Coarse Broads, Inc, began March, 2006 with Carrie Hull and Robyn Kuhl. Our mission was and still is to share with Natural Fiber Producers how they can diversify their livestock business by developing and putting into production their annual harvest of fiber from their animals.
By embracing sustainable farming practices and adding fiber usage to the mix, Natural Fiber Producers can become self supporting at the very least and provide stability in today's unpredictable market. Profitability increases when fiber is utilized, adding additional income streams through application of sound business practices in fiber production and processing.
We offer a series of seminars teaching these principles, as well as train fiber sorters in the Certified Sorted fiber sorting system - a standardized system developed by Coarse Broads themselves.
How it all started...
My name is Robyn Kuhl, my farm is From the Heart Ranch. My husband, Wade and I started raising alpacas in Southern Oregon, and moved our herd to Sandpoint, Idaho in 2004. We have a medium size herd of Breed stock and Production stock alpacas. I have a back ground of starting, running and selling businesses. After moving to Sandpoint, I joined my local fiber arts guild, and our local affiliate. That is where I met Carrie....
I'm Carrie Hull and I own and manage Timber Basin Ranch, home to about 40 alpacas, a small herd of Saanen dairy goats, as well as chickens, hogs and organic gardens. We focus on sustainable agriculture through diversification - meaning we utilize our fiber and other by-products to support our alpacas as well as ourselves. Cost control, alternative management practices, and sound livestock production principles are applied on a daily basis. With a background in textiles, education, and 15 years experience as a vet tech, I enjoy sharing my knowledge and teaching others how to do the same. I came to the alpaca industry through my vet tech experience and after leaving my employment as a vet tech, I worked for a large alpaca ranch in my community caring for over 600 alpacas . It was excellent hands on education and I had exposure to some of the finest fleeces in the world on a daily basis, but I wanted to learn even more about alpaca fiber and its use in the textile world. After a long search, I found Olds College in Canada and the Fibre Sorter Training. That was just the beginning of a wild and crazy ride.....
I'm Carrie Hull and I own and manage Timber Basin Ranch, home to about 40 alpacas, a small herd of Saanen dairy goats, as well as chickens, hogs and organic gardens. We focus on sustainable agriculture through diversification - meaning we utilize our fiber and other by-products to support our alpacas as well as ourselves. Cost control, alternative management practices, and sound livestock production principles are applied on a daily basis. With a background in textiles, education, and 15 years experience as a vet tech, I enjoy sharing my knowledge and teaching others how to do the same. I came to the alpaca industry through my vet tech experience and after leaving my employment as a vet tech, I worked for a large alpaca ranch in my community caring for over 600 alpacas . It was excellent hands on education and I had exposure to some of the finest fleeces in the world on a daily basis, but I wanted to learn even more about alpaca fiber and its use in the textile world. After a long search, I found Olds College in Canada and the Fibre Sorter Training. That was just the beginning of a wild and crazy ride.....
Robyn continues.....
Carrie announce one day at our local AOBA affiliate meeting that she was going to Canada to attend a training about fiber and asked if anyone wanted to go along. So I said yes, expecting a fun road trip. I hadn't been to Canada yet and we only lived 40 miles away. To give you an idea of how unprepared I was, I didn't even pack a coat! The class was in March, and we weren't just going across the border, we went way north in to Alberta.
Carrie announce one day at our local AOBA affiliate meeting that she was going to Canada to attend a training about fiber and asked if anyone wanted to go along. So I said yes, expecting a fun road trip. I hadn't been to Canada yet and we only lived 40 miles away. To give you an idea of how unprepared I was, I didn't even pack a coat! The class was in March, and we weren't just going across the border, we went way north in to Alberta.
During class I struggled because I have a very hard time with accents. Ruth Elvestad was the instructor and I think she has a strong Canadian accent. So I followed along with the book as best I could. Just before lunch, Ruth was explaining to us what we would be doing after the lunch break, touring the mill next door, Exotic Fibers. She was telling us the ins and outs of the mill it and she stated that they can process up to 55 lbs of fiber per hour. My eyes got as big as saucers and the hair on the back of my neck stood up. I asked Ruth to please repeat that, confirming that I had heard her correctly. I did some quick calculations and realized in short order that with the fiber we currently had the US we could run that mill year round!! It only required4000 farms put in 26 lbs each to keep that medium sized mill running full time for an entire year. What an amazing thought and quite contrary to the popular rumor that we could only run a mill for 4 days with the alpaca fiber we produced in this country. This opened up a whole new world for me and the implications were vast and exciting!
Coming back to the US 4 days later, we had a totally new perspective on why we raise alpacas. We looked at our business models completely different and it opened up a untapped and exciting ocean of ideas and possibilities for us. Having been lead to believe that the only alpaca fiber that had value was the very fine fiber before our trip to Canada, we were blown away with the exciting prospects for all grades of fiber and so on the long and crazy drive home we contemplated all the things one could produce with coarse fiber..... and jokingly deed ourselves the "Coarse Broads".
Coarse Broads continue....
We set off to do our first sort together, excited and anxious to put our new knowledge to the test. On the drive home, that long drive home from attempting to sort 70+ fleeces in 5 hours, we realized we were not prepared to live up to our expectations!!! The point of sorting is to make the fiber uniform by separating it by color, grade, and length. What we realized was that we were lacking the practical "know how" to get it done. We already had a long list of farms (25 or more) that wanted us to come and sort their fiber over the next few months - and the realization hit- as we split up and went to different farms, how were we to be sure we were doing the same thing and had the same grades of fiber when we left? We had no idea how to put what we learned into practical use. Being inventive and hard working gals, we had some long discussions, did lots of research, got together to work out the steps we each needed to take, in the same order to produce the same results, and tested our system between the two of us. In a nutshell, our goal was "Standardization". Over the next few months, we had created the Certified SortedTM System of Fiber Sorting, a process that ensured that when the principles were applied, that no matter who did the sorting, the outcome would be the same.
The first true test of the system was when the 25 farms who now had sorted fiber, looked at us and said, "Okay, now what?" Hmm. Yeah, now what? Well we had all these grades of fiber, we needed a way to put it into production, and since we had a quantity of it, we worked out some better pricing and ended up with an informal fiber pool. When the products came back, we were pretty excited with the quality to say the least! The next year we grew to 79 people in the informal fiber pool. Hmm, this isn't staying the same or getting smaller, it's getting bigger and we kept getting requests from people all over for us to teach our system of fiber sorting! We made attempts to get Ruth Elvestad to come down to the US to teach the class that we had attended in Canada, but only one class set up in Oregon, and there was certainly a pushy group of alpaca breeder all over the US that wanted fiber sorting instruction.
We finally had so much pressure and requests, that we relented and agreed to teach our system. Our first classes had limited regional openings, so that we could train sorters who could service the entire U.S. We increased our research, and developed our textbook to encompass not only how to sort but textile basics. As we customized our training, we added those things we felt we had missed while training ourselves. Mentorship, timely correction of sorting samples to allow for student calibration, continuing education, further testing and evaluation, and standardized equipment are just a few tools of our trade we developed to meet the needs of our apprentices.
We are now approaching our 4th year as instructors in the "Certified Sorted System". We hold 3-4 classes of 16 students each year as well as a yearly refresher coarse and continuing education. As we continue to improve the "Standardization" of fiber sorting through our system, we have found that "Mentorship" is an invaluable tool. Each apprentice has an personal mentor who checks samples and assists the student in becoming accurate and efficient in their sorting and classing practice. Our system teaches the sorter to not only sort the fiber into grades, but to class that fiber as well, producing fiber that is truly "Textile Ready".
Having more than just Carrie and I out there sorting eased our work load, but also created more people with sorted fiber wanting in on the reduced processing costs. So we finally had to make a hard decision. The informal pool had to become it's own entity. North American Alpaca Fiber Producers (NAAFP) was born - a nationwide fiber cooperative.
We are now approaching our 4th year as instructors in the "Certified Sorted System". We hold 3-4 classes of 16 students each year as well as a yearly refresher coarse and continuing education. As we continue to improve the "Standardization" of fiber sorting through our system, we have found that "Mentorship" is an invaluable tool. Each apprentice has an personal mentor who checks samples and assists the student in becoming accurate and efficient in their sorting and classing practice. Our system teaches the sorter to not only sort the fiber into grades, but to class that fiber as well, producing fiber that is truly "Textile Ready".
Having more than just Carrie and I out there sorting eased our work load, but also created more people with sorted fiber wanting in on the reduced processing costs. So we finally had to make a hard decision. The informal pool had to become it's own entity. North American Alpaca Fiber Producers (NAAFP) was born - a nationwide fiber cooperative.
NAAFP was modeled after a craft cooperative, with influences of a grain cooperative model as well. It was imperative that members own their fiber in its raw state all the way through to it's sale as a product, thereby creating the maximum profit for the individual member and not for the cooperative. We consulted with the Northwest Cooperative Development Center, hired a CPA that specializes in Cooperatives, wrote by laws which were reviewed by an Attorney, divided the country into regions and recruited 5 people from those areas to be the first Board of Directors. May 25, 2007 found NAAFP as an officially an agricultural cooperative.
Carrie and I worked on product development, researching commercial mills by visiting as many of them as we could. All on our own dime. The first year as an official cooperative had some steep learning curves, and Carrie made the decision to focus her vision on the Duvet run. Robyn then stepped in as Administrator and overseeing the rest of the runs. The majority of the overhead expenes for running a cooperative were covered by Robyn and Carrie respective of their roles. It wasn't until the start of the third year that any compensation was covered. Carrie receives a small run execution bonus, and Robyn, well let's just say she could make more and work less if she went to get a job at the local Taco Bell. The office, and warehouse rent, the internet expense, is still covered by Robyn. Good thing it is a labor of love. The hope is that when we get big enough, NAAFP can support itself completely.
For more info on NAAFP... visit www.naafp.us
Our focus continues to be in assisting Natural Fiber Producers to understanding what is required from them as fiber producers to best support and engage in the textile industry as well as how to be a cost control freak, and the best uses for the fiber they produce...
