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What to do with Waste Wool?!?

 
pollinator
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Location: Western Washington - 48.2°N, Zone 8a
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If you've have sheep, you've have waste wool.  I've stumbled across many uses for it in our forums, but I thought it'd be nice to collect up the uses for this valuable resource in one place.  I'm adding what I can find, but would love to hear other folks' uses.

Threads I've found about it.
As a soil amendment
As Wool Pellets for an easy to use fertilizer
As a replacement for peat moss in soil blocks
Another discussion of wool as a peat moss replacement
As a possible slug repellent?
As drainage lining in pots
As Raw Wool Insulation
As pillow stuffing or quilt batting, after washing of course

My favorite use is as weedblock, mulch, and topdressing fertilizer.  I keep all of the shearing and skirting scraps and any fleeces that are not worth processing and lay down a four inch layer of the fluffy stuff in the fall at the end of our dry season.  This ends up being in my Zone 1 beds, young trees, and anything I want to give a boost of slow release nitrogen.  The rain mats it down nicely by late winter and it is a great weedblock when soil temperatures rise.  It is low effort, rather amusing, and in the spring birds will pull up bits of it to take as nesting material...but never enough to be a problem.

What do you use it for?
 
master steward
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I just asked a bunch of questions here: https://permies.com/t/278058/people-growing-toilet-paper-Plectranthus#2921507
About plant alternatives to toilet paper.
Since the wool is biodegradable, would it work in a Willow Feeder/ bucket compost system as a butt wipe?
Would it be practical and comfy, or yucky and useless?
I don't have an easy source, so no way to test it, but I expect there are some permies out there that do.
 
pollinator
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Jay Angler wrote:I just asked a bunch of questions here: https://permies.com/t/278058/people-growing-toilet-paper-Plectranthus#2921507
About plant alternatives to toilet paper.
Since the wool is biodegradable, would it work in a Willow Feeder/ bucket compost system as a butt wipe?
Would it be practical and comfy, or yucky and useless?
I don't have an easy source, so no way to test it, but I expect there are some permies out there that do.



Wool would make a decent butt wipe, although depending on where on the sheep you get it from, you would probably want to wash it to prevent parasite transmission. The lanolin in the wool would do extra credit to soften and moisturize your bum, so you may want to wash it at around water heater range (~120ºF) to ensure some of the lanolin doesn't completely wash out.

As with anything there's a sliding scale in the quality of butt wipe you can make with wool. Washing at lower temps to retain lanolin and then carding it would be my choice. You could also felt it and use it in strips. In all cases, wool will break down nicely in a bio-digester.
 
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I was given a load of waste wool a few years ago and made a thread on using it: uses for dag end fleeces. I actually had a lot of fun cleaning and spinning some of it, although it obviously had been rejected, much of it was OK for playing with after washing.
One thing I am going to try in my new polytunnel is using the fleece as membranes and wicking material in a wicking bed.
Unfortunately I can't use it generally as mulch as my dogs eat it and it makes them ill. I'm hopefully getting some more this week, but might use that in my dog resistant growing area, since it is relatively safe in there!
 
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