NJ Fibershed is working to create a network among textile artisans and fiber farmers raising small flocks of sheep, alpacas, goats, and other fiber animals in New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania. Our goal is to promote face-to-face relationships between fiber animals, farmers, and fiber artists within our community. NJ Fibershed provides educational programs to support small-scale fiber farming, such as animal care and fiber processing. We organize community outreach events for current and aspiring fiber farmers, and offer fiber arts workshops focusing on utilizing ecologically sustainable materials and practices.
We invite you, if you raise fiber animals and want to learn about processing fiber, if you’re a fiber artist in NJ looking for local fibers, or if you’re simply curious about what the day of a fiber farmer really entails. Join us by signing up for our quarterly newsletter, or support us through your membership.
NJ Fibershed is committed to providing a climate of purposeful inclusion of safety and welcome to all historically marginalized peoples. We value the diversity of racial and cultural identity, sexual and affectional orientation, gender identity and its expression, religious background and belief, age, mental and physical health and ability, and educational and socioeconomic status.
As of 2024, NJ Fibershed is a New Jersey nonprofit corporation exempt from federal tax under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.
— NJ Fibershed Board Members: Rehanna Azimi, Nekell Bjorn, Anne Choi, Laura Chandler, Andrea Peart, Sue Posbergh, Jessica Vallee-Vasquez.
What is a Fibershed?
NJ Fibershed is an regional affiliate of Fibershed.org, a non-profit organization based in Northern California. Fibershed.org and its affiliates work to develop regional fiber systems that build ecosystem and community health. Our work expands opportunities to implement climate benefitting agriculture, rebuild regional manufacturing, and connect end-users to the source of our fiber through education. We transform the economic systems behind the production of material culture to mitigate climate change, improve health, and contribute to racial and economic equity.
We envision a textile system that embraces the values of de-colonized and equitable soil-to-skin processes. We will strengthen an international system of diverse textile communities that directly enhance regional economies for the purpose of generating permanent and lasting systems of localized fiber production. These regional land regenerating production systems will diminish pressure on the ecologically undermined areas of the world.
How did the Fibershed project start?
The project began in 2010 with a commitment by its founder, Rebecca Burgess, to develop and wear a prototype wardrobe whose dyes, fibers and labor were sourced from a region no larger than 150 miles from the project’s headquarters. Burgess had no expected outcomes from the personal challenge other than to reduce her own ecological footprint and maybe inspire a few others.
Burgess teamed up with a talented group of farmers and artisans to build the wardrobe by hand, as manufacturing equipment had all been lost from the landscape more than 20 years ago. The goal was to illuminate that regionally grown fibers, natural dyes, and local talent was still in great enough existence to provide this most basic human necessity—our clothes. Within months, the project became a movement, and the word Fibershed and the working concept behind it spread to regions across the globe. Burgess founded Fibershed’s 501c3 to address and educate the public on the environmental, economic and social benefits of de-centralizing the textile supply chain. Learn more about Fibershed.org.
Photos by Zann Davies