Last Saturday I went to a livestock market, for the uninitiated this is a market where farmers trade stock (in this case sheep and cows) both between farmers but also with slaughter houses so animals can often go from the market to the local abattoir. It was a really interesting experience – I work with farmers quite frequently but there it was really interesting seeing something so steeped in tradition and so industrial. All the animals are housed in temporary stalls and sold off in lots - the animals are still auctioned in guineas and the auctioneers work the crowd so quickly to ensure best prices are got. I just about followed the sheep auction , watching the twitches of eyes and hand movements in the crowd, but the cattle sale was mystifying. I didn’t like the cattle ring much so I spent most of my time with the sheep, exchanging banter and opinions with farmers. I did stick out slightly as most people were older farmers , almost exclusively male and 55 plus but I found that about the price of sheep I can just about hold my own! The sheep sold from between £16.50 to £42. I did fall in love with some brown jacobs which were sold for breeding. (They were nearly £50). One farmer I spoke to told me how pleased he was to have sold his 70 sheep for £41.50 each which still seems quite cheap to me.
I did at one point have to take myself off and give myself a bit of a talking to about over-sentimentalising food production. I think I had been eye-balling sheep too much and was starting to feel quite nostalgic for my vegetarian days. I felt better when a life-long farmer admitted that he couldn’t face ever taking his animals to slaughter and then started showing me photos of his Highland calf on his camera phone!
I spoke to several sheep farmers about knitting and wool production. One farmer in particular was really quite sniffy about the fact that knitters often buy “specialist” wool from small-scale producers rather than the average by-product from more mainstream farmers. He said that he would get fiver for taking the wool to his local processor and the company used to collect it from the farm but don’t bother these days. He was planning one last attempt to sell it that day and then if not was planning to put it on his bonfire. This inevitably led on to a discussion about the inadequacies of the British Wool Marketing Board and about how widespread it was going to be this year that fleeces were burnt. When I left the markets I was thinking a lot about these burning fleeces and wondering whether all the producers that I bought wool from would be considered small-scale hobby farmers. I remembered reading this article in The Telegraph a while ago and have been mulling it over since.
It’s tricky, for most farmers wool is a by-product of meat production and many more factors – like adaptability to British climate, low disease risk etc are likely to come before whether the wool will feel nice to knit with. Most British wool is quite short staple and rough in texture. I was really surprised at the Iknit day when I heard people talk about the beautiful Heathland Hebridean as being too rough for garments. So maybe it is inevitable wool will continue to decline in value as a commodity and I’m not sure it isn’t better for it to be burnt than decomposing in landfill somewhere giving off methane.
While I’m sure the BWMB could be more innovative in finding new markets for British wool – I do wonder whether also the farmers couldn’t be more progressive in finding emerging markets for their products. Recent insulation made with sheep wool has been so successful that surely this could be increased or maybe some kind of renewable energy be made using fleece (probably doubtful). Or maybe it has wondrous mulching properties which could be used for horticulture?
It has made me think a lot more about where the wool is coming from that I’m knitting with and whether knitting can help the price of fleece. I think buying British wool from small independent producers can massively help keep rare breeds alive and conservation projects that depend on sheep grazing but I’m not sure many larger scale farmers would be interested in selling the odd bag of fibre to knitting enthusiasts. The whole discussion has made me reconsider how I buy wool – I’m definitely keen to buy wool from British wool and try and use less cashmere, alpaca, cotton etc. Although my stash at the moment is likely to mean I have no need to buy any wool for quite a while! It has made me think that continuing to buy lamb and mutton is really one of the best positive actions that can be done to support sheep farmers. (I read an article recently which mentioned that most consumers of lamb were over sixty).
But also has raised a somewhat controversial question in my mind about whether it is actually a problem that farmers are burning fleeces. On one level it seems morally wrong and wasteful but on another if the market has moved on maybe it isn’t so bad. I would be really interested to know what you think about it. The whole trip was definitely food for thought and an area I’m keen to find out more about it during my farming adventures!
