The "Problem" with Wool

Even before I started raising sheep, I had an affinity for wool clothing. When I was in high school, my Dad gave me a Pendleton board shirt he'd had since college. I still wear a Woolrich sweater that I received for Christmas while I was in college. As soon as the fall weather turns cool here in the Sierra foothills, I wear wool shirts. And I wear wool socks 365 days out of the year.

Wool is an amazing fiber. It keeps me warm even when it's wet. It is naturally antimicrobial - I have a wool t-shirt from Duckworth that I haven't needed to wash since I received it for my birthday last April. Wool is naturally fire resistant (unlike synthetic fibers). It stretches and breathes and holds onto dye (which explains why that 1960's vintage Pendleton my Dad gave me still looks great).

From a sustainability perspective, wool is equally amazing. I wear a wool cap crocheted from my wool by my friend Marie Hoff - I love thinking about the fact that 5 years ago, that cap was nothing more than grass and sunshine that my sheep converted into fiber through the miracle of rumination. Wool is biodegradable too - there's no island of wool floating in Pacific, nor are there micro-particles of wool found in sea creatures.

The biggest problem with wool, at least for me as a wool producer, is that it's so damned durable! It doesn't wear out! Many of the wool shirts I wear all winter are 30-plus years old! I guess this doesn't say much for my fashion sense, but it certainly reflects my frugality. If wool didn't last so long, perhaps we'd sell more of it!

In all seriousness, I have thought about the lifetime cost of a wool coat versus a synthetically lined canvas coat (both of which I've owned). I have a Pendleton western shirt I purchased more than 20 years ago. At the time, I think I paid $100. In that same time period, I wore out countless cotton shirts (at $25-40 a pop). The cotton shirts needed to be washed after every time I wore them; the Pendleton needed to be dry cleaned once or twice a year. I guess I'm slow on the uptake, but looking back on 20 years of winter warmth and work, all I needed was the Pendleton!

For the last several years, we've sold our wool through a broker (mostly because I lacked the time to do the marketing myself). In the overall scheme of things, our wool clip is a tiny drop in the world wool bucket - not even a blip on our broker's radar screen (to mix my metaphors). This year, thanks to the trade war with China, our 2019 wool clip remains unsold. In 2020, we'll think about alternative uses for our wool - perhaps I'll have it scoured (cleaned) and use it for home insulation - or maybe I'll find a local fiber artist who wants to turn grass and sunlight into something beautiful! Either way, I'm happy to know that our 2020 wool clip will be around for a long time - that's the "problem" with wool!