Shepherding her flock

SAUK CENTRE – Spring means lambing season at Open Sky Farm, owned and operated by Julie Mackenzie and her husband, Andrew, in Getty Township near Sauk Centre.

The barn on the 150-acre property purchased in 2000 is never quiet this time of year, Mackenzie said. Female sheep, called ewes, move in and out of pens, while a camera mounted on the wall helps Mackenzie monitor those close to labor.

Outside, fences are routinely checked, feed is hauled and daily life bends around the needs of the animals.

“When you’re in this season, it is around the clock,” Mackenzie said. “We just take care of the animals and don’t sign up for anything else.”

But lambing season is only part of the work, it is also the starting point for Mackenzie’s renewed focus on using the wool her sheep produce and reconnecting with the craft behind it.

When she is not tending to the flock, Mackenzie is working with wool — sorting sheep coats by size, organizing fleeces set aside for processing and managing years’ worth of fiber stacked alongside the new additions.

One afternoon, Mackenzie said a line from a book she was reading stuck with her. She said the line read: If you are going to raise animals, you better like what they produce — or you will not put up with the work.

“I was sitting there knitting,” she said. “And I thought, OK.”

At first, she considered alpacas, but at $1,000 a head, they felt out of reach. Sheep were more practical — around $200 each at the time — and offered versatility in wool, meat and milk. Mackenzie chose Rambouillet sheep, a breed known for its fine wool, strong maternal instincts and ability to handle Minnesota’s climate.

She started with nine, and, as the flock grew, so did her knowledge.

Each spring, shearing marks another turning point in that process.

Mackenzie hires a crew to shear the flock, timing the work carefully around lambing season. Each sheep produces several pounds of wool, but what comes off the animal is only the beginning.

The fleece must be sorted and cleaned, with unusable portions removed before it can move forward. From there, the wool is carded or combed — processes that prepare the fibers for spinning — before eventually becoming yarn.

For years, Mackenzie sold fleeces to hand spinners and worked with processors to turn wool into yarn. But, after the 2008 financial crisis and personal burnout, she shifted her focus to her marketing career, making it harder to maintain both paths.

“I learned so much,” Mackenzie said. “Not just about wool, but about what it could be.”

When she returned to working full time, Mackenzie took a break from selling her wool commodity and building the flock.

“It wasn’t like I just stopped,” Mackenzie said. “I just stopped promoting it.”

The coronavirus pandemic disrupted the already-limited network of small-scale wool processors, and many companies went out of business. As production options stalled, she had few options to send the wool for processing.

“I’ve got five years’ worth of wool,” she said. “I’ve got a big supply.”

Today, the farm is full of the calls of baby lambs to their mothers, and the farm is continuing while Mackenzie said she is rethinking what the future of her wool operation might look like.

At its core, she said, the work is about more than the animals or the product.

“You either cared properly for your animals or you didn’t,” Mackenzie said. “The feedback you get is directly related to the investment you made.”

The work also forces a pace dictated by the animals and the land. When working with wool, Mackenzie said patience is required.

“You have to slow down,” she said. “Their tempo is different from ours.”

Taking the lead from the animals is a lesson Mackenzie sees in everything from lambing season to spinning wool, where even the tension in your hands shows up in the final product.

“There are people who wear a wool sweater and don’t know where it came from,” she said.

For Mackenzie, wool carries more than just function.

“Wool is a kind of magic because you’re creating something meaningful,” she said. “In this wool, there’s the sunlight, the grass they (the sheep) have eaten, the care we’ve given.”