Fall Shearing, 2015 and beer brings deep clothing talk

11 sheep got a haircut today.  Got 6 nice lambs fleece, first shearing, and one nice adult fleece - all lovely for handspinning.  The rest were too tippy or short so I put them to one side for felt making.

To start with we made a pen with pallets and binder twine.  The trick with this sort of pen, and hurdles in general, is to stagger them in a zig zag style for strength and support.

Larry certainly has grown this last year.

I remember when he was cute little fluff ball that followed us everywhere.  

After wrestling sheep in the mud, I got a bit thirsty.  So, in my same sheep wrangling cloths, I went to my local brewery to fill up my growlers.  Growlers are basically two ltr jugs that we take to the beer making place and they fill them up with fresh beer.  In my opinion, growlers are a good thing.

I like this brewery.  It's new and getting quite famous, so there are usually some tourists or townies hanging about.  But the bread and butter business seems to come from people in fluorescent safety gear or overalls.  The brewer(s) make beer on site, in locally made vats, while employing local people.  The beer is brewed in small batches and it is darn fine stuff.

There was a fella there, and somehow we started talking about clothing lines produced in North America, and how few there are these days.  Bla bla bla, environmental impact, labour issues, stuff like this.  I made my usual comment about how awareness of local issues like food have made people receptive, maybe it's time that there were more locally made clothing from local materials.

He replied along the lines that yes, it's important and yes it would be a good thing, however, making a big deal of the local issue is too gimmicky.  It's better to make a quality product and focus on that.  If that means using local materials and employing local people, then people who care about it will seek it out.

It was quite a powerful thought for me.  Being thirsty, I immediately connected it to the fresh beer that was filling my growlers while we talked.  Why did I choose this brewery?  There must be over a dozen within easy drive of my home, most of them fill jugs.  I passed at least 10 other sources of locally made alcohol in the 5 minutes it took me to get to the brewery.  Why do I buy my beer here?  The atmosphere, sure.  The localness, also important.  But it's the taste more than anything.  The quality of the beverage brings me back.

So maybe it is a good time to start producing locally made clothing from local materials - but not solely as an act of rebellion against globalization (or whatever we are ranting again these days) but as a source of quality, long lasting, everyday wear.  Something that is dearly missing in our world.