Schleicher County Livestock Show: Mill Weaves Lamb a Blanket of Himself
Eldorado Mill Volunteers Revive the Old Wool-for-Blankets Trade for One 4-H Order, Receive Six Ounces of Slick-Shorn Clippings and a Form Reading “Size: Lamb”
ELDORADO, Texas — For the first time in decades, the Eldorado Woolen Mill has accepted a custom weaving order, and the volunteers who agreed to fill it have asked Farm.FM to publish their work order in full, “so people understand what happened, and so nobody else brings us a sandwich bag.”
The Eldorado Woolen Mill opened in 1939 as the first woolen mill in Texas. In the 1950s it ran a Custom Weaving Program in which ranchers from at least 40 states sent in wool and received finished blankets back, with no cash changing hands. The building is now kept by a nonprofit foundation. Its oldest machine is a German-made card from the 1880s that everyone calls Peralta.
This fall, a Schleicher County 4-H member, 14, walked in with a printed copy of the old program rules, a completed order form, and a zip-top bag containing the fleece of her finewool market lamb, Dumpling. The foundation, moved by the paperwork, agreed to honor the program for one order.
The bag weighed six ounces.
Custom Weaving Order No. 1 of the Modern Era
The following entries are reproduced from the work order taped to the mill’s front counter.
Monday, 9:10 a.m.
Order received. Customer requests one (1) blanket. Wool supplied: one fleece, finewool, slick-shorn for the upcoming county show. Customer advises lamb was shorn “show-ring close.” Bag contains what appears to be the lamb’s eyebrows. Weighed twice. Still six ounces.
Monday, 9:40 a.m.
Reviewed 1950s ledgers. Smallest order on file is a rancher who sent in four fleeces and a letter apologizing for the drought. Volunteers agree this order is smaller. One volunteer proposes we decline. Overruled. Program rules say “any Texas wool.” Program rules do not say “any amount of.”
Monday, 2:15 p.m.
Scoured. Fine wool loses a great deal of its weight in the wash, mostly grease and dirt, which we knew. What we did not know is how it would feel to watch six ounces become a little under three. The volunteer doing the scouring asked to be left alone for a while.
The Peralta Problem
Tuesday, 8:00 a.m.
Fed scoured wool into Peralta. Peralta has carded fleeces for Army blankets, saddle blankets and upholstery shipped to Sweden, France and Saudi Arabia. Peralta made a sound we have not heard before. Senior volunteer calls it “polite confusion.”
Tuesday, 8:01 a.m.
Carding complete.
Tuesday, 10:30 a.m.
Calculated maximum blanket dimensions from available roving. Answer: approximately the size of a show card. Rechecked using the mill’s 1940s specifications for its World War II run, when it made 24,300 blankets for the U.S. Army. Our blanket is one-twenty-four-thousand-three-hundredth of that order, give or take, and noticeably less than one blanket.
Tuesday, 1:00 p.m.
Emergency fiber drive. Called around for donations. In a county whose sheep, goat, wool and mohair sales rank sixth in Texas, this should have taken ten minutes. It took ten minutes. Then everybody wanted to talk.
Schleicher County Answers the Call, All at Once
Tuesday, 1:12 p.m.
A ranch south of town offered a full Rambouillet fleece. A ranch west of town offered two. A mohair producer offered enough kid mohair to “make it shine.” Customer, contacted by phone, declined all three, politely, and repeated that the blanket must be made from Dumpling’s wool only. Customer was very clear. Customer had clearly practiced being clear.
Tuesday, 3:45 p.m.
An FFA member who shows market goats stopped by with a sack of mohair “just in case.” Left it on the counter. Nobody is touching it. It is very nice mohair. It is sitting there being very nice at us.
Wednesday, 7:30 a.m.
Spun. Plied. Wound. The yarn is beautiful. There is not much of it. One volunteer has begun referring to it as “the reserve.”
Wednesday, 9:00 a.m.
Dyeing discussion. Customer requested red. Volunteers voted, 5 to 0, for the shade mill workers long ago named after a governor who ordered so many red blankets as wedding gifts that the color took his name.
Wednesday, 4:30 p.m.
Woven. One blanket, red, finewool, edged by hand. Measures 22 inches by 30 inches. Contains every usable fiber Dumpling grew last year. It is, without exaggeration, the finest blanket ever produced for a customer who weighs about 125 pounds.
Invoice, Delivery and a Note on the Size Field
Thursday, 10:00 a.m.
Customer picked up order. Customer, on seeing the blanket, said “perfect” and then said “it fits.” Volunteers asked what it fits. Customer pointed at the order form, where the line marked SIZE reads “Lamb.” Volunteers had read this as a description of the wool. It was a measurement.
Dumpling, it turns out, was slick-shorn for the Schleicher County Livestock Show, which is held in December at the Schleicher County Civic Center in Eldorado, a town that sits at 2,438 feet, at the top of the Divide, in a month that does not care how close your lamb was clipped. Every shorn lamb in the barn wears a blanket. Dumpling’s exhibitor saw no reason he should wear anybody’s wool but his own.
Thursday, 10:05 a.m.
Invoice issued in accordance with 1950s program rules. Amount due: $0.00. A volunteer noted that the 2022 census put the average Schleicher County farm’s net cash farm income at $3,900, against $40.9 million in countywide production expenses, and that a week of hard work for no money at all makes the mill, by local standards, a fairly normal operation.
Thursday, 10:06 a.m.
Thank-you note received, handwritten, delivered with the pickup. Signed by the customer, and in one corner, in what the customer says is hoof, by Dumpling.
Thursday, 10:07 a.m.
The mohair is still on the counter.
What the Mill Learned From One 4-H Lamb
The foundation reports that Dumpling wore the blanket to the barn on show day, took it off for the ring, and put it back on immediately afterward with an expression the senior volunteer called “closed for the season.” His exhibitor placed well in the class, kept her record book current to the ounce, and listed the blanket under “Value Added Products.”
The mill has since received three phone calls from other exhibitors asking whether the program is open again, including one from a heifer exhibitor. The foundation has declined further orders, and has framed the work order instead, beside a 1940s note from a veteran who said an Eldorado Army blanket helped plug a torpedo breach in his boat.
“That blanket saved a ship,” the senior volunteer said. “This one kept one lamb warm in Eldorado in December. Honestly, I couldn’t tell you which was harder to make.”
Five Humorous Observations About Texas 4-H Livestock Shows
- Only in Eldorado can a 14-year-old walk into a historic landmark with a sandwich bag of lamb clippings and walk out with a work order. That’s not a town named for a city of gold. That’s a town named for a city of fleece.
- Six ounces into the wash, three ounces out. Wool loses half its weight getting clean. So does every show-barn volunteer by Saturday afternoon.
- Five volunteers held a formal vote on the color of a blanket that covers one lamb, and it was unanimous. That is the most Schleicher County sentence ever written, and they would like it known they were prepared to debate it for an hour.
- Sixth in Texas for sheep, goats, wool and mohair, and the ranches couldn’t give away a fleece because a 4-H member had already said no. Respect the order form.
- The mill made 24,300 blankets for the Army and one for Dumpling. Ask the volunteers which customer sent a thank-you note. It wasn’t the Army.