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2024 Ag Pride | Ranching Tradition Fiber 

Hannah Gill

What started over 20 years ago selling fleece from three sheep on eBay has today turned into a successful fiber arts business for Kami Noyes of Whitehall, Montana and her Targhee/Rambouillet Sheep. Noyes, a fifth-generation Montana rancher, raises sheep and cattle on her family ranch with her husband, Reid, living in the same home where her grandparents raised her father.  

“Sheep have come and gone every generation for one reason or another,” Noyes says. “We brought them back because I grew up with sheep and they’re fun with little kids. My daughter was two and I couldn’t leave the house without her running out of her bedroom trying to get dressed to help me feed the lambs, so it was priceless.” 



As someone who was always encouraged to pursue crafty endeavors, she saw an outlet as a stay-at-home ranch mom to make a little side income with the sheep. Selling things on eBay was big at the time, so as Noyes’ sheep herd grew, she started selling the raw fleece online, directly off the sheep. After a local knitting group found her, Noyes was able to use their knowledge to help her expand the business where today, she sells through her website all over the world, still sells raw fleece, has two lines of wool yarn, finished items and most recently, she has added wool pellets to her lineup of products.  

“It’s grown in stages,” Noyes says. “The yarn line that I’m just starting is a combination of my wool and then I buy local area wool from other ranchers and I’m able to go out and buy their whole clip.” This means she buys the wool from a whole flock and leaves with everything, which means she then has a lot of wool to process.  



A couple years into selling whole fleece, Noyes learned how to spin and process the wool herself, but today, because of the sheer volume she handles, she employs local mills to process much of the wool for her, though she keeps some to do herself.  

Processing involves taking the raw fleece, skirting off the dirty areas, then washing the good parts of the fleece. From there, the next step is to “pick and card it” meaning combing all the fibers in one direction. At this point you can either dye the wool and spin it into yarn or dye it after spinning. 

“I do a lot of specialized hand spun yarn because I love to hand spin, that’s kind of my stress reliever, that’s still my favorite thing to do is hand spun yarns,” Noyes says.  

For years, Noyes would use the waste wool, the dirty areas that were skirted off at the beginning of processing, as compost. Her research on what to do with waste wool showed that wool is an excellent natural fertilizer with good nutritional values. Wool’s natural ability to absorb water means it helps aerate the soil and reduced water waste by trapping water in the soil. Turning the waste wool into pellets would be a way to add value to something that otherwise would be just that, waste.  

“I found equipment a long time ago to do this, but it wasn’t made in the United States and that was a big thing to me because, being in agriculture and having a husband that is a mechanic and fixes a lot of things, we know that if it’s not made here, getting parts here or getting help is impossible,” Noyes says. 

After years of looking, it wasn’t until August of 2023 that Noyes has been up and running, producing wool pellets for fertilizer.  

When Noyes says that they’ve worked to minimize waste – in both the ranch and the fiber business – she means it. Bringing sheep back to the ranch has been a way to minimize waste and build healthier pastures.  

Two years ago, the Noyes’ were tight on hay and they started putting the sheep out during the winter with the cattle, which actually resulted in using less hay than they anticipated because when sheep are fed with cattle, they simply eat the smaller pieces that cattle would waste. 

“You actually decrease the amount you’re feeding because you’d have to feed those sheep their own bale, but when they’re with the cows, you don’t have to add a bale to the group,” Noyes says. “The sheep come in fatter than they ever did after being out there.”  

In the summertime, the sheep graze the calving pastures after the pairs have moved out, and Noyes says the grass in those pastures has improved immensely from the sheep grazing on what the cattle leave behind, including weeds. 

Aside from all the benefits that the ranch has seen by incorporating sheep, Noyes highly values the friendship she has found in the fiber arts community. Because of that community, when Noyes’ sister was re-doing an old barn on the ranch to turn it into an event venue that used to be a lambing barn when the sisters were young, Noyes’ kept dreaming that it would be a cool spot to have a fiber festival. 

“My husband and sister encouraged me to do it, so I jumped in and it’s become quite successful,” Noyes says.  

This July will be the eighth annual Copper K Fiber Festival with people attending from around the world, featuring roughly 40 vendors and a multitude of workshops and crafts at the Copper K barn. It is located roughly eight miles from Whitehall. 

“It’s become a family reunion of fiber artists,” Noyes says. “The community is just so awesome.” 

From the time Noyes was easing into the business to today, she’s had help, guidance and assistance along the way from her friends in the fiber arts community.  

“As soon as you get into that niche, there’s somebody that wants to help you and give you something they don’t use anymore, it’s of the best communities I’ve ever been involved with,” Noyes says. “They’re all so kind and love sharing fiber arts and new people starting into fiber arts. It’s fun.”