By CRAIG FREILICH

CANTON – Rita and Al Ostrander want to sell Ostrander’s Sheepskin Shop, now operating at their bed and breakfast near Canton.

“After 37 years we have decided it’s time to sell our sheepskin gift shop,” said Rita Ostrander, who along with her husband Al have made a business making and selling items made from hides from their sheep farming.

“It’s very time consuming,” Rita said. Along with the sheep farm and sheepskin shop, they have been running an award-winning bed and breakfast at their Cape Cod style house at 1675 State Rt. 68, at Langdon Corners, about four miles southeast of Canton. They started the B&B after Al retired from dairy farming in 1996.

They are not selling the building the shop is in there – any buyer would use their own space -- but they offer the business, with all its equipment, inventory, some fixtures and introductions to suppliers and sales representatives. The buyer would have to set up elsewhere, “maybe like we did. We started on the front porch, then it moved into the living room and then, during the holidays, the rest of the house.”

“We’ll provide patterns if they want to make the things we make here,” Rita said.

And there is another possible incentive to any buyer: they kept the business home-based, and tried sales on the Internet, “but it got away from us and turned out to be more than we could handle, so we pulled it off the Internet,” Rita said.

They are entertaining any serious offers. The Ostranders be reached at 386-2126.

Rita said she wanted to thank “all our loyal customers” from around the region and into Canada.