Boosting the Soil with Sheep's Wool

We say things like “the cyclical nature of regenerative farming.” But what does that mean in practical, everyday terms?

For Daniella at Windy Acres Family Farms, it’s finding ways that her livestock can benefit her garden, and vice versa, circulating nutrients continuously between them.

The sheep have a job to do. They graze amongst her orchard and blueberry patch to keep the cover crops in check, then fertilize the soil around them, directly above the roots systems. Then the chickens circulate the property to peck bugs and slugs away from the plants. In return, the sheep also get leafy green leftovers from pruning back the garden.

But best of all, her sheep also give back to the soil in an interesting way – with their fleece.

With the wool industry at an all time low in Canada, there is no market for the annual fleeces harvested off her merino-soft flock of Old English Babydoll ewes. But while the wool can’t be sold, they’re of great value to the rest of her farming operation.

Daniella uses wool as a natural garden mulch with a wealth of benefits in regenerating her soil.

Untreated fleece helps the soil retain moisture to feed the roots of plants and blocks out weeds and slugs. Its lanolin can deter harmful insects. Wool is of course known for temperature regulation for people, but the same is true the garden. It will help protect plants from harsh conditions in winter and helps prevent plants from drying out during heat waves.

A fleece will take at least two years to disintegrate, all while slowly releasing natural sulfur, phosphorus, potassium, and mostly nitrogen into the earth – the top nutrients that plants need to thrive. Combine that with composted manure and table scraps, and you have loamy, rich soil ready to support a healthy microbiome and healthy plants.

What’s amazing to us? The fleece is a natural, renewable fibre that modern industry deems as almost useless. Farmers have nowhere to offload their fleeces because people aren’t willing to pay to have it milled and turned into cloth, and farmers are not often using them as mulch and fertilizer anymore.

For Daniella, it’s a free byproduct that naturally regenerates her soil.