Winery Sheep

Here in the Napa Valley, many of our vineyards are using sheep to remove the weeds growing under and around the vines in the spring. Unlike goats, they don’t eat the grape wood, and they do add a valuable fertilizer to the soil! I visited these characters at a St. Helena vineyard in early April. These are rare Churro sheep, originally from New Mexico, where the Navajo people raise them for the tough, long wearing wool used in Navajo rug making. I was fortunate enough to have been given a small amount of that wool, I later spun it into some beautiful naturally colored yarn!