My goodness its been ages since I posted! last time we were under nearly a foot of snow and now its March!
The sheep are about to lamb and are waddling about and the weather which has been rather mild since the big freeze is set to turn cold again! I have been busy so time for an update!
We managed to raise the needed finances to take on the new unit and we (Me and Taffy my lovely assistant) hopefully get the keys at the end of the week and then it all goes mad!
Machinery arrives from 'up north' for processing waste weaving wool, we have installations of a huge woodburning stove, water tanks and solar panels to organise to provide hot water for the scourer.........not to mention all the associated plumbing!
We then have to move the current machinery, build a drying room full of racks for drying wool and get up and running again.........
AND even more excitingly I have been developing wool packaging along with a local packaging company and we are about to start supplying a very well known organic box scheme! This is really cutting edge as it will be made from virgin wool and waste recycled wool all produced and processed in the West Country and will be squeekily eco as there will be no empty lorries or vans travelling around and fibre miles will be kept to the very minimum!
We are looking for a small needlefelting loom and hope to have one in situ soon meanwhile we will be working with another processor to fulfil our commitments.......This is all very very exciting!
On another topic I watched a tv programme last week about the future of farming and was struck by the inclusion of permaculture as a mainstream solution..........brilliant! I was a little troubled over the assertion that forest gardening could feed us all.....everytime I hear this in temperate climates where a holding of several acres is seen supporting a few people I feel like yelling 'how are we going to feed Birmingham?'.........people are not going to change habits and lifestyles that quickly..............more importantly we should, I feel, be addressing more pressing issues............the food programme on BBC radio 4 was hilighting that of the 130,000 deer in Britain currently culled each year to keep their very high numbers under control most of the meat (venison) is exported!!! At the same time the majority of the venison we eat in the UK is imported from New Zealand....but because it is packed here it can have the lable 'produced in the UK' stuck on it!!!! Are we missing something here?