Date: Feb 25, 2015 Author: Heather Richards Source: Buffalo Bulletin (
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Bruce Pheasant's ranch is a sprawl of wheat-colored hills, speckled with white, grey and black sheep. Dropping his pickup into low gear, Pheasant steps out and lets the truck roll, walking along behind the bed and peeling off a sheaf of alfalfa every few feet. The ewes bleat and the younger ones jump and skitter, jostling against Pheasant's legs, for the rich green alfalfa hay.
About three generations ago, sheep ranching around Buffalo and Kaycee was booming, according to the Wyoming yearly trends in the 2013 agriculture report. But sheep numbers are down from millions in the '30s and '40s to fewer than 500,000 two years ago.
Sheep ranching is hard work. Pheasant has seen predators wipe out 30 or 40 lambs in a matter of days. Eagles, coyotes and mountain lions literally eat away at his livelihood.
Many families moved on to other endeavors. Not Pheasant.
"You can't beat it," Pheasant says staring out over his ranch toward the Bighorns. "It gets in your blood."
But to keep his family business alive, Pheasant's had to innovate to meet changing market demands. His most recent undertaking is a partnership with Mountain Meadow Wool in Buffalo to create a Johnson County sourced hoodie.
The idea is similar to the farm-to-table movement that has gained popularity in the food industry in the past few years. In this case, it is not food, but the material used to make these hoodies that can be traced to a local mill, and in Pheasant's case, one ranch in rural Wyoming. From sheep to sweater, it's all locally sourced.
Sheep ranching in Johnson County has a history that weaves together Basque immigrants, homesteaders and ranchers. The Basques are credited for importing the Rambouillet breed, which produce fine textured wool, said Valerie Spanos, co-founder of Mountain Meadow Wool.
Spanos co-founded the mill with Karen Hostetler in 2002. Neither knew the business or the industry.
They knew about yarn and "worked backwards from there," Spanos said.
They saw their neighbors, the sheep ranchers of Johnson County, going out of business. The wool mill became a way to help area ranchers.
"We thought, ‘We'll save the country,'" Spanos joked.
They began as stay-at-home moms, working out of their kitchens and in Buffalo coffee shops. The more they learned about the yarn business, the more they had to learn about wool and area ranching. It took years before they were producing yarn, marketing themselves at trade shows and selling directly to yarn shops. But in that time they've built a strong business and relationships with Johnson County ranchers, like Pheasant, as well as with ranchers in neighboring counties. Those relationships allow them to capitalize on the go-local movement, which perfectly fits their mission to create locally sourced and traceable products.
They credit their success in part to their outside-the-box-thinking model. There is no standard that they feel they have to comply with, no set way of doing things, they said.
When years ago most mills stopped accepting black wool, worrying it contaminated the pristine whites, Mountain Meadow used it to naturally create an array of grays, including the shade used for Pheasant's sweater.
Hostetler and Spanos sit down and work with designers, manufacturers and craftsmen to create products suited to the buyer's needs, an overture uncommon in the business and something small-batch manufacturers and craftsmen appreciate, Spanos said. They also are drawn to the quality of the wool.
"The wool that we produce is incredibly soft textured because of our environment and because the Basque herders brought breeding stock," Spanos said.
Pheasant's grandfather, Bruce T. Pheasant, raised Rambouillet when he moved to Johnson County from Missouri to homestead in the early 1900s.
The family almost sold the ranch a few years ago, but Bruce T. Pheasant's grandson and namesake moved back to Kaycee from Casper to continue the family business. He just couldn't let the land leave the family. Pheasant hopes one day his kids will continue the business.
To keep it viable Pheasant is experimenting, cultivating his herd by breeding Rambouillet and Cormo sheep. He also dabbles in California Red, which he says spinners like.
"A lot of people don't care about the wool," he said. "They want a big lamb, and they think a finer-wooled sheep doesn't raise a good lamb. Well, I've proved them wrong."
Pheasant raises the sheep, shears the wool and then sends it to Mountain Meadow where it's washed, dried, conditioned and combed before it's spun into yarn. From there the wool goes to California where the yarn forms the hoodies.
The final touch is an understated logo of the Pheasant brand stitched onto the lower left pocket. The tag reads, "Nine Mile Ranch, The Pheasants, Kaycee Wyoming."
