Things To Know When Buying Fleece From Us

1. The fleece will be raw (unwashed and uncarded or combed and containing lanolin, dirt and debris natural to sheep’s fleece that lives in a field) unless otherwise stated in the description. The fleece will be varying degrees of dirty but should never be disgusting or offensive.

2. The fleece will more than likely be shipped compressed to save room in the shipping box. Please carefully open the package as soon as feasible and let the fleece decompress and get its loft back. If it stays compressed for a long period of time it is possible that the fleece may loose some of its crimp or loft. It will still be a perfectly spinnable fleece but will loose a bit of its character.

3. The fleece will have some vegetable matter, mostly hay but also some seed heads and little things that the sheep have picked up in the field. Please be aware that there may be viable seed heads in your fleece so please process it in a place/way that those seed heads do not sprout and give you weeds where you don’t want them.

4. I include some britch wool because I know it takes a yarn even stronger. It all depends of what the wool will be used for.

5. I do include some neck wool that may have a little more vegetable matter than the rest of the fleece because the neck wool is extremely soft! It is nothing that a quick flick or two with a flicker brush cannot knock out.

6. I do not coat my sheep. Between the sheep tearing up the coats I did buy them and watching them pant and struggle with hear stress so much in the summer, I have personally decided that for my flock, it is not worth it. You should ask me the story about Lightening the sheep almost strangling her newborn in a twisted leg loop on a coat that fit her sometime. I will post that somewhere: probably in the “this is why it is important to have sane animals” section.

7. I do my utter best to accurately present my products: the good, bad and ugly. Lighting can be tricky with colors and shades. If you find a lock or two that happens to be shorter than what I said in the description, please give me some grace. Now if there is a good amount of it that is shorter then I probably made a mistake, please reach out to me and I will make it right.

8. Our sheep are on mostly grass and hay from our own fields. They live in those fields and get messy. They have shelters but sometimes they choose to not use them. We use as little medicines or chemicals as possible in order to preserve hardiness and vigor. To date, we have never used any pour-ons. The wool you receive will be very natural.

9. We want you to be happy with your wool and we also want repeat customers! If you are not happy with any aspect of your experience with us and our wool, please let us know.

10. Lamb fleeces are unique in a few general ways: they are usually the softest fleece a sheep will make in its lifetime with very few exceptions; the tips of the wool usually break off due to how fragile a newborns wool is and the fact that it is covered in birthing fluids; the fleece will probably have a shorter staple length than what will be typical for that sheep for the rest of its lifetime. There are a few exceptions to these "rules" of course, but generally this is the case. In my own personal opinion, the value of having an extra soft fleece balances out the fact that the tips may break and the slightly shorter staple length. Mind you, it should just be the tips of the wool that are fragile. There should never be a weakness in a staple of wool any where in the middle of the locks. That is wool break and is not a normal occurrence. Please see the Term Definition page for "Break" for more information on wool break.