For most of yesterday and into the night I was in the room upstairs in our farmhouse that I use as an office. And even though I was processing my wool orders, and knew what I was selling and packing up in envelopes to mail out, it has only just dawned on me how much Bedlam Farm Wool I actually sold in just one day.
I just counted the skeins of wool that are still stacked in neat piles separated by color on the bed. There are twenty-two in all. Six are red, the others are all natural grays including five of the Barber Pole skeins that create gray and white twisted wool from Biddy and Kim.
Yesterday I had ninety-seven skeins. Today, most of them are in the mail heading to their new homes around the country and in Canada too.
I heard from one person who said she still had some of Liam’s wool from a few years ago, not sure what to make with it. Some people let me know they save the wool from year to year with a bigger project in mind. I also get photos of gloves, socks, sweaters and shawls hand-knit with Bedlam Farm Wool (which I love to post on my blog). But mostly I never know how the wool is used. Although many of the same people buy wool year after year.
On Sunday Jon and I spoke on our podcast about how he has given up sheepherding, how Red helped bring him to a place where his work with dogs is now about people, not sheep. And Jon’s realization comes my own.
If I were not selling the sheep’s wool, they would just become expensive pets.
I got my first sheep seven years ago, and yet this is the first year that I feel like I really know something about their wool. Like I know what people want and how to sell it. And that’s good for all of us, including the sheep.
I’m encouraged by the success of selling so much Bedlam Farm Wool in one day. A few years ago, my wool sales were down. That’s when I started to experiment with dying the wool. It was a risk because it was much more expensive to process and I wasn’t sure if people still wanted it or not.
But now, a few years later, I can see it’s working. So thanks to all of you who have helped make that happen.
I’ll continue to come up with new ways to make sure our sheep earn their keep. Because Bedlam Farm wouldn’t be the same without them. And, after all these years, I’m really getting into this wool-thing now.
