So many projects have to be left by during the winter. Too little sunlight and cold, blasting wind makes many things impossible. Our never ending fencing project comes to a standstill over winter, my hands freeze and hurt too much bending the wires. Even fleece processing halts during the cold as the cold, soapy water is just too much to mess with.
But all the better for summer!
This year, I have fenced in our "Big Pond" pasture. It was the largest finished pasture yet, and the most difficult, but it now gives me a fenced pathway from the farthest pastures by the road all the way to the barn.
My second summer project has been processing the fleeces from spring shearing, and a few purchased fleeces from last year. I decided to experiment with 'suint' cleaning method for cleaning to minimize the water usage (although we've had more than enough rain the last two years). Fermented Suint is one of the oldest methods for cleaning lanolin from fleeces. Fleeces are soaked in tubs of water (rainwater is preferred) and allowed to soak for a week or more. The salts and oils from the sheep sweat (suint) interact to form a type of soap. The lanolin and dirt is then naturally removed from the wool fibers in the wash. The water from the fermented suint bath can then be re-used to soak more fleece, reducing the amount of water involved.
Once the fleece is removed from the bath, it still must be rinsed, but does not require the multiple hot soapy washes as traditional wool cleaning. I rinsed the fermented fleeces through one soapy soak in cold water followed by enough cold rinses to remove the soap residue. The added soap (dawn in our case) helped remove the large amount of dust from the fleece.
fermenting fleece has a pungent odor. A secure lid is a must or flies/mosquitoes will get into your wool. This is a large rubber trashcan with 3 of the babydoll fleeces.
The water laden fleeces are very heavy. Using a pitchfork makes lifting them easier. Allow them to drain over the barrel as much as possible to preserve the suint bath for more fleeces. I placed the wet fleeces into totes with holes in the bottom that allowed drainage.
Rinsing- I soaked each suint-washed fleece in a tote with soapy water and then rinsed through multiple clean, cold water rinses until the soap was rinsed out
The fleece on the left is slightly grey from dirt. Two more rinses and it was as white and clean
My Benjamin Green combs <3. I used the combing process to clean up a few fleeces that I had purchased that were very dirty with hay bits and burrs. The combs did a wonderful job and i ended up with beautiful top for spinning and felting:
The romneyX fleece was destined for felting but i did a small sampler of two ply yarn that will make its way into a hooked-rug later this year.
My Review of Fleece Cleaning Methods:
Hot water and soap: I call this the "traditional" method. Soap and very hot water is used to clean the oils and dirt from the fleece using multiple hot water rinses. I do not like this method mainly because I do not have access to unlimited hot water and boiling enough to clean my wool is just frustrating. Typically I found my water cooled off before I got an entire fleece through, and doing multiple fleeces I was constantly running in and out for hot water. Maybe one of those "insta-hot" units would be helpful and large tubs would likely cool less quickly. It just felt very wasteful with the amount of water used (the cooled water was discarded, although theoretically could be reheated) and the energy used for heating the large volume of water. I will say, I think this method ended in the cleanest fleece of the three methods.
I give this method a B+
Wahing Machine Method. This method uses the hot wash/spin cycle in the wash machine. It was definitely the easiest method, but I don't feel great about the amount of gunk going down my drains (all that grease) or in the washing machine. Not to mention, you have to have an upright washer (which we no longer have). I also felt it really wasted a lot of water and energy heating the water. Typically it took 2-3 cycles to fully clean my fleeces. Perhaps if we had a grey water tank that could recapture the water lost it would be worth it for wool that needed to be cleaned in a hurry.
I give this method a B
Suint Fermentation method: This was super easy- soak it and rinse it. The cold rinse was much less time consuming than the hot water rinses as I could just refill with the hose. I do have a few changes I would make to my set up, but that is just to make it easier (larger buckets and some way to allow the fleece to drain between rinse stagesso I don't have to hold it and wait for it to drip.) The biggest drawback is the smell of the suint bath when you open the lid and are getting the fleeces out. I couldn't really smell it while it was in the closed soaking tubs, or once it was at the rinse station, just when I was digging pulling it out of the soak. This could be a problem for people living in close proximity to other people.
I give this method an A
