For years we sold our fleece off at the spring shearing and watched it leave the valley. A few seasons back we started keeping it. The Beargrass Camp Blanket is the result — our own wool, off sheep that grazed the hay meadow last summer, scoured and spun and woven at a small mill over in the Mission Valley and carried back home. It's the only thing in the store born, raised, and finished within sight of the same mountains.
It's woven heavy and tight, the way a blanket has to be to earn its name out here — warm against a damp morning ride, warmer still pulled up in a bunk while the stove ticks down. The colors are the soft naturals the sheep actually grow, with a single woven stripe in a small dye-lot we keep limited. My grandmother Ada would've said it was about time we kept our own wool. She'd have been right.