, I urge you to contact iagarb for angora blend yarns and support other small farmers and their custom yarns. You can find them at the wool shows and festivals in your area.

Will you take it upon yourselves to spread the news to Ravelry and the PDX Knit Bloggers and any other groups you love?

Thank you, everyone.