News

Welcome to the 48th Annual Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival

Posted: May 1, 2021

We’re glad you are here to help us celebrate all things sheep and wool, staying home and staying safe until 2022. To get started, just go to our Virtual Festival Home Page, which has all the information you need to get started. No admission tickets, no log in, and no secret passwords needed!

For background information on why we made the move to a virtual festival, read this statement from December.

48th Annual Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival

Posted: December 5, 2020

WEST FRIENDSHIP, Maryland, December 4, 2020 — For the second year in a row, the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival will be held virtually. The 48^th annual festival will be held on May 1^st and 2^nd, 2021, with most events happening online. The Festival theme will be “Staying Home and Staying Safe until 2022”.

“Because we usually bring tens of thousands of people together from across the country and around the globe for one weekend, holding the festival as a virtual event in 2021 is the only responsible decision we could make”, said Festival Chairman Gwen Handler and Maryland Sheep Breeders Association President Jeff White in announcing the decision. “By making this decision now, we will be able to focus all of our talents and energies into making this the best virtual festival we can.”

According to General Manager Kris Thorne, “We will build upon what we did for the 2020 virtual festival by incorporating more of our contests, competitions, and educational events than time permitted us to do last year. The vendor marketplace and virtual fleece sale will be back; we will have new artwork and will produce our printed catalog, which has become a cherished keepsake for many; and we will again have t-shirts, tote bags and other festival memorabilia for sale in our online store.”

Stay tuned for further information as plans unfold, and connect with us on social media https://www.facebook.com/MarylandSheepandWoolFestival and https://www.facebook.com/groups/mswfOnlineCommunity.

Check back on May 1, when we will be unveiling our “Virtual Information Tent”, your roadmap to the virtual festival.

In the meantime, visit our New and Noteworthy page for a sneak peek at what we have planned.

Welcome to the Virtual Online Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival

Posted: May 1, 2020

Welcome! We’re glad you are here to help us celebrate all things sheep and wool, apart yet together. For that true, hanging-out-with-all-of-your best-fiber-buds experience (including friends you haven’t even met yet), head over to our Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival Online Community Facebook group or visit the 2020 Virtual Online Festival thread on Ravelry. Unlike the in-person Festival, this one won’t have to close down at night and will go on all weekend long!

Virtual Vendor Marketplace

If you’re ready for some shopping, stroll through our Virtual Vendor Marketplace. No crowds and no lines this year! Note the buttons at the top where you can filter your selections by category (including “New Vendors” and “Maryland Vendors”), letter of the alphabet, or both at once. Be sure to use the “See All/Clear Selection” button if you are switching back and forth between the two, or you might just find yourself looking at only Woodcrafts vendors who start with a “W”! If you remember your favorite vendors by where they are located, or want to follow your usual route, you can take a peek back at the “By Location” section of last year’s Vendor Locator Guide.

The Festival makes up a large percentage of the yearly income for many of our vendors, so please shop generously — you will find many of them are offering special deals and discounts for the weekend. We have included links to their social media accounts as well, so “like” them to show them your love year round. We will also leave the marketplace up until the end of the year, so you can come back whenever you want; just remember the discount codes are good for a limited time only.

We have curated a YouTube playlist of virtual booth tour videos made by some of our vendors that you might want to check out. Many vendors will also be livestreaming over the weekend; some of them are listed on this schedule, but I’m sure there will be many more. Some of our vendors will also be hanging out in the #MissingMaryland Facebook group.

Virtual Fleece Sale

It won’t quite be the same without the smell of freshly shorn wool and the feel of lanolin on your fingers, but our Virtual Fleece Sale has over seventy producers who have all kinds of fleeces for sale, and they will be very appreciative of your business in these difficult times. There is a link for each producer to the place online that you can view their fleeces, as well as instructions for how to make a purchase. The list can be filtered by color, fleece type (fine, medium, longwool, etc.) and breed, and some producers are offering special deals and discounts, too.

Online Swag Store

We are now taking advance orders for 2020 Festival Gear at sheepman.com/product-category/maryland-sheep-wool-festival-online/. How this will work — we will accept orders for one week. At the end of that time, we will turn the final counts over to our printing company. Working from home, they will begin the process of ordering the blank items so that the presses are ready to roll when non-essential businesses are allowed to reopen. Because we do not know when that will be, and what kind of delays may be encountered in getting the blanks, we are unable to estimate at this time when you will receive your merchandise. While we may order a few extra of each item to sell online afterwards, your best bet is to place your order during the May 2 – May 10 window.

Zoom with Us!

We have two zoom events planned:

Junior Spinning Contest – Saturday at 2:30 pm. Anyone under the age of 18 who has attempted the art of spinning and has access to a drop spindle, spinning wheel, or e-spinner and has a supply of fiber on hand is welcome to compete, and everyone is invited to join in and cheer them on. Use this link to join the Zoom meeting or go to join.zoom.us and enter 891 4020 6760 as the meeting ID. You will be prompted to download and install Zoom if you haven’t already done so. A few things that will be “different” – contestants will need to measure their finished spinning, and be able to hold the yarn close enough to the camera for our judges to clearly see.
Saturday Night Spin-In – Saturday from 6:00-9:00. We should be able to accommodate 100 spinners. Here is the link to join the Zoom meeting, or go to join.zoom.us and enter 834 9049 1576 as the meeting ID.

Virtual Family Activities

Check out our Family Fun at Home page for activities the whole family can enjoy. We also have videos of the following classes that would have happened in our Family Activities Tent, suitable for all ages (including adults!):

Virtual Sheepdog Demos

Are the sheepdog demos your favorite part of the Festival? Nancy Starkey, our commentator for the Sheepdog Demonstrations, has put together this slideshow with a collection of scenes from previous sheepdog demonstrations.

Virtual Breed Display Barn

While you can’t stroll through the Breed Display Barn or watch the Parade of Breeds this year, you can still explore all the different breeds of sheep in The American Sheep Industry Association’s Breed Directory.

Support Our Instructors

We had a really great line-up of Fiber Arts Seminars booked for this year, and many of the classes had already sold out before we were forced to cancel the Festival. We invite you to read all about these talented people here. You will find links to their websites and online stores, information on where to buy their books, plus links to online tutorials and classes that they offer. Please support them in any way you can.

#showusyourentries

We know that people work very hard throughout the year on entries for our various competitions, so just for fun we started a campaign on Instagram to let people show off their entries using the hashtag #showusyourentries. We even have at least one entry in the new #creativeshearing contest!

Click on the hashtags above to see what has been entered. If you are interested in showing off your own entry, the instructions are in this post. No official judges or prizes, just a chance for you to share your work (and for people to vote for their favorites).

How you can help support the Festival

Buy merchandise in our Online Swag Store
Order a catalog – Orders will be accepted through Sunday night at mswf2020.eventbrite.com; after that you can download a form from our website and mail it with a check. We still have a lot of catalogs that would normally be given away at the Festival sitting on pallets at the fairgrounds, and we’d love to send you one (or more) instead of sending them to recycling
Make a donation – Donations can also be made through Sunday night at mswf2020.eventbrite.com; after that, you can also use the catalog order form to send a donation by mail. You can also donate via PayPal at https://paypal.me/MdSheepandWool. Please include “Donate” in the “Add a note” field.

Now sit back, kick your feet up, and enjoy the virtual festival!

2021 Catalog Cover Artist

Posted: March 2, 2021

George Maurer

George Maurer’s name is well known to Maryland shepherds, and it’s not because of his artistic talent. Recently retired, George was a partner in the family meat processing business, Maurer & Miller Meats in Manchester, Maryland for more than three decades. George’s family moved to Maryland in 1960 from Kalamazoo, Michigan where his father worked at a meat packing plant. In 1962, George’s father incorporated Maurer & Miller Meats with his friend and fellow Marine Eugene F. Miller. In 1987, George, his brother Stephen, and his brother-in-law Tom Richards bought the business from his father, George J. Maurer. George patiently coached many local (and not-so-local) shepherds on raising the best possible lamb for the dinner table, however, working 12-hour days, sometimes six days a week, didn’t leave much time or energy to paint. Since his retirement, he has spent much of his time pursuing his passion for painting.

Photo by Kelly Heck Photography

In an article in the July 2020 edition of the Mason Dixon Surveyor, George said, “I don’t have any formal training, but I was interested since I was a kid”. He enjoyed art at North Carroll High where he graduated in 1971. “I never took an art course when I went to Frederick Community College, but I would always walk through the art building to see what they were doing.”

A turning point came when his daughter entered elementary school and Maurer started taking her to Barbara Schnell’s studio in Hampstead, Maryland. “My Mom knew that I like to draw so she signed me up for lessons,” says Amber Maurer Farran, who graduated from McDaniel College in 2009 with an degree in art. “It was mostly little kids in the basement—4th or 5th graders—and it was only an hour class.

“At first, my Dad waited in the car, but then he came in and started drawing, too.” George Maurer explains, “I’m not going to drop you off and come back to pick you up. The class wasn’t that long.” Father and daughter ended up painting together in Schnell’s basement all the way through middle and high school. When Amber eventually stopped going, he continued. “I think he was inspired by watching me paint,” she says, “and he started to paint the kill floor at the butcher shop. Paint what you know, right?”

George is intimately attuned to the natural environment, local agriculture, artisans, and trades which compete agribusiness. He is a member of the Carroll Arts Council. In January 2014, George and Amber had a show together at the Carroll Arts Center entitled “Meat the Maurers,” and in Spring 2019 they had another show together at Off Track Art in Westminster, Maryland entitled “More Than Meats the Eye.” George also has art hanging in Dutch Corner Restaurant in Manchester and he participates in the Annual CCAC Members Art Show.

See George’s Facebook page

Maryland Sheep & Wool Virtual Online Festival

Posted: May 1, 2020

Since we won’t be getting together in person this year, we are hosting a virtual online festival instead. Watch this space for information and links to the following activities, which will be published on Saturday morning.

Virtual Vendor Marketplace
Virtual Fleece Sale
Online Swag Store

…and much, much more!

Our home base will be the new Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival Online Community group on Facebook. This group was set up to allow the greater festival community to interact, inspire, and share with one another. Anyone is welcome to post in this group. However, if you want to post about items for sale, you must be a current Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival vendor or be part of in the virtual fleece sale.

Don’t forget, 2020 catalogs can ordered through Sunday night https://mswf2020.eventbrite.com/. Your purchase helps offset the printing expense (and we’d rather get them in your hands than send them to be recycled). While you are there, you can also donate to help offset the expenditures we had already made prior to the cancellation. And a big virtual hug to all of you who have already donated!

#mdsw2020 #virtualonlinewoolfestival

Join us for our Virtual Online Festival, May 2nd and 3rd!

Posted: May 1, 2020

Since we won’t be getting together in person this year, we are hosting a virtual online festival instead. We are working on the following components for festival weekend, May 2^nd and 3^rd:

Virtual Vendor Marketplace
Virtual Fleece Sale
Virtual Junior Spinning Competition
Virtual Family Activities Tent
Online Swag Store

Virtual Vendor Marketplace – We will be creating an enhanced vendor list on our website, which will include links to online stores for those vendors that have them. Many vendors will also have videos available giving you a tour of their “virtual vendor booth”, as well as special offers and discounts for the virtual festival weekend.

Virtual Fleece Sale – Our Fleece Sale committee will be contacting producers who have brought fleeces to sell in the past, and we will be posting a list on our website of producers that have fleeces available this year, including information about what they have to offer and how to get in touch with them.

Virtual Junior Spinning Competition – We will be hosting the Junior Spinning Competition via Zoom during the time slot that the event would have happened at the Festival (Saturday, May 2, 2020 at 2:30 pm Eastern Time). Visit the Junior Spinning page for more information.

Online Swag Store – Beginning May 2, we will be accepting advance orders for a limited selection of 2020 “Apart Yet Together” merchandise (tees, sweats, totes, posters, note cards, mugs) at https://www.sheepman.com/product-category/maryland-sheep-wool-festival-online. Under the governor’s executive order, the company that prints our swag is only allowed to do work for essential businesses, so delivery won’t be until some time after that order is lifted.

#showusyourentries – Click here to read more about how you can show off everything you would have entered at this year’s Festival!

More details on all of the above will be provided as our plans progress.

Don’t forget, 2020 catalogs can still be ordered at https://mswf2020.eventbrite.com/. Your purchase helps offset the printing expense (and we’d rather get them in your hands than send them to be recycled). While you are there, you can also donate to help offset the expenditures we had already made prior to the cancellation. And a big virtual hug to all of you who have already donated!

#mdsw2020 #virtualonlinewoolfestival

#showusyourentries

Posted: April 26, 2020

Another addition to the virtual festival lineup! We know a lot of you worked very hard on things you were going to enter in our competitions this year, so just for fun we are organizing a virtual #showusyourentries campaign on Instagram and Ravelry. No official judges or prizes, just a chance for you to share your work (and for people to vote for their favorites).

Just post a photo of your work on Instagram or in the #showusyourentries thread on Ravelry (https://www.ravelry.com/d…/maryland-sheep–wool/4030287/1-25) and tag them with the hashtags #mdsw2020 #showusyourentries plus one of the following:
#skeinandgarment
#finearts
#photo
#sheepshow
#creativeshearing

For Skein & Garment, please include one of the following tags as well:
#woven
#knit
#crochet
#felt
#spun
#misc

Feel free to include as much descriptive information as you want on your post. You can start posting photos at any time. Next weekend during the virtual festival we will encourage people to visit Ravelry and search for those hashtags on Instagram and show some love to their favorites.

Special note for the Skein & Garment Competition – for the 2021 Festival, we have decided two accept two years worth of entries (i.e., anything completed since the 2019 Festival). We don’t want the public reaction to items in the virtual show to influence the judging next year, so items you show off now will be ineligible for entry at the 2021 Festival.

(For those of you not familiar with Ravelry, it is is an online site for knitters, crocheters, designers, spinners, weavers and dyers to keep track of their yarn, tools, project and pattern information, and look to others for ideas and inspiration. There is even a discussion group dedicated entirely to the Festival, https://www.ravelry.com/groups/maryland-sheep–wool)

Family Fun at Home

Posted: April 23, 2020

Welcome to our Family Fun at Home page! Since we won’t be having any in-person Family Activities this year, we’ve put together a list of things you can experience from home as part of our 2020 Virtual Online Festival.

View a variety of wool fact sheets on topics such as Wool Qualities 101, Wool History, Wool Processing, Wool and the Carbon Cycle, and How Wool Reduces Climate Impact at https://www.americanwool.org/resource-2.

Read the Sheep Reporter newsletter for kids.

Explore different breeds of sheep at https://sheepusa.org/resources-materials-breeddirectory.

Watch some videos about sheep and wool:

Meet an American Sheep Rancher
Learn about Shearing Wool, A Sheep’s Haircut
Discover the many natural benefits of wool in Wool 101 – Essentials

Learn a new skill by taking a virtual class! Kellie Nuss, chairman of our Family Activities Committee, has made videos of the following classes that would have happened in our Family Activities Tent. These videos are suitable for all ages (including adults):

Cancellation of the 2020 Festival

Posted: March 18, 2020

With regret that is beyond words, we are announcing the cancellation of the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival for the first time in our 47 year history. We had originally intended to reassess the circumstances surrounding the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak at the beginning of April, but the ever-increasing bad news in terms of the virus and its effects, and the increasing government restrictions on public gatherings that we do not see being lifted in time for the festival have led us to follow the lead of national, state, and county authorities and make this extremely difficult decision.

We realize that there are many of you that will be disappointed, and, beyond disappointment, we realize that for many vendors the business they do at the Festival is the single biggest contributor to their annual income. However, we want all of you, your communities, and everyone you interact with to stay safe and well, so we feel that this is the correct decision to make at this time.

Because of the complexity involved in planning this event—over 53 different committees, plus several hundred committee members and volunteers—rescheduling the Festival for a later date is not a viable option. We are looking into things we can do to help our vendors, such as the possibility of providing some kind of online virtual marketplace. Some of you have expressed an interest in purchasing t-shirts even if we don’t have a Festival, so that is something else we will be looking into. Stay tuned for further information.

Refunds will automatically be given to everyone who registered online for Fiber Arts Seminars, Shepherd Workshops, or Family Activities. Entry fees for the Sheep Shows, Fleece Show & Sale, and Sheep-to-Shawl entries will also be returned. If you paid for a 2020 catalog, we will apply that money to a catalog for next year. If you purchased admission tickets, we will be happy to give you a refund, but ask that you consider donating your admission fee to the Festival to help defray the expenses that have gone in to planning the Festival thus far, as well as any fees we may incur because of this unanticipated cancellation. If you wish to request a refund of your admission fee, you may do so by going to “Tickets” in your Eventbrite account, finding your order, then selecting “Request a Refund”; or by emailing gro.l1787904907oowdn1787904907apeeh1787904907s@eci1787904907ffo1787904907. If you do not request a refund, we will assume you have chosen to donate your admission fee. We are also going to leave the “Donate” ticket option open at https://mswf2020.eventbrite.com/ for those of you who would like to make an extra donation to help us out.

Please remember to take care of yourselves and to take care of one another, and join is for the 48th annual Festival on May 1 & 2, 2021.

3/19/20 Update

Because the 2020 catalogs were all printed before the decision was made to cancel the Festival, we have decided to go ahead and mail catalogs to everyone who ordered one, and we are reopening catalog sales at https://mswf2020.eventbrite.com/. We have a couple of thousand of them that would normally be given away at the Festival sitting on pallets at the fairgrounds, and we’d love to get rid of them. So order a catalog to commemorate the Festival that never happened! Your purchase will help offset the printing costs. Plus they are chock full of advertisers that could use your support right now!

Don’t forget that can you also use Eventbrite to make a donation to help offset the expenses that went into planning the Festival so far, as well as any fees we may incur because of the unanticipated cancellation.