Dr. Thomas Wayne King and Debra Raye King are the featured speakers for the April 9 Thursdays at the U program at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire – Barron County.
Their presentation “Raising Icelandic Sheep” will run from 12:30-1:30 p.m. in the Blue Hills Lecture Hall in Ritzinger Hall and also will be livestreamed at ricelaketv.com.
Debra Raye King and Dr. Thomas Wayne King
The couple will share their experiences raising registered Icelandic sheep for wool on their Sunny Cove Farm in South Range, set on the hills overlooking Lake Superior.
The Kings, who have been married for more than 50 years, live in Solon Springs on beautiful old-growth forestland.
Thomas, a professor emeritus of speech, language and hearing sciences at UW-Eau Claire, is a prolific author and composer. His parents were both graduates of Rice Lake High School, with family in the Hardscrabble and Dobie areas since the 1800s.
Debra, a retired dean of students at Northwood Technical College and a former UW-Eau Claire Continuing Education staff member, is the author of “Gravedigger’s Daughter: Growing Up Rural” and its update in progress, “Gravedigger’s Daughter: Digging Deeper.” She also is a fiber and textile artist. Each summer, she serves as a judge at 4-H and open-class fairs for many counties throughout northern Wisconsin.
The Thursdays at the U weekly series is free and open to the public thanks to support from the UW-Eau Claire – Barron County Foundation. Neither seating reservations nor parking permits are needed for in-person attendees.
While in-person attendance is encouraged, most presentations in the series are livestreamed and archived on the Thursdays at the U webpage.
The next program in the series will be April 16, with Dr. Mark Sherman presenting “A Few Observations on Perennial Agriculture.”
For more information, contact Laura Holden at 715-788-6207 or holdenlk@uwec.edu.
