Posted: Thursday, November 19, 2009 10:00 AM
Steve Brown/Capital Press
Jeanne Carver brought samples of woolen yarn and the finished products to illustrate her speech to the American Agri-Women conference in Salem. What with her Central Oregon Columbia sheep and the deep pool of talented spinners, weavers and designers in the region, she said, ÒWeÕre doing it all right here.Ó
Fashion world warms to wool's story
Rancher describes how home-grown effort has blossomed
By STEVE BROWN
Capital Press
Jeanne Carver has gotten more and more opportunities lately to tell her "sunlight story." On Nov. 12, she shared it with about 200 people at the American Agri-Women's annual meeting in Salem.
The story begins in Central Oregon, on the 138-year-old Imperial Stock Ranch, where Carver and her husband, Dan, raise cattle, sheep, hay and grain on 30,000 acres.
"Out on the high desert, sunlight becomes meat, wool and skin," Carver said.
Responsible management of the land, animals and people was an essential part of the ranch long before there were such buzzwords as "sustainable" and "green." The Carvers' practices include low inputs, no-till crops and rotational grazing.
"Dan calls his cattle biological grooming tools," Carver said.
He's the cattleman, she said, and she loves the sheep. One of their predecessors on the ranch interbred sheep with great meat characteristics and sheep known for their wool. The result was the Columbia breed, which excels at both.
In the 1990s, a drop in demand made wool a minor byproduct of the lamb operation, so Carver went to where the market was most open: wool yarns sold over the counter.
She connected with talented spinners and weavers in the region, who worked from their homes and on their own schedules. From this sprang a clothing line of "wearable art," hand-crafted by local artisans.
The ranch has now extended far beyond the usual livestock operation, she said. "It's not just about the food. It's about the culture. Traditional skills underlie every nation, every culture in the world."
The Carvers have also received help in the form of USDA and regional economic development grants. In the past 12 months, Jeanne Carver has administered $280,000 in grant funds to hire help "in things we didn't know: retail and marketing, feasibility studies, business planning."
With that stimulus and expertise, growth of the ranch's yarn and apparel business has accelerated.
"You didn't find American yarn anywhere before," she said. "Now you can find Central Oregon wool across America, Canada and Europe."
In October, at Portland Fashion Week, Carver told her "sunlight story" as she introduced fashion designer Anna Cohen's Imperial Collection of clothes. She said she was nervous about speaking in such a high-profile spotlight, but then the woolen works were greeted with applause and "incredible reviews."
Next up, she said: Vogue magazine is interested in doing a story and photos.
Still, despite all the attention, the Carvers are intent on maintaining an even keel.
"Slow food," she said, is a term coined as a backlash to the first McDonald's restaurant in Turin, Italy. The term refers to a sense of place, a sense of home, a sense of family -- "all the things we value in agriculture, things that feed the spirit and soul."
In that spirit, the woolen creations that have sprung from Central Oregon sunshine have been referred to as "slow fashion" -- natural fibers, sustainable luxury, solid values.
"We built this country on self-reliance -- growing our own food, making our own clothes, building our own homes," Carver said. "Oregon is a pioneer state. Agriculturists have always been pioneers."