Old Fashioned Farmer Cooperative Markets Wool

If you have a small sheep farm, how do you sell your wool when woolen mills only deal with clients that have over 20,000 pounds to sell?  You get together with all the other small wool producers in your area and form a wool marketing cooperative.

That’s what happened over 60 years ago when shepherds in Bucks and Montgomery counties formed the Bucks/Montgomery Cooperative Wool Pool.  Every year since then they have held a one-day Wool Pool to collect local wool, pack it into large plastic bags and ship it to a woolen mill.  This provides many small producers the same marketing power as large sheep ranches in the western states. 

On June 4, seventy-four shepherds from fourteen Pennsylvania and New Jersey counties delivered their wool to the Roth Farm of Delaware Valley College in Upper Gwynedd, where it was graded, sorted, bagged and loaded on a truck headed to a woolen mill in South Carolina. 

Nearly 23,000 pounds was handled this year, down from 25,000 last year.  The wool that comes in varies in quality and it is sorted according to “grade” before being bagged.  Then a hydraulic bagger is used to stuff 250 pounds of wool into eight foot long plastic bags before being loaded onto a truck. 

Wool prices were up nearly 50% over last year, which will mean more money in the pockets of our local sheep farmers.

The Wool Pool is a collaborative effort between Penn State Extension, Delaware Valley College and the Cooperative.