At Mosshollow Hill, everything starts with an idea or a need. We research the process, implement the plan ourselves, enjoy the successes, and learn from the failures. Through this process we raise food to limit what we purchase from a store, and our animals provide weed abatement, entertainment for each other, ourselves, and our guests, and fiber used in our textile arts. We value hard work, creativity, experimentation, repurposing, and resilience. Come learn, create, and explore with us.
Meet the Proprietors
Susan Shirley
Susan Shirley grew up reading books about magical places and dreamed of living in the woods amid family and furry creatures. Mosshollow Hill is her dream realized, and she enjoys sharing her adventures with family and friends. As a full-time public school teacher, Susan encourages her students to explore the world in a kind and responsible way and loves sharing the Maker world with them. As a fiber artist, she creates a world of handmade felted magic inspired by nature and literature and thrives on learning new techniques. Living and playing on Mosshollow Hill allows her to combine her two passions: creating and teaching. She enjoys the distractions the chickens, sheep, goats, dog, and cats provide and loves sharing her world with Brett. She hopes Mosshollow Hill inspires visitors to live their dreams.
Brett McCleary
Brett McCleary is the Keeper of Tools and Grounds at Mosshollow Hill. He divides his time between teaching history, building the structures on the property, and caring for the orchard, garden, and animals. In his free time, he enjoys photographing wildlife and landscapes in his quest to see a mountain lion. When a need arises on the farm, Brett researches, plans, and implements the solution. His creations blend practicality and aesthetics making Mosshollow Hill a beautiful and functional place to live.
Meet the Animals
For up to date animal images and videos, join us over on Instagram and TikTok.
Sheep Sheep!
Mosshollow Hill’s wooly ladies are Wensleydale/Romney crosses and gloriously curly. Just before a shearing, they resemble wooly bears. Daisy loves attention and is as affectionate as her mother was elusive. Dottie, seems part mountain goat. Given a chance, Dottie would scale any structure to get a tasty treat and enjoys a good scratch. We miss their mothers, Momma Klaus and Mommy Molly. Those wooly ladies lived to nearly 15 years old before we had to say goodbye to them.
The ladies enjoy wandering the Mosshollow grounds in search of greenery to munch helping to maintain the weeds and grasses naturally. Brett built a skirting table and mobile wash station for Susan to use during fleece washing and fiber preparation. The wash station enables her to use the dirty water on the trees, bushes, and flowers. Once clean, the fleece is ready for dyeing or fiber art!
Chickens
Mosshollow’s chickens came to The Hill at 4 different times. The Literary Crew moved from Morgan Hill to Mosshollow Hill with Brett, Susan, and their cats in July 2014. Each lady was named for a famous book character: Mrs. Snodgrass, Katniss, Morgaine, Lyra, Jane, and Bellatrix. They were a tough group of hens and gladly made Mosshollow their new home. Each lady’s unique personality emerged early on-hence their names. As they eased into egg-tirement, the Literary Crew continued to amuse and delight visitors, but sadly have all passed on.
In April of 2015 the next generation of eggers arrived in Mosshollow and were promptly named the Westerosi Crew after the Song of Ice and Fire series. They began laying over the summer, and, like the Literary Crew, enjoyed their tasty organic feed as well as free-ranging for insects and worms around the grounds. Some of the ladies enjoy sitting on laps for lots of love while others are more elusive.
June of 2015 brought the World of Froud to Mosshollow. 3 Silkies: Aughra, Jareth, and Fizzgig were integrated into the flock, and it was a wild adventure ever since. One couldn’t help but giggle when the silkies came waddling across the yard. Sadly all the Silkies have crossed the rainbow bridge. Jareth, the Goblin King, may he rest in peace, was our resident rooster and a glorious little fellow though a bit afraid of his own shadow and the bigger ladies. He sadly passed during the pandemic, and our farm hasn’t been the same without him.
Jareth’s daughter, Little Val, is still here although she lost her vision from a hawk attack, so she has her own apartment coop where she can live free from the concerns that others will peck her.
In February of 2019 we added a new variety of little peepers named for Hayao Miyazaki’s film characters including Copper Marans so now we have beautiful dark brown eggs. And a gorgeous blue cochin named Totoro.
A visit to Mosshollow Hill always includes a photo-shoot with the chickens, just watch out for road apples!
Cats
Our resident felines pictured here, enolA our elusive house panther, and The Lady Eboshi all tufted and tabby, fill our home with delightful purring and fuzzy mischief. enolA adopted our chickens before we moved here, and we rescued Eboshi in 2016 from a cat rescue. They’re still getting used to having a 90lb dog in the house. enolA is much more eager to befriend Sierra, but Eboshi wants nothing to do with her.
Goats!
In September of 2018 we adopted two Nigerian Dwarf wethers and promptly named them Snackly Bellington and Scrappy Duncan after getting to know them. They prance about participating in extreme goating activities and generally delight all who see them.
The goats are the best animals for weed abatement and maintaining defensible space as they eat everything including fallen oak leaves!
Ein Starker Lowe Sierra McCleary-Shirley Von Bautzen
the Leonberger
After nearly 20 years of waiting, studying, researching, and looking for the right breed, we finally found what we had been dreaming of all these years. A Leonberger! Bred to look like the lion on the town crest in Leonberg, Germany, the Leonberger dog is bred from Newfoundland, Saint Bernard, and Great Pyrenees. Our beloved Sierra has captivated our hearts and lives, and we can’t imagine our farm without her.
I saw you hot on a lady at the watsonville craftvshowcon December 1st. I knit but have always wanted to learn the science to make felt. I saw a hat in San Francisco that was felted with other yarns and fibers in it and would love to learn.
Hello Lynn,
It’s wonderful when I hear about one of our hats out in the wild! I wonder which one it was.
As to felting workshops, I used to give workshops here at Mosshollow Hill in Aromas pre-Covid. We haven’t hosted any events here in the past few years, but I am hopeful that this spring we can begin again. If you send me an e-mail at hello@mosshollowhill.com I can let you know when I open up for the spring. I have also taught at Slow Fiber in Monterey in August of ’21, and Jaki has asked me to return as often as I am able. Being a full time public school teacher means my time is limited, but if I do decide to teach there again, I can let you know.
In the meantime, I encourage you to watch YouTube tutorials. If you’re on TikTok, I have a 3 minute video on the wet-felting process that shows the entire process of wet-felting around a resist. If you would like to purchase materials (the solar pool cover is an excellent tool for rolling your wet-fibers), I can put together a kit for you to pick up if you’re local or have mailed to you depending on the size.
I encourage you to start exploring fibers.
Keep in touch!
-Susan