Our Wool Story….Why Blankets?
For more than 20 years we wholesaled our wool to a commercial wool processor. We’d shear, bundle the wool into giant burlap sacks, and eventually load them into a tractor trailer for transport to Groenwold’s. Two full days’ worth of labor and a years’ worth of growth for each ewe yields us just under 2000lbs of raw fleece each year. The market price for wool was usually somewhere between 60 to 85 cents per lb for our fleece. For price comparison, during the Civil War, wool reached prices as high as $1.82 per lb. Current prices were just high enough to cover the cost of shearing, but each sheep must be shorn each year or run the risk of sickness and overheating. I’ll be honest here, we don’t have a super high quality wool. It is not super fine or super soft. It is a medium micron, medium staple length, average fleece. It has always been more important to have a fleece that can get rained on and dry quickly than have ewes suffering from fleece rot or illness in the wet summer months. So enter 2017 prices: 30 cents per lb. Ok, no big deal. We’ll store the wool for a year and sell it next year when the prices come up. 2018 prices were about 5 cents.
Lets make something….anything!
With almost 4000lbs of backlogged fleece and market prices remaining low we decided to produce something, anything wool. We discovered MacAusland’s Woolen Mill in Canada! MacAusland’s is a fifth generation family run mill that has been processing wool and producing 100% virgin wool blankets since 1932. They still use all the traditional, old fashioned machinery! They are the only mill on the Eastern Seaboard that will give you your own fleeces back in the blankets. They use traditional washing techniques and pickers to remove vegetable matter from the fleece. Most commercial woolen mills use the process of carbonizing, essentially dipping the wool in a solution of sulphuric acid, to dissolve organic matter. Maintaining a traditional non-chemical process retains lanolin on the fleece, which creates a smooth, buttery feel to the finished product and a light sheep-like smell to the fabric. You do see the occasional piece of vegetable matter in the finished blankets, but we love this evidence that no harsh acids were used in their production!
Our blankets are cuddly soft, durable, and come in a variety of sizes. They are machine washable and sustainable. Give one a try yourself or present one as a gift that is sure to last a lifetime.
Check out our available blankets here!
Queen Wool Blankets
$140 each
Queen Blankets are Approximately 76" x 104". They are available in checkerboard and traditional 3 stripe pattern.
Double Wool Blankets
$110 each
Double blankets are Approximately 72" x 90". They are available in checkerboard and traditional 3 stripe pattern.
Throw Wool Blankets
$85 each
Throw Blankets are Approximately 52" x 76". They are available in the checkerboard pattern.
Lap Wool Blankets
$65 each
Lap Blankets are Approximately 48" x 60". They are available in the traditional 3 stripe pattern.
