Website: https://fibershed.org/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fibershed/
Mailing address:
Fibershed
PO Box 221
San Geronimo, CA 94963
We develop regional fiber systems that build soil & protect
the health of our biosphere.
Mission & Vision
Our Mission
Fibershed is a non-profit organization that develops equity-focused regional and land regenerating natural fiber and dye systems. Our work expands opportunities to implement climate beneficial agriculture, rebuild regional manufacturing, and connect end-users to the source of our fiber through direct educational offerings. We are transforming the economic and ecologic systems that clothe us to generate equitable and climate change ameliorating textile cultures.
Our Vision
We envision clothing ourselves through diverse and decentralized textile systems that operationalize equitable soil-to-soil processes. We are uplifting the voices and strengthening the capacity of place-based grassroots textile communities that are directly enhancing their regional economies for the purpose of generating permanent and lasting systems of localized fiber and natural dye production.
We see a nourishing tradition emerging that connects the wearer to the fields where clothes are grown in a system that can last for countless generations into the future. Through a host of scientifically vetted soil health-enhancing practices, paired with regional textile districts, we will create the new standard for textile material culture creation.
Our Impact
We work across three program areas to cultivate Regional Textile Economies, expand Climate Beneficial Agriculture, and empower Education & Advocacy. Rooted in our Northern California Fibershed homebase, we foster Fibershed community around the world — here is a snapshot of our impact:
- 45,550+ Metric Tons CO2e estimated drawdown secured through four years of community carbon farming practices that will result in 20 year carbon sequestration rates
- 200,000+ pounds of Climate Beneficial Wool verified and moved into value chains that fund ecosystem restoration
- $1 Million in investment capital leveraged into regional manufacturing, from pooling Climate Beneficial verified fiber to reshoring the latest textiles technologies and providing technical assistance to entrepreneurs
- 45 Fibershed Affiliate communities around the globe generating place-based visions and engagement for their fiber system
- 75,000+ reached with public education through community events, curriculum development, digital media and partnerships
A new “farm-to-closet” vision for the clothes we wear–by a leader in the movement for local textile economies
There is a major disconnect between what we wear and our knowledge of its impact on land, air, water, labor, and human health. Even those who value access to safe, local, nutritious food have largely overlooked the production of fiber, dyes, and the chemistry that forms the backbone of modern textile production. While humans are 100 percent reliant on their second skin, it’s common to think little about the biological and human cultural context from which our clothing derives.
Almost a decade ago, weaver and natural dyer Rebecca Burgess developed a project focused on wearing clothing made from fiber grown, woven, and sewn within her bioregion of North Central California. As she began to network with ranchers, farmers, and artisans, she discovered that even in her home community there was ample raw material being grown to support a new regional textile economy with deep roots in climate change prevention and soil restoration. A vision for the future came into focus, combining right livelihoods and a textile system based on economic justice and soil carbon enhancing practices. Burgess saw that we could create viable supply chains of clothing that could become the new standard in a world looking to solve the climate crisis.
In Fibershed readers will learn how natural plant dyes and fibers such as wool, cotton, hemp, and flax can be grown and processed as part of a scalable, restorative agricultural system. They will also learn about milling and other technical systems needed to make regional textile production possible. Fibershed is a resource for fiber farmers, ranchers, contract grazers, weavers, knitters, slow-fashion entrepreneurs, soil activists, and conscious consumers who want to join or create their own fibershed and topple outdated and toxic systems of exploitation.
Online event, November 13, 2021
About this event
This year’s symposium will begin with a conversation between those living and working to produce our global demand for textiles and those that receive the mounds of material that is discarded once clothing is deemed “uninteresting” or damaged. We’ll hear from members of the OR Foundation Community and the Garment Worker Center, who will share the consequences that they personally and professionally experience due to current rates of production within the fashion industry.
The day will include a presentation by Local Futures, an organization founded on the work to uplift place-based regional economies; including efforts to ‘expose the big picture’ and ‘unite and connect’ farmers, mainstreet business owners, indigenous communities and everyone in between. We will hear from textile artist Karen Hampton whose art and life is shaped by connection to her ancestry– a lineage versed in care and regard for soil, textiles and dyes.
The second half of our day will focus on our region’s water and agriculture. With rapid changes in weather patterns, our soil based systems from which we rely upon for material culture are undergoing transitions. We will hear from hydrologists, farmers, those leading people-powered solutions, and researchers in two panel discussions focused on realities and solutions of California water and the growing agroforestry movement. We will hear lightning talks from Fibershed Producer members focused on stories of how they are implementing carbon farming practices and enhancing biodiversity and soil carbon within their working landscapes.
The Fibershed Marketplace Showcase will feature a range of the region’s soil-to-soil textiles and will highlight our region’s farmers, artisans, weavers, felters, knitters, mills and natural dyers who will be offering freshly farmed and ranched goods from our range and cropland systems.
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Two Case Studies
Approaching Life (and Wool) One Step at a Time at 5 Creek Farm
As a little girl, Coleen Maloney was sure she’d found the perfect birthday present for her mother: a small brood of chicks.
“My mother was born after the first day of Spring, and I was sure it was going to be the best gift ever,” she remembers with a laugh. “When I presented her with the chicks, she looked at me like I had given her a lawnmower! She was livid, and I was completely clueless. But we kept the chicks, and it was probably one of the first signs to my family that I was different.”
While her parents and siblings enjoyed tennis, swimming, and baseball in the suburbs of Sacramento, Maloney longed for country life. Instead of holding a racket, she wanted reins in her hands, roaming around a farm on horseback and getting dirty. So when the opportunity came to care for a horse whose owners went on sabbatical for a year, Maloney convinced her parents it was the job for her.
“I was thirteen years old, and it was fabulous! I could ride the horse whenever I wanted, and I got so much enjoyment from caring for her. I proved that I was capable, and it showed me how much I loved being around animals,” she says. “From then on, any babysitting money I made went towards local horseback riding lessons.”
Her family just shook their heads quizzically and wondered when she’d move past this stage. “They’d look at me like, ‘Where did we find her?’ But that was just me,” she shrugs. “I would never outgrow it.”
Years later, with a family of her own and living in Petaluma, Maloney’s children provided the first nudge towards farm life. They enrolled in their district’s 4-H program and began to raise Suffolk sheep. “We had a bunch of them, and the kids did well with the Suffolks, but they were huge!” she exclaims. “About four hundred pounds – the size of a small pony. And when the kids went off to college, I just couldn’t picture myself out in the lambing barn with them.”
The animals were sold, and life went back to normal. But when Maloney and her husband found the land that would eventually become 5 Creek Farm, she knew she’d finally come home. The 20-acre property in Santa Rosa came with two prominent red barns (“local landmarks of sorts” smiles Maloney), a meandering creek, groves of walnut trees, and local history to preserve.
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“I’ve realized I’m not just an alpaca rancher; I’m a fiber farmer, too,” beams Schmid. “I’m able to produce great fiber and then work with others who are also creating incredible fibers. The whole fibershed is greater than the sum of its parts, and we’re working in a way that honors and respects people, animals, and the land. What we’re doing fits me perfectly.”
Charlene Schmid, Integrity Alpacas.
Raising Happy Animals at Integrity Alpacas
A baby blanket, crocheted from soft and cozy alpaca fiber, was Charlene Schmid’s first glimpse into a new world of fiber. She was making it for her daughter, and the experience of working with such a silky, luxurious fiber left an indelible impression. “I didn’t want to use any other yarns after that,” she says with a satisfied laugh. “Alpaca was it for me.”
And while others might have been content to stock their craft cupboard with skeins of alpaca fiber after having such a revelation, Schmid took a different approach. She went out and bought an alpaca.
“It was a gradual process, but one that was inevitable,” she smiles. “I was a Montessori teacher and had been taking my students to visit a local alpaca farm for a few years. There was a great vintage machine there, and I wanted them to appreciate the work and skill of the people involved in the production of the fiber from beginning to end. One thing led to another, and I learned that others in Davis wanted to start an alpaca cooperative. That was the push I needed.”
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Other
Civil Eats TV: Women in Wool
In the latest episode of Civil Eats TV, we profile the unique way women work together in the world of wool—from the land they manage and the sheep they shear to the ways they’re contributing to vibrant local economies.
Hazel Flett. (Photo credit: Judy Starkman / Mizzica Films)
We visit Bodega Pastures, a 1,000-acre sustainable sheep ranch located in Bodega, California, managed by owner Hazel Flett, who has long employed ethical and ecological practices.
We watch as Lora Kinkade, a 30-year-old traveling shearer—a rarity in a highly competitive, male-dominated industry—demonstrates her unique and humane approach to shearing.
And we learn about Kinkade’s longstanding relationships with local ranchers, the importance of sheep-to-soil health, and the necessary role shearing plays in the health of the animals.
“Shearing is completely vital for the health and well-being of the animal,” says Kinkade.
“[Shearing] helps them avoid heatstroke, heart attack, there could be parasitic infestation if we let the sheep’s wool get too massive,” explains Rebecca Burgess, the executive director of Fibershed.
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… and in the UK
Back in April a team of about 30 volunteers started work on a grand plan – to grow their own clothes.
On a patch of unused land in the Lancashire town of Blackburn, they planted the seeds of two crops – flax and woad.
Fast-forward to early August and they harvested the small field beside the Leeds & Liverpool Canal.
The flax has since been broken, scutched, hackled, spun, and woven to create the fabric linen.
Meanwhile, the woad leaves were heated and then cooled in water to create natural indigo dye to colour the linen blue.
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