Wool prep - Southdown

 Welcome to my kitchen! Today I started (with some help, Thanks!) to process a Southdown Fleece. This was 7.5 pounds of wool I purchased at Sheep & Wool this year. The farmer was a young girl who sells her fleeces to save up from college, Yep this is a Junior's fleece. I am a 4H leader and always extra happy to help a Junior. This is spread out all over my kitchen table. Basically, you pick through it, remove as much barnyard and yuck as you can. Then you sort it into piles, by size, or stress in the coat. I only found a small amount of second cuttings - this is when the shearer doesn't cut all the way down and has to try again resulting in much short lengths of wool that are generally not desirable - and very little sunburn or rubbing in the coat.

 I sorted into four basic piles. One was it has lots of tiny bits of VM (plant matter) that will require extra work to get out but doesn't have much tagging (fancy, sanitized way of saying yuck - sweat, urine, and lanolin all kinda of rolled into one -  matted into the fur but that is not so bad - or full of manure - you toss.) I call this my extra picking pile.

 My compost bin pile. All the VM and manure, and the bits of wool it is not worth it to try to clean along with my second cuts. Gardeners don't worry, it take years for my compost to make it to my garden.

 This is the good condition pile, I don't think this will take any extra processing to get this ready. So wash, rinse, rinse, rinse, dry, pick, card or comb, dye and spin or spin and dye.

 This is the extra tagged pile. I will wash and rinse this. If I like how it comes out I will proceed, if not I will pick it then start over at the washing. If I had a dedicated dirty picker I would start there, but I don't.

Here is a close up of the fiber and stuff in it. I spent about three hours sorting through this wool, my daughter's both helped for a few minutes and a friend helped while her little one allowed it. Entirely by myself it would have been at least another hour if not two.