Bully for woollies: Fall Farm Festival celebrates the role of sheep in New Mexico

Sheep and wool products will be center stage during Oveja Project Cooperative Convention and Fall Farm Festival on Friday and Saturday at the historic Gutierrez Hubbell House, 6029 Isleta SW.

Oveja is the Spanish word for sheep and the Oveja Project Cooperative is an organization dedicated to reinvigorating the wool and lamb industry in New Mexico.

Katy Lente, president of the cooperative, said a slate of lectures related to sheep in New Mexico are scheduled for Friday. On Saturday, vendors will be selling sheep products and there and will be examples of weaving, knitting, felting and crocheting.

Domestic sheep are not native to New Mexico, but flocks of them were once prevalent here and an integral part of the economy.

In the 1500s, Spanish explorers brought herds of the hardy Churro sheep into New Mexico, depending on the animals for meat as they traversed a land they did not know.

Sheep would soon become a vital part of the Diné or Navajo way of life, and after Anglos arrived they introduced Merino sheep to the state and crossbred them to Churro.

By 1890, the United States census showed that New Mexico was the largest producer of sheep and sheep products in the country.

But challenges — including competition with cattle for grass, wicked blizzards in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and the creation of synthetic fibers — took their toll on the sheep business.

Lente, who got into sheep when her sons raised them in 4-H, said that a few years back a field veterinarian with the New Mexico Livestock Board noticed that the sheep industry was dwindling in the state and brought that to the attention of her co-workers. A series of meetings called to confront the situation, led to the creation in 2018 of the Oveja Project Cooperative.

The site of Friday and Saturday’s events, the Gutierrez Hubbell House, dates back to the 1860s and is an ideal setting for programs that explore an aspect of the state’s agricultural history. Managed as a Bernalillo County Open Space facility, it sits on a 10-acre parcel that includes a traditional garden, a heritage garden, walking trails and farm plots.

It is listed on the National Register of Historic places and during its long history has been a residence, a mercantile, a trading post, a stagecoach stop and a post office.

Don Bixby is vice president of the Oveja Project Cooperative. A retired veterinarian, Bixby is a former president of the Livestock Conservancy, a nonprofit that strives to save endangered livestock and poultry breeds from extinction.

“This week’s events will help expose people to the role sheep have played in the history of New Mexico and to the potential for focusing on local food production,” he said. “And it will show people that sheep are good for the environment, easy on the land. They even help reduce the risk of wildfires by cleaning up the understory that fuels fires.”