Wool Gathering

This past weekend, my husband and I went to pick up 200# of wool and took it to the processing plant. This is the wool that I will be using to build a yurt this summer. It was really exciting to get started on this project.

We got up early on Saturday morning and drove to Florence, MT which is about 3 hours from our house. We arrived and the little white trailer is where the wool we were buying was stored. We loaded it on to our trailer and strapped it all down.

Here are a few of the sheep that were on Suzanne’s farm.

Most of the wool is this dark color. This is either a Targee or Black Welsh breed of sheep.

The dogs wanted to get in on the act, so here is Suzanne trying to calm them down a bit.

All of the bags of wool were labeled with the sheep name for the fleece. This is Sophie and there was also Elmo and Ernie and a few others I have forgotten.

Here’s some of the darker wool. I got a mix of Targee, Black Welsh, Romney and BFL.

Then we took off for Hall, MT. We had to make a stop for a cargo net to go over the tarp as we were afraid all the wool was going to blow away. Once it was strapped down more tightly, we were back on the road to Hall. After another one and half hours of driving we arrived at Sugar Loaf Wool Mill.

Here I am helping to unload the wool from the trailer. It was cold and windy.

Once we got inside, Ed weighed all the bags of wool. We had 206#.

Here’s Sue and her assistant adding up the wool amounts.

Here is the carder and it is really huge. Ed was really nice and turned on the carder to make a batt that will be similar to the ones I will be getting back. The videos below show the carder at work. I wasn’t able to edit the videos because I need a better editing program but I think they are worth watching if you haven’t seen a big carder running before. The videos are fairly short and the last one shows Ed cutting the batt off the carder.

This is a rolling felting machine that Ed built himself. I need one of these 🙂