NJ Fibershed is working to create a network among fiber artisans and fiber farmers raising small flocks of sheep, alpacas, goats, and other fiber animals in the state of New Jersey. Our goal is to promote face-to-face relationships between fiber animals, farmers, and fiber artists within our community. NJ Fibershed provides educational programs focused on small-scale fiber farming, such as animal care and fiber-processing, and we organize community outreach events for current and aspiring fiber farmers.
Our NJ Fibershed will not only be a watershed of local fiber products; it will also serve as a common source of farming knowledge and education, connecting us with one another so that we can share our experiences and skills. And if we can come together in one place, we can become a resource for our local fiber artists looking for farm wool, and for anyone who aspires to raise their own flock of fiber animals.
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 and background, nationality, sexual and affectional orientation, gender identity and its expression, religious background and belief, marital status, family structure, age, mental and physical health and ability, political perspective, and educational and socioeconomic status.
— NJ Fibershed Board Members: Rehanna Azimi, Nekell Bjorn, Anne Choi, Laura Chandler, Andi Holladay, Andrea Peart, Sue Posbergh,
What is a Fibershed?
Fibershed develops regional and regenerative fiber systems on behalf of independent working producers, by expanding opportunities to implement carbon farming, forming catalytic foundations to rebuild regional manufacturing, and through connecting end-users to farms and ranches through public education.
We envision the emergence of an international system of regional textile communities that enliven connection and ownership of ‘soil-to-soil’ textile processes. These diverse textile cultures are designed to build soil carbon stocks on the working landscapes on which they depend, while directly enhancing the strength of regional economies. Both fiber and food systems now face a drastically changing climate, and must utilize the best of time-honored knowledge and available science for their long-term ability to thrive.
As each Fibershed community manages their resources to create permanent and lasting systems of production, these efforts to take full responsibility for a garment’s lifecycle will diminish pressure on highly polluted and ecologically undermined areas of the world. (China produces 52% of the world’s textiles. The industry is the third largest fresh water polluter in the country.) Future Fibershed communities will rely upon renewable energy powered mills that will exist in close proximity to where the fibers are grown. Through strategic grazing, conservation tillage, and a host of scientifically vetted soil carbon enhancing practices, our supply chains will create ‘climate beneficial’ clothing that will become the new standard in a world looking to rapidly mitigate the effects of climate change. We see a nourishing tradition emerging that connects the wearer to the local field where the clothes were grown, building a system that can last for countless generations into the future.
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.
Photos by Zann Davies