25 Sep The Story of Mountain Meadow Wool

It was lightly raining the morning I visited Mountain Meadow Wool in Buffalo, Wyoming, wetting the gravel roads just off I-90 in an area that might be called a “light industrial district” if it were anywhere else in the world. Buffalo is not known as an epicenter of manufacturing. A picturesque town with million-dollar views of the Bighorns, it’s the perfect stopover on the way to Yellowstone or Rushmore. History figures large here, with constant reminders of the Johnson County Wars and a long tradition of Indigenous culture etched into the prairie and high desert sage.

Just off Plains Drive is a heavy-machinery rental center, a nearby auction yard with bawling cattle, and the wool mill itself — a windowless, white metal building surrounded by wild sunflowers and thistle. A sign advertises daily tours and a gift shop.

I meet co-owner Ben Hostetler in the gift shop. Hostetler has obvious energy for this project. He attributes his passion to a love for both agriculture and the community. We climb a flight of stairs and overlook an immense factory room where we view computerized machines, wool-dying areas, and workers putting the final touches on finished products like scarves, blankets, and hoodies. This, Hostetler explains, is the knitting side of the production. His mother and partner in the operation, Karen Hostetler, is nearby, working with interns from the University of Wyoming who have spent the summer at the mill learning production and manufacturing skills. Today is their final day in Buffalo, and they are celebrating with donuts and coffee.

The Hostetlers are not ranchers per se, though, as a kid, Hostetler participated in 4-H, and they still keep a few hobby sheep around their place. But growing up in the center of one of the world’s storied wool-producing areas, it struck them as problematic that the local wool was shipped away and sold to other countries. The whole idea of the mill began when the Hostetlers wanted to sell some of their wool to nearby community artisans and hobbyists, but no one was processing wool in Johnson County. The pair refused to accept that it was impossible to enjoy Wyoming wool at the local level — in fact, they rejected that outright. The Hostetlers are one example in a growing movement of entrepreneurs rebelling against large-scale production and taking matters into their own hands.

An overlook above the factory floor provides views of the varying machines used to turn raw wool into a value-added product.

“In 2005, the idea came about to bring textile processing to Wyoming. My mom was initially thinking, ‘We have this great history of wool in Johnson County; let’s go get some local wool and make something out of it, maybe a craft store downtown,’” says Hostetler. Their first effort was to ship a bale of Wyoming wool to Canada for processing. This struck Hostetler as inconvenient, even impractical. Why couldn’t they have their wool processed here in the U.S.? Better yet, right here in Buffalo, at its origin? The Hostetlers quickly discovered that the lion’s share of Wyoming wool was being processed overseas. The community never saw it again once it was shipped off.

As it stood, there was no opportunity to add value to this unique local product. But the Hostetlers figured that if a little mill in Canada could process raw wool, they should be able to do it in Buffalo as well. Then, they could offer it to the locals and the ranchers themselves to promote the quality and durability of Wyoming-made wool.

Freshly dyed yarn is laid out on drying racks before it’s spooled into cones.

In 2007, the mother-son pair began developing their own production facility. Hostetler describes those first years as “on-the-job training” because no one had any textile experience, and no one knew the process or the machinery. They began with tiny lots — sometimes just 10 pounds of yarn per day. But they began to learn from their failures and bank on their successes.

One of the first steps in processing raw wool is scouring. Scouring is washing grease and dirt from the natural product. Globally, this is done in enormous factories. But the Hostetlers needed to scale this down to a facility that would suit their needs. While getting his master’s degree in environmental engineering, Hostetler wrote his thesis on this process and how to do it on a small scale. They built their own machines — a fraction of the size of machines used around the world — and carved out a niche in the U.S. as the one mill that would take small batches of wool — sometimes as little as 35 pounds — and process it in a traceable way so customers knew what they were getting: With Mountain Meadow, they were guaranteed to get their own wool back, and there’s something sacred to that.

Karen Hostetler partnered with her son, Ben Hostetler, to found Mountain Meadow Wool in Buffalo, Wyoming, making use of the “great history of wool in Johnson County” and bringing textile processing back to the state.

The benefits are obvious. Because Mountain Meadow tracks all of its lots as the wool goes through the process, individual ranchers can guarantee that what they sell comes from their ranches. They can put their brand on their products and actually sell what they produced. This type of local authenticity adds value and leads to pride in craftsmanship.

The day I visit, everything is humming along. Hostetler shows me the tanks where they use biodegradable soap to clean the wool. The place is built on efficiency: Even the little fluffs of wool that find themselves lost in the process or adrift on the factory floor get used. These bits are collected and blended into their own line called Knitty Gritty. I have my eyes on a pair of Knitty Gritty gloves that seem like a bargain at $25.

Yarn is made, including the carding and spinning steps, in the spinner machine.

Below us, I see two employees coning yarn, a wholesale product for knitters and hobbyists. There are also employees skeining yarn. Hostetler explains that this physically demanding job requires lots of knot tying. A tour group of maybe six people wanders along the factory floor, snapping photos and occasionally touching one of the finished sweaters on display. That is one of the things about wool — you get the irresistible urge to reach out and touch it.

We move into the adjoining room, a raucous facility with bundles of raw wool stacked at the far side, which feels alive with the constant whir of machinery, the not-unpleasant smell of sheep, and the faint, wan scent of motor oil. These bales weigh upward of 500 pounds and require forklifts to move. They’re marked so that each “clip,” or total harvest from a given flock of sheep, is processed together and not blended with wool from other flocks.

Skeins of yarn are labeled and ready to be sold.

Hostetler explains that much of the equipment is from the 1970s and ’80s — the heyday of the American textile industry — and is unfortunately prone to breakdown. “Something breaks down every day,” he confides with a grin. And the parts to repair these machines are few and far between now that the American textile industry has packed up and gone overseas. In fact, the whole dying operation came to a halt for two weeks when a part broke and he had to order a replacement from Germany.

An employee sets up the pin drafter prior to spinning. All of the fiber makes three to four passes through this machine to align the individual fibers.

These are the kinds of nightmares that business owners face. But the idea of serving the community and making something tangible from local resources runs strong among people like the Hostetlers. They have long-standing relationships with area ranchers and are grounded in the community. Even from a distance, I can read the letters on the bundles of wool distinguishing one owner’s clip from another’s. And that seems to be the key — differentiating your wool from others and selling a cone of yarn or a hat that came from the sheep you raised yourself, on your land, with your family and co-workers.

Hostetler talks about connecting what we eat and wear to the local communities and producers. His rhetoric reminds me a bit of Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals or even Wendell Berry’s classic The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture. But criticism over off-shoring America’s once-dominant textile industry might be best spelled out in Steven Kurutz’s American Flannel: How a Band of Entrepreneurs are Bringing the Art and Business of Making Clothes Back Home, where the author describes the piecemeal devastation of the American textile industry during the ’60s and ’70s. Kurutz says that, at one time in history, the U.S. was a textile giant — think Woolrich, Levi’s, Carhartt, and L.L. Bean — not only making clothing for Americans but exporting workwear globally. The temptation, though, to maximize profits was too powerful: It was simply a matter of packing up and shipping the machinery to another country where labor was dirt cheap and environmental regulations were nonexistent to see profits soar. One by one, the giants of American textile manufacturing off-shored their operations. Today, most brands we associate with American manufacturing make little or nothing on American soil; according to the author, we manufacture a mere two percent of our clothing. “Over a period of 40 years,” writes Kurutz, “America had outsourced the shirt off its back.”

The Hostetlers maintain a small flock of hobby sheep, including Lambert, a black Rambouillet.

These conditions persist. These same global pressures are apparent even in Buffalo. And I have to ask Hostetler if he isn’t at least tempted to outsource some of the labor. “I always tell people, ‘I know how we can make a lot more money as a mill. That would mean shutting down production and going to the commodity mills, going overseas, and being a brand only.’ And so, the question as to why we make it speaks to the desire, as both an employer and as a worker, to actually make something. We want to create good, sustainable, livable jobs where somebody can take pride in their work, take satisfaction in their work.”

Hostetler also points out that the relationship between the mill and the local ranchers brings the community a lot of joy. Employees from the mill get to witness the entire process, from shearing to the finished garment. Hostetler says one of the biggest assets is the relationship the mill has with area shepherds and ranchers: “We work with handshakes, not contracts.”

Beanies, popular Mountain Meadow Wool retail items, are tagged with the company’s registered brand.

I wander around the mill and watch the employees spooling newly dyed wool into cones. Tours are finishing up. The elder Hostetler catches me before I leave and hands me a donut for my drive home. As I walk by a display of merino-wool sweaters, I notice a charcoal-colored one on the rack made from a blend of white and black wool, no dye. I have the overwhelming urge to reach out and touch it. And so, I do. If I buy this beautiful thing for someone, will they even know the story behind it, I wonder? They should.

These garments and the philosophy that makes them possible are tangibly felt. And yet, they are intangible, too. There’s something about the mill and the story of Mountain Meadow Wool that makes me want to tarry for a beat and admire the ingenuity and conviction that says we can make things in America. On my way out, I drag my fingertips across a wool table runner, amazed by how so many hard decisions can yield such a delicate result.

David Zoby is a freelance writer from Casper, Wyoming who has been writing and publishing essays and stories for over 20 years. His work regularly appears in Gray’s Sporting Journal, The Drake, and The Sun Magazine; @davidzoby.

Rebecca Pickrel is a photographer based in Sheridan, Wyoming, where she lives with her husband of 40 years and their Great Dane. As the owner of Pickrel Photography, Fine Art, she specializes in capturing individuals and families, while also offering product and branding photography services. Pickrel is a certified master photographer through the Professional Photographers of America.