Knitting is popular in the Bay Area. So why are California wool mills disappearing?

San Francisco Chronicle​

5 hours ago

Mimi Luebbermann wants to make yarn for the rest of her life.
And on a warm, breezy July afternoon, she was doing just that on a long wooden table at her farm: separating wool tufts the color of storm clouds that will be milled into plush, durable strands — which might be knitted together into a cozy pair of socks or a winter sweater. Nearby, her 25 sheep stood in a dry, golden pasture in the distance, eyeing a palette of green apples on the other side of the fence.
'There are so few things that are satisfying in the modern world,' she said. 'But wool does that — it makes you happy, and we want happy people.'
There's an existential threat facing Bay Area shepherds like Luebbermann, who's 80 and has raised sheep on her Windrush Farm outside of Petaluma for the past 30 years. ' The problem is that the mills are shutting down,' she explained. 'I will have to stop raising sheep because there's no way to get the wool processed.'
The reason for mill closures is a familiar one to American industrialists: Much of the wool industry has been pushed to other countries for cheaper production. Meanwhile, synthetic wool is less expensive to produce and buy, meaning fewer consumers are choosing to purchase higher grade organic wrool.
If that threat to the regional wool industry prevails, Luebbermann's heaps of cloud-like fleece might never become sweaters and socks to be passed down for generations, her pastures will sit empty and the educational field trips of eager students will stop coming to learn about land and animal stewardship.
Luebbermann stepped out into the pasture, calling to her sheep in operatic falsetto. They came running, lifting their heads into her awaiting hands for scratches.
'We're kind of an endangered species,' she said.
Earlier this year Mendocino Wool and Fiber in Ukiah (Mendocino County), a primary mill for small scale yarn producers in Northern California, closed. Further south along the Central Coast, Morro Fleece Works announced that it will sell its operation or shut down. It's not just a California problem. Mills have closed in recent years across the nation — including Zeilinger Wool Company in Michigan, a 115-year-old mill passed down through four generations.
'It doesn't seem like there's a quick or easy solution,' said Marcail Williams, owner of Valley Oak Wool Mill in Woodland (Yolo County), which is one of the outer Bay Area's last small-scale mills. It's where Luebbermann processes her wool. 'Right now, I would love for it to keep going on, but if it doesn't, then I gotta just move on.'
Ironically, knitting culture is thriving in the Bay Area.
'There's a lot of knitting groups, like, so, so, so many,' said Sarah Laoyan, 32, who learned to knit in third grade but picked it back up during the pandemic and joined a San Francisco knitting circle. 'I would say that a lot of the influx of it has to do with sustainability — a lot of people are interested in making their own clothes that will last a long time.'
Yet, despite the popularity, most Bay Area knitting stores have a limited supply of local yarn, if any, because the imported and synthetic material is much cheaper both for stores and their customers.
'It's tricky because (local wool growers) are having a hard time competing price wise,' said Katelyn Randolph, the owner of the San Francisco knitting shop Imagiknit, which opened a second location in Berkeley last year.
In April, Williams, 39, was weighing large paper bags of wool destined to be skeins of yarn at her mill in Woodland, where she grew up. She gestured to even more bags of wool stacked on the mill's shelves that she hasn't gotten to yet, because demand for processing is so high. The pressure to keep her operation going is a lot, she said. Money is tight, and she's in debt.
American wool used to have much deeper pockets.
But federal funding for the domestic wool industry — through tariffs that once sheltered American wool from wool overseas — has fallen from around $200 million in the 1950s to just $2.25 million in the 2010s. The industry began moving overseas by the 1980s, where costs are often less expensive than in America. These days, the rise of synthetics and cheaper production costs in places like Australia and China have compressed American wool into a husk of its former self. In her book, 'Vanishing Fleece,' author and knitter Clara Parkes details this history of 'an industry and a way of life that has been hard-hit but refused to die.'
'It's very hard to make a living at this,' said Liebe Patterson, a shepherdess who's been working desperately to keep the small-scale, local industry alive — and she also relies on Williams to transform her wool into a product.
In March, Patterson opened the gate to her barn in Marin. A flood of 30 brown, tan and white sheep took off running toward a hilly pasture. She patted the fluffy head of a tan sheep as it waited in line for its turn at the low-hanging oak tree branch that doubles as a scratching post for the flock.
In 2023, Patterson opened West Marin Wool Shed, a brick-and-mortar shop in the heart of Point Reyes Station. It only sells locally produced yarn and wooly goods grown by people like Luebbermann and processed by people like Williams.
Unlike others in her industry, Patterson doesn't rely on her sheep and their wool to survive, and she wants to be a resource for those who do.
'A challenge is cash flow,' she said. 'That's, I think, the one thing I can help with.'
Patterson's shop is a place where people can see and feel local wool and invest in its future, which gives Luebbermann and Williams some hope.
'We're consistently growing in sales, and people are getting to know where we are and what we do,' Patterson said. 'I'm hopeful because I'm seeing a lot of people connect — they're drawn to it.'
Patterson and Luebbermann are optimistic that with the rise of artificial intelligence and other modern technologies, people will find deeper appreciation for the local and tactile. Like produce in large grocery chains, mass-produced wool is often refined toward homogeneity. To Luebbermann, it lacks luster and heart.
'(Local yarn) has a life and a vigor to it that … I find commercial yarns are dead,' Luebbermann said. 'The life has been processed out of them.'
Still, what it will take for yarn like hers to find its audience in Bay Area knitting circles and yarn shops remains to be seen.
'If you go to a yarn store and you pick up one really nice indie skein of yarn, it's like $30 — an entire sweater is like six to eight skeins of yarn, so that's like $300 for a sweater,' Laoyan said.
Meanwhile, mass-produced or acrylic yarn can run for as little as $5 per skein. And that price difference is a big problem for local producers.
' If you can think of it as an investment into something that you're not gonna throw away, that you should pass on to your grandchildren, it's just a different product,' Luebbermann said.
She believes small farms, especially near urban centers like San Francisco, are essential to the well being of animals and humans.
'(Sheep) share with us their wool, and we take care of them,' she said. 'That's an important exchange that should never get obsolete — it should be a part of our life as humans sharing a planet.'