Chamisa Mesa Fiber Co. Ranch & Fiber Mill · Española, NM Ask the mill

Española, New Mexico · Fleece, roving & hand-dyed yarn

From the gate to the box, every mile in between.

Chamisa Mesa Fiber Co. runs a sheep ranch and a small fiber mill on the same ground. Raw fleece, custom milling, hand-dyed yarn — and the whole route from the pasture to the shipping box, marked out stage by stage.

Read the catalogue Walk the route
Española, NM → ranch gate, mill floor, shipping box

The mill route

Five stages, one fleece, no skipped miles.

Every batch we sell runs the same five steps, in the same order, on the same ground. Here is what happens at each stop, from the open gate to the closed box.

01
Open pasture gate with sheep grazing beyond it The pasture gate

Fleece

The clip comes off the pasture and gets weighed, skirted and bagged. Anything the weather ruined stays in the field where it fell.

02
Wet fleece being lifted from a scouring sink in the mill The scour sink

Washing

Cold rinse, warm scour, cold rinse. The lanolin goes down the drain and the fleece comes out smelling like nothing much at all.

03
A batt of carded fleece coming off the drum carder The carder

Carding

The part where fleece stops being a fleece. It goes in matted and comes out as a batt, or gets drafted straight on into roving.

04
Spinning wheel beside a dye pot with skeins drying on a line Wheel and dyepot

Spinning & dyeing

Roving becomes yarn on the wheel. Skeins go into the dyepot in small lots, which is why no two dye days come out identical.

05
An open shipping box of folded skeins on a workbench Out the door

The box

Skeins are weighed, labeled and folded into the box. After that it is the highway's problem, not ours.

Catalogue

What comes off the route.

Grouped by the stage it leaves the mill from. Availability moves with the clip, so ask us what is on the shelf this month rather than trusting a list.

Stage 01 · off the pasture

Raw fleece

Skirted, sorted and bagged from the clip. Sold by the bag, in the natural colors the flock grows — which is to say, the colors the mesa grows them on.

  • Skirted
  • Sorted by color
  • By the bag
Stage 03 · off the carder

Roving

Washed fleece run through the carder into batts, or drafted on into roving that is ready for the wheel, the spindle or the loom.

  • Carded batts
  • Drafted roving
  • Natural colors
Stages 04–05 · off the wheel and the dyepot

Hand-dyed yarn

Spun on the mill wheel and dyed in small lots. Colorways shift with the season, not with a printed book, so a dye day is a one-off by design.

  • Small dye lots
  • Skeined
  • Weighed and labeled
Stages 02–05 · to order

Custom small-batch milling

Bring your fleece to the mill or ship it in, and we run it down the same five stages and hand it back as roving or as yarn. Small batches, your clip, our route.

  • Your own clip
  • Small batches
  • Roving or yarn back
Ask the mill what is available

Pull off here

Workshops at the mill. Tours at the pasture.

At the mill

Spinning & weaving workshops

Workshops run at the mill through the season, on real fleece from the ranch and with the carder running in the background. Bring your own wheel or use one of ours. Write to the mill for the current calendar.

  1. 01 Spinning — drafting, treadling, plying.
  2. 02 Weaving — warping the loom, weft, finishing.
  3. 03 Fleece — reading a skirted clip and knowing what the carder will do to it.
At the pasture

Ranch tours

Walk out from the mill to the pasture, meet the flock and see where the clip actually starts. Tours are arranged by request, in the season that suits the sheep rather than the calendar.

Ask for dates when you write, and say whether you are coming with a group of makers — we will put the kettle on the woodstove.

  1. 01 Mill floor first, so the pasture makes sense.
  2. 02 Out to the flock, on foot, weather permitting.

Trade & milling desk

For yarn shops and growers.

We supply shops with fleece, roving and hand-dyed yarn, and we run custom small-batch milling for growers who want their own clip back as roving or yarn. Tell us what you need and roughly how much of it, and we will answer from the mill.

  • Wholesale fleece, roving and yarn
  • Custom small-batch milling
  • Workshop and tour bookings

Send a note to the mill

Orders, milling inquiries and tour requests all land in the same place.

End of the route

Come out to the mesa. Or send us your fleece.

The mill sits in Española, New Mexico, and the gate opens by arrangement. Start with a note about what you are after and we will take it from there.

Send to the mill Read the catalogue