Brandie: I had just started raising sheep. I'm a lifetime learner. I wanted to learn how to do shearing and ASI[1] regularly holds shearing schools in North Dakota. But Edwards, out of Wright Wyoming, had volunteered their flock, and their place, to host an ASI school.

Brandie: This was a couple years ago.

Misty: And this is shearing school?

Brandie: A shearing school. And so I wanted to sign up for it. I don't wanna be a professional shearer by any means, but I want to know how it's done. So in the meantime, in kind of a concentric circle, over here we have a knitting group that was meeting in Greeley. We meet at the local brewery.  Um, yes, there's a theme. But we're definitely not uptight, knitters, let's put it that way.

Cori and I had crossed paths when I was doing a demonstration over at their historic Centennial Village. In Greeley and decided that she wanted to come be a part of the knitting group. And so she shows up at the brewery and man, we got along like peas and carrots. I don't even know what we were talking about, but it was probably the trials and tribulations of raising sheep.

Cori: Well, it was really intimidating because I walk into this place and I had met this small group at Centennial Village, and I walk in and there's like 15 people there. And they all turn around and look at me, and I'm like, okay, maybe I'm not coming to this group. But we start talking, I'm like, we're talking sheep. And not everybody in that group has sheep.

Brandie: Not everybody is a shepherd.

Cori: Some crochet, some knit, some spin. And so I happened to mention, I said, "Hey, my shearer is getting older. Do you happen to know a shearer?"

Brandie: And I having already signed up for the sharing class. I'm like, well, maybe, depending on what I find out here in another couple weekends, I might be able to help you out.

Brandie: So then I go home, and I just kept thinking... I'm like, well, why do that when you could just learn how to do it yourself? So I messaged her through the app. We were using a meetup app. And I was like, "Hey, if there's a slot open, do you want to go to Wright Wyoming with me and learn how to shear?"

Cori: So I'm sitting in the living room that evening with my husband and I'm like, "This is chick from this group that I just met, just messaged me on Meetup. And she wants me to go to Wyoming with her, to the shearing school." And so...

Brandie: Yeah, get in the car with me and let's go to Wyoming where they can hide bodies that you'll never ever find. Done, done, done!

Cori: And so I'm like, I can handle being in the car with somebody. So, I message her back and I'm like, "Yeah, sure. I'll go with you. When is this?"

Brandie: I called Edwards, they had an extra slot. So we went up there and -- So we do the shearing school.

Cori: Well now, wait, actually we have to back up.

Brandie: We laughed all the way from Greeley, Colorado to like Douglas, Wyoming.

Cori: So we're both concerned here that we are gonna be spend all this time in the car. Like what happens if we'd have nothing to talk about? 'Cause we're not friends ¾we just met. We have nothing in common. We had an hour long conversation. That was all.

Brandie: At a brewery under the influence of beer, you know?

Cori: We get to Cheyenne and we're laughing so hard. The wind is blowing.

Brandie: The wind is blowing like crazy. I get out to put fuel in the car and the wind literally sucks me out of the car and throws me into the gas pump. And I hear her in the car, and she's cackling so loud the whole car is shaking.

Cori: And I said, "I’m glad you have leather seats. Because I might just pee my pants."

Brandie: And it was on.

Cori: And a long friendship grew from there. So we get up to Edwards, right? It's freezing cold. It's blowing...

Brandie: Yes. But we're in this barn.

Cori: Hundred year old barn

Brandie: And ASI has got their shearing setup set up. We get divided up into groups and we're just kind of learning how to the whole thing. The guy is teaching, he's stepped up as an instructor and you're getting to know him, [and] you're seeing his wife run around with a clipboard. The kids, the dogs, the family, his brothers there with his kids... The four H group is coming through. It's just super, super cool. And I am a rancher's daughter. I grew up in western Nebraska and we raised cattle.

Cori: Well, and on top of it, I lived in Cody for a great many years before I moved down to Colorado. So my heart is really in Wyoming. So going to this place and, and meeting these people, these people -- the salt of the earth.

Brandie: And you know, when you're very intimately familiar with the plight of the family farm, and how hard it is to make a living...

Cori: And some years are just, you're trying to get by or you're not getting by, you're just hoping for the next year.

Brandie: So we're trucking along and there's all these white sheep, and then we start seeing some colored sheep come through. You know, and Guy likes his counting sheep. It's an old tradition where you have a colored sheep, sheep for every so many white ones. And so if you've got, you know, a herd of 300 and you've figured it so that you've got one black sheep to every 50 white sheep you're gonna have six black sheep in the pen. You probably have everybody. It's just a way to kind of tallying at a glance, to know what's going on. If you're missing half of 'em, then it's like, okay, well you gotta go back out.

And so I'm like, well what are they doing with these colored fleeces? 'cause we're hand spinners. So we love the color because we get tired of spinning white. So the colored stuff is appealing for our extremely niche market. And so we're like, "Well, what are you doing with all the colored fleeces?"  He's like, "Well, we can't do anything with 'em."

They've just been stockpiling 'em in a barn and we're like, "Well, what are you gonna do with them?" And Guy says, "I would like to get it spun so that I can have my mom crochet us up a family heirloom, a blanket. Because these are our sheep and they represent our family history. "

Cori: Five generations in this family of genetics and, and everything.

Brandie: And we said, "Well, we're spinners. We're spinners. We can help you out."

Cori: And so he says, "Well, you know, we were gonna have this sent over to a mill, but it, but the cost, the cost is just so much."

Brandie: And so you know what we do? It's like, all right, well, I have a set of skills. Mm-hmm. I have a set of a particular set of skills that you might be interested in.

Cori: No, no, no. Now wait a minute. Wait a minute.

Brandie: We're arguing about whether or not we could take on this giant project. And and I'm like, well, let's think about it. Whatever.

So we go back out for the second day 'cause it's a two day school, right?  So we're there and running the lambs and the sheep through and everything and I was like, "We should probably go look at it because who knows?"

Cori: And by this time I’m thinking better of this. I don't think we can do it. And she says, "No, no, no. I really think we can."

Brandie: Well back up, because I went out there... They opened the bags and these beautiful pewter, gray, black, dark gray, chocolate [are] spilling out of these bags and I'm like, "Oh God, put it in the car." I drive a Mazda CX-9 and we pack the back of the car full.

Cori: Yes. Bags and bags.

Brandie: Yeah. So we did, we put it all in there. So then we went home, and we unloaded it. And we're like, "Oh, shit what did we just do?"

Well, maybe we can get help. So then, we pull a third friend in and see if she'd scour it for us at her mill. We take it down there. Well, she's kind of doing it as like a charity thing, so that kind of goes to the bottom of her work pile. So it sat at the mill.

Cori: For a year.

Brandie: I feel bad 'cause we're sitting on it. [But] she did finally get it through her scouring line, and got it back to us.

And we were just about to rally the troops, calling all the knitters and spinners and stuff, because everybody else liked the project too, right? Save America's farmers and ranchers! We're all a hundred percent on that bandwagon. And right as we were rallying the troops.

Cori: Rallying the troops.

Brandie: Edwards had all of their ewes in their lambing barn, 170 head and pregnant ewes, and suffered a barn fire and lost all of them. In May this year.

Cori: Yes. Plus some new babies.

Brandie: Yeah. Plus some new babies.

Cori: The only ones that they had out were the rams and the yearling ewes.

Brandie: Out in the field. So years, of genetics gone.

Cori: Within 20 minutes, something like that.

Brandie: Their entire summer's income gone. And you have to know that from a sheep producer standpoint, even those yearling in the pasture have more time to go before they could be bred. So, like you want to talk about a setback.

I just... it was horrible. We're just crying hearing about this.

Cori: He'll take bottle lambs into the house. And he's got pictures of them sitting in the rocker recliner, you know, with this lamb on his chest bottel feeding him.

Brandie: It's not like de didn't care.

Cori: Yeah.

Brandie: I called him a couple weeks later bcause I just, I wanted to check in and he's like, "Man, you know, those sheep, they got me through my divorce. They got me through some of the toughest times." He's like,"There's a lot of people that think they are just sheep. But they were family to me."

And I'm just like, I know, I know. I hear you. I know, I see you. I understand. Because it would be no different than if it was me. You know? So anybody that ever says these ranchers don't care about their animals, they're full of shit. Like 100%.

And here we are, we're sitting on about 40 pounds colored wool that comes from sheep that no longer exist. They're gone. And I'm like, "Guys, we gotta get this spun."

Cori: So we rallied the troops again.

Brandie: We had rallied the troops.

Cori: We had a Spin-In.

Brandie: We had a big Spin-In down at a friend's house that has a mill. People from Laramie drove all the way down ¾ four hours away to participate. You know, we started like 10 in morning.

Cori: We had a potluck.

Brandie: And then when everything was said and done, they took wool with them, and all of them completed skeins while they were gone. So we have a big pile of it. And so our entire goal coming up here this weekend, not only to just hang out with like really cool Wyoming people, cause people in Wyoming are some of the nicest people I've ever met.

Cori: Yeah.

Brandie: But so that we could connect with Guy. He doesn't know we're here. We gotta give him a call and make sure he is gonna be home tomorrow.

Cori: Yes. And we're just gonna show up with this fiber. And all of the ladies signed a card, so he knows exactly who.

Brandie: So we're hoping that it'll at least get a start. It's not enough for a blanket yet. I brought all the rest of the wool with me, some of the Wyoming folks are talking about taking more of it and trying to process more of it.

We'll continue to work on more of it. Probably have to mail it to him. It might be next year's Wyoming Sheep and Wool Festival by the time we get all done, but we can just make another delivery on our way.

Cori: Exactly.

Brandie: So, that's the Edwards ramble whole story.

Cori: Yes. And how we became friends.

Brandie: And how we became friends.

Cori: And now we're inseparable.

Brandie: Pretty much.

Cori: Yes.

Note: The transcript above has been condensed from its original audio recording to improve the flow and readability of the story. 

[1] Brandie uses the acronym ASI, but in actuality, she is referring to ASIA the American Sheep Industry Association