Circle of family continues in sheep ranching
By Dana DuGan
Diane Josephy Peavey, who started the Trailing of the Sheep Festival with her husband John 20 years ago, is revving up for a big celebration.
The Sheep Tales gathering takes place at nexStage Theatre, Friday. Courtesy photo by Carol Wallerfestival was suggested by Hailey resident Carol Waller, the former executive director of the now-defunct Ketchum/Sun Valley Chamber of Commerce, as a way of bringing in more visitors during fall slack season. The Peaveys, who annually run, or trail, their sheep from high summer pastures in the north back to their Flat Top Sheep Company ranch in Carey, were all for it.
“This is a big year,” Peavey said. “We’ll have a great time. It was an unorthodox festival to begin with. Carol Waller initiated this, and we decided it needed components, so we have the trailing parade on Sunday, then we added the Folklife Fair, and the third element was storytelling. It was clear we were losing the elders and their stories. That’s the three-legged stool.”
The Trailing of the Sheep Festival’s new executive director, Laura Drake, says she “inherited an amazing festival.”
“What’s special is the milestone of the 20th anniversary,” Drake said. “The ability to sustain, entertain and educate about sheep ranching is due to the dedication of 20 years of hard work.
“Another thing that makes it special is that a Make-A-Wish Foundation grantee, Shelby Huff, is coming. And we’re really looking toward the future with the next generation speakers at the Sheep Tales Gathering. It really bridges the gap of this entire industry.”
In fact, Peavey was inspired first at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival held every fall in Washington, D.C., since 1967, where she lived before marrying and moving to Idaho.
“I saw Basque dancers there long before I moved to Idaho,” she said. “We use the fair to highlight the three groups, Basque, Scots and Peruvians, who have most to do with sheep farming. The Basque history is remarkable; it’s the story of Idaho, and the quintessential story of immigration.”
It’s these stories that are at the heart of the Sheep Tales Gathering at the nexStage Theatre in Ketchum, 7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 7, hosted by Hal Cannon, who founded the Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nev.
In 2014, the elders were featured in the first of the three-year program, “Celebrating Generations.” Last year, it was the survivors who were highlighted. These ranchers were the offspring of the elders. They had survived the downturn in the market in the 1980s, and again in the early oughts.
“There was no regulation at all, and lots of imports,” said Peavey, who is a board member of the American Lamb Board. “It was a whole series of things that converged.” Longtime family sheep ranchers had to sell out, she said.
“That’s the whole point of bringing in the next generation. In an industry like ours, which is so fragile, it’s so important to learn from the next generation. They’re keepers of the stories and the traditions, and the ones who determine whether we eat lamb chops 30 years from now. It is truly a family industry tied to the generations.”
The speakers will include a selection of sheep ranchers in their mid-20s to 30s, who grew up with sheep or developed a passion for sheep ranching later in life.
Among the storytellers is Lou Arambel, a fourth-generation rancher from Boulder, Wyo., whose great-grandparents emigrated from the Basque country in Spain in the 1880s. They run about 5,000 sheep, and each year trail them along a 200-mile corridor from the Wind River Mountains in western Wyoming to the Colorado border.
Blake Ball, from Lewisville, Idaho, also a fourth-generation rancher and sheep shearer, runs some 6,000 ewes.
Another fourth-generation rancher, Evan Helle, and his wife, from Dillon, Mont., runs a “sheep to shelf” clothing business called Duckworth. Helle will also speak, with Monica Ebert, on new wool clothing innovations at 2 p.m. at the Sheep Folklife Fair on Saturday.
Dominique Etcheverry, from Rupert, is a French Basque through her grandfather, Jean Pierre. She educates people about the benefits of sheep, lamp and wool, and is a member of the Trailing of the Sheep board of directors.
The farms manager for Texas A&M AgriLife Research in San Angelo, Texas, Jake Thorne is responsible for livestock on several ranches. He became a livestock judge while still in high school, earning him a scholarship to Texas A&M. Today, he judges sheep shows across the country.
There will also be a group of invited young sheep ranchers: Jake Benson of Utah; Brittany Bush of Bolinas, Calif.; Monica Ebert of Bozeman, Mont.; Chad and Linda Osguthorpe from Utah, who own their own operation; Christina Girodani from Hailey, who handles sales and outreach for Lava Lake Lamb; and Corey Peavey and his fiancée, Christie Erickson, of Flat Top Sheep Company. Peavey is a fifth-generation sheep rancher.
“What they all have in common is a commitment to make the sheep industry work,” Diane Peavey said. “They have a huge enthusiasm. It’s one of the few industries left today where grandchildren can grow up next to their grandfathers. It’s one of the things that most attracted me to this storytelling aspect. It has an intense human component to it.”
The American Lamb Board is sponsoring the visit of some of the storytellers to network and visit during the Trailing of the Sheep Festival.
The Idaho Humanities Council sponsors the Sheep Tales Gathering.
The following night, at the nexStage Theatre, the 20th anniversary celebration and Sheepherder’s Ball will continue with reminiscences and celebration through music and words, 7-9 p.m., with Peavey, Pamela Royes, the author of “Temperance Creek,” and Carolyn Duferrena and her mother-in-law, Linda Duferrena, author and photographer respectively, of “Fifty Miles from Home,” about sheep ranching in Nevada.
At the reception, the original founders of the festival will be formally recognized. Music will be supplied by Txantxangorriak, a group of young Basque musicians from Boise who keep their music and traditions alive on accordions and tambourines; Hal Cannon performing sheep songs from the West; and, finally, a concert and dance party with Texas Western Swing Hall of Fame members, Hot Club of Cowtown.
For more information on the festival, see page 12, and visit trailingofthesheep.org.