The Ups & Downs of Sheep Farming

Homer Heater shares this sheep story from his life growing up on Riffle Run in the 1930s and '40s. "We raised a sheep once, a ewe, which we really came to love. She was quite beautiful with long wool and two pretty curved horns. We raised her as if she were a child, for we had no other sheep. When she had her first lambs, she refused to suckle them, and they finally died. The boys jointly owned Sally, and we agreed to let Dad sell her provided the money would go to buy Mom a washing machine. He sold her, but he did not get the washing machine, and before long the money was gone. I can’t really blame him, because we were so poor that there was always a need for money, but now our Sally was gone, and Mom still did not have a washing machine." Be sure to check out his website.

My grandfather, Oras Stutler told this story about sheep. My grandparents kept chickens, one or two cows and hogs. However, at one livestock auction there was a particularly sad little herd of sheep on the auction block. Grandpa and his buddy bought them, brought them home, Chloroxed them snowy white, fed them well for a month, then took them back to the auction and made a healthy chunk of change for their efforts.

At one time sheep were far more important in this area. We know that the early settlers in Orlando, like others in the area, processed wool and therefore kept sheep because we know of pioneer Alexander Skinner's1 loom and spinningwheel. Gideon Skinner's son, my Greatuncle Hayward, showed me the huge loom Alexander was to have built and told me that his own grandmother (Alexander's daughter) Patience (Duvall) Skinner (b. 1846, d. 1931) used it. Also, I have seen Alexander Skinner's will in the Lewis County records in which he bequeathed a spinningwheel to his daughter Ann (See entry Alexander Skinner's Will April 19, '06)

The print is of a woman carding wool by hand, as the early settlers would have done. Wool carding machines made their appearance, generally at mill sites, in the last half of the 1800s.

Today Orlando's hills and hollers provides a fine setting for sheep farming and the production of specialty wools. The Kilmarnock and Rocky Fork farms are evidence of that. (See the Orlando Today entries for Kilmarnock Farm April 29, '06 and Rocky Fork Farm, May 7, '06.)

1. Smith tells us that until the large preditors had been exterminated, folks found it neccessary to stick with livestock that could fend for themselves pretty well like hogs, and livestock that could be kept locked up at night like oxen, cows, horses, mules and such. He also tells us that John Riffle killed the last panther in Lewis Count in 1853.

2. We know that wool became a valuable crop with the Civil War in the 1860s. Smith notes that lots of wool was needed for soldiers' uniforms.3 A factor in the popularity of farming sheep that Smith didn't mention was the devastation of the South's cotton fields.

3. Smith explains why the wool boom did not last long. Beginning in the late 1880s, competition from Australian and Argentinan wool producers eroded the profits in wool production. Farmers in the area let their once-fine stock deteriorate. After that cattle became the popular choice of livestock.

1. Alexander Skinner, b. 1807) was the son of Catherine (Scott) and Alexander Skinner and the husband of Phoebe Conrad (b. 1815 d. 1886).
2.

3. A History of Lewis County West Virginia, Edward C. Smith. pg 337.
4. A History of Lewis County West Virginia, Edward C. Smith. pg 376