We left off Issue #3 with a cliffhanger. We identified five themes and were considering what kind of farm-based operation could be best meet our themes: regenerative agriculture, easy care, versatile, core strength, and functional/lifestyle.
The answer, as you may have guessed by now: SHEEP!
Specifically, Icelandic Sheep.
Why Icelandic Sheep? Well, we’ll dig into each of these in their own issue, but here’s a (more or less) feature complete pros and cons list by theme.
Regenerative Agriculture
Pros: 120 acres of farmland in the Driftless Region of Southwestern Wisconsin, most of which is great for pasture. Wool is a very environmentally friendly fiber and, so long as it is processed responsibly, can have a very long lifespan and even be composted. Because Icelandic Sheep are hearty animals, they do not (usually) require feed beyond pasture, and do not require a lot of nutritional supplement.
Cons: A large component of regenerative agriculture related to livestock is making sure that pasture has plenty of time to recover the good stuff (grasses, forbs, etc.) and minimize the bad stuff (thistle, weeds, etc.). Sheep farms with scale in other countries typically have thousands of acres of open grazing land - much like cattle ranching in the Western United States. We do not have thousands of acres available to us. We will need to learn high-intensity rotational grazing, which is fairly new to modern livestock management and not many sheep flocks, let alone Icelandic sheep flocks, have experience with it.
Another concern here is that we do plan to have clothes that are fiber blends (wool + nylon; wool + polyester; etc) - such blends are common with next to skin clothing to provide the elasticity and garment functionality that is necessary for modern technical clothing. This is an area where we will need to tread very carefully to stay true to our theme of regenerative supply chains.
Easy Care
Pros: Icelandic sheep are relatively easy to care for and breed. They are strong, independent sheep that can, to some extent, defend themselves from predators. They grow quickly. They are good mothers and breed twins frequently making flock management fairly easy. As far as livestock go, Icelandic Sheep are pretty chill.
Cons: Neither of us knows anything about raising sheep; Erin was raised with dairy and beef cows (and a few sheep) and her agricultural degree is in dairy science; I can accurately tell the difference between a sheep and a cow. I don’t want to overstate our ignorance here - we (well, specifically, Erin) know what we’re doing in terms of running a livestock farming operation, but she simply doesn’t have a lot of experience specifically with sheep.
Versatile
Pros: Icelandic sheep are one of a few breeds that are good at all three sheep-based products - wool, meat, and dairy. Demand for all three sheep-based products is growing globally.1
Meat from Icelandic lambs is very good. The lambs grow quickly and are sturdy animals. The meat is prized for its mild taste. Most Icelandics grown in Iceland are actually used for meat. The ewes twin (or more!) frequently, so having meat animals is a good, steady source of output.
Sheep milk is higher in protein than cows milk, so it is great for cheese and yogurt. Wisconsin cheeseries are starting to make more sheep-milk-based cheeses. The milk from sheep is great for soap as well.
The wool from Icelandic Sheep is highly regarded, though unique because it is double-layered:
The inner layer, or thel, is insulating, superlight and very airy, while the outer layer, or tog, is long, strong and water repellent. Carded together, these two layers make lopi, versatile wool used to knit lopapeysa, the distinctive traditional Icelandic sweater of concentric rings.2
Tog is perfect for felted applications and durable, heavy-duty wool goods like blankets and jackets. Thel is as fine as merino and can be used in lightweight, next-to-skin clothing. The Lopi not only makes great sweaters, but is prized by the hobby market.
Cons: The wool produced by Icelandic Sheep is fairly unusual. All of these characteristics might sound like a strength, but unfortunately this means that not many American wool processors like to deal with Icelandic wool. Finding processors will be a challenge.
More processing for wool than is normal on sheep farms will likely be required. We may need to clean, separate, and perhaps even card and/or spin yarn and thread directly on-farm. Some finished product manufacturing may need to happen on-farm as well. In the early stages, making blankets or our own yarn for hobby markets probably isn’t a huge problem, but scaling to garment production is definitely the largest challenge this endeavor will face.
Dairy could be a challenge as well. Wisconsin cheese producers are starting to produce sheep-milk cheeses, but doing on-farm cheese production has high barriers to entry. Initial use of dairy will be almost exclusively for our Fensalir line of soaps.
Finally, Wisconsin has a ridiculous shortage of meat processors. In some cases, processing is booked 2 YEARS in advance. Processing meat at scale will also be a challenge.
Core Strengths
Pros: Icelandic sheep are relatively rare in the United States and present interesting breeding opportunities. If we are able to produce quality breeding stock, we actually get FOUR sheep-based products - the fourth product being lambs with high quality genetics that can be sold to others starting or improving their own flocks of Icelandic Sheep.
Since there is not a lot of capacity for American Icelandic wool processing, there is an opportunity here to be a centralizing force for increasing wool production. In fact, most Icelandic sheep flocks in the United States are dispersed and relatively small. Even beyond centralizing for wool production, there could also be opportunities for organizing for meat and dairy as demand for those outputs continues to grow.3 4
Cons: Even for someone not afraid of business complexity, running four simultaneous businesses with one input (sheep) is daunting. Running the business at scale actually seems easier in some cases than running a smaller operation (for example, where do you sell four lambs worth of meat? Selling forty lambs worth of meat seems way easier).
However, scaling presents some very real problems: how to source enough wool to meet clothing demand; how to produce garments using unique wool; where to find enough meat processing throughput to keep up with the farm. These are all very non-trivial problems of growing operations.
Functional/Fits Lifestyle
Pros: Icelandic Sheep check a lot of boxes in terms of what we’re looking for in a farm-based business. The fact that they are easy to care for means we don’t need to be heavily involved in farming operations every day. Erin is already making soap that we sell at Farmer’s Markets. We do a lot of camping, hiking, and canoeing; wool is very popular in a variety of outdoor sports applications.
Icelandic Sheep also look cool.
Cons: I strongly suspect that sheep will make a relatively easy hobby farm. However, we’re under no illusion that scaling operations won’t be a real challenge. There are four simultaneous businesses just related to the outputs, let alone the challenge of running a farm and managing the flock.
There is likely to be an “awkward teenager” phase where there are more sheep than reasonable for a simple hobby farm, but still not enough for larger distribution on any of the outputs. This may force us to focus on one output over another thus negating (or at least not taking advantage of) the versatility of the Icelandic.
Mazinani, Mitra and Brian Rude. Population, World Production and Quality of Sheep and Goat Products. American Journal of Animal and Veterinary Sciences. Nov 2020. https://thescipub.com/pdf/ajavsp.2020.291.299.pdf
Pinchin, Karen. Why Farmers and Knitters Are Fixated on Icelandic Sheep. Modern Farmer. Dec 13, 2013. https://modernfarmer.com/2013/12/breed-apart-icelandic-sheep/
USDA Economic Research Service. Market Outlook. July 16, 2021. https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/animal-products/sheep-lamb-mutton/market-outlook/
American Lamb Board. Demand for American lamb increases in second quarter. October 27, 2020. https://www.morningagclips.com/demand-for-american-lamb-increases-in-second-quarter/