Lani’s Lana: Sheep, Landscape, and Western Wool

In the high-desert, sagebrush steppe of far northeastern California, where a pollinator strip on the Bare Ranch coincides roughly with the Nevada state line, Lani Cockrell creates and stewards family, flock, and community. Her home base is the town of Cedarville, the rough midpoint in the Surprise Valley between the Warner Mountains and Hays Canyon Range. Anyone who calls this the “middle of nowhere” or says “there’s nothing here” simply hasn’t learned to see it yet.

Since her start in the early 2000s, Lani wanted to offer handspinners and fiber artists a superfine, homegrown wool from northern California/northwest Nevada with all-American processing. The farthest her fiber travels is the eastern United States. Since then, Lani’s Lana Fine Rambouillet Wool has evolved from a flock of finewool sheep to roving, yarn, fabric, and bulk sales to garment designers and fashion brands, as well as natural-dye foraging and gardening, robust class offerings and retreats, and a 60-page Carbon Farm Plan (CFP) developed with the help of climate scientists and conservation specialists.

A Commitment to Regenerative Grazing

Today, Lani’s sheep graze 90,000 acres, always on the move, never overgrazing, tended by shepherds. The acreage is a combination of private and leased land including public lands managed by Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and US Forest Service (USFS), the Modoc National Forest among them.

This attention to and prioritization of local and regenerative practices has earned Lani’s products both Fibershed and Climate Beneficial fiber certifications. A fibershed is defined as a roughly 150-mile surrounding region from which all fibers, dyes, and labor are sourced. The Climate Beneficial Verification program recognizes that natural fibers “can be grown and raised in ways that maximize the drawdown of carbon from the atmosphere to help restore ecosystem health and stabilize our climate.” Fibershed (a nonprofit organization) verifies and monitors those practices on the land.

Lani herself is energetic, creative, and resourceful, an exemplar of appreciating what you’ve got, using what thrives nearby, and leaving things better than you found them. She is a critical holder and sharer of cultural and agricultural memory, preserving while passing things on.