I grew up on a farm in Idaho before all this fooforaw we have now. You know, cell phones, endless choices of television channels to choose from, etc. Looking back, it seemed like a lot of time was spent entertaining myself when I wasn’t helping out on the farm. One of my favorite past times […]

It was about 1987, and I was trying to gain traction with my saddlemaking business with a main street location in Salmon, Idaho. I’d become acquainted with a local rancher who was related to an old timer in the area by the name of Sid Williams. Sid had been a mink rancher and did some […]

This is a nice letter from a customer: Dear Cary, After speaking with you the other day, I thought a lot about our conversations over the past couple years. When I first talked to you I thought maybe I was looking for something similar to a  cutting saddle that I could rope on, and that somehow evolved […]

The halfbreed saddle has become a classic over the last twenty years or so. Most of the ones I’ve made have been on a Wade tree. This was a nice exception…it is a Lewellyn tree made by Warren Wright. The front (fork) is thirteen inches wide and is covered without a seam. I’ve taken extra […]

My paternal grandfather, Theodore John Schwarz (b.1896) came to Idaho in the 1910’s. This is a pencil illustration by my first cousin Todd Schwarz rendered from a photo of our Grandpa Schwarz. This was a time when woolie chaps were extremely common among the cowboys of the day in much of the west. All the […]

The story of the 2009 TCAA Woolies began in 2007. I’d been looking for a source for good quality angora goat to use for chaps and unfortunately almost all the hides available had hair that was too short for an attractive pair of woolies. I eventually discovered a tannery in Texas that sold goat hides […]