Sheep Industry News July 2023

guests of a local plantation owner. She turned to goats to clear the property. “They were like land piranhas,” she jokes. “It was solid blackberries, poison ivy and kudzu. I ended up with six or eight goats and they cleaned this place up. After they cleaned up the pastures, they started stripping the bark off the pecan trees, eating my barn and ripping holes in the fence.” Clearly, the toddler-like goats weren’t a great fit long-term for a working professional who was away from the farm dur ing the day. At the suggestion of sheep producers Jan Southers and Cornel Kittell, Joanne turned to Gulf Coast sheep. It was 2004, and the breed wasn’t easy to find. Southers and Kittell picked up a few who had come to Georgia by way of Florida, some from Mississippi and a ram from Louisiana. But care ful research had led them to believe the breed – which is still listed as critical on The Livestock Conservancy’s Conservation Priority List – would be a great fit for Georgia’s hot, humid climate. Georgia Rustic Wool is a fiber provider for the The Livestock Conservancy’s Shave ’Em to Save ’Em Initiative. “They brought me these four ewes, and they were as sweet as they could be,” Joanne recalls. “Then they got really serious about it and bought rams and started breeding them. When I saw the wool they produced, I had to figure out what to do with it. I knew how to knit at the time, but I didn’t know how to spin. So, I got a spinning wheel for Christmas and started getting really into the wool. I figured if I was going to spin it, I needed to know what I wanted and what my customers might want.” That process allowed Joanne to combine the artistic side she inherited from her mother and the science side that she

gravitated to in her professional career into a cohesive blend as she bred for better wool and took to dyeing the wool she had manufactured into yarn. FILLING A NICHE Maxed out at 30 head on her five acres – and an additional 32 acres she leases from a neighbor – Joanne has done just that. She sold five of the seven fleeces she took to Maryland and nearly empties her inventory each year at the South eastern Animal Fiber Fair in North Carolina. The small Gulf Coast sheep grow a similarly small fleece at about 4.5 pounds. Joanne sells those fleeces for around $60 to $80, but her prize winning fleece in Maryland went for $125. “I’ve kind of found where I fit in this market,” Joanne says. “Any fleeces I don’t sell, I send to a Battenkill Fibers in New York. They turn it into yarn, send it back and I dye it. Then it goes to a local shop called Revival Yarns. I went in and talked with them and they wanted to have a local wool corner where I can sell it on a commission basis. I do demos there and they’ve been great to work with.” While she admits her wool operation isn’t a “big money maker,” it generates enough income to justify her involvement in an industry she’s come to love. Joanne is passionate about supporting family farms, and her involvement with the Geor gia Sheep Association as a great opportunity to do just that. “Even if someone just raises sheep for a few years, they get to understand how hard it is, how rewarding it is and that this is where our food and fiber comes from,” Joanne says. “And it teaches their children that these things don’t just come from the store.”

18 • Sheep Industry News • sheepusa.org