As her flock drifts across the pastures of Gum Tree Farm in Middleburg, Virginia, shepherd and designer Frances Kansteiner transforms the finest Merino wool into garments of quiet luxury and exquisite craftsmanship.
Story by Cara Clark
On a cool Virginia morning, the hills around Gum Tree Farm in Middleburg ripple with the movement of Merino sheep — soft, pale, and impossibly calm. They graze beneath the steady watch of two imposing Kangal dogs, as well as the farm’s founder, Frances Kansteiner. She oversees the flock with the easy, practiced familiarity of one who has spent decades caring for animals, paying close attention to their subtle expressions of health and contentment.
This diligent shepherding is for more than just the flock’s wellbeing; the lambs need to produce the best wool for Franny, who is also a garment designer, to turn into sought-after pieces that are years in the making.
A shepherd's journey
This pastoral life is one Franny embraces, though it wasn’t one she planned on living. What began as a practical solution to the proliferation of a neighbor’s three-lamb gift soon became its own quiet education in textiles.
In the early years, Franny spun and knitted everything herself — yarn drying in the rafters, socks and mittens stacked on a table in the barn for neighbors to buy.
“I was knitting a lot,” she says, “and then people would see the things we made — ‘Do you have more of those mittens? Any more socks?’— and it grew from there.”
But as the flock multiplied, so did the fleeces, until she reached the point where the math overtook her.
“Three hundred sheep make a lot of wool,” she says. “And then you’re thinking, now what am I going to do with all this?”
The answer arrived slowly, the way most things on her farm do — one decision, one experiment, one good piece of advice at a time.
Franny learned the entire process backward, discovering each step only when she reached it. At first, that meant scouring and carding the wool herself, but soon she began driving the raw fleece north on visits to her son in New Hampshire, dropping bags at a small Vermont mill that washed the wool organically and spun it into yarn.
“It felt like a family,” she says. “One mill would tell me who they knew that wove. Someone else would know a pattern maker. It's all word of mouth.”
