The Year of the Goat: Friends' Folly Farm

Pogo stands with Dory, one of the angora does on Friends' Folly Farm | more photos

In addition to the general woes of the farmer, one of the difficulties that small farmers of fiber-producing animals often encounter is finding a facility that will process small amounts of fleece. Frequently, the minimum amount that can be sent for processing is far greater than a farm's entire output. Not only does this mean that farmers are forced to store the hair for several years' worth of shearings, but it also means that separating the fiber of animals with naturally interesting coloring from the more standard white becomes impossible.

Happily for the fiber farmers of Maine, there is Friends' Folly Farm. Owned by Pogo (just one name, she said, like Madonna or Cher) and her partner Marsha, Friends' Folly has both its own herd of angora goats, and in a small building to the side of the house, a cottage-industry sized carding and spinning machinery. Because the machines are small, they can be run with a fraction of the fiber needed to operate commercial mills. This allows Pogo, Marsha and their customers to keep the fibers from certain animals distinct, and even to design their own blends.

On the day we visited, the mill was filled with bags of fiber in all stages of processing, and it was fascinating to see the changes that occur in the texture of fleece as it goes, in the more extreme cases, from matted hair to fuzzy yarn. Pogo said that she's seen antique carders and spinners, and the technology by which filament is turned to yarn has changed very little in the past 150 years. Pogo pressed several buttons and as machines began to whir, she showed us the path that the fibers took through various rollers and combs: The shorn fibers are washed, dried, and fed through a picker. This machine combs the fleece into a pile of gossamer, which shoots into a collection room the size of a large closet. In small batches, the picked fibers are fed through a carder, which has a series of teeth that turn the fluff into long ropes of roving. The roving can then be spun by hand, felted, or spun by machine into yarn.

Though I'd seen demonstrations of spinning before, I'd never really considered how time consuming it must have been, before the industrial age and the advent of textile mills, to make such simple things as socks or sheets. Not only would a person have needed to keep and shear a flock of sheep or goats, but they would also have had to wash, pick, card and spin the fibers before even thinking of knitting or weaving a piece of cloth. It's amazing to me that people didn't wander around naked until the nineteenth century. Even at Friends' Folly, it's not a speedy process, so I can't imagine how long and tedious it would be by hand. Perhaps, though, there's the same therapeutic value in the repetition that Paul Hopkins finds in milking. When the machinery was turned off, there was something almost primally calming about being surrounded by piles of fleece. — MMH