Welcome to Wild Sage Wool Company
At our family sheep ranch, we document our journey into agriculture and sustainability. This blog serves as a platform to share our experiences, successes, and all the knowledge we have gained along the way.
Why Sheep?
We are the Bond family. We are both born and raised Coloradans who call the northwest corner of the state home. Our path to country living started many years ago when we were looking to rent a house after a work relocation. A cousin of mine was moving and the home he rented on the outskirts of town would soon be available. He cautioned me that the owners of the home were very traditional but truly salt of the earth people. He arranged a meeting for us and after a cup of coffee and a firm handshake we were moving in. They were gracious landlords who took wonderful care of us and gave us immense freedom. We moved in with two dogs and before we knew it, we had 30 laying hens and three goats. While we had high hopes of free lawn maintenance, we quickly discovered that our goats were in fact princesses and could not be bothered to eat weeds and clear the property of unwanted vegetation.
As time passed our family grew and so did our little valley. We were always on the hunt for a property of our own but as the real estate boom took hold we found ourselves outpriced at every offer. We stayed patient and eventually expanded our search area. In the summer of 2024 we found a place to call our own. The property had everything we were looking for, a modest home, a two-bay shop, out buildings and 42 acres at the dead end of a county-maintained road. We began fixing up the home and started the move. This process involved relocating our beloved, very permanent, 8×12 foot chicken coop over 20 miles to our new property. When the dust settled, we had our family, now three dogs, two goats and all our hens moved and we truly felt like we were home.
Now you may be wondering, where did the sheep come into this picture. I think this is a classic story of how most people find themselves in the sheep production business, taxes. Our property is actually two distinct parcels of land. The larger chunk where the house sits is designated agricultural for tax purposes, the smaller hay field parcel is not. This was all brought to our attention by the county assessor’s office. In order to retain and get agricultural tax status on our property we needed to produce something. We mistakenly assumed the goats or chickens would easily qualify for this, but our lazy lawn ornaments did not count. We then thought about trying to cut and sell the small amount of hay off the smaller field but with no irrigation and historic droughts in the area we were concerned about long term viability. This discussion was taking place around Christmas time, and I had been crocheting headbands for gifts. It was on a big city shopping trip that the idea of producing our own yarn came into play. There is a fiber mill in our town and sheep would qualify us for our agricultural exemption. After extensive research, talking to other area sheep producers and the local fiber mill we set our sights on our tax problem solution, Shetland Sheep. This small heritage breed of sheep checked all the boxes for what we were looking for in livestock. We went to work sourcing registered lambs to purchase the next fall. Shetlands are not widespread in our state and sourcing a handful proved to be more difficult than we anticipated, we were only able to secure five for our first year. We set to ready the hay shed, enclosing one side as a makeshift barn and putting up hog panel fences around the enclosed paddock. Before we knew it fall had arrived and we picked up our sheep. We have come to truly enjoy the breed for so many reasons, ease of care, fine wool production but mostly because of their wonderful temperament. Having grown up around very large-scale sheep operations and only interacting with them in passing, I took for granted any amount of individuality sheep possess. After interacting with ours I have come to recognize and appreciate their unique personalities and enjoy every opportunity to spend time with them.
Our hope is to share our learning experiences, the process, and all the rewards of owning sheep with anyone who wants to listen.