In the world of wool, there are a lot of steps to unwind before you get a sweater.

Obviously, there's the knitting, but before the knitting, there's the spinning and making of yarn.

To do the spinning, you need a mill.

And before the mill can get to work, you need the raw material, the fleece.

And that's where the shearer comes in, because that's the person who gets the wool off the animal and on its way to

the marketplace.

On today's episode, we're going to talk to a shearer of sheep. And while there are all kinds of

cool things to learn about wool and economics and how to make a sheep sit on its butt, there's

a larger story here, where the arcane art of separating a sheep from its wool ends up connecting a lot of people, many of whom have nothing to do with sheep.

Today, we hear a story about how people with the weirdest career path ever helped rescue their communities from calamity.

This is Fibre Nation, Tales of Textiles, Craft, and Culture, and I'm your host, Alison Kourleski. Ready to launch your business? Get started with the commerce platform made for entrepreneurs.

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I first met today's guest not in a barn or pasture, but via a book and her Instagram feed.

My name is Stephanie Wilkes, and I shear sheep, and I write.

Stephanie is the author of raw material, working wool in the West.

It's a wonderful, at times, heart-clutching read, and we have a link on our show notes page.

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