Eliza Blue

Black Hills Pioneer 315 Seaton Circle Spearfish, SD 57783 Phone: 605-642-2761 Email: [email protected]

In the crush of travel, the new book, and the beginning of summer I have somehow neglected to report on one of the most exciting things that has happened in recent memory: The long-awaited arrival of yarn spun from the wool of my own darling sheep!

On a trip to a small family farm in the Driftless Area of Wisconsin, Eliza Blue discovered an interesting breed of sheep being used for milk production.

Almost a year ago exactly, I wrote about a tiny, cream-and-yellow striped kitten our visiting Italian friend found crying in the corral. The poor thing was smaller than the palm of his hand, minutes old — she still had a damp umbilical cord — and her mother was nowhere to be found. I took her to the house and mixed a bottle of kitten milk replacer for her without a hope in the world that she would survive. She was just too tiny.

Six months ago, we moved from our house on the ranch to a house in town. A lot of my readers were concerned we weren’t ranching anymore.

Last winter, we took two ewes out of breeding rotation. One was ready for retirement and the other had a case of mastitis that damaged half her udder. While the rest of the flock hung out with the buck in the big corral, those two were let out to free range with the cows. When it was time to pull the buck, they happily rejoined the flock.

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There have been some hard seasons of shepherding over the years, but none compare to the last few months. The irony that these difficulties arrived precisely when I decided to re-dedicate myself to flock management and get serious about growing my fiber business is not lost on me; and I’ll be honest, it’s hard not to take it personally when an outpouring of care and devotion (and time and money) are rewarded with one disaster after another.

I’ve learned so much from writing this column and needing to work within a limit of 650-675 words. Most weeks, the column is much too long when I finish the first writing, and the winnowing of my word count is almost always the longest part of my editing process.

When the tragedy struck her flock, Eliza Blue used grief “as the container for joy” by making hard decisions with the future well being of her sheep on her mind.