From the Pastures: Positive thinking

Happy New Year! Are you used to writing 2025 yet? Always amazing how time passes so quickly. This year I am super excited about the new year. I am making an extra effort to be positive and focus on family and friends. I am optimistic about all the opportunities this year for my farm, mill business and store. I have gotten a lot of requests for natural wool yarn and roving. The amount of really creative people always amazes me. They want to work with real wool rather than synthetic fibers.

Seems to be a lot of new uses for wool. Another farmer contacted me about supplying wool for making wool pellets. Short and slightly dirty wool can be used for pellets. The wool pellets are great for gardening. Wool holds water and releases it slowly, helping the plants. It also slowly degrades, giving more nutrients to the soil. Several places in the United States are now making wool pellets, so you should be able to find some to try this spring.

We are feeding all hay now. The pasture is on winter break to say. Our sheep do well on just hay. We put out maybe a little more than sheep on grain will eat. Since we have plenty of hay, I feel making sure they have hay available most of the day keeps them in good condition through the winter.

Always seems when you go away for a few days and have someone else doing chores, something breaks. This time it was a heater in the big water tank. Many thanks to my sister for sorting out the issue and keeping the water for the sheep from freezing.

The best part of winter is wearing wool. Pull out your wool socks, hats and mittens and have a great January.