by Clara Parkes
By the time the Wool Trust was created in 2000, significant damage had been done. Every few years, the funding comes up for renewal, and everyone holds their breath. How long the funding will continue is anyone’s guess.
According to a recent economic impact study, the American sheep industry adds $5.8 billion to the U.S. economy—yet its voice in Washington, D.C., is almost inaudible. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America spent $25.8 million on lobbying in 2017. By comparison, ASI’s entire lobbying budget hovers around $175,000, all from member dues. Wool outreach programs? Just $200,000. Are you starting to see the problem?
Back in the meeting, we moved on to other numbers. Global wool production is at a seventy-year low, we were told. While it seems to be holding steady, all the production, sales, and export projections are still following a downward trend—and even those numbers were given with a cautionary, “If we’re lucky.” I don’t know if I’d expected better news, but I certainly wasn’t getting it. If anything, I felt like I’d trekked upstream only to discover that the dam keeping my town safe was actually aging and riddled with cracks.
At last, we were told about a tiny growth spot that exists for the industry: smaller farms that are cropping up and raising specialty flocks. Farms like Eugene’s. Farms where “every sheep has a name,” which got a chuckle from the group. (For the record, Eugene’s sheep all have numbers—which I’ve never heard spoken so lovingly as when Dominique called to her ewes on shearing day.)
The tone in the room suggested that they considered these smaller farms rogue operators—liabilities, even—that clearly didn’t care about or fully understand sophisticated issues of fiber quality and breeding. In addition to sheep, these operators often also raised—and here was a palpable shudder—alpaca.
I’d been writing about yarns from these small farms, from rare and unusual sheep breeds, breeds that the “regular” wool channels won’t even acknowledge as of importance, for decades. The fiber arts world prizes the very colored fibers that ASI considers a contaminant. We’ll pay ten times what these farmers would ever get on the open market for their wool. The real issue for us is simply that of scarcity. You’re lucky to find a farm—yes, farm—with more than one hundred of these more interesting, unusual sheep breeds. Since numbers equal power and visibility, those smaller players get very little support or recognition from ASI.
The question was asked, “How can we bring them into the fold?” But I was left wondering if we were the ones who needed to bring ASI into our fold. There in San Antonio, all the attention was going to the handful of big producers, customers, and deep pockets keeping ASI afloat, leaving the countless smaller producers and customers and pockets to fend for themselves, despite the fact that they had potential to carry the future.
Everyone in the room seemed to be so intent on keeping the big buyers for that name-brand clothing company or for the Department of Defense happy that they had lost sight of an even bigger urgency: making people want to wear wool in the first place. Ladd said it himself: The only hope for wool was people using it. Without demand, there will be no product.
Instead of paying a branding agency to create glossy “wool is great!” brochures to hand out at trade shows, ASI should be plowing its resources into broad public campaigns to raise the profile of wool, the desirability of wool, its innate attractiveness and magic, among the actual humans who’ll be wearing it. Instead, it would take the American Wool Council another four years to set up an Instagram account.
If consumers don’t show an interest in wool, companies will have zero incentive to make anything out of wool—which means they won’t be buying wool from American producers. It’s that simple. Was I the only one seeing this?
Remember when I said that global wool production was at a seventy-year low? There was one outlier: the United Kingdom. In 2012, wool production in the UK actually increased by 6.2 percent. Not coincidentally, these numbers came two years into the UK’s Campaign for Wool, a massive program initiated by His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales to raise public awareness of, and appreciation for, wool. Here in the United States, ASI is the largest possible voice for wool, and it’s not being used.
The meeting adjourned. There was a reception at a nearby restaurant, but I’d had enough for one day. I needed to find a quiet place to sit and think. Out a back door I went, down some stairs to the water. I walked for a while, passing mariachi groups and women in high heels teetering perilously close to the river’s edge. I found a table just as the sun set. I skipped that margarita and went straight for a gin and tonic.
I’d wanted to come away with a sense that things were going to be okay, that the adults in the room knew about the problem and were actively engaged in fixing it. Instead, I felt that ASI needed help, and that I—we, the people who make with wool and wear it out into the world—could actually be part of the solution.
I didn’t know how much, if anything, I could accomplish with my 676-pound bale, but I was more determined than ever to try.
CHAPTER 4
MOVING BODIES
Getting the bale to Maine was an adventure. It turns out a good 50 percent of yarn making has zero to do with making yarn and everything to do with simply moving wool from place to place. Unless you have your own end-to-end wool-processing plant, you’ll need to figure out how to ship from the ranch to the scourer, from the scourer to the mill, from the mill to the dyehouse, and from the dyehouse to the warehouse. Then you have to get the product to your customers, or to the store that will, in turn, sell it to the customers.
Shipping freight is like entering the Bermuda Triangle. Each shipper will give you dramatically different quotes. Change the origin ZIP code and you could easily knock $400 off the bill—or add another $1,000. It made no sense to me. Then you have to specify the NMFC for your item. That’s the National Motor Freight Classification, a standard that catalogs eighteen traditional freight “classes” or commodity types for interstate freight. And the numbers do not go from one to eighteen, as one might expect. No, they start at 50 and run rather randomly to 500 depending on item density, handling, storability, and liability. An item with an NMFC of 50 easily fits on a pallet, weighs about fifty pounds per cubic foot, and is very durable, say, something like sandbags. At the other end of the spectrum, an NMFC 500 item could be bags of feathers or ping-pong balls. Turns out, the bale’s NMFC is 70. Oh, you also have to note whether you’re shipping a carton, drum, pallet, or skid—none of which applies to a bale. It goes on.
Even after the bale was in motion, there were hiccups. The bale went MIA between Vermont and Maine for three days, prompting fears that it had slipped off the back of the truck as it crossed the bridge from New Hampshire to Maine and kerplunked to the bottom of the Piscataqua River. Or, worse yet, maybe Eugene and Ladd had orchestrated a hoax and were, at that very moment, toasting each other on a beach in Guatemala. Eventually the bale arrived safe and sound. Apparently things can go on temporary walkabouts when you ship freight.
Now that it had arrived from the scouring plant in Texas, I would need to open my bale to divvy up smaller amounts of wool for each mill. This skill is not frequently taught in school. Nor is there a What to Expect When You’re Expecting a Bale book for expectant bale-openers. But I did know someone who’d opened bales before: Anne Bosch and her husband, who operate the Blackberry Ridge Woolen Mill in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin. She was on my short list of potential mills for the project. I wrote her for advice on how to get this thing open, ending with a naive but sincere plea, “Is it true they explode?”
She wrote back right away.
The wires will require wire cutters. The long-handled ones work best because they give you better leverage. You should wear protective eyeglasses and make sure no one else is near. The wires can fly fast and hard. We leave most of the plastic bag on the bale to help keep the wires under control, which works most of the time. The bales are about 2.5 x 2.5 x 6 feet [.75 x .75 x 1.8 m]. If all of the wires are cut at one time,
it could double or triple in volume. Even if you don’t cut all of the wires, it can sort of bow out in the middle like a banana. Make sure the floor around it is clean.
Have fun!
I am not naturally athletic. I have chopped firewood just enough to prove that I can, but otherwise my ideal form of physical exertion involves walking to a place that serves tea and toast. I wasn’t liking the sound of this. What if I hurt myself? What if I went blind? What if it really did explode? People were expecting a story, and “I asked a stranger named Joe to open the bale, so he did, and now it’s open,” wouldn’t cut it. I had to do this myself.
At the Ace Hardware store on Route 1 in Falmouth, Maine, a friendly man named Dennis lumbered over and asked if I needed help. Why yes, I did. I told him I needed some wire cutters, protective eye gear, and gloves. As he mulled over my request, I added, “I’m opening a 676-pound bale of wool today.”
His eyes grew big. Clearly this was exciting news for Dennis. He wanted me to be prepared.
Dennis found me the right pair of bolt cutters (“Wire, you say? Any idea what gauge?”), gloves (their smallest so-called work gloves for women were bright pink with “TuffChix” emblazoned on the side), and eye protection. I also got a drop cloth to cover the exploded bale, a Swiffer to clean up the floor around it, a box of quart-sized bags for mill samples, and garbage bags so I could begin divvying up the fiber. I honestly thought I could just dump hundreds of pounds of scoured wool into garbage bags and send it on its way. All the while, Dennis told me about his career in construction, and then his career in law enforcement, pointing to each scar on his body and explaining how it got there. He also told me all about his leather-working hobby, pulling out his wallet for show. Dennis was all for me opening this bale of wool.
Car loaded with supplies, I set out for the old Pepperell Mill Campus in Biddeford. I had also packed a camera and tripod so that my survivors would have video footage to show the authorities when they were asked, “How the hell did that happen?”
The bale was in Biddeford because my friend Pam Allen, who owned the yarn company Quince & Co. at the time, was doing me a great big favor. Pam had teamed up with three others to purchase the assets of the bankrupt JCA dyehouse in Massachusetts and move everything to Biddeford, where they had just relaunched it as the Saco River Dyehouse. They had leased a huge space on the ground floor of Building 13–1, the very same building and floor where the old Pepperell Mill dyehouse used to be. At that point they still had far more space than they needed, so Pam subleased a portion for the Quince warehouses. She, in turn, had more than she needed. I had a bale, so we struck a deal.
While the Pepperell Mill complex has since become a warren of lofts and offices and restaurants, much of it hadn’t yet been developed. It had the feeling of a haunted indoor playground the size of a football field, with ancient creaky wood floors and tall narrow windows, many still covered with wood or even bricks. When they’d moved into the space, Pam told me they’d found a gold mine of 1960s office furniture, much of which they kept for their own use.
While Quince was a major customer of the dyehouse, it certainly wasn’t the only one. No walls separated Pam’s yarn inventory from racks upon racks of freshly dyed yarn, some for her, some for her competitors. Sometimes her competitors came to tour the dyehouse or talk colors, staring at the Quince shelves as they did so.
The other dyehouse partners quickly began showing a keen interest in my bale, especially Claudia and Ken Raessler (who would soon become the sole owners). Before the dyehouse, they had raised alpacas while Claudia worked as a lawyer and Ken as an anesthesiologist. When I arrived with my wire cutters and TuffChix gloves, Claudia intercepted me. She peppered me with questions about this woolly presence that had been deposited in their midst. She’d already reached in and pulled out a sample of fiber. “It feels very nice,” she said. She wanted to know my plans for it. Where would I be shipping it? Did I know how? Which mills would I be using? What kind of yarn would I make? Did I need help?
My immediate response was to evade all her questions. Who was this person trying to horn in on my bale? But more than that, I couldn’t reveal my plans because I didn’t have anything fleshed out yet. I had a vague idea of how it could work, but my plan was to let each action inform the next. Otherwise, how could I correct my course as I learned new things along the way?
Claudia drifted off, and I stood studying my bale. They’d put it on a wooden pallet and tucked it between two pillars along the main thoroughfare between the Quince warehouse and the dyehouse. The plastic had several big gashes in its midsection, the exposed fibers darkened by what I hoped was just dirt acquired during freight transport. I hoisted myself up onto the bale and asked Pam’s assistant Jerusha if she’d mind taking my picture. When I got off the bale, my hands and my jeans were covered in a fine black grime.
“Oh yeah,” she said, “you’ll probably want to keep your stuff covered around here.” Good thing I got that drop cloth.
Looking at my bale again, I had no idea just how much this thing would explode, or in which direction. But if it did, or if anything went awry, it could block access to the dyehouse. Not a good idea.
Jerusha ran off to get a hand-operated forklift she’d seen among the dyehouse equipment. We wiggled it in place, fiddled with the lift mechanism, and successfully moved the bale to a more explosion-friendly resting spot at the end of the Quince shelves facing into the dyehouse. From here the bale could explode all it wanted, although I hoped it wouldn’t.
Floor swept and equipment ready, there was no more delaying the show. Time to begin. I donned my protective eye gear, slipped on the TuffChix gloves, grabbed the wire cutters, and tiptoed toward the bale. Anne had advised that I keep the plastic on while I cut the wires to keep them from flying into my face, and I realized this would also help contain the wool. Clever.
I positioned the mouth of my wire cutters over the first wire, took a deep breath, and pulled the handles together. From within the bale came a small “pop” that made the warehouse floor jump. I reached in and snipped the next wire. The boom was louder, like gunfire. People started coming over to see what was going on, fully expecting a construction crew to be doing demolition. I welcomed them, saying I could use witnesses to tell the emergency crews what happened. Standing at a safe distance that only made me more nervous, they watched and advised, none of us ever having done something like this before.
There were four visible bands of wire, each band composed of two wires. I could feel the force holding those wires in place. With each wire I cut, the pressure of the compacted wool was transferred to the remaining wires, making the next snip of the wires cause an even louder boom that made the floor shake. The plastic covering the bale grew taut; the tape securing it creaked ominously. It really did sound like a large building on the verge of collapse. By the time I reached the final wire, I was getting scared. This was the point of no return.
I took another deep breath, adjusted my protective goggles (which had begun to fog from all the excitement), and clipped that last wire. I jumped back. The bag creaked and groaned, and then the noise stopped. Nothing. We all stood and stared, wondering what to do next. I’d cut all the wires, I’d freed the fibers from their bondage, but they still hadn’t exploded. How was I to cut open the bag so that the fiber would move in the direction we needed, without doing myself or anyone else bodily harm? Great theories were discussed. We debated whether a vertical or horizontal slash in the plastic would be most effective. I settled on a plan: I’d cut from the farthest end, where all the plastic had been tightly folded over and taped shut like a birthday present. It had more plastic through which the fibers could travel before hitting the floor.
With one arm behind my back and the other extended like Zorro, I lunged forward and jabbed at the plastic, then quickly retreated. Nothing. I did it again. And again. And again, at which point the bale finally began to creak like a redwood preparing to topple. Jerusha got a scared look on her face, pointed at
something, and ran away, while Lisa, another onlooker, started shouting, “Go around! Go around!”
I must have knocked something over, tipped something in such a way that the whole building, or at least the long, heavy metal shelf behind me, was on the verge of collapse, taking down the next and the next like a very fatal game of dominoes, with me buried beneath it all. Just as I turned to retreat, the wool burst from its plastic and oozed out into the open like sausage being squeezed from its casing.
We all stared at the wool, mouths open, silent. I crept closer, unsure if more was getting ready to blow. But it was still.
When I finally regained my composure, I asked Lisa what that whole “go around” thing was about. “You almost gave me a heart attack.”
“Oh,” she said with a shrug, “Jerusha was about to walk in front of your camera.”
The most peculiar thing about the fibers was how they’d formed flat layers, almost like a mille-feuille pastry or the pages of a book. I’d never seen anything like it before, but then again, I’d never opened a bale of wool before, either. The fibers were definitely sheepier than I’d expected—shorter and more jumbled and with little bits of hay and other vegetable matter. Would a carding machine get it all out? Is this how all commercially scoured fiber looks before it goes to the mill? Or had I pinned my entire public standing on something that, in actual fact, wasn’t all that great? I’d promised to be completely honest with people, but could I be that honest?
I pulled out a tiny tuft and began playing with it. The fibers were extremely tender, baby-like. As I teased apart the clumps, the fibers started to wake up. I took a lock and ran my pinched fingers along it. The fibers stretched and stretched and stretched, then sprang right back to shape when I let go. It was irresistible. I pinched and stretched again, and again. It was so simple and pure and soft and lively, like a puppy. Or 183 puppies, which is the number of sheep whose coats contributed to this bale. And they were telling me that everything was going to be okay.
