| No Longer Available A BALE OF FIBER scroll down for the newest photos of the bales A person might just think a bit before deciding to purchase a 600 lb. bale of fiber, but a person just might be wrong too. These same persons are crazy enough to buy more big bales! Harlan Brown of Brown Sheep met me at the door awhile back asking if I would like a bale of some really beautiful natural gray blend wool. Silly question.......of course I would, but I need to make room for it..........somewhere. The storage building is nearly full to bursting, the garage is doubling as a shipping and storage area until the new shipping area gets closed in. But one can always make more room for fiber can't one??? But we had made room for two more big bales.........White Roving and fibers this time!! And now they are gone!!! I'm not sure who is the most dangerous in the Brown Sheep Mill.........the enabler's who show us the fibers, or Carl and Carol who love them all. All I know for sure is that we end up with truck or van or trailer full of fibers every time we head for the mill. And we go back for more Frequently!!! And we love every minute of it. When someone jokingly says they have a "Ton of Fiber" on hand, we just laugh, I think we have at least five tons in the shed. At any given time anymore we have several tons of fiber on hand ready to be shipped out across the country and around the world. This gray bale was made up of colored natural wools, much from the four state area of Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana. It had been washed and carded and then compressed into a huge bale. The correct term for this gray fiber was "Laps" as it was a very wide, thin "roving". As we cut the bands the fibers began to expand again as wool will do. I could only hope it will still be in the garage come morning. |
| The bale slid out of the truck with the might of two men, and they pushed it into place in the garage. |
| The first thing to do is get these steel bands cut off. |
| The bands are loose and the fiber is starting to come out of the burlap and plastic. |
| Oh! Oh! Might be we should have opened it with the bale turned the other way! |
| Holy Cow!..........or should it be Holy Sheep!! This stuff just keeps on expanding. |
| And expanding across the floor |
| We are finally able to pull a length wise piece about a foot thick and put it atop the huge carded fiber. Knotting the plastic bag to contain it somewhat. This stuff was ready to sell. |
| THE WHITE BALE! This fiber was in roving form, just compressed. Clean and carded into rovings. Some in loose carded handfuls. Some is 100% wool, some wool blends. ..mohair, silk, etc. |
| There was right close to 600 lb. of white rovings and fibers in this bale. Carl cut the wires and it began expanding across the floor once again. A whole lot of good spinning and dyeing in these fibers. |
| Carol props up the second big white bale. Harlan Brown thought we finally had the warehouse free of the stored fibers. But I was sure there was one with colors... and two years later Harlan Brown found them. |
| Now here it was 2008, and Harlan called again.......he had found two more bales of rovings. When we got to the warehouse we found two bales of black, gray, brown and white. I still insisted there was at least one bale of colors, reds, blues, etc. Harlan insisted there was no more. We went over to the mill and loaded the mill ends and the yarns and as we were leaving, here came Harlan and he laughed and told me I was right....in a far corner he found two more bales. We will bring them home as we find storage space for them. |
| The bale is out of the truck. Having been smacked in the face with a cut wire, Carl ducks as he cuts the next one. |
| The wires are cut, and the fiber starts expanding. This time we hope it expands up instead of out, or the pickup will be out of the garage for the summer.........again!!! |
| THE BIG BALES ARE GONE!! fun while they lasted... |
| A BIT OF OUR HISTORY WILL THE BROWN SHEEP MILL IN MITCHELL, NEBRASKA. About 2006 or shortly thereafter we took on the job of selling out the Mill End Waste for the mill. This is how some of it came to our home.. |