The story of Brown Sheep Company begins with a family farm in western Nebraska. E.W. Brown purchased the farmland that has remained in the family for over 100 years and counting. In 1980 came the arrival of the first truckloads of used spinning equipment, purchased from the Southeast where many textile mills were closing at that time.  
 
Some of the first major customers of Brown Sheep Company yarn were traditional Navajo weavers in the Southwestern US—many of the trading posts in that region remain long-standing customers. Yarn shops nationwide began to stock their shelves with Brown Sheep yarn as the company continued to grow and expand, shipping yarn across the country and abroad.
 
By the late 1990s, a new generation took the mill to the next level, advancing the technology used and updating the equipment. By the early 2000s, the majority of the original used machinery had been replaced by new, state-of-the-art textile equipment.  Research enabled them to develop an environmentally-friendly system for recycling the mill’s dye water, putting Brown Sheep Company on the map in a whole new way.