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Sarah Sunshine - Owner & Production Manager
As Eliana’s daughter, Sarah Sunshine has played a large role in Shepherd’s Dream operations for 8 years. Sarah’s new position as business owner comes with a lifetime of experience in the realm of natural bedding.
Although she enjoys making mattresses and various products as well as working with customers, her greatest joy is found through dance, nature and working with children. |
| Photo coming soon - Laurie is currently on a journey to India |
Laurie - Seamstress
Laurie has been with Shepherd’s Dream for several years and has witnessed many of our transitions. Laurie is an expert seamstress and craftsperson. We are honored to have her working with Shepherd’s Dream. Laurie brings a calm and loving energy to everything that she creates.
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Sarahti - Office Manager
After a different lifetime as a biologist and educator, Sarah has transitioned into a new role at Shepherd’s Dream. Sarah enjoys the opportunity to apply her knowledge of ecology and sustainability to a new and dynamic stage.
Sarah maintains her connection to biology in her spare time, exploring the beautiful and wild region where we live. She confesses to a mild obsession with birds. |
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Kyla - Production
Kyla is currently making mattresses and assisting in the office. We are happy to have Kyla working with Shepherd’s Dream following her diverse and adventurous history. After many years of traveling and working in various fields, Kyla has a found a great place to utilize her natural art skills.
Kyla and her husband are hoping to build a home in the area and they enjoy recreation in the great outdoors. |
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Phil & Valerie PecK - Frame Builder & Seamstress
Phil and Valerie build our lovely wooden bed frames. Valerie has also recently been working with us as a seamstress. Valerie has many years of experience with sewing and building and has been a great addition to our crew.
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Bob Davidson - Frame Architect
As an expert architect and builder we are honored to have Bob’s guidance and support in our project. Bob designed the Shepherd’s Dream bed frame and translated the designs to local woodworkers. Bob is also responsible for the beautiful restoration of our store and other Montague live and work spaces.
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Eliana Jantz - Founder & Wool Bed Designer
Eliana, the founder of Shepherd’s Dream, has honed the physical components of the Woolbed through a 20 year evolutionary process. According to Eliana, her process has been guided by one simple, common sense intention: to support optimal health through ‘the right use of materials’ as it relates to the bed we sleep in.
As Eliana moves away from daily operations, she is inspired to delve into new aspects of health and well-being. |
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Woolgatherer Carding Mill
We rely on the staff at Woolgatherer Carding mill to provide us with the most wonderful wool batting on the planet. Nathon, Tony, Tim and Eric miraculously keep the old carding mill pumping out wool.
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How Montague became Home of the Woolbed
In April of 2002, we, (the girls and I), found what we had so fervently been searching for. A place where our dreams could come true. We had begun to hear about the little town just north of Mt. Shasta from our wooly collaborator, Patrick Holland, who was shepherding there. Two years earlier, Patrick had contacted me in Santa Rosa, to talk about wool and what he could do to help things evolve in the world of wool, particularly as it related to wool bedding products. Over the course of the next couple of years, this brought him to the inspired act of building what was really needed. A wool carding mill which could supply quality wool batting to us seasoned bedmakers, here in the Northwestern region of North America!
We visited Patrick to celebrate the mill’s opening Easter of 2002, feeling especially inspired by the season that was upon us - the daily birthing of new lambs on the pastures! - to me it symbolized Hope and Joy! Patrick took us (Eliana, Sarah and Logan) for our first drive through the tiny, almost ghost-town of Montague, specifically to show us the building which would become the cornerstone of our new incarnation as bedmakers.
It would happen sooner than we could even imagine! The two story red brick building in the heart of town - which felt to me like the symbol of new vitality, - was built to last in 1890 by Italian master masons in the new born town of Montague. From her front door, the new wool carding mill stands a quarter mile down the road. The feeling here is open fields and skies, sunshine and breezes, Gregory Mountain lying like a sleeping, dreaming bear in the middle of this high plain, protecting Montague. As I walk around town, the majestic Mt. Shasta plays hide and seek behind Gregory Mountain.
"So, Eliana, (whispered my wooly self) - how about this place? ... peaceful place! ...wonderfully open feeling, kinda desolate, maybe? ...???...??...?"
I couldn’t help myself. A month later I was back to look inside the “Grandmother” Brick Building. I walked through the sad ending of an era within this dignified structure. I heard about Grandma Swain’s Market and Grandma’s generous community spirit. For 5 decades, she provided shelter, food and drink to the townfolk and she cared about the children in town. They could always find a shelter from the storm with her. Would this now become a shelter for me and the dream I was giving birth to?
Now back to Sonoma County to pose the question to my friend and collaborator, Bob Davidson, who, for the past year had been helping a group of us explore the possibilities for a collective land project based around Shepherd’s Dream as a central force in it. Bob and I had been sharing the same vision for creating live/work architecture which would empower our ideals for creative collaboration within a collectively shared space. The question of where and with whom had been looming for some time. This place had the magical ingredients ...and we knew it. We were finished waiting. This was it! And we were it! Co-creators of the Montague Woolbed Project and parents of a new creative endeavor which would hopefully become a shelter from the storm for others of same intention!
From here on it seemed like heaven and earth were moving with us, obedient, - as we had become, - to what felt like our destiny! With Bob as my guide, I would be the best student of inspired architecture, - and the most supportive and loving companion I could be!
By next Spring, granny shelter was reborn! Kindred spirits came from near and far to celebrate the event. We had found home!
See our photo gallery "The Montague Feeling" >>
