- [Narrator] This episode of Wish You Were with Eliza Blue is brought to you in part by South Dakota Public Broadcasting and the South Dakota Arts Council.

Thanks for watching.

(gentle music) (vibrant guitar music) ♪ Backroads and byways ♪ ♪ Campfires will lie awake ♪ ♪ Sweet grass and summer sage ♪ ♪ Come on baby come and take my hand ♪ ♪ Take my hand ♪ ♪ Take my hand ♪ ♪ We're Dakota-bound ♪ (gentle guitar music) - [Narrator] Join us as we travel to share stories and songs from the prairie.

(gentle music) Sheep are relatively new arrivals to western South Dakota.

The first flocks weren't introduced until just before the turn of the last century, but it soon became obvious that they were a good fit for this ecosystem.

Depending on the breed, sheep tend to be thrifty, and they acclimated well to life on the open range.

Their thick coats of wool protecting them from the harsh extremes of the northern prairie's climate.

Their dual purpose, meat and wool, also made them attractive to early producers.

Many Dakota ranchers and farmers began their operations with a few head of sheep.

A small flock of sheep was cheaper to buy than cattle, and you could raise more sheep per acre than cattle.

The demand for wool was high, so a rancher could quickly receive a return on the investment and expand their operation.

Those early producers quickly learned that sheep must be cared for in a different manner than cows, however.

Before the range was fenced, and in many cases, even after, it was necessary for herders to live with the sheep so they could move their animals to grass and water.

And also, most importantly, protect them from predation.

Some herders lived in tents, but most opted for a sheep wagon, a precursor to the modern day camper.

Some families took turns trading off shepherding duties, but it was not uncommon for a bachelor farmer, rancher, or hired hand to live year round in their sheep wagon, or for whole families to take to the open range in summer when mom and dad could sleep in the wagon with younger children while big kids slept outside beneath it.

Wool and lamb consumption sharply declined in the latter half of the 20th century.

New synthetic fibers like acrylic and polyester became more popular than wool for sweaters.

By the mid-sixties, these and other changes in the marketplace led to a significant reduction in the profitability of shepherding.

Currently, the number of sheep in South Dakota is around accordingly, and management is quite different.

The once ubiquitous sheep wagons are no longer used regularly, and now live in private collections and museums, a nostalgic remnant of the not so distant past.

(music fading) - Hi, I'm Eliza Blue.

And today we are in Bison, South Dakota in front of Leonard Chapman's sheep wagon which he has kindly allowed us to use to play some music.

And he even lent us a banjo.

So we're gonna play you some shepherding songs and take you on a little tour, and we wish you were here.

So as you can see, we've got some pretty cozy quarters here inside the sheep wagon.

And I figured if a whole family could spend the summer in a sheep wagon, then we could definitely fit a band in here, right?

So I've got Justin Sime and Todd Larson, and we're going to play a song that I'm calling The Shepherd Song.

(banjo music) ♪ Come by my hand ♪ ♪ Held the cup of your face ♪ ♪ The hands of the wind ♪ ♪ Held your ribbons of lace ♪ ♪ I pulled you and carried you ♪ ♪ Feeling so bold ♪ ♪ To the little house ♪ ♪ Across the prairie so cold ♪ ♪ You were a child and I was a child ♪ ♪ What did we know ♪ ♪ About the kingdom so wild ♪ ♪ What could we grow ♪ ♪ In the wind and the heat ♪ ♪ Worked on to death ♪ ♪ To raise a bushel of weeds ♪ (gentle music) ♪ The winter came fast ♪ ♪ The winter came hard ♪ ♪ I said we'll go home in the spring ♪ ♪ If we don't want to starve ♪ ♪ You put on your shawl ♪ ♪ Of the brightest red wool ♪ ♪ The only color for miles ♪ ♪ You stood out in the snow ♪ ♪ I'll buy us some sheep ♪ ♪ I said we'll raise the wool ♪ ♪ We'll raise up the lambs ♪ ♪ Because this is our home ♪ (gentle music) ♪ Just as we are ♪ ♪ And there we will be ♪ ♪ A sweet loving hand ♪ ♪ On the grassy green seed ♪ ♪ When we look out ♪ ♪ The only color for miles ♪ ♪ Is the white of the sheep ♪ ♪ Against the prairie so wild ♪ (gentle music ending) When I first moved to western South Dakota, I hadn't planned to stay long.

It was going to just be a temporary adventure.

And then my friend Fern gave me two bum lambs, and I knew there was no going back to city life.

So Fern's grandfather was actually the sheep wagon owner, and her uncle is Leonard Chapman who's sheep wagon this is.

So I credit that family with a lot of what has come to pass, including the fact that because I stayed, I met my husband, and we fell in love, and I am thankful every single day for both the sheep that kept me here and my husband who has made my life so beautiful.

So this song is for him.

(gentle guitar music) ♪ How could I have know ♪ ♪ You'd be waiting here for me ♪ ♪ Across an ocean of grass ♪ ♪ Across my sea of disbelief ♪ (gentle music) ♪ And I'll admit that I was lost ♪ ♪ And I had wandered for to long ♪ ♪ But then I found you in the fields ♪ ♪ Then I found you in the barn ♪ ♪ In the lamb's curly wool ♪ ♪ In the hay still green and sweet ♪ ♪ In the dust and in the dirt ♪ ♪ In the first full bush of spring ♪ ♪ In the night so very cold ♪ ♪ In the way all things must die ♪ ♪ In the way we are reborn ♪ ♪ To the the sun and to the soil ♪ (gentle music) ♪ Every song's a love song now ♪ ♪ Every song I sing's for you ♪ ♪ When I found you I had nothing nothing nothing ♪ ♪ Now I have leaves and stems and roots ♪ ♪ When I found you I had nothing nothing nothing ♪ ♪ Now I have leaves and stems and roots ♪ ♪ Now I have leaves and stems and roots ♪ (gentle music ending) When I got my first bum lambs, it quickly became obvious that there was no way I was gonna be able to sell them, so they had to find another way to earn money.

And of course the obvious answer is fleece.

So I am here now with my friend Kelly Knispel from Dakota Carding and Wool.

She is who processes the wool from my flock, and she is gonna lead us through the steps to get from a fleece to yarn.

- Yes, so I have sheep and I have raised them for 25 years and I raise them for the meat, and I raise them for the wool, and today we're going to talk about what I do with the wool as it comes off the sheep.

So after they're shorn and you have their fine fleece, and it's a greasy mess, the first step is to stick it into very hot water and soap, and let it just sit for about 30 minutes, and the soap and the hot water dissolves the dirt, and the grime, and the lanolin.

And then after it is washed, we rinse it in the same temperature water.

And after it is all rinsed, and washed, and the water is clean, and you don't feel the grease anymore.

I let them dry on racks.

After the wool is washed, I then bring it over to the rack so that it can dry in the air.

And some of the hay fines fall through to the floor, and it's all drying and laid out here ready to get carded.

And these baskets also are ready to card.

And it's at this step if I don't want to, if we're not carting with the natural color of white or gray or black, that then you can dye the wool.

And then that would also dry on the rack before carding.

After the wool is dried, then we're going to put it on the conveyor belt and it is going to card the wool.

Feed it in here and up and over all the little different rollers and doffers that we have on here.

And each one goes from very coarse to very fine at the end.

And all those steel teeth that are on each of these rollers open up the fiber and allow the hay fines to drop down underneath.

This machine is from the early 19 hundreds.

It was built in the United States, down in the south in North Carolina.

And it was used in a mill in Vermont during our peak textile industry on the east coast.

So it's very old equipment, but it runs well.

There's nothing on it you can't fix.

And it's a gem for opening up wool and getting the wool ready to spin on your spinning wheel.

After the wool has been carded on the carding mill, and it's all a smooth preparation ready for spinning.

Then the spinning wheel, which I have here, a large bulky spinner, and this spinning wheel is actually made in New Zealand, but there are many companies in the world that make spinning wheels, and they all are just putting twist into the wool.

So after you've carded it, and it drafts out between your hands, the spinning wheel is putting a twist into the wool to give it strength.

You can pull it apart real easily, just the carded wool, but once it has the twist in it, then it's strong enough to take and weave it, or knit, or crochet it, or whatever it is you like to do with yarn.

- So before really being introduced to spinning, it should have been obvious but it never occurred to me that actually yarn is made of all these individual fibers.

Some of which are short, and some of which are long.

So when it comes to spinning fleece, is there anything specific that you kind of look for in a fleece?

- For beginners especially, a nice three to four inch staple length is great to spin.

Finer fleeces are usually shorter, and they all can be spun.

And uniformity of fleece is nice.

Although with this batch, actually, I have several things carded together.

So with wool being a universally easy fiber to spin, you can add other things to wool.

Dog hair, hemp, this has silk in it and mohair, and the wool will carry it onto the spinning wheel.

- Amazing, okay.

And then at the end you have wearable art, which is beautiful and functional.

And of course it gives all of us who love sheep, (Eliza laughing) a reason to do what we do.

So thank you so much for taking us through these steps.

- Yes, no, it's wonderful.

I can't say enough good things about wool and the sheep that produce it.

- In his youth, my husband worked at a guest ranch in Wyoming, where he was often the sole American.

Guests from all over Europe, sitting in their cubicles, planned vacations there lured by the mythology of the American west.

Once they arrived, many discovered they couldn't go back to their old lives.

Some came back to Wyoming summer after summer, in other notable cases, such as with the owners of the guest ranch, who were originally guests themselves, they came back and stayed.

In almost every case, it was a passion for horses that started it all.

And for many of them, the care and keeping of horses now defines their lives.

Where does this passion come from?

This singular life-altering love of a species?

Early in my time in South Dakota, I discovered most ranchers come down strongly on one side or the other in the sheep versus cattle debate.

As a rancher, you are either a shepherd, or a cowboy, and only rarely do these two meet, but no matter which you choose, a devotion to living and working with animals is a part of ranch life.

Now, I personally find horses beautiful.

I find cows generous, dogs and cats are beloved, and I consider the ones under my care to be part of our family, but I'm inextricably and inexplicably drawn to sheep.

Like my equine-adoring counterparts at the guest ranch, the first time I walked into a barn of sheep at lambing time, I felt my world shift, and I knew my life was about to change.

I was thinking about all this recently as I was driving across the Dakota Plains, I found my gaze passing over the herds of cattle that dot the landscapes, but lingering on the flocks of sheep.

11 years in, and I'm still just as in love.

Perhaps that's why I bristle when I hear sheep lambasted for being unintelligent.

It's true, they are capable of making spectacularly stupid choices in an effort to stay with their flock, but it's not unwarranted.

In the modern vernacular, sheeple is an insult applied to those considered too foolish to think for themselves, and therefore easily lead to danger.

However, for sheep, sticking together makes sense.

When your main concern is predation, the center of the flock is the safest place to be.

Also, running at the first whiff of jeopardy is a reasonable response for a smallish animal that has no claws, fangs, or any other kind of defense.

I've been thinking about all this currently because we, as a country, are navigating a level of uncertainty unprecedented in my lifetime.

Across the country, people are flocking up certain that the group headed in the other direction is headed toward a cliff.

I, for one, can't tell if there are wolves at our heels, jagged rocks ahead, or if we are just running because someone in the front got startled by the wind.

Uncertainty begets uncertainty, and there is no end in sight, but while I feel no more prepared to deal with this geography than anyone else, I've run across swaths of uncharted ground before, often plunging blindly ahead because what I was leaving behind felt so perilous, and it worked out.

Like the folks at the guest ranch, I am blessed to be in the center of a life I could never have imagined until I arrived, breathless and bewildered.

I know to some the choices I have made along the way look impossibly stupid, and certainly many were, but I still believe if love is your shepherd, you will not be led astray.

After all, true north is a direction, not a destination.

(crickets chirping) (gentle music) And now some notes from the field.

♪ In the bleak mid-winter ♪ ♪ Frosty winds made moan ♪ ♪ Earth stood hard as iron ♪ ♪ Water like a stone ♪ ♪ Snow had fallen ♪ ♪ Snow on snow ♪ ♪ Snow on snow on snow ♪ ♪ In the bleak mid-winter ♪ ♪ Long ago ♪ ♪ Heaven cannot hold him ♪ ♪ Nor the Earth sustain ♪ ♪ Heaven and Earth shall flee away ♪ ♪ When he comes to reign ♪ ♪ In the bleak mid-winter ♪ ♪ A stable place sufficed ♪ ♪ Lord God almighty tiny baby Christ ♪ (gentle music) ♪ What can I give him ♪ ♪ Poor as I am ♪ ♪ If I were a shepherd ♪ ♪ I would bring a lamb ♪ ♪ If I were a wise man ♪ ♪ I would do my part ♪ ♪ Yet what can I give him ♪ ♪ I'll give my heart ♪ ♪ What can I give him ♪ ♪ I'll give my heart ♪ - Thanks for joining us.

We're gonna finish off with one more song.

I think we'd be remiss not to include an old folk song.

And this one is very, very old.

In fact, I couldn't find the origin of it, but it may in fact go all the way back to England, although it was sung by early settlers in Appalachia, and I think in New England, so it's traditionally a Christmas song, but since it is called The Shepherd Star, we thought it would be an appropriate way to end.

(guitar music) ♪ Hail the blessed morning the great mediator ♪ ♪ Down from the regions of glory descend ♪ ♪ Shepherds go worship the babe in the manger ♪ ♪ Lo for his guard the bright angels attend ♪ ♪ Cold on his cradle the dewdrops are shining ♪ ♪ Low lies his bed with the beasts of the stall ♪ ♪ Angels adore him in slumbers reclining ♪ ♪ Wise men and shepherds before him do fall ♪ (guitar and violin music) ♪ He is our friend in the midst of temptation ♪ ♪ Faithful supporter whose love cannot fail ♪ ♪ Rock of our refuge and hope of salvation ♪ ♪ Light to direct us through death's gloomy vale ♪ ♪ Star of the morning thy brightness declining ♪ ♪ Shortly must fade when the sun doth arise ♪ ♪ Beaming refulgent his glory eternal ♪ ♪ Shines on the children of love in the skies ♪ (guitar and violin music) (music ending) (guitar music) ♪ Backroads and byways ♪ ♪ Campfires will lie awake ♪ ♪ Sweet grass and summer sage ♪ ♪ Come on baby come and take my hand ♪ ♪ Take my hand ♪ ♪ Take my hand ♪ ♪ We're Dakota-bound ♪ (gentle guitar music ending)