Without Animals We Are Not Human

I was pondering why we, I mean people like me, feel a compulsion to raise our own fiber, and reject the commercialism of so many yarn companies. There is brand after brand of fiber-of-unknown-origin. They tell us what kind of fiber it is, but we have no idea where it came from. Who raised it? Was it a loving, caring farm or was it a commercial operation where the sheep are shorn, then put on a trailer to the slaughterhouse, or on a steamer to be shipped to the Middle East to be sacrificed in a brutal, bloody way in a religious ritual? What kind of practices are supported by our yarn purchases? Are we supporting an American farmer, or contributing to global warming by shipping it from who-knows-where? I prefer to know where my yarn comes from, and I like it to be as local as possible. If I have to buy fiber I buy it from someone like me, who is hand-raising the animals and caring for them in an ethical way. All those glitzy labels are seductive, and you can buy as much as you want of any dye lot and be sure to have enough for your sweater. We can knit away and never think of what practices are behind that yarn. And it's not only the ethics - it's the satisfaction of taking our craft to the most fundamental level. Like a potter scraping her clay from the banks of a stream instead of buying it from the art supply house. An old sheep friend put it oh, so eloquently when he responded to something I said online. I don't think he will mind me quoting him here. Harry Kelley said this about why we raise sheep...

"There is some yearning, deep down inside each of us, that longs to
journey to the beginning, when the magic of twist made everything
that is, seen and unseen. Raising sheep, shearing, skirting,
washing, carding, combing, spinning, weaving, knitting: it's all
going back to our home among the stars. Raising your own sheep is
putting the universe back in order. Without animals we are not
human."

Thank you, Harry, for saying what I could not put into words but what I feel so deeply in my soul.