Our Blackface sheep are perfectly suited to the Scottish hills - in part due to the fantastic insulating and waterproofing properties of their wool.
Blackface sheep need to be sheared once a year as they do not naturally shed their wool. We shear (clip) from mid-June into July when the sun starts to warm them and their wool starts to "rise".
June through July | Clipping on the Farm
Shearing is a skilled art learned over many years of patience and practice. Done properly, it is almost like a dance - the shearer must keep the sheep off-balance while they carefully run the clippers over the sheep in an age-old pattern. Skilfully cutting through the new wool or "rise", the shearer removes the fleece in one piece with no harm to the animal.
We start in June with the 400 hoggs (one year old sheep) being clipped for the first time. By then they will have grown an early "rise" - a layer of new wool between the skin and the old wool. We need to wait until July for the ewes to produce this rise as the lambs they will have had have made significant demands on their wool growing resources.
Textures of the hill.
Three bags full
My job is to roll and pack the fleeces into giant wool sacks, known as 'sheets'. The fleeces are laid out on a table before the sides are folded in, the fleece rolled, and then tucked to allow for ease of sorting into different grades later. The sheets are stitched shut, labeled, and transported to the British Wool Marketing Board in Galashiels.
Galashiels has a long history of grading and processing wool. Although most of the woollen mills have now gone, the wool is still graded and baled here. The first process at the wool board is to sort the fleeces. Each fleece is graded by people who have developed an amazing sense of touch. They quickly sort the fibres according to fineness, length, and colour. The finer and longer the fibre, the better the grade.
Our hill farm
For more information about farming life throughout the year see our 'farm' page. Find out how we farm with nature, and our landscape-scale habitat plans with our neighbours in the Pentland Hills.
Eastside - The Farm