Rare breeds Farmer uses colorful sheep to make art

BOONESBORO, Mo. -- Andy McMurry considers himself an abstract artist, blending colors and textures and patterns with eye-catching appeal.

His approach is organic, the results naturalistic and his subjects, invariably, end up bare-skinned.

McMurry's art is his flock of 400 naturally colored sheep, bearing wool in all hues of brown, black and white, with shiny grays and rich chocolates and a few fleeces with hints of blue or red.

The wool, once sheared, has no need for dyes nor bleaches nor chemical mixtures. It's spun on the McMurry farm into yarn and woven into naturally colored shawls and scarfs and throws.

"The reason I got into these sheep is it's just like painting ... it's totally an expression," says McMurry, 33, who also does decorative home painting.

Like the sheep, McMurry is a rare breed.

In an agricultural field where white wool is king and sheep are more often bred for their meat, McMurry is one of the largest producers of colored wool in the nation.

Such is the determination of the National Colored Wool Growers Association, a group that has fewer than 650 members, many of whom are hobbyists shepherding just a few dozen sheep.

By comparison, there are about 66,000 sheep producers in the United States, according to the American Sheep Industry Association.

McMurry developed an interest in sheep at age 19 while participating in a Future Farmers of America exchange program in 1988 in New Zealand, a top sheep-producing nation.

When he returned home to the family farm, he arranged for a colored ram and six pregnant colored ewes to be placed on a ship of 2,000 otherwise white sheep headed from New Zealand to Canada. From there, McMurry brought the colored sheep to his farm on the hillsides of the Missouri River.

His sheep are of two breeds, Romneys with longer than usual wool and Merinos with finer wool.

Unusual diets

From those first seven sheep, McMurry has mixed and matched their offspring, generating new colors and textures and strengthening the bloodlines of those that he finds most appealing.

He says their wool is cleaner than that of most sheep because of their unusual diets. McMurry feeds his sheep little to no hay or grain, instead shepherding them to native or specially planted grasses and weeds, even through the winter.

The sheep, generally separated by sex and sometimes by age, graze under the watchful eyes of guard dogs in areas cordoned off with temporary electric fences. McMurry moves the fences frequently but gradually, allowing the sheep to enhance the soil with their manure without trampling the grass during extended stays.

With the help of a state agricultural loan, McMurry bought a loom three years ago and now Elzan McMurry, his mother, weaves the wool into garments in what once was a dairy cattle shed.

The McMurrys sell their products in local stores and over the Internet under the business name of Geno-palette, meaning a palette of colors produced genetically.

Catalogs, both online and paperback, tout not only the natural colors and fine textures, but also grazing methods.

Holistic feeling

"This sheep thing is holistic ... the relationship of the rain and soil and grass and sheep, and the sheep's health, and the weaving and spinning, and then the products you can share with people," McMurry says.

After sheering a lamb in a demonstration for visitors one fall day, McMurry rolled a handful of the soft wool over and over in his palm -- a process that with soap and water can turn wool into felt. For McMurry, just feeling the wool is relaxing.

He explains how the sun has faded the warm coppery brown to a cooler grayish brown at the tips of the wool. That's what gives the wool its visual depth.

"I think it would make pretty yarn," says McMurry, envisioning a potential scarf. "The wool is so engaging to me, I just look at it, and it's, 'Wow!'"