Sallie Whitlow has been in love with natural fibers for as long as she can remember. She is a knitter and long-time hand spinner who first became interested in alpacas (back in 1994) through working with their beautiful fleece. Her business, Sallie’s Fen Fibers, a mini-mill in Barrington, New Hampshire mostly processes alpaca, but also processes other fibers including wool, mohair, angora, and cashmere.
The mill has been operating for 10 years and is only getting better at producing an outstanding product.
Thanks to Britta McCarthy, a senior at the University of New Hampshire who reached out to us about her work with Sallie’s Fen Fibers, a mini mill in Barrington, New Hampshire, and a video she produced on Sallie’s fiber processing operation. We were more than happy to put it up here for our community to watch and also, to know about for their own personal use.
She wrote to us: “I became deeply interested in sustainable fiber systems this past year and have focused my capstone research on natural fiber resources in New Hampshire. Sallie Whitlow puts an enormous amount of work into the functioning of the mill to the benefit of small, local fiber growers. It’s a great opportunity to help showcase the hard work that goes into fiber processing.”
We caught up with both Sallie and Britta to ask some questions about the mill and their passion for fiber.
Sallie Whitlow
You’ve had your mill for 10 years now. Did you start it first for you and then saw there was other business to be had?
The mill was started as a service to customers of Sallie’s Fen Alpacas, offering a post alpaca purchase service. The intent was always to process fiber from other farms. All of my new business was and still is mainly by word of mouth.
Do you have more people coming to you for processing over the past few years? Steady?
Business has been steady with maybe a downward trend over the last two to three years. This may reflect the fact that the number of alpaca farms is declining and many of the new ones are very small, maybe 3 or 4 alpacas, and the owners are not interested in doing anything with the fiber.
Is your business based mostly on alpaca?
I would estimate that 80% of the fiber processed is alpaca. The percentage of wool processed has been increasing as more of the sheep farmers are thinking of selling roving or yarn from their fiber as a way to increase the income from their flock.
What’s your favorite part of running Sallie’s Fen Fibers?
My favorite part is ending up with a product that the customer is happy with. I also have some ‘special projects’ for customers that are fun as they are outside the normal products generated by the mill.
