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[Sheep bleating]
- Carol: We started out with one sheep.
And one sheep leads to another sheep,
which leads to another, and here we are at multiple sheep.
- Narrator: Nestled in a valley by Valders
is the Hidden Valley Woolen Mill.
- I grew up in this house and I was gone for about 20 years.
The place had sat abandoned for two or three years.
My uncle bought the farm, and he said he'd sell it to me.
Threw me a price, and I told him I'd bring him a check tomorrow,
and I bought it for no other reason
than the fact that it was so cheap, and I knew I could make it livable.
Told her I'd bought the home place,
and she was pretty excited about it at the time. [Carol laughing]
So, we had the house and two acres,
[Sheep bleating] and we started from that.
Now we own 16 acres and run about 75, and right now,
we're up to about 550 head of sheep with the lambs.
- Carol: I read an article about the Coopworth sheep.
They were developed in New Zealand.
They had just been imported into the United States,
and there still aren't many of them here.
And they were long-wooled sheep that were supposed to be
wonderful for hand spinning.
So, of course, I had to get one.
- Paul: These girls have been just fantastic.
We learn more and more about them every day.
- Narrator: With so many sheep, there's a lot of wool.
- There was a little woolen mill about 10 miles from here,
and they were ready to retire.
I was there one day, and the discussion came around
to getting rid of the mill.
"Do you know anybody that wants to buy it?"
And I said, "Well, I do."
So I came home and told Paul that I bought a woolen mill,
[laughing] and so we had to build a building,
and it came at the right time.
There used to be a variety of mills throughout the state.
Most of them have since gone out of business.
- It's like years ago every medium-sized town had a brewery,
and the microbreweries are coming back now,
and hopefully, this type of industry will come back again.
- Narrator: The woolen mill is an eight-ton,
1923 carding machine, which Paul is an expert at operating.
- I'm feeding the machine,
and I have to control the rate of feed
so that we have a consistent roving at the end,
the size of what a hand spinner would want.
The wool will get on the main drum, and then,
as it goes around what we call the roll "workers,"
which are these right here, you can see the fiber
being pulled and combed right there.
And then the small rollers are called strippers.
They take the fiber off of the workers
and put it back on the main drum.
And as it works its way over, there's eight rollers
that work it, and then on the other end,
it will come off on what's called a doffer.
It will be combed off the doffer into the transfer unit
to make the actual roving.
As you can see, she rolls it into a half-pound ball,
and she's really accurate. [chuckles]
It's amazing.
- Narrator: Dying wool is an art,
which Carol has embraced from the start,
being inspired by what she sees around her.
- I create colorways.
When we started out, we would go to festivals and come home,
and people would call and say, "Ya know, I bought this stuff,
"and it's got some blue in it and some green in it,
"and I want more."
Well, that's nice. [both laughing]
I can't picture, quite. "What do you want?"
So we started giving everything a name,
and that has made a big difference, because then,
ya know, it creates a connection between the people
that are purchasing it
and what the inspiration was.
- Narrator: A connection that is celebrated
at farmers markets and wool festivals.
- We're really getting into a computerized world,
with the Amazon attitude of buying and shipping,
but fiber is a little bit different in the fact that
people really want to feel it.
And so, that's why I think the shows
will always go... to some extent.
My goal this year, of those 300 lambs that are down
in the barn right now, is that not one single lamb
goes into the system. [Lamb bleating]
Everyone will go with what they call the underground market,
which is direct market to cuts, individual lambs...
[Lamb bleating] or of that sort.
I was almost successful last year in marketing 100%,
but that's my goal.
- And direct marketing is farmers markets,
and Paul does the Downtown Appleton Farmer's Market
while I'm doing the Downtown Green Bay Farmer's Market.
So it's like nonstop marketing.
I go to approximately 10 fiber festivals
throughout the Midwest.
I always laugh and say, "Have sheep, will travel."
[Carol laughing]
- Our life has been a multitude of adventures...
[Both laughing]
some good, some bad, some indifferent,
but it has definitely not been dull.
- And we have our sheep to thank for that. [Laughing]
[Sheep bleating]
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