E Sager

Our experience here in New Hampshire is a little different. We are lucky to live in a community that values locally raised meat. The nearest grocer is 30 min away, so people are already used to going for quality locally raised meats and produce as a matter of practicality. Add to this, there is enough farm competition around, which lends itself to a higher quality product from farmers. Checkout our website for the current prices we're getting for our heritage lamb and we're not the most expensive lamb in town either.

If you don't have an existing market for lamb, you may have to build one yourself.

Since we raise mainly Clun Forest Sheep with some Scandinavian breeds mixed in for diversity. The Scandinavian breeds allow us to keep a smaller amount of ewes overall, while getting a large yield of total lambs each spring. We just had one give birth to 4 lambs!

Each year we sell all the registered lambs we can, then we raise the rest of them out on pasture and send them to the processor before the next lambs arrive. We get a nice yield of milk and fiber as well. Wool from our flock is our base fertilizer for our market garden as well, so there's a monetary return on fruits and vegetables as well. There are so many yields from sheep.

Thanks for all the great questions everybody!

For all of you didn't win, but still want to try some wool pellets; you can use the discount code PERMIES on checkout, which reduces the flat rate shipping to just $5.

Treat your garden to some Wool Pellets

Happy growing!

Carla Burke wrote:Excellent information, E! Thank you!

I do have another question, though. I saw in another thread that it's great for sandy soils, but what about clay soil? Mine is heavy, red clay, with tons of rocks in many sizes (I'm in the Missouri Ozarks). I've all but given up on ever having good soil for planting directly into the ground, in favor of raised beds, for most of my planting. But, some things don't lend themselves well to raised beds and containers - like trees or even bushes. Would the pellets turn my clay into soil deeply enough, simple turning, but without tilling, to plant things like hazelnuts or blueberries, within say a year or two? If there's even a chance of that, how much of the pellets would you recommend for improving say, a 3ftx3ft spot, for a single, medium to large bush (like a hazel or blueberry)?

Great question! I don't have first hand experience, but I do read good things about people using them in clay soils. Because it functions like temporary peat moss until it breaks down, I would just caution against using them in areas where you have poor drainage. This is because they hold water really well. If you already have a decent amount of organic matter in your clay soil, wool pellets should complement that and improve aeration. New beds in clay soil may want to add some calcium product like gypsum to floculate the clay first before mixing in compost and wool pellets.

One last thing to consider is clay soils often have a high cation exchange. In soils with high cation exchange, you typically can benefit from a faster fertilizer or use less wool pellets because you don't have as much nutrient leaching problems like in sandy soils. I hope that helps. If you try some, let me know how it works for you!

Carla Burke wrote:I've known for some time, about using wool (particularly the skirted portions) in compost, but haven't done it, because unless the time is taken to cut it up finely, it can be difficult to turn the compost. So, it would, at least theoretically, be much less labor intensive to simply put it directly into the garden. But, I've seen just how long it can take to break down the fibers, done that way. Do the pellets break down and become accessible to the plants substantially faster, or is it just the other matter that was trapped in the matted fibers that breaks down, faster, and the actual wool still breaks down fairly slowly? I guess what I'm actually asking is do the pellets act like a time-release fertilizer? Or, because they're pelletized, do they break down at a more even rate?

Hi Carla, I can confirm it acts like a slow-release fertilizer. How fast it breaks down is related to your soil biology and moisture levels. My older beds, it takes 2 months to break them down. In new beds, it takes about 5 months. The reason pellets break down faster than raw unprocessed wool is the same reason your food processes faster in your stomach when you chew, rather than swallow whole. The pelletizing machine steams the wool to 160ºF +, then grinds it and then forces it through a die. Basically chewing the wool. This pre-processing in the pellet making process allows the biology to break the wool down faster.

Derek Thille wrote:Welcome Ethan!  Your operation seems to have a lot of similarity to Anna from Longway Homestead here in Manitoba.  In addition to pellets and other sheepish products, they do workshops on natural dyes.

A neighbour of Anna partnered with her this year and created small cubes of wool batting (I think) to use for plant starting (an alternative to peat pots).  It's a neat idea but I start too many seeds for that to be economical for us.

Other hair was mentioned in another post...our standard poodle makes a lot of that.  We have a bag that I'll be taking out to the acreage soon.  Some will be used in compost, some left out and about for birds to use in nesting, and some will get buried in a hugelkultur I'll be building this spring.

Hi Derek, it's true we're not the only farm making wool pellets or dye starts. I'm sure there are many more. My favorite is WoolGrow Australia. Sherri is doing an amazing job innovating with her wool and getting the wool message out there. She also makes wool pots similar to the one you describe your friend makes in addition to other useful wool garden stuff.

WoolGrow Australia

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.

Wojciech Majda wrote:Hi guys, I am planning to add a minimal quantity of gypsum to my pig feed, so it will be fermenting with extra calcium and sulfur. In theory, it should provide bacteria with extra sulfur, so the cystein and methionine content should be higher...

Let me know what you think about it!

Cool idea, please keep us updated on how that works out.

I'll put another shout out for pickled eggs. You can get pretty creative with different spices. We make a sichuan / korean pepper flake combo that is amazing. Another thing you can do is make egg noodles and then dry them out for storage.

Timothy Norton wrote:Welcome to Permies!

I had to look at the photos of the pellets a few times to realize that they are waste wool. After seeing them wetted down, it definitely is more obvious but not before. I'm interested in trying them over raw waste wool to see if applying them is easier. I'm fortunate to have a local fiber guild in the area as well as a processing mill so I'm going to see if they might have waste wool to spare as a comparison point.

Hi Timothy, unpelletized waste wool works great as well. For many years we used handfuls of raw wool in each tomato hole with great results. Pelletized waste wool has two main advantages over regular unpelletized waste wool. First, is the speed that the wool breaks down. Raw wool in the soil, or in slow composting can take over a year to break down. When wool is put through the pelletizing machine, steam heats it up to over 160ºF, grinds it, then pushes it through a die. This processing allows the wool pellets to break down in 2 - 6 months depending on how vigorous your soil biology is. In our older beds, it takes just two months, but in newer beds it takes about 5 months. That's makes the pellets an ideal slow release fertilizer for gardens and farms.

The second advantage is the form factor. It's easier to sprinkle the pellets into furrows in your garden beds. The form factor allows you to use it in soil blocks and to add fertility to spent potting soil. The pellets are excellent at holding water. As you've seen them swell up, this makes them a nice sustainable alternative to peat moss.

Hitting up your local fiber guilds for waste wool is an excellent idea. Waste wool in any form makes a valuable source of organic matter in a garden.