The Outdoor Gibbon
Join me on my journey through stories and interviews talking to like-minded individuals. It doesn’t matter who you are this podcast will hopefully educate and guide you through the world deerstalking, shooting and the outdoor world.
The information in these podcasts is for you to enjoy and develop you own opinions, if you take everyday as a school day you will see the bigger picture.
Thanks for listening and sharing in the journey
The Outdoor Gibbon
65 British Wool: The Forgotten Fiber Making a Comeback
A humble fleece from a sheep's back holds the key to a more sustainable clothing industry—if only we'd reconnect with this remarkable fiber. In this episode, we journey deep into the world of wool processing with Fiona, founder of The Shire Mill, a small independent operation breathing new life into British wool.
The disconnect between sheep farmers and the true value of their wool tells a troubling story. What once provided a farmer's annual rent now fetches less than the cost of shearing, pushing many to discard fleeces rather than sell them. Yet as synthetic fabrics fill our landfills, the natural performance benefits of wool—breathability, water resistance, warmth even when wet, and complete biodegradability—remain unmatched by modern alternatives.
Following a fleece's transformation reveals the craftsmanship behind quality wool products. From the initial "skirting" to remove debris, through washing, fiber separating, carding, drawing, spinning, and plying—each step demands skill and patience. The process preserves each fleece's unique character, whether from soft Bluefaced Leicester sheep or hardy Herdwick breeds whose wool excels in carpets and outerwear.
Most fascinating is Fiona's personalized approach, processing individual sheep's fleeces separately to return "Dave yarn" or "Steve yarn" to farmers with named animals. This connection between animal, processor, and end product represents what's been lost in our fast-fashion world, where a 75p synthetic beanie becomes garbage while a £75 wool hat could serve for decades before harmlessly returning to the soil.
Have you considered the origin story of your clothing? Join us in celebrating this remarkable renewable resource and the skilled artisans working to preserve traditional wool processing in Britain. Follow us across social platforms to continue the conversation about sustainable natural materials and share this episode with anyone interested in reconnecting with the authentic materials that clothed humanity for centuries.
The mill can be found at https://www.shiremill.co.uk/
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Thinking about doing the PDS1 or PDS2 use the link below.
https://www.shootingandhuntingacademy.co.uk/link/6f1QuV
Using this link above you will get a Free PDS1 Shooting assessment with myself in scotland
Hello and hello and welcome to another episode of the outdoor gibbon podcast, episode 65. We in this episode are going to talk about wool, the whole process taking a fleece from a sheep and turning it into a usable product, be that a wool product or even just a thread. But we'll come on to that shortly. June how did we get to june? That six months of the year has just flown by. We were only what feels like talking about the beginning of the year, the end of the pheasant season and all the rest of it and the stalking show, and now all of a sudden we're into june. We're almost at that longest day and we all know what happens after that. The days get shorter again and we head off towards winter. That's when the fun time begins. I think that's when everybody will be gearing up for those days when you can light the fire, cozy up at the end of a shoot day, drink a drink, a wee dram, or have that light nice glass of port. But let's hope it doesn't get there too quickly. We've got plenty to be going on with while the summer's here and hopefully the weather stays for just a little bit longer so that we can just enjoy those summer months, but that rain has been much required. We're seeing that the ground has quite happily soaked that up quite nicely. Unfortunately, that has one major disadvantage, and that disadvantage is that all the weeds and the cover suddenly grows. So for the start of the roebuck season it's been absolutely brilliant with very low cover, and I was just looking today and it's amazing how much the weeds and the grasses have jumped. And now all of a sudden, the roebucks have the natural ability to hide even better and and presenting a shot gets even harder and harder.
Speaker 2:So we recently ran a poll on the insta feed and we asked whether or not people would like to see the in-field type of recording, another one of those where the last one was done with Catherine and we recorded the entire day out deer stalking. The feedback has been massively positive, with a lot of people saying yes, please, they really enjoyed that sort of that sort of podcast. So stick with me. There's a few ideas in the pipeline. One might be some dog training, another will be a stalk, but definitely something coming up in the future. As well as that, we have got some more great guests lined up for you. We are going to be talking all sorts of wonderful topics and hopefully something for everybody to enjoy. So let's get on with the podcast.
Speaker 2:So I chat here to fiona, who runs a small independent wool mill at a friend's farm in leicestershire. I it was a spur of the moment type of recording I was down there to go to the stalking show and just offhand said do you want to do a podcast? And she agreed she doesn't want to hear it back, she doesn't like hearing her own voice, but I think it's absolutely brilliant. So if you do know her and you have listened to it, do give us some feedback and say that she should definitely listen. Anyway, let's get started. The Outdoor Given podcast is proudly sponsored by the Shooting and Hunting Academy, an online training platform and UK registered learning provider that provides a host of accredited and nationally available courses and masterclasses delivered by leading industry experts. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Outdoor Gibbon podcast. Today I am joined by Fiona, and she runs a small scale mill called the Shire Mill. How are you doing?
Speaker 3:Good, thank you Yourself.
Speaker 2:Very good. Thank you very much for this very impromptu recording.
Speaker 3:You're welcome.
Speaker 2:I kind of just bullied my friends where I was staying to say I can I get a recording with uh, with this lady that runs a mill. So tell us more about obviously. First of all it's you process wool we do.
Speaker 3:Yes, I mean, milk covers quite a lot. We, we could be grinding wheat, but no, no, no.
Speaker 2:We we process wool exactly, so tell us a bit more about why one you wanted to start processing wool.
Speaker 3:Yeah, okay, so wool, it's a passion of mine, that's what it comes down to.
Speaker 3:I have been a knitter since I was about seven. My grandma, I think probably just to keep me quiet and out of the way put some knitting needles and some yarn in my hands and taught me how to knit. And then nothing for quite a long time, picked it back up later on and it's like a rabbit hole basically. So you start with knitting and then you think, oh, maybe I could dye some yarn, maybe I could spin some fleece, and you buy a spinning wheel, and you buy some processing hand carders and things, and you just fall down the rabbit hole. Um, and and you love it, and um, it was always a bit of a dream to do that on a bigger scale right um.
Speaker 3:So I'd seen mini mills. I knew they were a thing that was available, um, but they're very, very expensive and that got put into the if. If I win the lottery, maybe I could do that sort of bucket. And then a local mill who used to be in Derbyshire had decided to retire.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:And they put all their equipment out for sale and because it was about 20 years old, at that point it was cheaper. I'm not going to say cheap, cheaper and it was one of those. If I don't try this now, I will never get another opportunity.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:So I had to go for it. You know, and very kindly, the friends that you mentioned said I could rent one of their buildings because I have nowhere at home to put it. The equipment is quite large. You had a quick tour this morning.
Speaker 2:As I say, we've just seen sort of the mill and, yeah, these aren't the sort of things you're going to put in your lounge.
Speaker 3:No, I think a lot of people do think I'm there with a spinning wheel and a drum carder and doing it all very much sort of individually by hand. But it's not, it's lot bigger yeah, these are sort of mini.
Speaker 2:Well, they're fairly substantial machines, gears, drives, motors the carder weighs 850 kilos.
Speaker 3:I know that because we had to move it. So the um, the mill, as I said, was in derbyshire and we had to go and pick up all this equipment. That was very stressful. Um involved a loader hoisting this equipment that I just bought through the air onto the back of the truck and then it flew down the motorway and we had to get it in here and I was going to say it's, it's in a sort of a courtyard.
Speaker 2:Uh, through it doesn't really look like it's got very big doors through small doorways.
Speaker 3:No not through the doorway, okay, we had to get permission to pull out a window and the wall put the machinery in again, dangling off a loader and lots of skidskates and stuff, and then rebuild the wall with the machinery inside. So that's going nowhere anytime soon because it is literally built into the building.
Speaker 2:But that's how probably old mills back in the day were built. The machinery was probably fitted in on multiple floors. Yeah, probably built in situ and and that was it. So again it kind of goes back. I think the reason for this podcast is we were I've talked on a couple of podcasts about using products, byproducts of of animals, for example, wool, fleeces, skins, fur, and it's just died in the in the uk there are.
Speaker 3:There are pockets of it, which is good. That gives me hope. Um, there are people that are championing it and working with it. There are some, some quite big brands that use british wool. Um, but still not a lot okay um, as, as an example, the wool clip, which is what you call all the shearing of your fleece, that would, once upon a time, have paid your rent for the year. So in summer you'd shear your sheep, you'd load them on the trailer, you'd sell those fleeces and that would cover your rent.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:Now, what you get paid does not cover the cost of shearing.
Speaker 2:I was going to say of the five. Yeah, they're not, they're just sitting there with with packs of wool. That, yeah it almost. It's better to stick it on the ground, as I care a lot.
Speaker 3:A lot of people do um, so it costs about one pound fifty to have a sheep sean right and depend.
Speaker 3:It depends on the breed, the condition, the color, what you get back for it. You might get 50 pence, you might get a pound back. So it costs you more to have the fleece taken off the sheep, which you must do for welfare reasons, you can't just leave them. So it costs you more to have that shearing done. Then you will get back. You also have to deliver your wool to the depot that takes it. So for a lot of people they will be spending more in the diesel to take their flee wool to the depot that takes it. So for a lot of people they will be spending more in the diesel to take their fleeces to the depot.
Speaker 2:It's crazy then they'll get back, but that I suppose that goes back to the fact that the uk, which had especially the area we're in now, had absolutely fantastic number of mills derbyshire peak district that that were producing some of the finest.
Speaker 3:Wool was huge. For many hundreds of years in the UK wool was massive. That was where, as a nation, our wealth really sat. But then synthetic fibres came in and they're very easy to look after, they're very cheap, they're mostly manufactured abroad and people were sort of attracted by this convenience, which I think is where a lot of of that kind of comes in.
Speaker 2:I think so, and it's the it's as you say. It's exactly that word, that word that we hear all the time. It's cheap, yeah, and wool. Wool is expensive, because we'll come on to the process in a minute, because you just explained it to me this morning but you have a fantastic material. That's. That's basically.
Speaker 3:It's pretty waterproof, it's breathable, it's yeah, it's so good on so many levels that it's really hard to replicate it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but it's right there, it already exists. You know it's it as you say it. It can be fairly waterproof. It's warm when it's wet, which a lot of synthetic materials are not, so it's got that going as well. It's a sustainable material. They're out there growing it right now because we're not quite into shearing season For most people. Some people have started, but for most people it's still growing, but it grows every year. It's a carbon sink. There's carbon stored in the wall. So if you've got a jumper that can last 50 years or more, it's a carbon store and it's biodegradable at the end of its life.
Speaker 3:So you could take your woolly jumper that is no good anymore and as long as it's a pure wool jumper, you could bury it in the ground and it will rot it will rot and disappear and actually give, give back minerals and materials to the ground so that your runner beans, whatever you exactly and and there is no other material that can do that, and they keep sort of trying to reproduce this with the kind of the, the very technical materials that you, you can buy to wear for whatever activities you're doing, and you just kind of think but wool is right, there, it already exists do you see, do we see, a trend of wool coming back to the high street, or is it still is it?
Speaker 2:is it still one of those things that people just think, oh, it's itchy, I'm not going to have that.
Speaker 3:I think a lot of people still think it's itchy and that very much depends on the wool you're using. So there are hundreds of breeds. The uk has hundreds of breeds, but if you look globally, so many breeds and some are amazingly skin soft and you could wear them around your neck and others are really not okay so something like a herdwick, which is a sheep a lot of people will be familiar with. They're very cute. You see them in the lakes. Um, they are lovely, but they have a very coarse fleece.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:But it's about using the right fleece for the right job.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:So Herdwick is amazing for things like carpets.
Speaker 2:Right, okay.
Speaker 3:And I've seen it used in suits as well, because it's very hard wearing and you've got a layer between the wool and your skin.
Speaker 3:But then there's lots of other fleeces that you would put next to your skin that are soft. So it's about using the right breed for the job you're looking for and not just going, oh I want a wool sweater, because you might end up with anything. So you would want to be sort of a little bit specific about it. Shetland is a good example of some very nice soft fleece. We have Blueface Leicester, which is lovely. Merino is one a lot of people hear about.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah.
Speaker 3:You don't see as much British Merino.
Speaker 2:I was going to say that's more sort of further afield, the Merino, wasn't it?
Speaker 3:Yeah, a lot of Australian Merino and South African no, South American Merino.
Speaker 2:It's one of those things that's something that you do see a lot of, because people like merino socks, merino base layers, because of the natural ability for the, the breathability, the, the natural wicking and everything about it. So that seems to be there, but that's not obviously helping the british farmer it's not.
Speaker 3:But those are properties of wool, those are not properties of merino. The the thing with the merino is it's very smooth. It's got very fine fibres. It's got a lot to do with the thickness of the individual hairs and the number of scales on it, so this is probably more detailed than you want to be no, no, no, keep going.
Speaker 3:If you watch television and you see an advert for conditioner and they'll show you a diagram of a hair very close in and it'll have the scales and they will be going on about how their wonderful conditioner smooths these and makes your hair lovely and shiny. Wool has the same kind of scales.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:But some fleeces have more, some are bigger, some are coarser, and then the individual fibre itself is thicker. That will be perhaps, shall we say say, a little bit more scratchy, potentially right if it's smoother if it's thinner. If the scales are smaller, then it will be. It will feel softer, it will feel less prickly. So that is all down to the breed oh, wow, okay, that's written there.
Speaker 2:That's really interesting because obviously, yeah, some people will look out the window and there'll be a sheep, probably now standing in the in the field behind their house, and they'll go. It's a sheep it is a sheep. It makes wool yes but then you've just explained that that particular breed, or whatever that sheep is, it could have. Yeah, there's, there's multiple different types of the fleece you're going to get off it that you can process down so you can get a core. That is brilliant. That's really interesting. I didn't know that.
Speaker 3:There we go.
Speaker 2:Right, so let's okay so say that somebody's now shorn their sheep.
Speaker 3:Yep.
Speaker 2:And we're not talking like Wallace and Gromit, where you chuck the sheep in at one end and the process happens in a woolly jumper.
Speaker 3:We are not.
Speaker 2:It's not quite that magical. Okay, so they've shorn the sheep, they've got this bag of raw fleece?
Speaker 3:yep, and they then send that to you well before they send it to me right um, what I ask them to do, or require them to do, really is to do what we call skirting. So you lay the fleece out flat and you take off all the really mucky bits.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:Okay, I tend to describe it as if you wouldn't want it in the yarn. Take it out the fleece.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:So obviously around the back end of the sheep there's quite often a lot of muck, yep. So take all of that off. You'll also have bits, quite often around the neck, that are felted. Okay, take that off. Around the edges a lot of them have quite hairy legs. Especially if you're looking at the native breed Right, those hairs will be thicker, they'll be coarser. If those go into your yarn it'll make a more prickly yarn.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:So to get the best yarn, I get them to spend. It can just be five minutes picking out the best bits of fleece and obviously picking out the sticks and the twigs.
Speaker 3:Yeah, sticks and twigs and things. There's no point sending those um, because obviously you don't want those in your yarn. Of things like sticks, I can pull those out, but if there's a lot of hay, a lot of grass, seeds, things like that, you do end up with tiny bits of those in the yarn, okay. So if it's not in the fleece to start with, you'll get a better yarn.
Speaker 2:You get a better. Okay, right okay.
Speaker 3:So before they send it to me, I ask them to do that. But yes, then they bag it up.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:They book it in first. I should say Okay right.
Speaker 3:Just in case anybody starts thinking they're just going to post me lots of bags of yarn, book it, it comes in to me. We take in by post or courier. So we take from Scotland, we take from Cornwall. We do also have quite a lot of local customers. If they're local or passing by, they might drop it off in person, which is lovely, because then I can talk about sheep at them. They can have the tour, which is wonderful. So they bring it in and I've got these lovely bags of fleece to work with. We sort out what they'd like it back as so they could have it back as roving if they want to spin it themselves, which is like a nice, clean, fluffy stuff ready for spinning.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 3:They might want it back as yarn and then there's various thicknesses of yarn they can have back. So we have a chat about what they want it back, as they might not know, so I'll talk them through it and work it out. Police come in and then they are. Washed is the first step. So we need to get the dirt, the grease, all of that out so they're nice and clean.
Speaker 2:Now, this washing process you talk about, is this where you stick it in a washing machine, or is this a very manual you do each one? You're shoving it in and out of a bucket, kind of thing.
Speaker 3:Closer to the second okay so it's. They go through depending on how clean the fleece is. Right about six stages of washing, wow. So they'll go through. A nice cold soak overnight gets lots of dirt out, and then they'll have hot washes with soap and washes without soap to rinse them off okay, and is it a specific type of soap?
Speaker 2:because obviously you you always get a woolen jumper and you read the packet and it says hand wash only and obviously be careful of temperatures, things like that. So is there something special with the washing process?
Speaker 3:we. We have a scouring detergent okay um, but if someone's doing it small scale at home, I, when I was doing that just to do some hand spinning, I used to quite often use washing up liquid because it's a degreaser and what you're looking for is to take the grease out of the leaves and the grease, and those greases are just the natural greases that occur on the hair. Yeah, it's what keeps the sheep waterproof. It's the lanolin, so so they use it for waterproofing.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:But we want it taken out before we start spinning because it will gum the machines up.
Speaker 2:Right, okay no-transcript.
Speaker 3:And then we set them out to dry. As far as possible we air dry our fleeces okay which this time of year we're just. It's just getting warmer, so much easier job.
Speaker 2:In winter that can take quite a long time so does that mean, in in the summer you can process more than in the winter because of air drying?
Speaker 3:certainly get it through the washing process quicker, okay, but there is a limit to how much I can physically do as one person running the machines, okay. So it's a little bit easier to do that prep stage when the weather's nice, because it will sort of proper height of summer. It will dry overnight okay, right, right but it's. It's much easier when it's nice and warm okay so from there it starts going through the machines okay do you want a description of each?
Speaker 3:let's, let's do the process because, at the end of the day, you just showed me through the mill.
Speaker 2:We can't record in the mill with the machines running because literally loud it would be, it would just be machine it would just be machine noise. So I've had a quick run through, but we'll go through it again for the listeners so they can kind of get that process yeah, okay, um, and there are lots and lots of pictures of our processing stages.
Speaker 3:If people want to see them, I will put links for that so they can have a look. That's great. So the first machine we go through is the fiber separator, okay, which fluffs the fleece out.
Speaker 3:So it goes in looking like a sheep fleece, albeit a clean one, and it comes out looking like a big fluffy cloud okay, yeah, so it's opened the fibers up, it's separated them out and the bit that you wouldn't have been able to see, because it's underneath is a certain amount of things like vegetation, and coarse fibers will fall out downwards okay so it will take those out up to a point. If there's a lot of vegetation, some is going to make it through, but it will take a little bit of that fluffy cloud with leaves is a possibility fluffy cloud with some leaves is possibility right but quite a lot of it will fall out underneath right, okay so that's that's made it into that, that nice fiber.
Speaker 3:You've now got something to start processing okay, and is that that must be?
Speaker 2:you were saying about having to just put small amounts onto the conveyor belt, so you're actually manually having to process this to put it in there.
Speaker 3:So again, that's a labor intensive job yeah, so I will stand next to it as it's running. I will fluff the fleece out a little bit. I don't just throw it in and wait for it to come out right I put it in on on the belt in handfuls.
Speaker 3:Okay, so that will go in. If you put too much in, it just won't process right. So I'll sit and supervise that stand, usually to be fair. Um, from there it'll go into the carder. Anybody who is listening, who has done any kind of spinning, will perhaps be familiar with drum carders or hand carders and what they do.
Speaker 2:They brush the fibers right, align them to a degree and produce something that's ready to start spinning okay, that was that small sort of one inch wide like fiber sausage, fiber sausage coming at the end, that's that's roving okay, right so, as you say, it looks like a sausage, but it's 50 yards long right, okay so the carder will take that fluffy cloud, brush through it and align those fibers to make that roving fluffy sausage.
Speaker 3:So then it's in a position.
Speaker 2:It's it's about ready to spin and you said that some people just that's all they want done. They'll buy their, they'll take their roving away. Yeah, they'll go home, they'll spin it themselves or they'll use it, for I think felt felting.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so some. That's what some people like to do. They like to spin or they like to felt. But to do the cleaning and preparation process at home is it's quite, it's quite labor intensive. Um, you end up using the bathtub, which is usually not very popular with your partner.
Speaker 3:Um, buckets in the garden are preferable, but I, I know people do use the bathtub, um, and it's just quite a big messy job to do at home, if you've got a big garden, fine, but if you haven't, or maybe if you just don't want to do it, which is fair enough, so they'll send it to us and we will turn it into roving that they can have back, and then they can spin it themselves or felt with it. Some people have it back like that to sell on, so they have customers that would like to spin their sheep, but they don't want to buy a raw fleece from them, so they might buy some roving instead okay.
Speaker 2:And then okay, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. And then, so now we've got these. They look like giant cardboard tubes now the cans, yeah cans. Now they're full of roving. So what? What then? What's the next process?
Speaker 3:okay, so the next process we combine two of those together.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:We put it through something called a draw frame.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:It teases those fibre sausages out and combines two.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:We'll then take the output from that and do it again.
Speaker 2:So when you're combining the two, are you kind of you're reducing or making it stronger?
Speaker 3:So the strength will be the same.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:It's just, it's mixing them essentially. By the time you've done that twice, you've got four batches of carder output sat next to each other okay and that will make a nice consistent fiber stream for the machines. That's what the machines like. They like consistency okay so they like a nice smooth fiber to feed in to spin. If there's lots of thick bits and thin bits, you'll get breakages as you're trying to spin right.
Speaker 2:If, if it's a human that is doing the spinning by hand, then we can adapt yes, but the machinery can't do I was going to say the machinery doesn't have the same sense as the human being watching it and spinning it. We have the human brain, we go oh, it's a thin bit, we'll add a bit more, whereas the machine is just like well, I just process this. I don't know what I'm doing Exactly.
Speaker 3:So I can do a certain degree with the settings on the machinery.
Speaker 2:But the machine assumes what's being fed in is consistent right and a human doesn't need that, which is is why they are obviously soo-searing. So setting, just going back a snap, setting this all up. Is it, um? Is there a like a recipe, or is it trial and error? Does it change with fleeces? Do you have to spend a lot of time adjusting machines?
Speaker 3:so it's a little bit of all of those. Okay, when we bought the machinery, I had two days of tuition on the machines before we picked them up right that was not really enough, as I, as I learned afterwards, because there was so much to learn.
Speaker 3:The first few are quite straightforward. So the fiber separator feed it in not too fast. The carder we weigh it in, out comes the roving. When you get to the spinner, there's a lot to learn, a lot of different settings, a lot of subtleties that will change. And then, because fleece is an organic material, every fleece is different.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:So every breed is different and you can say OK, well, I know the fleece I've got coming through is a long wool okay and obviously I look at it and as I'm handling it and doing the first stages, that's very useful because I get to learn quite a lot about the fleece so I can see the lengths of the fiber, I can see what it's like, I can see how it's behaving.
Speaker 3:But one long wool is not necessarily the same as another and individual sheep within that might be different, and if you bring in crossbreeds as well, they can be different again. But actually they can be really good because they can take the best of both. So every single fleece requires a little bit of okay. I know this is probably the sort of settings that I'm looking for the outdoor gibbon podcast is proudly sponsored by the shooting and hunting academy.
Speaker 2:Through the academy, shooters, hunters and those involved in the use of firearms can gain an in-depth and unique level of training that enables them to shoot better, behave more effectively in the field, up their strike rates, as well as learning new skills, crucially those new to deer stalking. The Academy also offers the Proficient Deer Stalker Certificate Level 1, the PDS1, a deer management certificate that is nationally recognised and accredited both by Lantra and UK Rural Skills. Visit the Shooting and Hunting Academy to find out more, and uk rural skills visit the shooting and hunting academy to find out more.
Speaker 3:Let's get back to the show but let's test it, alter it as needed, hit the sweet spot that it will run happily you're kind of all of this kind of says exactly why that we went away to synthetic fiber.
Speaker 2:Because you set the machine going to produce nylon, yeah and, and it wangs out nylon it does.
Speaker 3:I mean bigger machines, bigger processing are a little bit different to my tiny bits of equipment.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't say your bits of equipment are tiny, but they're, they must be more comparable, so my spinner yeah has what we call heads, so it spins eight strands at a time.
Speaker 3:Right, the sort of the next size up of mill in the UK is spinning 24.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:So they are working at three times the speed. So in the world of mills, we are tiny.
Speaker 2:That then means the manpower. Looking at at it, you do all of this individually. If you were in a, a commercial mill, you'd have one, maybe two operators per machine, I'm assuming probably not.
Speaker 3:They'd probably work at a similar sort of rate. Oh really, yes, um, it would be. Everything would be scaled up, right, but the manpower would only be slightly scaled up. Oh, wow, okay, once you've got the settings it can hopefully run quite happily. So you do those settings, but the all eight, or all 24 or all 120, if you're running that would be running the same.
Speaker 2:Right, okay.
Speaker 3:So I can't do two batches on the spinner at one time. That are different yes, of course so it will be running those eight and once I've done all that sort of fiddling about and finding the sweet spot, so it will run quite happily.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you have to do it as a batch, but you can you put.
Speaker 3:Say, somebody sends you 10 fleeces yes, I can combine them into one big batch of 10 fleeces, so you don't have to just do like one fleece make a bag of wool. I don't have to, but we do.
Speaker 3:We can do that okay which is where we have quite a lot of customers who've got named sheep right so we will get dave and we will get ron and we will get steve and they'll come in a bag with the names on and I love that because I love to kind of know who we're working with and they will get back Steve Yarn.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:That they can make a jumper with.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:But we do also have people who would like a bigger batch. So they perhaps have half a dozen fleeces and they'd like all of those combined, which we can do as long as the fleeces are similar.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:So, as I said, even within a breed it can vary, so you might get some that is half the length of another. So what I would do is I would say these aren't going to work very well together. Let's make a batch that is the longer stuff and a batch that is the shorter stuff, and we'll process them as two batches. You'll get two lots of yarn. Okay, the yarns themselves will be quite similar, but those fleeces were perhaps not blended very well together for our machinery I see so we can do that.
Speaker 2:But I would always sort of look at the fleeces and work out what I suppose that gives you the ability, as a small scale operation, to actually give a higher quality product back. I hope so yeah whereas, obviously, if you were processing tens of thousands of fleeces a day, you have less that's a very different process.
Speaker 3:Yeah though, oh, I say different process. Actually the stages are the same, but we're talking much bigger equipment. I would imagine it's more tolerant of a bit of variation than the smaller equipment.
Speaker 2:But do you think the yarn would be coming out as probably as good a quality?
Speaker 3:I mean I'm going to say yes because I've worked with a lot of beautiful yarn from mills of all sizes. I think what we have, because we focus on small batches I will take from a kilo, which is a fleece, up to about 15. So small batches is what we do and it means we can give that sort of that level of service. We can look through and we can say let's make two batches. Do you want an individual named sheep? Yeah, how would you like it? Um, and they, they can have the best yarn for their wool back that we can make.
Speaker 2:So we've just got the last part of the process. I think we touched on the spinner, so you've got the spinner yeah and now that's producing bobbins of um singles singles yep, so that's one strand.
Speaker 3:Okay, so we've taken the fluffy sausage. Yeah, we've teased it out. We've put twist in it. Okay, we've filled a bobbin with that, so we've. We've got these lovely bobbins full.
Speaker 2:From there it goes to the plier but you said something about your machine was sensitive and it lives in a tent, doesn't it? Only in the winter only in the winter, okay it's very pampered. Well, we need to tell people about this, because you walk into this room and there's all these machines, and then you've got this there's a gazebo, there's a gazebo there is, and inside that there is another machine.
Speaker 3:There is it doesn't like the cold and the damp and, as you said, we're in a machine on a courtyard and in winter it gets very, very cold right and the machine does not like it. It doesn't like to be cold, it doesn't like to be damp, which we found out the first winter. We knew that they didn't like to be too cold, but it was a little bit of a surprise when I turned it on. It went into overdrive and started trying to run at maximum speed.
Speaker 3:You're right, turned it off very quickly because that's not ideal, that that's going to break the machine I had to look through, took the side panel off, you know, got the electrician in, came to the conclusion it just didn't like to be cold and damp. So from November to May it lives in a gazebo with a little heater Okay, very pampered.
Speaker 2:I was going to say that that's, yeah, very pampered for a machine, absolutely, but especially living on this farm. We are sat in a kitchen at the moment and it's colder in here than it is outdoors.
Speaker 3:Yes, that doesn't surprise me at all.
Speaker 2:This farm is not. They don't heat it very often.
Speaker 3:So the fire does come on, but I can understand why the sheds that you're in are. Yes, they are.
Speaker 2:They are very chilly, so the tent will be up until I normally take it down first of may, no particular reason, but that seems like a good, good choice, right, okay? And then, obviously, now we take those singles and we're now going to combine those. Yeah, we're going to twist them together, right?
Speaker 3:so we're going to ply them, okay which is is the the term for that usually either two or three, depending on the yarn we're making right. The more you twist together, the thicker the yarn gets. Okay, so we can we can adjust the end thickness both at the spinner and at plying, so I can make the spinner produce a much thinner yarn or a thicker yarn, depending on the end result.
Speaker 2:And then we get to the plier and we twist those together so your average customer is what sort, what sort of return do they want normally?
Speaker 3:so it tends, I mean it does vary. We get a lot of double knitting weight, which is a it's a fairly typical for sweaters, hats, scarves, that kind of thing. I get some four ply weight right so this this is going to get a bit confusing and involved okay ready to have your, your mind blown. So when spinning became mechanical, they used to spin one thickness, one very fine thickness of yarn yes that was the only thickness okay so now we can vary.
Speaker 3:We can make thin yarn or we can make thicker yarn, but they usually just make one thickness. And if you wanted a thicker yarn, you would ply more of those together. Yes, exactly as we still do, right? But because you only had one thickness, you'd get two ply yarn, four ply yarn, six ply yarn, eightply yarn, eight-ply yarn Okay. And that's what they'd be called. So you could order some four-ply yarn and it would be made with four strands twisted together. Now we can change that initial thickness.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:So you can twist two strands together, but the finished result has the same width as a four-ply.
Speaker 2:Okay, right.
Speaker 3:However, in the English language we still call it four-ply yarn.
Speaker 2:But it's only got two-plies.
Speaker 3:So it's a two-ply, four-ply.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:The others have names, so we have double-knit, we have Aran weight, so we use other words for the different thicknesses.
Speaker 2:But four ply has remained as four ply right so that could get nice and confusing I was going to say yeah, because it's a two ply, four ply yeah, so yeah, ordering that over the internet could be a real problem yes, it can right, okay, and then that's. That's the end of the process. That's ready to go, so that will.
Speaker 3:That will still be wound onto bobbins at that point. From there I will put it through the skein winder, which makes it into the big loops that you will typically see yarn purchased, as I will twist them into a nice, nice finish. Okay, um, we can also put it onto cones. So if it's going to weavers or machine knitters, they tend to have it back on cone instead of in in the skeins. Some people will call those h. If it's going to weavers or machine netters, they tend to have it back on cone instead of in in the skeins. Some people will call those hanks.
Speaker 3:It's a bit of a regional variation, okay yeah um, but yeah, so we can do it as either the skeins or onto cones and that is.
Speaker 2:There's no at this point.
Speaker 3:That is exactly the natural color that it is in with the yeah, we don't do any dyeing, so it goes back the colour that it came in. I suppose the only it's not really a variation to that we can blend colours together, okay. So one that is quite fun to work with is if I have any Jacob sheep fleeces in.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:Jacobs are spotty.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:So they have big brown and white splotches. So what you can do with Jacob fleeces is you can pick out the brown bits, right, you can pick out the white bits and you can have the bits that are a bit of brown and a bit of white and as those go through the machines, the brown bits will stay brown.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:You process the white separately. That will stay white, but the bits that are some brown, some some white, as it goes through the machines those will all be mixed together and you'll get a really nice sort of heathery gray color okay so it is still a natural color, but it is sort of mixed together a little bit that's quite clever and then with those three you can twist them together, which makes a really nice effect.
Speaker 3:So you could have white twisted with brown or with the gray, or you could have it twisted applied with itself, so you just get a gray yarn, a black yarn and a white yarn. Oh, I see. So jacob is quite fun to play with and you get a lot of variation on the natural color. But yes, it all goes out as natural colors brilliant.
Speaker 2:So let's go right back again. So how long, let's say, somebody sends you a fleece? How long does the process on average? Because obviously drying times, things like that take um.
Speaker 3:So I timed this approximately, I reckon. For a two kilo batch coming in it takes about 16 hours of processing.
Speaker 2:That doesn't include drying time right and it doesn't include chatting to people on emails and things like that's still a long time to just. And what would two kilos? If you put that as yarn, what does that make? Does that make you one jumper? Does that make you a woolly hat, a pair of socks?
Speaker 3:so we reckon on between 50 and 60% return.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:It can vary. If you've got those herdwicks with a lot of very coarse fibre that will come out, you might only get 40%. If you send me a beautifully clean fleece, you might get 70% back. Right, okay? So, if you sent two kilos, hopefully you'll get at least a kilo of yarn back. Right hopefully you'll get at least a kilo of yarn back right.
Speaker 3:A jumper, probably about 600 grams, depending on the size of the person, the style of the jumper something like an aaron jumper with lots of cabling will take more yarn yeah but you're probably looking sort of six, eight hundred grams for a jumper so potentially a jumper and a hat for one sheep, that's not bad actually it depends on the sheep if you've got a little little shetland, you might only get a kilo you might get a woolly hat you might get a woolly hat and a pair of socks. If you've got sort of the bigger breeds of sheep, you might get three kilos of fleece off them right.
Speaker 2:So it does again vary very much, but it's still as exactly as we were speaking at the beginning. You can understand why the process has slowly died out, because you've just said there you're small scale and it takes 16 hours. Yeah, the big scale stuff must take. It might be slightly quicker, but it's still the same process it's still the same process.
Speaker 3:The reason I can do it and the reason I can make it viable is because those 16 hours will overlap okay so I will have something going through the fiber separator and something going through the carder and something being spun, potentially right so that two kilos will take 16 hours of processing, but there will be three things going through at the time potentially six kilos potentially, or it might be the same fleece, but it's sat at three different points, so the one I've got running at the minute that you saw when we walked around, that's one batch.
Speaker 3:It's about seven kilos, so that is currently on all the machines at the same time. Right, okay, it wouldn't be possible for me to do it if I just took a fleece, put it through, stood and put it through a machine, then moved on to the next machine.
Speaker 2:I was going to say you'd be there forever. I would. It would be what? 16 hours, yeah, 16 hours, and that's not yeah, and that's 16 hours spread out through a few days. You don't just stand in there for 16 hours.
Speaker 3:Wow, Okay so.
Speaker 2:Wow, Okay. So yeah, I can kind of see. Yeah, you scale it up. You can understand why we shipped it all out to the Far East and places like that to do it.
Speaker 3:You can. There are economies of scale. Bigger machines will potentially go faster. They can have more capacity. As I said, they may need a little bit more staffing, but it will not be in direct proportion. You might need two members of staff but you're doing 10 times the amount of fleece.
Speaker 2:But it is still quite labor-intensive well, yeah, and that probably explains why that to buy a wool product you pay more for it, but at least you know you're getting a natural fiber. That natural that will last that will last and has had somebody almost give it a bit of love and care and attention while it's being made, rather than some faceless machine that just spews out threads without threads of plastic.
Speaker 3:Yeah pretty much exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it really does go to show because I think yeah, just follows on. It would be. It would be lovely to see a mill start back up, a big scale mill start back up in the uk.
Speaker 3:That there are some, we are, we're not without any. There are a few but they must be.
Speaker 2:They must be sort of what would you call them, not niches, but fairly specialist, specialist. They are.
Speaker 3:Yes, yeah but they, they will do sort of a thousand kilos, which I I can't even consider large batches, and if people come to us with larger batches I will always point them to a more appropriate mill.
Speaker 2:Who can help them? And those mills? Are they spread out throughout the uk or are they still focused in certain areas?
Speaker 3:because there's only a handful um they are reasonably spread right so there's one down in cornwall okay um, there's sort of halifax. Yorkshire still has a sort of a. There's a bit of a wall base there still not in any way like there used to be. And then there's some of the smaller mills up in Scotland as well, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Well, as we say, I think most of the, the most important product that we, the UK, is known for, is like the tartans and tweed. Well, scotland's known for his tartans and tweeds. They make the. I think we were chatting about this on another recording. They make their way on to things like fashion week tweed.
Speaker 2:Everybody wants tweed, but tweed was created for the guys, the keepers and all the rest of it, because it's such a good fabric, because it keeps you warm yeah, warm, you get wet, so you end up walking off the hill weighing twice as much, but you're still warm yeah and in some cases, dry, yeah, because actually it's shedding that water off, naturally, so it is.
Speaker 3:It's one of those things if you can support and and things like that, it's yeah, it's great yeah, I mean there's there's sort of a I think it's a fundamental thinking change that would need to happen that people need to be prepared to pay more money to get the better quality product and to see the value in it, rather than you can go to a high street shop and buy two beanies for one pound fifty.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I think that was the thing. There wasn't it, people? Once upon a time it was. You took your will and it came back. There was somebody that processed it, made cloth, made yarn, whatever from it, and those clothing was made to last. You repaired it. Socks were darned, hats were repaired, jumpers were were fixed, and it carried on until it literally reached the end of its life.
Speaker 3:Now I'll trick it away that's it so disposable yeah because it's so cheap, because you've paid one pound 50 for two beanies yeah oh, I've lost it. Oh, I don't like it anymore. Oh, it's stretched out of shape people will just it's the wrong color, it doesn't match my jacket anymore and and it's just considered so disposable. And then it's more of a problem because when it's disposed of it doesn't biodegrade, Whereas if it's wool it wouldn't lift. You've already said that.
Speaker 2:It biodegrades, it breaks down.
Speaker 3:But you've got these beanies. I feel like I'm picking on the beanies here, but it's quite a good example. There's obviously one one on the table, just yeah, of course, sorry, um, but they, you know, they're quite a good example. You know that people will buy one of those for 75p and treat it as a disposable item. But the fundamental shift you need is for people to see hang on. If I spent a bit more, I got a good quality wool, one preferably british wool, but baby steps yeah you get a better item.
Speaker 3:It lasts, it has all those performance benefits because it will be warmer, it will, it will be a better product and it will last, and ultimately you. It would biodegrade at the end of its life.
Speaker 2:So it is all around a better package, but you have to find a way to convince people to buy that instead of a 75p hat you say that, though, you go to the next extreme, because I I saw an advert for some, I think, scandinavian brand making woolen hats made by families locally, and all the rest I've seen that advert yeah, I can't remember the name of the brand, but I have also seen that advert recently then you go and look at the price of the hat, the beanie they want, and it's 75 pounds started price and you're just like wow.
Speaker 2:But then I suppose, when you take everything into account that we've just spoken about the processing, the wool, all the rest of it, and that hat potentially will last a long time, it could well be 75 pounds. Well spent, absolutely so, yeah, okay, that makes more sense now that if you've got all that, those steps, and there are lots of different people who are benefiting from the income from that, you are providing a community with support.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm getting a really nice hat.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, no, 100% Very interesting. Yeah, it's a lot to think about because I think we also spoke about just when we first touched on this. We were talking about, obviously, the UK at the moment seems to ship a lot of its fleeces skins, everything like that in shipping containers and send them to the Far East Lanolin extraction and I think you mentioned the reason lanolin was extracted was it fed to?
Speaker 3:I'm told it's used as a food for prawns. So, I'm sorry for anyone who eats prawns and is put off by that. I am told that's what a lot of the lanolin is used from well.
Speaker 2:Therefore, you need to buy wild prawns that aren't yes, that aren't fed lanolin exactly. So there you go, but it's. It's one of those things, and I think it's a topic that we're the country keeps pushing on and banging on about. We need to be sustainable and and use green products. Well, why aren't we using wool more?
Speaker 3:because, at the end of the day, it's a green product but that sort of goes back around in a circle because you have to persuade people to spend 75 pounds on a hat yeah because you've got to create the demand to use what we've got before people are able to. But then it's a circular problem because people can't afford to invest, quite often without the market. But then the market won't exist because nobody can see a lovely wool hat available and then it just sort of struggles to to get going.
Speaker 2:I think we've had probably the last 30, 40, maybe 50 years.
Speaker 2:Has become, yeah, disposable stuff is much easier and we've gone away from this because you look back, probably look back to my grandparents and they will have bought things that they will have looked after and cherished like you'd have had. Well, you've had the old wool coats and things like that jumpers that would last, they'd have looked after and cherished Like you'd have had. Well, you've had the old wool coats and things like that. Jumpers that would last, they'd have had them for years, yeah.
Speaker 3:You would pass them on to somebody else if you were done with them because they would still last, which is not something that people even consider for the most part.
Speaker 2:It's not something you find nowadays. If it does a few years, you've got good value for money out of it, you feel absolutely.
Speaker 3:And that's that sort of fundamental shift, I think, is you've got to persuade people to step away from the cheap but disposable, back to it's more expensive but it's got the quality, it will last, but it's it's kind of breaking that mindset is the problem yeah, no, absolutely, and I think.
Speaker 2:I think that's the big thing, isn't it? It's, um, yeah, it's not just about the quick fix, it's it's look at it from a long-term perspective. Yeah, okay, well, fantastic. So I'm gonna put up all the the links, because I've got a card here which has got everything on it. I'll pop, pop some photos up as well yeah and um, but thank you very much for.
Speaker 3:Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2:No problem at all, and yeah, thanks a lot.
Speaker 2:Well, there you go. That's a really interesting topic the utilisation of wool a product that probably the country was brought up on and there were mills all over the place and now it's reduced to a few smaller mills and obviously, people like Fiona, who are doing a very small-scale milling process but actually producing a fantastic product at the end of it that can be used. Yeah, it just saves wastage. I think that we really do need to look at some things within the UK all of these Deer Skins that I heard a comment the other day from a game dealer. There is no market for them. There has to be a market for Deer Skins. Surely the material is fantastic. So if anybody knows where we can get rid of deer skins or how we can use them or turn them into something else, get in touch. It would be really interesting. It's probably another topic to talk about.
Speaker 2:Just one more request if you enjoyed this podcast, please do go and leave us some feedback it. It keeps it current and active in the charts and allows people to also find it. Do follow us on all the socials. Obviously, we're on Insta, facebook, tiktok, you name it. We're on there. Go and have a look, like and subscribe. We've also got a YouTube channel where you can find all of the podcasts. You may well be listening there, but, yeah, please share this podcast as well, far and wide, with all your friends, even if they're not into the hunting world.