THE JOYS OF SHEARING ORNERY, 250-POUND SHEEP

My journey to a vocation as a sheep shearer began in 2007 when I moved to California to take a chance on the man who would, happily, become my husband. I thought a knitting class might be a good way to make new friends.

Then, as now, local food was all the rage, evidenced in crowded farmers markets, whole-animal butcher classes, and field trips on foraging food. I thought local yarn sounded like a good idea, too. Don’t these same people care about where their clothes came from? I wondered. Yarn, after all, is the foundation of all fabric, spun to thin thread and then either woven or knit. Aren’t synthetic fibers at least as bad as a factory-farmed hamburger? Why can I buy sheep’smilk cheese at the weekly farmers market on my street, but not a hat or sweater from the very same animal? I began searching for answers.

I found many. Most U.S.-grown wool is exported raw, returning in garments labeled only with the country name of the last manufacturing step — as required by trade treaties. On top of that, most U.S. wool and textile weaving mills had closed by