With all the fellow bloggers complaining about the smell of their Billy goats this time of year I was feeling pretty satisfied with my well behaved (so far) Rams and my "more interested in food than boys" Ewes this weekend.
I finally pulled on the mud boots and went out to take the pasture fence completely apart. I surrender there is just no way the girls are going to be satisfied with only a section of that field. They have tasted freedom and it shall not be denied them. In truth I kinda like the look of them out there in their little group grazing away it really brings on that lovely British Island country-side feeling. I finally just ran an extra line of hot wire above the Ewe's heads but low enough to discourage the old Nag horses from coming out the gate. So far it seems to be working and keeps the horses in but allows the Ewes to come and go out of the barn and through the gate as they desire.
While I was out there working a strange SUV pulled into the driveway. Not an uncommon thing as I get all kinds of people coming by for honey on a fairly regular basis these days so I plodded through the mud up to see what they wanted. Turns out it was someone meeting my Mother.
As far as I know there is no commercial market for the fleece but this is the third year my Mother has managed to sell a pretty significant part of what she has stored and at prices that are at least significant to the bottom line. Last year she sold every bit of excess wool she had and then this weekend unloaded six more fleece at $20.00 each. Looking at it from a purely Sheep cost perspective that $120.00 almost covers the grain bill for six months and there are still at least 18 more fleece left in her storeroom. I also found out she is overpaying the shearer by a significant amount too but I already had that total figured in.
I cannot say if this is a trend or what but there seems to be at least a local demand growing for wool as each customer so far has mentioned they were teaching spinning classes. I was willing to ignore one or two years but with income coming in for three years in a row I think it might be time to start treating the wool as a money making commodity to add to the books.
Perhaps one of my long term projects should be learning to shear em myself. Learning how our shearer guy gets those sheep to fall asleep as he rolls em around would be a good skill to learn.
Keep Prepping Everyone!!!
Video tape the shearer or Youtube it, and give it a whirl. (pun intended)
ReplyDeleteK - I helped him last year and was watching. He also showed me some tricks. The shearing part looked pretty straightforward, not easy mind you but straight forward. It's how they keep those sheep from thrashing around that seems to elude me.
Deletewooooooooolllllll......... :-) Too bad shipping costs are so $$$ ha! Oh, you do know you can dye white fleeces with some of those ol' walnut hulls. I think knitters are re-discovering wool yarns, especially the natural colored wool. Much nicer fiber to work with and definitely holds up better to wear & tear than some of the foo-foo yarns out on the market today. Good for your mom!
ReplyDeletehobo - I got into Sheep because my Mother is a spinner. She sends the stuff off to be cleaned and does all kinds of stuff with it that I pay little attention to. She has all these spinning wheels and the like too. I was just interested in the meat production myself but if she has enough excess to make money off the wool I am adding t to the bottom line.
DeleteWe sell our fleeces to the wool pool every year. A few years ago we raised sheep strictly for hand spinners. The sheep had coats over their fleeces to keep the wool pristine. We would get about 80 dollars or more for each heavily skirted fleece. Hogget fleeces brought even more. Fine wool brings the best prices and there are lots of wool lovers out there. Go online and see how many sell raw fleeces. Your mom will soon have a regular market.
ReplyDeleteTewshooz - I hope. She has sold some in the past but never seemed to have enough of a market for it to move em all. Or with her she could have just been blowing smoke until she had a huge stickpile. I wouldn't put it passed her. I am mainly only interested in the meat sales myself or re-sale of ewes to others.
DeleteNot too surprising, cotton is king around here. But you can still see a market for spun wool yarn.
ReplyDeleteI think it is one of those markets where internet pricing has tended to hurt the pricing power of producers though.
Russ - Ya. Also like her buyer from last year got enough to last him a long while too. Of course in a grid down situation it might move much faster too.
DeletePeople buy what we get at the farm at work. There seems to be a market for yarn that is processed from natural wool as the chemicals are not taken out and it is a totally different product. I know little about it but if you were going to have to survive wearing wool, you would want the natural stuff as it turns water better and just performs differently than the big company produced stuff. I may smell different but I guess it is no worse than the chemical smell. Like I tell the students at work that they should be happy to shovel manure as it is natural, organic and green.
ReplyDeleteSf - Well I know a few of the sheep, especially our Blue Faced Ram, has so much lanolin on them it's positively greasy. I really don't like the smell myself but your hands will be nice and soft after you handle em.
DeleteThere is definitely a market for it here. And not only sheep, but alpaca too, and one guy was even pestering the local buffalo farm for shed buffalo fluff.....
ReplyDeleteRuth - The lady that was here this weekend mentioned she had used alpaca and even dog hair. We will see if she manages to get rid of the rest. She mentioned someone else called her yesterday.
DeleteI have to admit I asked one about spinning the shed from my Tibetan Mastiff this year. I'm interested to see what the yarn turns out like, but a single dog doesn't produce enough to be a viable market produce!
DeleteI grew up keeping sheep. We had around 250 ewes at one point I think. We always got someone in to shear them and if we were lucky we broke even. If we get a few sheep here I plan to shear them myself but I doubt they'lllook very good when tthey're done! Would you do it with electric shears or go off grid with it?
ReplyDeleteKev - Well I would prolly try and learn how to do both rudimentary anyway. The shearing part was a big issue when I finally decided to go the sheep rout for livestock. Originally I wanted to go with a small cattle breed but I had the sheep stock available for free. Still that shearing issue though. I figure it is prolly best to be able to do at least a basic if not pretty job myself.
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