“Your wool is worth nothing.”

At Leaf Livestock Wool Company in Geneseo, Illinois, we’ve raised Polypay sheep for 25+ years and naturally colored Rambouillet/Columbia crosses for about 10 years. Recently, we added Merinos and a couple of Targhees. We had as few as 15 sheep on the farm in 1998 and as many as 250 ewes at our height in the early 2010s. Our former shearer, with many years of shearing experience, used to buy our flock’s wool and haul it away in large burlap bags. He returned in a couple days with a check from a wool warehouse in northern Illinois.

One spring about 10 years ago, our shearing day was in full swing, and I was the wool bag stuffer. That year, we’d added a few beautiful brown and gray ewes to our flock when we fell in love with them at a sheep show. Before too long, I was ogling our beautiful brown wool, dreaming about learning how to spin yarn. After finishing shearing our flock, we were talking with the shearer about our wool. I was bragging about how stunning it was, particularly the brown wool, and he stated, “Your wool is worth nothing.”

My beautifully soft wool! Immediately I was offended. What did he mean? His livelihood depended on wool; certainly he’d have a better outlook.

A Frank Look at Wool Value

I didn’t fully understand then that the shearer was expressing his knowledge of the American wool industry and market. Wool prices were terrible, and they had been for years. [PAYWALL]They still are. Many shepherds give their wool away. Some burn it rather than lose money trucking it to a wool pool. Our brown wool in particular, no matter how clean, soft, or long the staple length, was deemed undesirable because it could not be dyed as well as the white wool we sold. We’d receive pennies on the pound for our cleanest, softest brown, gray, or black wool.

Friends, this wool was beautiful! I felt compelled to make it worth something. Even if it was worth something only to me, it felt like a way to honor our animals. (If you want an entertaining education on the history of wool production and processing in the USA, I highly recommend reading Clara Parkes’s book Vanishing Fleece. )

Leaf Livestock’s naturally colored sheep produce gorgeous wool . . . for those with the vision to appreciate it.

By the following summer, I learned how to spin, and I set out to have my first fleece processed. I still remember the cold day in November when my husband, fondly known as the Shepherd, and I traveled to pick up my roving. I opened the box, and I still remember being in awe! I’d never felt anything so amazing as this roving created from my sheep! I planned to spin as much brown yarn as I could out of my worthless wool.

The following year, I processed our Polypay and Columbia wool and more shades of natural brown and gray into roving instead of selling it to the wool pool. I decided I would sell some roving to offset the price of processing.

There were lows on my journey, and of course, there was a steep learning curve. Early on in my journey, a customer didn’t like how much lanolin and dirt was left in the wool roving. I refunded that purchase, and I tried to figure out why it was still dirty. Why didn’t the mill get the dirt out? I’ve learned that certain mills do a better job with our high-lanolin finewool. With the higher level of lanolin content, it is hard to wash out the dirt that accumulates over the year of growth. After that experience, I spent time talking to fiber farmers and learning about their preferred mills. I’ve learned to use a variety of mills for our range of products. There’s still VM in our roving, but I’m better at skirting, and I’ve found mills that can do a better job cleaning it.

I learned to dye my roving, and I became a contributor to a monthly wool subscription box. That was an exciting start to the fiber arts community. I earned enough to keep processing wool and to buy a cool drum carder. I loved that others wanted to buy and use my roving and batts for creating. I was motivated to continue to process our worthless wool.

My spinning, weaving, and dyeing interest increased, and before too long I was teaching beginner weaving classes and yarn dyeing classes. What better to weave with and dye with than my own home-grown yarn, right? So I expanded my wool offerings to mill-processed yarn.

Blending a bit of brown Rambouillet with Merino creates an oatmeal-colored yarn that takes dye beautifully.

Finding Value in Every Lock

Every April, Colin, our shearer of the last three years, the shearing team (friends who love our wool as much as we do), my family, and I spend two days harvesting the wool from our current flock of around 125 sheep. We also skirt, test the lock strength, label, and bag each fleece. It takes a couple months for me to inspect the entire wool clip again and skirt it more closely.

I sort wool by staple and shade; each decision made is to create a different end product. The longest staple wool is for yarn. The dirtiest wool becomes the most amazing combed top from that the mill that can clean our wool the best. Our customers love our combed top for spinning, and I have another mill make yarn with the combed top. (To read more about my experiences learning to make the best yarn from my flock, read my article “Farm-Fresh Yarn.”) I have the mills blend Merino with a bit of natural brown wool for a beautiful oatmeal yarn that looks super dyed! I sell out of that in no time! Since I prefer to spin roving, I have a couple wool/silk roving blends made each year. I have had rug yarn made from skirtings—that’s right, the dirtier wool with too much VM to pick out has become rugs!

Finally, all of the gray and brown becomes yarn and roving or combed top. I enjoy overdyeing the brown yarn. The customers love it; it’s so beautiful! The brown undertone creates a wonderful depth of the overdyed color. Remember, at the beginning of my story, how the brown wool was worth nothing? It’s amazing; now I sell or spin every bit of brown wool.

Once deemed worthless, Leaf Livestock’s brown wool is one of the farm’s most popular products.

My worthless wool has become tremendously special to me and to all of the people who create with it. Sweaters, hats, shawls, and so many items have been created across the country. Who could have known that a tired shearer with nothing good to say about my wool would motivate me to make a passion and a lifestyle out of nothing?

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Anne Sammons and her family own Leaf Livestock Wool Company, which raises Polypay, naturally colored Rambouillet/Columbia cross, Merino/Targhee cross, and Merino sheep in northern Illinois. Find her on Instagram as @leaflivestockwoolco.