Description

Drum carded for hand spinners or felt makers, British Shetland x Gotland fleece from ‘Humphrey’ our extremely friendly and polite Ram! He is the Father of many beautiful lambs who are part of our lovely flock of conservation grazing sheep for biodiverse chalk grassland and our community orchards. Humphrey’s fleece is more lustrous and has a longer staple length than a pure Shetland and falls into locks with a light to medium crimp.
We blade shear each of our sheep by hand (which allows us to wait until the fleece is ready), the fleeces are then carefully sorted (plant matter removed) and lower grade wool separated for use as packing material. Each fleece is gently but thoroughly washed in well water and eco-friendly laundy liquid or wool scour, dried in the fresh air, put through our antique wool swing picker to open up the locks and remove any remaining vegetable matter and then either kept as the natural fleece colour or naturally dyed by us at our small outside dye house in Oxfordshire, using well water and plant dyes, many of which are grown or gathered by us in a sustainable way from the organic Estate on which we are based. When we do use imported dyes we source these directly, or from a company with a strong ethical sourcing policy.
After dyeing the fleeces are picked over a second time and then either packed for felt makers or drum carded by hand ready for spinning.
We have a policy of buying no new packaging material for use in posting out parcels, we re-use old packaging gathered from other local businesses, individuals and schools. We hope you will enjoy receiving your parcel, whatever shape and size it is, knowing that it has a little less impact on the environment.