New Jersey is known for some farm products such as corn and tomatoes — but wool? There are quite a few farms here and in eastern Pennsylvania that raise sheep and produce wool fibers.
Anne Choi is a New Jersey-based fiber artist, who started NJ Fibershed, which is trying to bring together the fiber farms here.
NJ Fibershed provides a way for small-scale New Jersey-based fiber producers to sell their fiber. Choi said one of the things they did this year was produce a blanket.
“The blanket project was a way for people like me with smaller flocks to mass our fleeces together and have blankets woven so we collected about 430 pounds of wool from New Jersey farms,” she said.
Nine farms gave wool for the blankets, and those farms then get to sell them.
“The reason there’s such an interest right now in finding local wool is because the yarn that you buy from a store you don’t know where it’s from but it’s been very heavily processed,” she said.
Fibershed helps people become fiber farmers, with training in animal care and the processing of fibers. Choi said she was inspired when she saw what was happening on a lot of the farms.
“The reason I started Fibershed was when I found out that a lot of people who raise fiber animals were not using their fibers,” she said.
She said a lot of wool was simply being thrown out. Now it has been used to produce what Choi is calling the New Jersey Blanket.