Iowa Sheep and Wool Festival, Adel, Iowa

Although many people only turn to sheep as a last resort on a sleepless night, at the Iowa Sheep and Wool Festival in Adel, sheep — and the people who devote their lives to them — are given the chance to shine.

Walking into the Dallas County Fairgrounds on a Saturday morning in early June, the scene is quiet enough to distinguish individual ‘baas’ from barns around the property and the patter of little hooves in the sandy arenas. Visitors soon discover that what at first appears to be a festival in distress is actually an intimate, low-key family affair on the verge of an afternoon explosion of patrons, most of them eager sheep enthusiasts.

The Iowa Sheep and Wool Festival offers something for everyone — if that something is in any way related to the sheep industry. From wool wares to cooking classes, shearing demonstrations to sheepdog trials and endless lamb burgers, brats and kabobs, the festival pays homage to all things sheep, with some odes to goats and llamas as well.

Marsha Spykerman, executive director of the Iowa Sheep Industry Association and a sheep producer herself, has been involved with the festival since it began in 2005.

“Our attendance has grown consistently over the last three years, and from the gate yesterday this year’s going to be bigger,” she said.

Although the festival is meant to showcase the sheep industry, it is also a showcase of the dedication and camaraderie of the people who organize it. Like a huge reunion for the entire Iowa sheep industry family, the festival offers the producers a chance to gather and celebrate their livelihood and passion.

For Spykerman, the focal point of this celebration is the Lamb Lovers’ Feast. With a live band, a winery providing refreshment and a menu featuring lamb kabobs with ginger soy sauce and leg of lamb parisienne, Spykerman said the dinner is an aspect of the festival that should not be missed.

Wonderful Wool

Spykerman said the fiber products are a major draw for visitors to the festival.

“The thing that has amazed me the most,” Spykerman said, “even as many years as I’ve been raising sheep: I had no idea the extent of the fiber arts activities that go on, you know — what all they do with the wonderful wool.”

At the festival, two barns are devoted to fiber arts: one for vendors and one housing classes such as “Beginning Spinning,” “Survey of Silk” and the cleverly named “Live and Let’s Dye” along with bags of award-winning wool from a fleece show and groups of spinners.

“A lot of people … are involved in [spinning],” Spykerman said, “and I think a lot of them are looking to do something that’s … going to be a good quality and something … they can be proud of when they’re done.”

Members of the Little Sioux Spinners and Weavers Guild along with other spinning groups from around Iowa were busy carding, spinning, plying and answering questions about the hobby’s distinct vocabulary. Carding, according to two of the spinners, Pat Hammer and Nancy Fedderson, involves taking a portion of wool and combing it between two brushes to remove dirt and knots and prepare the fiber for spinning. Plying is the process of combining single strings together into three or four-ply yarn.

All of the wheels worked wonders, clicking and spinning away to produce compact strings of yarn from piles of raw wool on the floor around the spinners, from a natural, cream-colored fleece to a brightly-dyed purple spotted with pink. Some of the wool had been purchased at the festival from vendors in the craft barn or selected from prize-winners in the fleece competition.

Examples of fiber at its finest were displayed nearby. Bags of wool ranging from crimped steel gray to taupe, spotted, curly black or smooth snowy white rested cloud-like along display tables. The puffs of fleece were soft and springy, though slightly sticky from the lanolin produced by the creature they had once covered. The winner of Best in Show at the festival, a pure, white wool, was almost unusually clean and bright for being the coat of an animal that spends its life outdoors.

In the same barn, classes taught registered visitors a myriad of fiber arts. One class covered wet felting. Students started with squares of carded wool, and, taking small sections at a time, kneaded in a mixture of warm water and soap, slowly flattening and compressing the fiber.

“It’s like finger-painting,” one spectator watching in the crowd remarked of the process.

One festival patron, Chris Sowa, a college student, told of a conversation he had with an older woman.

“She was waiting on a rug-hooking class,” Sowa recalled, “and she said, ‘I came to Iowa to be a hooker.’”

Sue TeRonde and her daughter, Sarah, from Madrid, Iowa, started their visit by exploring the fiber barn.

“Well, Mom likes knitting,” Sarah said, “and I’m interested in getting more information about sheep-raising, shearing, that kind of thing … It’s just kind of a learning thing.”

For visitors like Sue looking to purchase some of the products they saw in the making, the craft barn offered many options. Vendors sold craft books, sheep stationary and Christmas ornaments, purses, hats, rugs and shelves of yarn in a rainbow of colors, ready to be transformed. A vendor outside the barn even displayed Alpaca wool products and stuffed toy llamas, some of which were imported from Peru.

Whether the TeRondes come back for the 2008 festival mostly hinged on one thing:

“It depends on if, you know, we get sheep between now and then,” Sarah said, “Who knows?”

10,000 Sheep

The extent of the fiber barns is overwhelming, but wool products are just one aspect of the festival. In other areas of the fairgrounds, the animals that provide for such diverse pastimes and wares are showcased.

Rocky Anderson, who said he has been shearing about 10,000 sheep a year for the past 34 years, gave shearing demonstrations. Children sat close, rapt with attention, while Anderson sheared a sheep in only five minutes with a pair of electric clippers. Anderson soon called on his young fans for help in demonstrating an antique shearing machine operated by a crank, an experience the three eager young operators seemed to relish.
Standing by the demonstration, visitors could hear the unmistakable bleating of sheep from a barn nearby dubbed the Hall of Breeds. Coming into the barn’s dusty darkness from the Saturday afternoon sunlight, new “students” could hear, see, touch and even smell the animals the festival celebrates while reading about different types of sheep from around the world. From the most widely-recognized Dorset sheep to more obscure breeds like Katahdin, Dorper and Cormo, the Hall of Breeds shattered the fluffy white sheep stereotype.

Julie Hofland, representing the Northwest Iowa Sheep Producers, had more sheep products for sale alongside the animals in the Hall of Breeds. Hofland’s table displayed wool slippers, gloves and earmuffs, as well as lamb’s wool dusters, steering wheel and seatbelt covers and elaborate metal belt buckles featuring, of course, sheep. Hofland said a favorite product for her customers was Wool Wax Cream, a hand lotion made with lanolin from sheep’s wool.

“It stays where you put it,” Hofland said. “You scoop it out with your fingers and it’s thick and you put it on and it’s there.”

On Sunday, half of the Hall of Breeds was transformed into an arena that hosted the three sheep shows scheduled for the day. Young competitors’ ages varied greatly, from experienced teenagers to children proudly struggling to lead stubborn lambs larger than themselves.

Dancing Dogs and Lamb Fajitas

Just outside, trainers were preparing different competitors. Though the sheepdog trials took place Saturday morning, Nyle Sealine demonstrated training techniques for sheepdogs the next day.

Like a minutely choreographed dance or a physical exercise in the principles of geometry, the angle of the dog’s pursuit dictated the line of flight of the flock. The dog responded immediately and precisely to the whistles or one-word commands of Sealine. The dog’s actions were never rushed — with eyes only for the sheep and ears only for Sealine.

A potential distraction for the dog, had he not been so well-trained, was the smell wafting through the air from the cooking demonstration tent. Chef Ken Dunn energetically prepared several lamb dishes and provided spectators with recipe books to follow along with during the demonstration and try at home. Visitors hurriedly queued up to sample each dish, ask questions or sneak back in line for a second bite. Dishes like lamb-stuffed onions, lamb parmesan, lamb fajitas, lamb roulade and lamb saltimbocca made Dunn’s demonstration a treat for burgeoning chefs or simply hungry festival-goers.

With so much to see and do, and in a festival named after and meant to highlight an animal, the real focus of the festival is people — the people who make it happen and the people who, through their patronage, keep it going.

The Iowa Sheep and Wool Festival is an open and engaging showcase of all the sheep industry has to offer, and its finest offering is the graciousness and hospitality of the people who represent it.

For Spykerman, the festival is a way for producers from around the state to meet each other or revisit old friends and share their love for the industry.

“People come in and they enjoy seeing each other year after year,” Spykerman said. “Seeing people come and enjoy their product, I think that’s good for us … I just hope that it continues to grow where more producers come and be involved and realize how much fun it is.”

Photos by Mike Snodderly