sun Say Baaa! Hailey
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Ketchum
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Sun Valley
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Bellevue
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Carey
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s t a n l e y • F a i r f i e l d • S h o sh o n e • P i c a b o
Intro Letter from New Owner/Publisher Steve Johnston
the weekly
Trailing of the Sheep Activities
Page 3
Jody Stanislaw discusses how you can stay healthy Page 5
Fall Gallery Walk is This Friday
O c t o b e r 5 , 2 0 1 1 • Vo l . 4 • N o . 4 0 • w w w.T h e W e e k l y S u n . c o m
Pages 6 & 7
READ ABOUT IT ON PaGes 12 & 13
Meet Michael Edminster, Sheep Photographer
By KAREN BOSSICK
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FILE PHOTO
TOTS Roundup BY KAREN BOSSICK
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his year’s Trailing of the Sheep Festival, which runs Thursday through Sunday, is bigger than ever, with an expanded Fiber Fest, a photography workshop and, of course, the women’s writing and storytelling symposium. “We’ve had a record year for fundraising, thanks to a show of support from Zions Bank, J.R. Simplot Co., the Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation, the Idaho Humanities Council and others,� said Mary Austin Crofts, executive director of the 15th annual Trailing. “It isn’t cheap to put this on. Our budget is $120,000.� This year’s Fiber Fest has expanded to 10 classes taught by professional instructors beginning Thursday night with a workshop on Slippers to Make Your Feet Sing. There also will be Star Weaving, Simple Spinning and other activities for children during Saturday’s Sheep Folklife Fair. And the University of Montana will provide a machine to determine the quality and warmth of fiber, said Crofts. Meanwhile, the sheep dog trials on Saturday and Sunday have been designated as a national qualifier for the first time. “Our sheep are some of the most talented—that means some of the least tame!� said Crofts. “In the last two years, not a single sheep has been penned. Handlers love this trial because it puts their dogs to the test.� One of the highlights of this year’s festival is Saturday night’s performance by cowboy poet Baxter Black, who used to work as a veterinarian for J.R. Simplot in south-central Idaho. Black will spin his world-famous cowboy poetry at the nexStage Theatre, with a little help from string musician Hal Cannon. “Baxter’s extremely funny,� said Baxter fan Jim Monger of Elkhorn. “He’s so popular that the only way you can get a ticket to see him at the Elko Cowboy Poetry Gathering is to enter tws a lottery.�
Trailing of the Sheep Schedule
any photographers boast of being paparazzi to the stars. Michael Edminster is content to be paparazzi to the sheep. The Bellevue photographer has clicked thousands of pictures of sheep over the years, taking some of the most intimate and revealing portraits of wooly buggers you’ll find anywhere. Edminster will show some of his work during Friday night’s Art and Lamb Foodie Fest at the Roosevelt Grill in Ketchum before selling prints at Saturday’s Sheep Folklife Festival in Hailey’s Roberta McKercher Park. Then he and Ketchum photographer Jack Williams will reveal their tricks of the trade, showing camera buffs how to take pictures of sheep during a Trailing of the Sheep photography workshop Sunday morning. “I always get in front of where the sheep are going. Then I hunker down and get eye level with the sheep. And as they come toward me, I talk to them and let them know that I’m not a threat,� said Edminster, a self-taught photographer who goes by the moniker “Mountain Mike� on Flickr. A former logger on the rainy Olympic Peninsula, Edminster fell in love with the people, landscape and climate of southcentral Idaho when he visited his brother who was working for John Faulkner’s Gooding sheep ranch. Intrigued, Edminster filled in as a substitute sheepherder. And the following summer Faulkner offered Edminister the chance to take over for a Scottish sheepherder who had passed away a few months before. “It was wonderful because his dogs spoke English, unlike those of the Basque or Peruvian sheepherders,� Edminster said. For the next five years, Edminster and his wife Lynne followed a routine dictated by the four seasons. Every spring they moved the sheep from winter grounds in Bliss across the Snake River to Bell Rapids, watching fighter jets maneuver as they passed over the Saylor Creek bombing range. As summer loomed, they headed north to Little City of the Rocks, across the rickety sheep bridge at Magic Reservoir and through Croy Canyon to Hailey. Then they followed the railroad tracks,
TOP-BOTTOM: Michael Edminster says herding sheep was the perfect job for an outdoor person like himself. PHOTO: KAREN BOSSICK/SUN (ALL OTHER PHOTOS: MICHAEL EDMINSTER)
This white lamb watched as Micheal lay in the mud trying to get her photo; The Noh Ranch sheep are lined up in the chute waiting for shearing; The dogs with wolf collars greet Michael on a rainy day — the collars help protect them against wolf attacks.
which were still in place at that time, to Murdock Creek and the Lake Creek and Eagle Creek drainages north of Ketchum. “There were just a few houses there then,� Edminster recalled. “We were close enough to town that sometimes we’d jump in the Jeep and head into Ketchum for pizza at Louie’s.� The Edminsters had two daughters when they began herding sheep. They added two more while herding. Lynne delivered one at the ranch—Michael weighed her on the wool scales. The family lived in a sheepwagon on the range, expanding into a Wagonaire as the girls grew. “There certainly wasn’t a lot of housework,� said Edminster, who homeschooled the girls. “And we had a solar shower for washing.� Lynne served up dinners of chicken,
“I always get in front of where the sheep are going. Then I hunker down and get eye level with [them].�
continued, page 13
By KAREN BOSSICK
THURSDAY
5:45-8:45 p.m. Fiber Fest kicks off with a class on Slippers to Make Your Feet Sing, 5:45-8:45 p.m. Registration: www.csi.edu/ blaine or 208-788-2033.
FRIDAY
8 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Women Writing and Living the West workshop at Carol’s Dollar Mountain Lodge in Sun Valley. Waiting list. 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Fiber Fest workshops, in-
continued, page 12