The Fleece Factory Of The Rockies

At the Fleece Factory of the Rockies, loose fiber goes into the carder, where it is opened, blended and aligned. It does not stop there. It runs on into the rug yarn machine, which forms it into a continuous thick strand and winds the finished rug yarn onto a spool. The mill posted a film of the process on September 30, 2026, and asked whether anyone else was “completely mesmerized watching this thing work.”

The mill and barns on County Road 38

The mill and barns stand at 24138 County Road 38 on the Sandwalker Ranch, just outside LaSalle in Weld County, minutes off I-76 or Highway 34. No hours are posted. Visitors call for hours or to make an appointment.

Tours cover both the mill and the barns, which hold alpacas and other animals. They are arranged by phone and fitted to the group, large or small, young or old. “Kids love the barn and seeing the animals,” the tour page says. Groups have come for years. The Greeley Senior Center ran a tour on May 9, 2017. Students from Platte Valley Middle School FFA appear in the mill’s 2018 newsletters. On March 18, 2024, the Weld County Farmers Union toured the mill and then went to lunch at Jem’s Café in La Salle.

The ranch runs the Sandwalker Ranch alpaca sales and breeding program and belongs to the Alpaca Owners Association. Shearing is done on site in season. A 2018 newsletter mentions shearing in the ranch’s arena, with skirting instruction offered while owners are there.

The mill takes in fleece and turns it into yarn, roving, felt and rug yarn. Its website reports more than 1,200 bags of fleece processed, totaling over 4,000 pounds. A notice on every page now says the Fleece Factory is not taking new fiber processing orders. The same website takes a long view of the work: “The fiber processing industry and craft hasn’t really changed over hundreds of years other than a few standards that have been upgraded and the equipment used is slightly modernized.”

The boutique and the skirting table

The boutique sells handmade goods along with dyes, tools and supplies, both in the store and online. In the fall of 2026 the shelves held handmade fiber pumpkins, each in its own colors. There was also Fabric Sheet Yarn, a chunky yarn the mill makes from old bedsheets, so that no two batches match. Blue Angelina, a sparkle fiber meant to be blended into batts, roving or handspun, sold at $6 for 10 grams. An earlier profile by Cheyenne Amen lists felted hats, baby gifts, yarn and how-to books. It also describes a classroom area inside the boutique with “a very cozy feel for great one-on-one instruction.”

Classes are held monthly. Current offerings are drop spindle spinning at $30; peg loom weaving, rake loom knitting, traditional rug hooking and a rug yarn seminar at $45 each; and wet felting at $75. The drop spindle class is taught by Cheri Paxson of Longmont. She opened Pax Knits in 1988 and raises fiber llamas and alpacas at her “Art Barn” in rural Longmont. Her class page says the technique took her yarn to blue-ribbon winners. A kit sold for the class holds a Schadt top-whorl drop spindle of 1½ ounces, a PVC “Knitty Knotty” for taking yarn off the spindle, and an ounce of llama roving.

The skirting class is free and is held monthly. In 2018 it met on the last Thursday of the month at 6 p.m. Each person brought a fleece and learned to skirt it at a shared table, and the newsletters headed the listing “THE BEST CLASS.” Many came with one fleece, skirted it, checked it in after class to hold a place in the mill’s line, and finished the rest at home.

Some of the same goods travel. The mill set up a booth at the Salida Fiber Festival in Riverside Park on September 12–13, 2026, where it sold that year’s festival Colorway colors. On October 3–4, 2026, it had a booth at the Mountain & Valley Fiber Arts Festival in Durango, stocked with locks and curls, chunky yarns, rugs, bags and wearable fiber art.

Three alpaca breeders and a joke about a mill

Cheyenne Amen’s profile tells the founding this way. Pat, Sharon and Rhonda had spent years showing alpacas, making alpaca products, breeding animals and building friendships. For more than a year they joked about starting a fiber mill. Then they spent another year finding out whether it could be done. They took classes, among them the Certified Sorting System and Textile Basics. When the mill opened, the three worked as Certified Sorter Apprentices and inspected each customer’s fleece at check-in. They advised owners on what each bag would best become.

The Greeley Tribune, in 2017, put it more briefly: in 2014, after 14 years in the alpaca industry, “the family took a leap.” The mill’s own account dates the start to 2014 as well, after “years of research and discussion,” with state-of-the-art equipment installed.

“Education is the key element to the success of our fiber mill,” Rhonda told Amen. “Helping customers understand what they have and how it would be best used is the most gratifying part of our job. We get to see looks of relief and hear chatter of excitement when they decide what to do with this precious information!” At the time, the mill was working on home insulation batts, a clothing line for hunters and personalized saddle blankets.

The staff page now lists Rhonda as owner, master operator, fiber sorter and grader, alpaca rancher, wool grower and fiber artisan. Sharon runs the carder and sorts and grades fiber. Jordan manages the store, and Todd is listed as “Owner and resident, maintenance man.” Cheyenne is pictured without a title. Dolores Ellen Beierbach was born in Seward, Nebraska, in 1935 and for many years managed The Flower Shacks in Greeley. According to her obituary, she “later worked alongside her family at the Fleece Factory of the Rockies.” She died on October 29, 2025, at 89. The obituary names Todd and Rhonda Amen among her grandchildren.

A coreless single and a beard

The mill’s 2017 change was mechanical. In her January 2018 newsletter, Rhonda wrote that the mill had developed a new spinning machine that made a coreless bulky single, one that “allows us to show our artistic hand.” The service began that January at $30 a pound. The same issue introduced Amy as secretary and office manager and Laura and Ramona as workshop helpers. It also put the processing wait at seven to eight months and offered tours on Wednesdays and Saturdays. The mill sold handmade peg looms for rug yarn in 24-, 36- and 72-inch sizes and became a Louet equipment retailer.

The March 2018 newsletter opened “Top O The Mornin’ To Ya!” It recommended Raymond Brekel, a sheep shearer due in the neighborhood on April 5. It also announced that the rebuilt website would be finished that month, with Rhonda adding: “I know I looked good as a guy with a beard but I really must show you what I look like shaved!” An April newsletter thanked Brenda Davisson of Field of Dreams Website Development for the new site. The same issue announced the mill’s listing in the Colorado Department of Agriculture’s Colorado Proud agritourism section.

At alpaca shows, the newsletters explained, the mill seldom bought a vendor booth. Instead its people walked the barns, stopping at each breeder’s stall to pick up fiber or deliver finished orders.

Fleece from Cactus Hill

The owner of The Dye Smith, a yarn dyer, came to the mill by way of another vendor’s booth. In 2022 she went to the Mountain Valley Wool Festival in Santa Fe looking for wholesale Colorado yarn. Elena of Cactus Hill Farm told her it would probably cost less to buy fleece and have it milled. Elena then pointed across the hall: “Rhonda (owner of The Fleece Factory of the Rockies) is over there, you should go talk to her.” The dyer took a pricing sheet and ran numbers through the evening. The next morning she went back to Elena’s booth and left with a bag of wool. Her yarn line, Colorado Pure, is grown, milled and dyed in the state. “Now I beg Elena for her best fleeces,” she writes, “and give them to Rhonda.”