Corespun Natural Stripes
Corespun yarn in natural colors (white, brown, grey) spun to create 6-8 stripes per 2 pound bump. Fiber content: 50% mohair - 50% Shetland wool
NJ Fibershed Barn Crawl 2025
Join the fun again this year by visiting one or all
participating NJ Fibershed Farms!
The Barn Crawl allows farm-fiber lovers to learn about our local fiber production, while visiting farms, meeting fiber animals, and shopping for locally-sourced products. The NJ Fibershed Barn Crawl is a community-building event with the goal of promoting the awareness of local fiber production and use throughout our state. June 7 & 8. 10am – 4pm, Rain or Shine, both days. NO TICKETS NEEDED – FREE EVENT
Dancing Waters Farm will be participating at host farm Windswept Sheep Farm in Pittstown NJ
Please stop by to talk fiber and meet the sheep (they eat animal crackers)! Our goal is to connect local fiber producers, artisans and those interested in learning about or supporting local fiber based businesses. Updates will be announced via Instagram/ Facebook (@windsweptsheep) as well as here on Dancing Waters Farm’s website (https://www.mohair-fiber.com).
Vendors at host farm Windswept Sheep Farm:
NJ Fibershed Members:
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- Dancing Waters Farm – natural colored and hand dyed mohair and wool roving, tops, yarn, corespun yarn, fiber dye kits, mitt kits
- Windswept Sheep Farm – Romney & Dorset fleeces, sheepskins, roving, yarns and fiber fertilizer (wool pellets)
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Other Local Vendors:
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- G.P.K Woodcrafts & Restorations – Gregg’s locally made cutting and charcuterie boards, wooden vases and bird houses (all made from locally sourced hard woods – maple, ash, walnut)
- Glass artist – Bonnie’s handcrafted, one-of-a-kind pressed glass sun-catchers. Graphite molds were hand carved using graphite sourced from local Asbury NJ graphite mill.
- Honey – Mountain Valley
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Dates: June 7 & 8 10am – 4pm both days – Rain or Shine
Address: Windswept Sheep Farm, 173 Whitebridge Road, Pittstown, NJ 08867
This is a field event, with field parking (uneven ground, possibly muddy), no rest rooms. Vendors will be inside barns if the weather is bad.
More Info on the Barn Crawl (other participants, etc.): NJ Fibershed website and on Instagram (@nj_fibershed)
#localfibernj #localfiberarts #localfiberfarms #windsweptsheep #dancingwatersfarm
2023 Year in Pictures
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This gallery contains 15 photos.
2022 Year in Pictures
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This gallery contains 16 photos.
Livestock Veterinary Good News – Acupuncture and a NJ Vet School at Last
Acupuncture
Acupuncture is making it’s way into the tool set of livestock veterinarians! It’s especially useful for chronic conditions such as arthritis, disc disease, back pain and musculoskeletal injuries, gastrointestinal disorders, neurological problems, and respiratory issues. Check out the details in this May 2022 Lancaster Farming article.
At Last a NJ Vet School
It’s gotten increasingly difficult to find livestock veterinary services throughout NJ, so it was great to hear that Rowan University has announced the planned opening of the first school of Veterinary Medicine in NJ! It will be located in Sewell, NJ and plans an inaugural class of 60 students in Fall 2025 (pending approval by the American Veterinary Medical Association Council on Education). Today there are only 33 USA accredited vet schools of which 5 are on the East Coast. With the addition of the new school, Rowan will become one of two universities in the nation to offer doctor of veterinary medicine, doctor of medicine and doctor of osteopathic medicine degrees. More details available in the January 2022 article listed below.
NJ Fibershed Blanket Project
The background story below – purchase here.
 The NJ Fibershed Blanket was a NJ Fibershed project highlighting locally produced fiber products that provided a sales outlet for small fiber farms. Wool was collected from small fiber farms located within the NJ Fibershed region and processed entirely in the northeast USA to create a blanket for customers seeking local products to support small-scale, sustainable farms. This blanket is a one-of-a-kind product, made entirely with NJ wool and processed in the northeast USA (NH, ME, upstate NY). You won’t find an equivalent anywhere else. |
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| Over 400 lbs of wool was collected from 9 small farms and sorted to meet our quality criteria. Dancing Waters Farm contributed ~25% of the wool for this project.
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Our unique, modern design features three solid color sections representing the three regions of New Jersey: North, Central, and South Jersey. The gradual transition between colors is a playful nod to the fundamental New Jersey debate of where, Central Jersey starts and ends (the Governor finally resolved this Aug. 24 2023 with legislation S3206). The nine lines in the transition represent the nine farms who contributed wool to the project. Two versions were woven – one with a white background (sold out) and one with a grey background (my favorite). |
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| The NJ Fibershed Blanket measures 78″ x 58″ (2m x 1.47 m) and weighs 2.5 lb (1.13 kg). The blanket price is $325. Purchase in my online shop.
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Dorset, Finn, Gotland, Romney and Shetland wool were provided by the farms. The wool was washed in New Hampshire, spun in Maine, and handwoven in upstate New York. That means no international shipping was done as the processing was done by some of the few remaining small fiber processors in the US.
Page Updated: Sep. 30, 2024
Rainbow Fiber Co-op
This fantastic group in their own words:
“is a Diné-led agricultural co-operative established to improve the financial sustainability and equitable market outcomes for the largest flocks of Dibé dits’ozí (Navajo-Churro sheep) remaining on the Navajo Nation. Our mission is to close the gap between rural Diné shepherds and an e-commerce driven marketplace for their wool. We are thrilled to announce that we have officially launched our online yarn shop!
Thanks to many generous donors we executed our first wool buy on the Navajo Nation in July 2021. We purchased approximately 3,200 pounds of Navajo-Churro wool from our shepherds. We paid a stipend for shearing help and a fair price for their wool by the pound. After skirting and sorting by color we transported the wool to Mora Valley Spinning Mill, a nonprofit community-based wool mill located in Mora, New Mexico, to produce an assortment of Navajo-style weaving yarns. In November of 2021 we began offering Diné-grown Navajo-Churro weaving yarns for sale online direct-to-customer. Sales dollars generated will be used to help fund the wool buy project again in 2022.
Most of the Navajo-Churro wool products available for sale online are from non-Diné shepherds. Diné shepherds are often told their wool is worthless or paid pennies per pound at mass wool buy events. Despite these challenges many shepherds create a market for themselves through hand spinning, weaving, and teaching weaving classes. This is difficult to do at scale and an unreliable source of income. In 2020 the pandemic brought marketing activities like farm visits, classes, art shows, and fiber events to a standstill. Several medium- to large-scale wool buys were completely canceled. These impacts have continued into 2021. We saw an opportunity to step up and do something to support these important flocks.”
Fibershed.org is helping them raise money to get their idea off the ground and their first run of yarn is now available on their website!
For more info: https://rainbowfibercoop.org/
2020 Year in Pictures
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This gallery contains 36 photos.
Antique Amish Yarn Swift
I recently bought an antique Amish swift from my artist and fellow fiber friend Linda Czech. Sadly she is backing out of fiber pursuits because her cats are fixated on destroying anything fiber she creates.
I took it “for a spin” to skein a bobbin of 2 ply Jacob wool handspun I’d done for the Woolverton Inn. The swift works perfectly to wind directly from my spinning wheel without my having to lean over or stretch up and it also counts the yardage as it goes. Not to mention that it just looks really great sitting in the living room!
2019 Year in Pictures
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This gallery contains 19 photos.
Monarch Migration
The Farm has always supported butterflies by keeping butterfly preferred flowers in the gardens and in particular looking out for Monarchs by raising them from caterpillars when their numbers are low. 2019 was the best Summer for Monarchs in quite a few years so I decided to start listing results for on-going comparison of years. But first a few pics….
Healthy Male Monarch With Wings Still Drying
15 caterpillars total
2 accidental deaths
0 disease issues
0 unexplained death
7 healthy males
6 healthy females
87% survival rate
Which far surpasses the 0% observed surviving in the garden.
Chrysalis Accidents
2 fell – one was crushed while cleaning the cage as it wasn’t seen on the bottom after it had fallen. The other fell just after the chrysalis formed and it was still too wet to survive the fall. This was the last caterpillar raised (9/18/19) and it seemed to have a bad destiny from the start. It wanted to j on the test tube rack for holding the milkweed leaves, when relocated to the top then picked the zipper of the cage, etc.