5. All About The Wool

Beautiful Swiss Valais Blacknose Fleece on the little ram lamb Farmachla Kyle. Summer 2023.

As I got to know the sheep and their needs, the season arrived where shearing had to be addressed. Wool is considered a waste and by-product of the meat industry. A natural, sustainable, self-growing, endlessly renewable raw material with so many uses was to my shock, being dumped in huge volumes due to a lack of processing facilities. Surely I could think of something to make or do with the wool from my sheep.

Some people think shearing is cruel, without realising the absolute necessity for it. The wool needs to be shorn in summer because sheep can easily become infested with blowflies during warm weather. These problematic flies lay thousands of eggs which hatch at the base of the wool into tiny almost invisible maggots, which burrow into the skin un-noticed often until too late. This can cause sepsis in the host sheep with a very poor prognosis. Death can occur within 24 hours without the owner even noticing there has been an attack until finding the animal dead in the field.

So if shearing is essential for the health of the sheep, what happens the wool? Not a lot anymore in Ireland and across Europe, New Zealand and Australia. The decline in wool processing occurred as a natural consequence of the production of technically advanced new easy-care synthetic materials from the 1960’s onwards.

As people moved away from natural materials, the mills and knitting factories closed but sheep production for meat continued and their wool kept growing.

Large scale dumping of raw sheared wool is not only happening in Ireland - this is a global problem. In the 1800s it was viewed as a valuable fibre that was woven, plaited, felted, and spun in huge volumes in industrial mills into clothing, flooring, mattress fillings, insulating material and ropes to name a few. However, sheep wool is now deposited in large volumes in landfills, or just left to rot on the ground.

Specialist Shearer

Patrick Corrigan

Curious Benny the little lamb checking out the process beside him. June 2023.

In Ireland there is a resurgence of interest in natural fibres, non-synthetic clothing, and a reduction of plastic consumption overall due to many reasons, mainly environmental.

Also a new generation for which Irish Folklore, storytelling, music and tradition is seen only in a positive light, traditional craftmaking is also highly regarded. Global interest in Irish culture extends to clothing, handmade tweed, hand knitted jumpers and other wool items all of which have seen a resurgence in popularity.

Most products knitted and woven in Ireland are not made using Irish grown wool however. This is not something consumers are in general aware of. We have an abundance of natural Irish-grown wool in Ireland however the processing of the fibre from sheep to wearable item is complicated, labour-intensive and costly.

Until processing facilities become available again without needing export, this problem of waste wool will not be going away anytime soon.

In the meantime, I have been experimenting with the wool, looking at ways to use it up. The top quality locks and fleece I am producing artworks with, and the coarser wool is being looked at with regard to other applications such as animal bedding, garden mulch, insulation and cushion filling.