Martha Cant
Starbuck Station Wools

STARBUCK STATION WOOLS

"My flock consists of various mixes between two types of wool, always striving for the right balance of length, fineness, and crimp"

The Starbuck Station Wools name, ‘Starbuck,’ comes from Martha Cant’s mother’s family, out of Nantucket. The Station bit is from Australian and New Zealand sheep stations, or ranches.

Starbuck Station Wools has a long history. When sheppard, Martha Cant, moved to Freestone in 1974, she acquired 17 acres of pasture. She started with Corriedales, added Lincolns to improve the luster. Then when she needed a new ram, she invested in a Wensleydale/Lincoln and a few Cormo ewes to breed him to, giving her the best combination of shininess and softness, always striving for the right balance of length, fineness and crimp. She has a number of naturally colored sheep, black and grey, in the Wensleydales, and brown in the Cormos.

She sells whole or half raw fleeces, wool processed intoroving or sliver, and hand spun yarns.

The dyeing process:

To color her wools, Martha grows a lot of her own dye plants: Japanese indigo, madder, coreopsis, and marigolds. Queen Anne’s lace and goldenrod, lupin flowers and laurel leaves are gathered from roadsides. She is developing a palate from these sources, and she dyes a lot of commercially spun yarns, as well as her own hand spun.