Two things I absolutely adore photographing are renovations of old buildings and sheep. So, when Teresa Perleberg of Bear Creek Felting contacted me to photograph her new project, the Nome Schoolhouse, I was over the moon.

Nome, North Dakota is a teeny, tiny little town south of Valley City, North Dakota (which is a teeny tiny city just west of Fargo, which is a slightly bigger city located in… you guessed it… North Dakota). A couple of years ago, Teresa and her fellow wool lovin’ pal, Chris Armbrust, got a crazy idea. They were going to purchase and renovate the old, dilapidated school in Nome and turn it into a wool-arts mecca.

Their company Shepherd Industries was born and they soon began work on this colossal project. Once completed, Nome Schoolhouse will be a Fiber Arts Center with a unique bed-and-breakfast and one kick-butt event center.

Renovations are well on their way and are set to complete in 2021. Since it’s such a big project, they wanted to document this crucial part of the renovations, as well as have a nice library of images for social media, their website, and other promotional purposes

A big part of the renovation is at the back end of the building where they are building a brand new structure to house Chris’ Fiber Mill. In addition, they will have a small barn and pasture at the schoolhouse (rural North Dakota, y’all, it’s great) where they’ll have Alpaca, Sheep and other wooly creatures.

I visited both Chris’ home fiber mill/farm and Teresa’s farm to photograph the mill and some of the friendly faces that will soon grace the Nome Schoolhouse barn.

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