North Coast wool producer, 101, was ahead of the flock

Jean Near has been doing things her own way, ignoring conventions of the times for as long as she can remember. At 101, and with a mind sharper than most people half her age, that’s a very long time.

“I’ve always been determined,” Near said.

She has slowed a bit in the past couple of years but continues to live independently on her 75-acre ranch in a wooded river canyon north of Ukiah, where she raises sheep renowned for producing ultra-soft wool in natural colors that range from pure white to black. She was among the trendsetters who brought colored wool into vogue, an endeavor she began in the 1980s following retirement from a 32-year teaching career.

“I don’t think many people were doing it before her,” said John Harper, an adviser with the University of California Cooperative Extension, who added, “She has always set the standard” for the niche wool market.

In Near’s home office, bags of washed and combed wool are neatly stacked on shelves, waiting to be shipped through eBay to spinners and knitters around the state. The names of the sheep from which they were sheared are on the labels: white wool from Snow; taupe from Duchess and black from Harvey.

Large boxes filled with whole fleeces and bags of wool sit on the floor, ready for pick up. Scores of trophies, plaques and ribbons awarded for her wool’s quality line the shelves and walls.

Near took a circuitous route to the wool business. It was predicated on chance, determination, savvy and a willingness to eschew what’s expected.

A member of the pioneering Gowan family, she grew up on a farm. Her parents moved from Ukiah to a Potter Valley ranch when she was just a few months old. She loved the animals and the farm work, milking cows and driving a horse-drawn hay harvester.

“I worked just like a boy,” Near said, in days when “a girl was supposed to be a girl with a hope chest with embroidered pillow cases. I was awfully happy to be outside.”

She bonded with the animals. They became her friends in part because there were no other children nearby.

“It just came naturally,” Near said.

After graduating from Potter Valley High School, she took off for the big city to get a college degree. She stayed with a family in South San Francisco, cooking and cleaning to pay her way while commuting to UC Berkeley. There was not yet a Bay Bridge, so she took multiple cable cars and a ferry to get to and from the college.

“It took two hours each way,” Near said.

She majored in English, with minors in history and physical education. The year before graduating, she married her first husband, John Ham, whom she had met at a dance in Covelo during a school break. He then was managing two Bay Area water supply plants. She briefly worked for the companies as well.

Became a teacher

After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, her husband joined the Naval Construction Force, becoming a Seabee based in Alaska. She stayed home and monitored short-wave radio dispatches for the government while caring for her two young boys. There were mandatory blackouts, but nothing happened, “thank goodness,” Near said.

During that time, she also heard frequent radio advertisements for teachers.

Near thought, “there no reason I couldn’t teach.” She applied, was accepted and almost immediately received a phone call from her mother-in-law about a job teaching at a little red schoolhouse 12 miles east of Covelo, itself a remote location in northeast Mendocino County.

She packed the boys into the family’s 1935 Studebaker and headed off for her new adventure, teaching just four students and living in a nearby cabin.

“I had so much fun,” Near said. She could teach however she felt was best, which included taking students on nature walks and building a map of Mendocino County. But she wanted to be closer to her parents in Potter Valley, so she didn’t stay. She taught at schools in Potter Valley, Philo and Mendocino before beginning her tenure at Ukiah High School, where she worked for 28 years, including as the dean of girls.

Mendocino County Supervisor Carre Brown was one of her students at Ukiah High School.

“She was wonderful,” Brown said. “She was a perfect example of the lady you would want to grow up to be. Very professional. Never judgmental.”

Near divorced her husband not long after returning to Mendocino County, a decision that was not as common in the 1940s as it is now. They had already spent much of their married life apart.

“I was always on my own, really,” Near said.

In 1953, she married Lowell Near, a fellow teacher and librarian at Ukiah High School. The school’s library is named for him.

They bought the property where she still lives while they were working, and later retired to “Utopia Ranch,” the name bestowed by prior owners. They took on some remodeling projects and acquired sheep to keep the weeds down, a necessary requirement for obtaining fire insurance.

“We just enjoyed the sheep. We were having a lot of fun,” Near said.

But in 1981, her husband died, leaving her once more on her own. She knew of women who had moved into town after their husbands died, in part because of the work involved in managing a large property on their own. But it wasn’t for her.

“What would I do in town?” she asked.

Instead, she came up with a new ranch-based vocation for herself. She already had sheep, so she consulted with a UC Cooperative Extension farm adviser about producing and marketing wool. Rod Shippey, aka “Uncle Rod,” came out and took a look at her setup.

He gazed out at the pasture where the sheep were grazing and said, “Jean, they’re all black.” In those days, the only marketable wool was white.

Colored wool

Wool manufacturers typically want wool they can easily dye, Near said, but she was undeterred. Instead of switching sheep, she went to work figuring out how to market colored wool. She read trade magazines, talked to people in the industry and took a monthlong tour of New Zealand’s wool industry.

On the plane ride home, she was full of ideas, including a plan for shearing and wool-processing seminars for would-be buyers in the cottage wool industry.

“I thought, there’s nothing to stop me from doing what they’re doing,” Near said. She also began breeding to get the softest wool possible, wool that is so fine it doesn’t itch. More information about it is available on her website, Jeannear.com.

Her focus and dedication have been instrumental in boosting small-scale wool production on the North Coast, others in the industry say.

“Jean Near has had a remarkable influence on wool in Northern California,” said Matthew Gilbert, a professional sheep shearer who is launching a local wool processing facility in Ukiah. “A lot of the nicest colored, fine-wooled sheep around can be traced back to her flock.”

Near loves what she does, but even she eventually needed to slow her pace. When she turned 100, she decided it was time to downsize. Lambs can be rambunctious and hard to handle, she explained. She gave her breeding ewes to a son and kept 10 sheep for herself.

Every morning after a breakfast of oatmeal and fruit, she walks down the dirt road path to the barn to let out the sheep. They’re kept in at night to protect them from predators, the most dangerous of which is dogs, Near said.

It gives her purpose and keeps her healthy. She advises anyone who aspires to living well and long to follow suit.

“You need to get up and walk every day,” she said, wagging a finger for emphasis.

She, of course, does more than that, practicing Tai Chi with a group at her home once a week.

If you can’t get outside, dance around the kitchen table, she said. And “always have a reason to live, even if it’s just a couple of cats you have to feed.”

You can reach Staff Writer Glenda Anderson at 462-6473 or glenda.anderson@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @MendoReporter.