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Deep cleaning the sheep shed

There’s a job we should probably do every year but it usually ends up being every two years or even every three or dare I admit it, every four.  This is because it’s not the most exciting of jobs and nor is it necessarily an urgent job.  It’s one of those jobs that you can happily turn a blind eye to and walk on by.  In fact, I like to remind myself that putting off this particular task can make things easier when we eventually get round to doing it.

the shed

So what am I talking about?  Yes my friends, it involves sheep dung, and it involves large quantities of it.  I’m talking about deep cleaning the sheep shed.

kitchen & living room

During the winter months our happy teddy bears spend a lot of time hanging around their shed.  They have a big shed, conveniently positioned next to the hay feeders.  It’s like a living room, kitchen arrangement for our woolly friends.  Although the sheep have access to the wider pastures on the hills, during the winter months when they’re on hay they trundle down to the orchard every evening, munch their hay, sprinkle it all about while doing so and then spend the night in the shed enjoying a cosy time out of the elements.  The sheep are very happy with this arrangement, they live a practically stress-free existence and the shed is a big part of this.

Yssi & Yogi relaxing at the salt lick

This is all very well, but the downside of the shed arrangement is that it can get really messy.  Sheep go to the toilet wherever they happen to be.  They are not like pigs who would never dream of going to the loo in their shed.  Sheep do their business wherever they happen to be.

 

 

 

daily clean up

 

 

Every afternoon I go along with my fabulous “Dungbeetle” sh*t shoveller which I got for my birthday recently.  This is a great piece of kit, it takes an impressive amount of dung and I can get the orchard and shed cleaned up in next to no time time compared to my old “shoveller”.  Plus I don’t get the back and arm ache which is a bonus!

But despite my efforts shovelling dung into the trailer each day, a small amount manages to somehow build up, secretly and stealthily like a woodland fungus, so slowly that it goes almost undetected.  Until one day you walk into the shed and wonder why you’re scraping your head on the ceiling.

hard at work

This phenomenon is probably common to farmers and smallholders and there might be a name for it out there somewhere.  Despite shovelling copious amounts of dung and bedding each day and keeping the shed clean and tidy, a huge amount still manages to mysteriously build up behind your back.  The fact of the matter is, I know I said earlier that this is a job that can be happily put off, when it gets to the point where you’re scraping your head on the ceiling, you know it’s time to roll up your sleeves!

As the shed is pretty sizeable, I break down the deep-clean by doing a small area at a time.  Every day I take my special tool, (I’m not sure what it’s officially called but it’s perfect for prising up compacted slabs of ancient manure).  Once the prongs go down, I can leaver up satisfyingly large chunks and fling them onto the muck heap.  Once I’ve finished I’ll shovel the manure into a trailer and quad it over to the vegetable patch to use a a mulch.

I’ve been working on this every day for the last two months.  It’s tiring, but hugely satisfying and there’s a real sense of “before and after”.  Also, sometimes I find things like lambing tail rings, or ancient bits of bailer twine hiding away in the “dung cake” which is weirdly nostalgic.  I mentioned earlier that this job is easier if you leave it for as long as possible.  The reason for this is because the thicker the wodges, the easier they are to prise away.  If the slabs are too thin, they crumble into nothing which is very disappointing.

the muck heap
before & after

I have only a little way to go now, I’m hoping to have the deep-clean completed by next week.  Then I can pretend not to notice the slow stealth as it creeps back over the next three years!

 

 

 

 

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Pepper not doing so well

Ten days ago I wrote a story about our hen Pepper who had a problem with her crop which wasn’t emptying properly.

Since I whisked her into the vets for an operation at the beginning of January (where the vet found nothing untoward), we’ve been scratching our heads wondering what could be causing poor Pepper’s crop problems.

Pepper in the kitchen

Since her operation, Pepper’s been convalescing in the kitchen in a dog crate where she can stay warm and safe until she gets better.

Since my last story and after chatting with the vet, we’ve given Pepper “Flubenvet” which is a poultry wormer, in a little dropper into her beak over the course of seven days.  The vet didn’t think she had worms, but said worming her wouldn’t do her any harm.  We were willing to try anything.  We also gave her “Beryl’s Friendly Bacteria” which is especially for hens to help her post-antibiotic tummy.

Pepper doesn’t have much appetite but every day she eats a small amount of chick mash, scrambled eggs or porridge and drinks some water.  We massage her crop daily and monitor her droppings.   Each morning we check her crop to see if it has emptied overnight.  Pepper’s crop continues to feel like a ping pong ball in the mornings but she seems relatively perky and continues to have some appetite. She’s still going to the toilet despite her blockage which means that some food must be passing through.

We continue to hope.  However, Pepper’s morning crop situation is worrying and every day at 7.30am when we give her fresh bedding and her morning cuddle we desperately hope to find her crop empty.  A chicken’s crop is like a storage bag, it sits under the right breast and fills up during the day as the hen goes about her business foraging.  Food collected in the crop then trickles into the gizzard and then on into the digestive system.  By morning the crop should be empty and the hen house full of droppings from the previous day’s foraging.

Pepper in the polytunnel last weekend

Over the days Pepper hasn’t made a lot of progress but seems perky-ish and enjoys daily trips to the polytunnel where she has an hour or so to stretch her legs and scratch for worms.  We were so happy to see her eating worms and scratching around the first time we took her in.

Last weekend Pepper turned a corner.  On Saturday morning her crop had emptied, I jumped for joy!  Pepper spent Saturday and Sunday looking much happier and more lively and really enjoyed herself in the polytunnel.  If it wasn’t for the fact that underneath her feathers she was very thin, Pepper looked for all the world like her old healthy self.

Sadly though, since last weekend, Pepper’s perkiness has started to wane.  She has become more tired and droopy as each day has passed.  Her crop has gone back to feeling like a ping-pong ball again in the mornings and Adrian and I are preparing to say goodbye to our dear feathered friend.

Pepper last week scratching for worms

I carried Pepper into the polytunnel today but she just stood on the soil and closed her eyes.

I brought her back indoors and gave her some beetroot soup with a dropper but she has spent most of today asleep.  She is getting more wobbly on her legs and we have to take care when placing her back in her dog crate hen house so that she doesn’t topple over.

We are making her as comfortable as we can and keeping her hydrated, but sadly Pepper is fading.  There is only so much we can do.

 

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Poorly Pepper

For a wee while now one of our elderly hen ladies, Pepper hasn’t been quite her usual self.  The signs were subtle, in fact, there was only one sign, her tail feathers weren’t as perky as they usually are.  We weren’t unduly worried because she’d gone through a hard moult in November along with the other hens.  Hens can feel a bit depressed when they lose their feathers, particularly if the weather’s bad.  We thought she’d perk up once her plumage grew back.   We were also not too worried because she wasn’t displaying the usual signs of hen illness; her comb was a bright healthy shade of red, her bottom was clean and fluffy and she had a good appetite.  She was also feisty (Pepper is second in command to Clippy the top hen), and she was still merrily bossing the other hens around along with Clippy and keeping order in the flock.

Then, one morning a couple of weeks ago I noticed Pepper wasn’t eating her corn.  She was running in for it and claiming her position next to Clippy to get the biggest beakful, but  she wasn’t actually eating any, just moving it around on the ground.  Alarm bells ringing, I scooped her up and brought her indoors.  The first thing I did was feel her crop, it should be empty first thing in the morning but Pepper’s was full and the size of a large golf ball.  She was also quite thin.  I was relieved and upset at the same time.  I was glad to have found the source of her discomfort, but upset because an impacted crop would need operating on, and sod’s law, it was 2nd Jan, bank holiday in Scotland.

… within a few minutes I had Pepper in a box and Adrian was de-icing my car.  Having spent three seconds philosophising about how these things always seem to happen at weekends, I’d rung the emergency vet and booked Pepper in for a crop op.

A crop operation entails a small incision into the crop and the offending blockage being removed.  It’s done under a local anaesthetic and usually takes about 15 minutes.

Once at the vet’s we got started, I held Pepper in position and the vet got to work.  When the crop was opened, we were both a little surprised to see only corn.  No bailer twine, no ball of hay, no bunch of feathers.  Truth be told we were strangely disappointed, we had expected a big plug of something to plop out, like pulling out a bunch of hairs from the plug hole.

We were a little mystified because Pepper should have been able to digest the corn in her crop, it was soft and should have been able to pass through into her gizzard without any problem.

Pushing that niggling worry into the back of my mind for the moment, I set off for home with Pepper stitched up and looking quite perky considering.

We put her in the kitchen by the aga in a dog crate and monitored her.  The first thing she did was drink lots of water.  That’s good we thought.  Later that day, we offered her a tiny amount of softened chick mash in a mini cup which she ate and enjoyed.

The next day Pepper was looking perkier and we offered her a  tiny amount of scrambled egg which again she enjoyed.  Later in the evening she had some more softened up mash.

Pepper post op by the aga

On day three it was sunny and relatively warm.  After some thought over a cup of tea, we decided to put Pepper outside so she could be with her friends.  It’s always a fine balance when taking care of sick animals, how much we intervene as humans is something we’re always considering.  Hens are sociable creatures and we reckoned being with her friends would lift her spirits.  Not only this, but hens love lazing about in the sun and it was a mild, sunny day.  Indeed, as soon as we put Pepper out, she joined her pals for a catch up and a sunbathe and looked happy as can be.  That evening Pepper was still looking happy and the weather was still mild so we thought we’d leave her to sleep in the hen house with the flock.  We watched her go to roost and made sure she’d hopped onto a perch.  Then we went indoors and had a cup of tea.

Pepper having a cuddle

The following morning I went to check up on Pepper.  I waited by the coops as the sun slowly rose.  The auto-doors were set to open just before sunrise at 7.30am.  As the doors opened I watched the hens come down the ladder one by one.   All of them trouped out except for Pepper.  My heart sank, quick as a flash I ran round the back of the coop and whipped the back panel off and there she was was, sprawled on the floor.  I felt dreadful, what a terrible hen mum I am I thought as the tears started.  But then I saw a small movement, Pepper was alive!  I carefully picked her up and brought her back indoors.  We wrapped her up in a blanket and then gave her breakfast, tiny bits of fat from last night’s slow cooked beef dinner, a small amount of porridge and a small amount of scrambled egg.  Pepper quickly perked up and spent the rest of the day in the kitchen getting small amounts to eat and lots of cuddles.

Pepper continued to improve slowly, but as the days went by I started to get a little concerned that her crop wasn’t emptying as fast as it should be.  She was going to the toilet (albeit on the runny side – post antibiotic tummy), but each morning her crop didn’t feel as empty as it should be.

Not having had crop problems in our flock before I made the mistake of googling “crop issues in hens”.  Two things came up; impacted crop and sour crop.  There was little else about crops not emptying except a brief reference to capillary worms which can affect the digestive system and stop things working properly.  I pondered this info and by the end of the day I had convinced myself Pepper had gigantic capillary worms.

The following day and thinking more clearly I rang the vet for advice.  I wasn’t convinced anymore about worms, Pepper’s comb was looking too healthy for there to be a worm problem.  The vet and I chatted about Pepper and he told me that sadly only about 50% of hens with impacted crops get better.  Out of the 50% who don’t respond to treatment the problem is usually due to something underlying like a tumour.

Pepper having porridge out of a small cup

The vet also agreed it was unlikely to be worms, but that it wouldn’t do any harm to worm her.  So we decided to give Pepper flubenvet in a little dropper every day, just to make sure.  We’re also giving her probiotics (special ones for hens), and keeping her spirits up with regular cuddles and strokes.

We’re taking each day as it comes, fingers crossed for our dear hennie.

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A spate of sore hooves

Up until recently we’ve had week upon week of rain, followed by … yet more rain.   On a farm or smallholding, where there’s rain there’s mud, particularly where livestock likes to congregate.  All through the autumn mud has featured heavily around the hay feeders, entrances to gates and along our woolly friends’ favourite paths.  (Did you know sheep create little paths to get from A to B)?

Trudging through mud is no fun, not for us in our wellies, but even less so for the sheep who don’t have the luxury of boots.  Not surprisingly they’ve been spending much of their time in the shed cudding and peering out into the gloom.

Last week the rain gave way to frost and we’ve all breathed a sigh of relief.  The sheep are happy sunbathing on the hill again and we’re no longer slipping and sliding about.  Nor are we getting in a tangle with items of clothing dangling from chairs and draped over the aga in various stages of drying off.

But then, as a reminder that resting on laurels isn’t something you can do in this farming life, we’ve had a sudden spate of lame sheep.  Undoubtedly caused by the wet pastures which softens hooves, bacteria lurking in the soil enters the sensitive internal structures under the soles and causes an abscess.  The signs are easy to spot, a sheep with a foot infection will limp and have an unhappy demeanour about her.  If not treated straight away she will have trouble standing and will resort to grazing whilst resting on her front knees.

Violet resting in treatment pen

With Violet, Ynca, Yssi and Shelby all limping this week, I’ve been out every other day with my first aid kit.  I like keeping our sheep’s hooves in good nick so I have a little bag (a bucket actually) specifically for looking after hooves.

When treating a lame sheep, the first thing I do is see how the sheep is walking and work out which hoof is the one I need to look at.  Then I’ll bring the sheep into a pen and start by checking the hoof for little stones or anything else which might be causing the sheep to limp.  Then I’ll clean the hoof up and scrape away any mud.  Next, I’ll cradle the foot in my hand for a moment or so to check for temperature.  A foot infection will cause a little heat and this is quite discernible, especially if you compare the infected hoof with a non-infected hoof.

Yssi

If I suspect there’s an infection I’ll spray the hoof with anti-bac spray, especially the interdigital space (the gap between the toes).  Then, I’ll give the sheep an antibiotic injection, I like using Betamox LA for feet as it gets to work quite quickly.

Violet, Ynca and Shelby are all fine now, it’s just Yssi who is still limping.  I’ll be going out again later today to check up on her and give her another wee “jag” if necessary.  Betamox is given every two days until the infection clears so fingers crossed Yssi will be feeling better soon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Bottoms, hooves and face trims

In the sheep world, Ryelands are often referred to as “teddy bear sheep”.  The reason for this, as you might have guessed, is their striking resemblance to roly poly teddy bears.  Most sheep have wool only on their backs, with their faces, tummies and legs remaining almost bare.  The Ryeland however has wool all over and can cause shearers to go a little pale.  It can be tricky to shear those woolly faces, tummies and legs and it takes longer too.

Yaar “before”

One of our jobs in making sure our Ryelands are happy and healthy is to keep their bottoms and faces trimmed.  During the summer months it’s especially important to keep their bottoms neat because woolly bottoms attract flies and flies are bad news for sheep, especially the blow flow.  We don’t use chemicals on our little lot so we take special care to keep their rear ends spick and span at all times.

We also keep their faces trimmed.  If we don’t trim around their eyes, they can become ‘wool blind’ (where the wool grows around their eyes preventing them from seeing).  Being ‘wool blind’ makes sheep unhappy as they like to be able to see what’s happening around them in order to feel safe.  Sheep have surprisingly good vision, they can see all around them, almost 360 degrees.  If they have wool growing around their eyes they can get nervous and twitchy because they lose the ability to check for predators which is an important part of being a sheep.

Yaar “after”

It’s a lot of work trimming all those faces and bottoms, (and not to mention hooves), so we rotate through the flock each week and work on three or four at a time.  Yesterday it was Yaar, Seline, Scarlett and Vera’s turn for hair cuts.

Adrian and I have got a little hair salon set up in the orchard, we put together some hurdles and bring the sheep in one at a time.  They seem to quite enjoy it and we have no trouble bringing them in.  It’s a good opportunity for us to catch up with the flock and spend quality time with our teddies.

 

 

 

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The hay ceremony begins again

to eat grass or not to eat grass, that is the question

Every year, round about the beginning of November we start the “hay ceremony”.  In other words, giving the little darlings hay for the winter.  The sheep let us know when they’re ready for hay, towards the end of October they make a daily pilgrimage down to the orchard and hang around the feeders (usually when they know we’re around so they can make a point).  Sheep are clever and have their ways of communicating with us.  They do this ritual twice a day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon, just to make sure.  After hanging around and sniffing for a bit, they have a meeting and then off they go again to graze grass in the higher pastures.

yippee!!! Hay!!!

Timing is important when it comes to hay, start the little fluffballs on it too soon and they take a few mouth-fulls and decide they’ll give the grass another chance.  This means hay is wasted because it stays in the feeders not being eaten and goes mouldy.  Start them on it too late and you have unhappy sheep.  Our sheep are lowland sheep so they need the extra forage during the winter, they wouldn’t survive without it, especially up here in Scotland.  Upland sheep and hill sheep on the other hand, (which you see a lot of around here) are much more thrifty and seemingly survive on next to nothing.

transporting hay

This year we started the hay ceremony last Saturday.  First of all we had to ferry bales from the big green shed down to the lambing shed in the orchard.  This started off badly because we discovered a flat tyre on our trailer.  An hour or so later after some descriptive language regarding the location of the pump, we were able to load up the trailer with hay bales and transport it down to the shed in the orchard.  After several journeys we had piled up enough hay bales to last a couple of weeks.  At the moment the sheep are on one bale a day but as winter sets in they’ll be up to two or three bales a day and then we’ll need to make more journeys.

Before that though, we’ll be heading down to the garage in the village for a new tyre for the trailer.

 

 

 

 

 

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Auchenstroan Wool & The Galloway & Southern Ayrshire Unesco Biosphere

Recently you might have noticed a new logo in the corner of our home page.  If you click on it, you will be taken into the Galloway & Southern Ayrshire Unesco Biosphere’s website.

To re-wind a bit, one sunny day back in the summer, I was enjoying a chinwag and a cuppa with my friend Kate.  We were in the Catstrand café in New Galloway (which incidentally also serves delicious cakes).

Kate works for Nature Scotland and is really plugged into the world of conservation, sustainable living and all things related to permaculture, particularly farming.  Kate and I always have a giggle and great chats whenever we get together.

Whilst putting the world to rights over our cups of tea, Kate asked if I had heard of an organisation called the Galloway & Southern Ayrshire Biosphere.  I said it rang a bell but I wasn’t sure what they did exactly.  (I should probably get out more!)  Kate filled me in and said it might be worth me getting in touch as we, (my woolly business) was just the sort of thing the Biosphere were interested in.  Part of the Biosphere’s work is to promote small, sustainable businesses.

I decided to apply to become a “Proud Supporter” with a view to becoming “Biosphere Certified”.  I clicked on the relevant buttons on the website and up popped a load of forms to fill in.  I’m fortunate to be married to a man who is a whizz at form filling so I roped Hubs in to help me and by the end of the day we had clicked through the pages and sent everything off to be processed.

Last week, out of the blue I received an email from the Biosphere team and saw that happily my application had been successful!

Soon, one of the team will come up to meet us and look at what we do here on our smallholding.  We are very much looking forward to showing them around, introducing them to our animals and chatting about what we do here.

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Autumn mulching

Today while I was in the polytunnel having a tidy up, I became aware of some strange noises coming from outside.  It sounded like pigs scoffing their way through a pile of apples and bananas.  I wondered if Adrian had got me an early birthday present.  There were snuffles and grunts interspersed by a strange high pitched creak.  I stuck my head out to investigate,  the noises seemed to be coming from the direction of the veggie patch.  There was also a sheepie-smell drifting around which I couldn’t quite place but seemed familiar.

Looking over at the veggie patch I spotted a huge wheelbarrow filled to the brim with manure trundling down the path going “creak, creak, creak”.  Behind the barrow emerged Adrian going “grunt, ah, ooh, aaa”.  Atop the barrow like a cherry on a cake was a pitch fork.

mulching the dormant beds

Then I remembered, this week is mulching week!

Mulching week entails something we do regularly here, shifting dung from one place to another.  In the case of mulching, this means shovelling well rotted sheep dung from the manure heap, over to the veggie beds.  This is done using a pitchfork, a large wheelbarrow, muscle power and lots of huffing and puffing.

glorious sheep dung

Our veggies love a good mulching, the soil has improved a million-fold since we started piling on the dung every autumn.  When we created our veggie patch five years ago, the soil was in a terrible state, all claggy and compacted.  We think there might have been a structure at some point in the history of the farm, where the veggie patch now is because the soil was so compacted and there was a ridiculous amount of rocks just below the surface.  Mind you, that is normal around here!

Fast forward five years and the soil is crumbly and lovely to work with.  The veggies are happy and thriving, and so are the slugs, but that is another story for another day.

 

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Elliot can now be with the hens

After three months of slowly introducing Elliot to the hens, yesterday was a big day for our Anatolian rescue dog from Turkey.  Elliot was ready to be let off lead amongst the hens!

Elliot and the chicks

We took lots of time with the “hen training” because Elliot didn’t get off to a good start with our feathered friends.  He had Clippy in her mouth during his first week here so both the hens and Elliot had to re-learn how to be with each other.  Elliot showed a little too much of the wrong kind of interest in the hens and the hens were nervous and panicky when he was around.  Not handled correctly, the training could go badly wrong.  We knew it would take time but by the same token we were hopeful it would be possible.  The truth was, we didn’t have much choice as with winter approaching we would soon have our hands full with feeding the sheep their daily hay.  The hay feeders are situated in the orchard where the hens are and we wouldn’t be able to have Elliot on his lead whilst sorting out the hay.  There’s too much to do so Elliot would need to be ready to roam free with the flock by the end of October.

just hanging out with my new pals

The training itself was quite tedious, you can read more about it here.  This said, the hens loved it because they got extra corn.  Most of the time George (our other dog) was visibly bored by our daily trips to the orchard.  He made a point of sitting by the gate so he could make a swift exit when the training was over.  Happily, despite his reluctance to get involved, his presence still had an effect and Elliot learned to relax more and “just be” with the hens with each passing day.  Animals learn best from each other and so far George has been a good teacher to him (even if some of his lessons are not necessarily to our benefit, ie, on hearing the recall command, decide in your own time whether it’s worth going back or not) …

Although Elliot can now be around the hens off lead, we will continue to keep a close eye on him over the next few weeks.  If anything were to trigger either the hens, the sheep or the dogs into an excited state, (ie a cat appearing out of nowhere), then we’d need to make sure he would be able to handle this and not get caught up in the high energy.

We will see how he goes over the next few weeks but so far so good, well done Elliot!

 

 

 

 

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Sharing the love of wool with the wider world.

Today’s blog story is to tell you about my rug-making teaching adventures over the summer and about the new downloadable instructions I’ve created on how to make felted fleece rugs.

I’ve been thinking about running rug-making workshops here on our smallholding for a few years now.  Then Covid happened and my plans went on hold.  Truth be told, I didn’t mind too much as the thought of all the spiders I would have to face while clearing out the shed was quite daunting.

relaxation area

I would need a lot of room, particularly as part of my vision was to include an area for a table and chairs for participants to relax and enjoy tea, coffee and biscuits in between felting – very important for any workshop, especially a whole-day one involving loads of physical effort.  All the room I would need would take a huge effort and reorganization of tools and equipment.

I’m happy to say I managed it!  (Admittedly with a lot of help from Adrian, my personal “Chief (humane) Spider Remover”).  And this summer the workshops became a reality.

The shed was transformed into a teaching room complete with large tables for felting and shelves for wool, towels, bars of soap and hot water urns.  The spiders moved next door, they said they weren’t keen the disturbance and preferred the peace and quiet of the hay shed.

Over the last few months, as well as teaching here on site and meeting some really inspiring and creative people, I’ve also updated my original (face up method) “downloadable rug making instructions”.

In addition to this, I’ve also created a brand-new set of downloadable instructions (face down method) so there are now two to choose from.

where the action happens

You’d be right in thinking I’m on a mission to spread the love of wool 😊

For those of you who know a little bit about making felted fleece rugs, you’ll probably be aware there are two ways to make them.  There is the “face up method” which is brilliant if you’re new to rug making as it’s slow and methodical.  It’s also ideal if you have a fleece which is in bits but you still want to use the wool.  It’s a time-consuming method but a lovely, meditative way to work.

Then there’s the “face down method” which is a little quicker than the above method, but you need a fleece which holds itself together well and isn’t likely to fall apart at the slightest puff of wind.  This method can be somewhat daunting if you’re new to rug making as you’re working upside down.  (Not you, the fleece).

If you’re interested in making your own rugs and creating something unique and beautiful for your own home, I can’t recommend it enough, just dive in and give it a go!  You can buy raw fleeces from ebay and etsy or better still, direct from a farm.  Click on the links below to find out more about learning this wonderful craft:

shelves full of felting things

Workshops here on our smallholding

Downloadable instructions:  making a felted fleece rug the face down method.

Downloadable instructions:  making a felted fleece rug the face up method.