Maria and I went to Brandon, Vt., to the Vermont Fiber Mill to pick up the Bedlam Farm wool from shorn sheep in the spring, the most extensive wool yet. It’s in eight or nine beautiful colors, and Maria plans to sort it, examine it, and sell it in skeins, dryer balls, and roving early this week, hopefully by Tuesday.

She has to figure out what to charge per skein and how to sell or distribute the roving and the bags of beautiful brown and black roving. This is a high point of the year for the farm and for Maria’s creativity. She loves having sheep, shearing them, and figuring out how to sell them. We love these treks to Vermont.

It’s always exciting for us.

Maria will honor orders made well in advance and sell her skeins on her Etsy page once they are posted there. I’m not sure how she will sell her dryer balls and roving. She will write about all of that on her blog Tuesday or sooner.

Deb and Maria go over the wool at the fiber mill. We’ve been working with Deb for ten years; she’s lovely to deal with.

After getting the wool, we stopped for lunch in Brandon at a new cafe. As I took this portrait of Maria, I could almost hear the wheels turning in her head as she thought about the wool – how beautiful it was and how she would price and sell it. It was fun, as usual. Growing and wool of sale is one of the reasons we have a farm and love it.