By Maeve Summers

Heidi Lantz-Trissel lives on an 11-acre farm off a winding road between Broadway and Harrisonburg with her husband, daughter and almost 50 other kids.

No, not those kinds of kids. Lantz-Trissel and her family raise dozens of sheep to create handmade yarn that is then sold to local and regional artisans.

Simple Hill Farm specializes in creating natural yarn from the sheep the family raises, embracing sustainable practices every step of the way. Lantz-Trissel, a former yarn-store owner and lifelong animal lover, found a special connection to the yarn-making process, and started work on her farm in 2008.

Lantz-Trissel had a flock of sheep on her farm that she cared for a couple years before she began the wool-making process.

“I always thought it’d be fun to have a farm and raise the wool from the start,” she said. “The farm has grown so much since then.”  

 Lantz-Trissel does most of the farm work herself, including the manual labor, the animal care and the yarn business. Though Lantz-Trissel said that her job looks a little bit different every day, one constant is how time-consuming making yarn can be. 

The sheep get sheared once a year in the spring, and then the wool is sent to Green Mountain Spinnery in Vermont, where they wash and spin the wool into skeins. Lantz-Trissel receives the yarn back four to six months later, which she says is relatively quick compared to other farms that can take up to two years. Once the yarn returns to Harrisonburg, she dyes it using plants from her farm, and the yarn is washed and dried again.

“My goal is to raise as much of the materials as I can,” Lantz-Trissel said. “It’s nice to be able to be sustainable in that way instead of using dyes with chemicals.”

She’s off to a good start, as her garden contains several different plants that can create a variety of hues – madder root to make red, marigolds to make yellow and indigo flowers to make, well, indigo. 

Dyeing with plants is just one way that Simple Hill has incorporated sustainability efforts into the work.

“It’s making it better than we started with,” Lantz-Trissel said. “And that goes for the animals, the plants, the grass, the dirt — everything.”

Every three to five days, Lantz-Trissel moves the sheep to a new spot in the pasture to allow grass to regrow. This strategy, she said, encourages deeper roots and helps with water runoff.

At Simple Hill, much of the farm labor is done manually in an effort to cut down on non-renewable resources. The farm doesn’t use chemicals, and instead of a tractor they use a sickle bar mower to cut grass. And although the yarn-dyeing process uses a lot of water, Lantz-Trissel collects rainwater in tanks to reuse for later. 

The local community plays a key role in the success of the farm. After the yarn is dyed, washed and packaged, Lantz-Trissel sells her skeins locally at Rocktown Yarn as well as more broadly at fiber festivals all around the Mid-Atlantic. 

“Our partnership with Simple Hill is something we really cherish,” Rocktown Yarn owner Amy Strunk said. “We love sourcing local fibers, and we get a lot of customers who appreciate small, local businesses as well.”

Every month, the farm has a Community Stitch Night, where people who knit or crochet can come together and work on their own yarn projects with those who have a similar hobby, as well as shop in the on-site store. 

“I want other people to be able to form a connection to animals and nature and fiber,” Lantz-Trissel said. “It’s an important connection to the earth and soil and what comes from that – the animals that grow, the fiber that comes from it – seeing that process is a lot of fun and can spark interest.”

Simple Hill also offers workshops, classes and children’s summer camps for community members to learn about different aspects of the yarn-making process, such as spinning, dyeing and weaving. 

“[Simple Hill] was so good with my son,” a parent whose child attended the Fiber Farm Summer Camp said. “He came home every day talking about what he learned that day and what plants make what color dye. Of course he had fun, but he also was able to connect with nature in a unique way and learn about some of the different ways that plants can be used.”

Though Lantz-Trissel hopes to increase community engagement in the future, she is happy with where the farm’s relationship with the public currently stands.

“There’s so many fun things about what we do here. It’s just nice to share that with the community – the support from anyone who’s come to visit the farm or purchased a skein from us means everything.”

 

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