Travel Reading, part 6 - Raw Material

After Reading Brotopia, I needed something that was more upbeat.

Raw Material: Working Wool in the West by Stephany Wilkes was just the ticket.

I found this book at Stitches West earlier this year.  I just loved the premise, so it went toward the top of my reading queue.

Turns out Ms Wilkes was the first interview on the Soil to Soil Podcast.  In which, I found her to be engaging and compelling.  So I was really looking forward to reading her book.

It was a slow off ramp from Brotopia.  Ms Wilkes is a former Bay Area Tech worker and mentioned some of the sexual harassment she was the target of prior to making her career change.  Fortunately she quickly got to her shearing experiences and told the story of how Mendocino Wool came in to being.

I appreciate the author telling stories of walking into businesses after shearing all day and describing the looks that shop keepers/clerks would give... as well as how good food can taste at the end of a long day shearing.... and of course, the response from family/friends about how crazy she was to leave a lucrative job for manual labor... and the despair that comes with being stuck in an office all week after spending an entire weekend outside, doing tangible productive work... I feel a kinship with Ms. Wilkes and hope I am able to meet her one day.... shearing people are some of my very favorite.  :-)

One thing I find interesting in the author's story, and have experienced it myself... while farming and shearing tend to be male-dominated, they are welcoming to women... if you are interested in learning, then you get the work.... at least in my experience, the overt sexism is not as prevalent as other industries I've worked in.