Meeting Mr. Leatherman
2023, Adventure-02. 04/13/2023
Prolog
Monday 4/10/2023 I received the SoCalFibershed newsletter. One of the articles was a request for volunteers to help with a one-day-1,200-sheep shearing event near Santa Ynez, California, a beautiful central-coast area ladened with native oak & walnut trees, vineyards, & thoroughbred horse ranches. The Cuyama Lamb shearing event was scheduled Thursday, 3/13, 8:30am-5:30pm. Because it's a four-hour drive from where I live, I quickly scheduled a hotel near the event for two nights. At 5:30pm Wednesday, just as I checked into the hotel, I received notice the event was pushed from Thursday to Friday, 10am. This left me with a full unplanned Thursday. Hmm, what to do.
Meeting Mr. Leatherman
During my 1st year of learning about all-aspects of Fibershed movement, I volunteered 1 day a week for a year & blogged about what I learned & observed via Alpaca Adventures. One of the things I observed were that alpacas die of natural causes, predation, & infections. The dead alpacas are typically buried rather than being skinned & processing their still beautiful hides. Because of this, I've become very curious about hide skinning & tanning options for "no kill" livestock, including alpacas. "No Kill" refers to livestock who are not raised for their hides but rather die of natural causes, predation, or illness. So, I decided to spend my unexpected free day finding leather workers & shops that might be in the area.
Fortuitously, I found Cooper Saddlery less than a mile from my hotel. As I entered the shop, I realized it was a working shop, not a retail establishment. But - lucky me - Brad Cooper, the owner, seemed grateful to be interrupted from doing his taxes. He was the most gracious host I can imagine for a random "drop-in" (me). He immediately started showing, explaining & giving me demos of the tools of the leatherworking trade. I was mesmerized at his depth of knowledge & speed at which he grabbed leather scraps & created a couple decorative pieces, which he gifted to me.
Later I asked about "no kill" leather tanning. Brad explained that as soon as animal dies bacteria starts setting in. You have about 45 min to get the hide off the animal, get it into a freezer, then once frozen send it to a tannery for processing. The biggest challenge to using "no kill" hides is the sporadic & random timing of accessing, skinning, & freezing the animal within 45 minutes after it dies. There are too few 'no kill' animals for a tannery to process with regularity. No-kill leather is also harder to work with as it is always rougher & has a not-smooth quality. It'll have little pits all over it like it's deteriorating, which never go away, & looks streaky once the final finishing oil is applied to the hide. I still wonder if there are issues if the fiber remains on the animal. For me, it's more about preserving the hide with the fiber on it & making home goods & wearables from that.
In a short hour or so, I learned so much from Brad:
How to prepare leather for imprinting
The multitude of tools & techniques used for designing & imprinting the leather
The difference between processed leather & "no kill" leather
The basics of saddle construction (saddle frames & horns, then adding the decorative leatherwork to the frame)
As we continued to talk, Brad, co-owner of Thundercloud Ranch, he shared that he & his partner train, board, & sell horses. If that's not enough to keep them busy, he mentioned that they were both falconers & described some of the incremental qualification levels there are in becoming certified falconer. (It's complicated & takes years of commitment.) Their horses are trained to work with their birds of prey & used for hunting & educational outreach. And, if that's not enough, they've recently started raising rabbits, which is the animal he first learned to skin & tan as a child in Texas! What a great way to start my Sheep Shearing adventure!