By Linea Jantz
In each hand, I held a warm glass bottle of formula. A lamb nursed furiously at each bottle, tails wiggling with delight. The barn was dim and smelled of last summer’s late season hay and warm milk. When the lambs finished eating, they pressed against my legs. I ran my small hands down their curly wool. My grandma always accepted bummer lambs (baby sheep who have been orphaned or rejected by their mothers) from her neighbors. I loved them with all my little girl heart.
Unfortunately, wool prices were abysmal. One weekend I trotted down the hill to visit the sheep and they were gone. They had all been sold.
Decades later, I learned that Spokane Zero Waste, a local fiber arts and sustainability nonprofit, was looking for ways to divert wool from the textile waste stream and help farmers find new options for selling wool. Remembering my lost bummer lambs, I reached out to Spokane Zero Waste Executive Director Elyse Hochstadt for more information.
From Hochstadt, I learned that roughly 90% of sheep’s wool is burnt or sent to the landfill due to the wool not meeting textile standards. In a pre-feasibility study from Northwest Agriculture Business Center and Southwest Washington Growers Co-op, for a wool processing facility in southwest Washington, the farmers surveyed produced a combined 314,984 pounds of wool in 2023, with many noting they also had sheds, garages, or warehouses full of additional wool from the previous three to 10 years. That’s a lot of wool to potentially enter the textile waste stream.
However, studies show potential for wool to be used as biodegradable packaging padding, blown-in building insulation, replacement for plastic bubble wrap, mats to prevent erosion, weed suppression mats, seed starter pots, plant fertilizer, and tree starter sleeves. The research was encouraging but also a bit overwhelming. Without designated funding for this project and with limited time and resources, which potential wool solution should Spokane Zero Waste focus their efforts?
Hochstadt connected with Stacey Carpenter of Hop’n Ridge Ranch. Carpenter found her way into sheep farming before she even had a farm. She was housesitting when a neighbor asked her to care for a bummer lamb.
At first, Carpenter tried not to get attached. There was a good chance the lamb was going to die. However, as the lamb’s condition worsened, Carpenter decided to see if some extra love and “a good, strong name” would help him pull through. Soon, Rhett Butler was trotting around with the family dogs, having become a beloved pet. When Carpenter and her husband eventually purchased land, Rhett Butler came along too.
Years later, Carpenter owned a flock of sheep, goats, and other animals including a pack of free-ranging bunnies. Her sheep needed to be sheared each year. On average, a sheep produced 7 pounds of wool and uncleaned wool was fetching only 40 cents per pound at market. It was difficult to even break even on shearing costs with prices like that, not to mention costs for transport. So, Carpenter started looking for what she could do with her non-textile grade wool.
She had lived in Germany for a time, where farmers were using wool pellets for eco-friendly fertilizer. She wondered if the pelletizer she had originally purchased to make feed pellets could also pelletize wool. After some trial and error, she was soon pelletizing not only her own wool, but wool for other farmers and shearers. She was also able to bring in extra income by selling wool pellets to home gardeners at local markets.
Wool is capable of absorbing 20-30 times its weight in water. In the form of pellets, that wool can be mixed into the soil near plant roots where moisture will be captured (preventing potential erosion) and released slowly along with a variety of nutrients. Researchers at the University of Vermont determined that wool pellets contain ideal levels of nitrogen, small amounts of potassium, and almost no phosphorous, making them an effective and environmentally-friendly option compared to commercial fertilizers that rely on high quantities of phosphorus, which pollutes waterways and creates blue-green algae blooms. Additionally, up to 50% of the weight of wool is carbon so using wool pellets also contributes to soil structure.
From a climate change perspective, a 2024 study from Science Direct revealed that increasing soil water retention could reduce up to 32.9% of land surface warming and delay critical temperature thresholds by longer than a decade. In this age of heat waves and drought, Spokane Zero Waste decided to partner with Carpenter to get the word out about wool pellets as fertilizer.
Spokane Zero Waste began tabling at community events, offering sample wool pellets provided by Carpenter. They implemented a Citizen Science program where local gardeners volunteered to grow plants side by side – with and without pellets – and report their findings in areas such as water usage, soil temperature, plant health and growth.
Kat Hall, the Watershed Restoration Program Director at environmental advocacy nonprofit The Lands Council, began working with Spokane Zero Waste to establish a trial plot at their Hangman Creek site in Latah. They built two fenced enclosures inside which they planted several of Woods’ rose seedlings. The seedlings in one enclosure were treated with sheep wool pellets; the other enclosure would serve as the control group. They committed to tracking the soil moisture between the two plantings. If results proved promising, they would be interested in incorporating wool pellets into future projects.
Time will tell the results of these Citizen Science efforts. I can only speak to my personal experience. I have a garden bed in full sun that I have tried multiple plants in over the years with different kinds of fertilizers and little growing success. This year, I amended the soil with wool pellets in the spring. I have killed multiple tomato plants in this bed in the past, but this year my sunflowers are blooming beautifully and the tomato start I planted in spring has grown eight tomatoes. I also noticed that, even in this hot year, the soil held moisture later into the day than it typically has in past years.
More widespread use of solutions like wool pellets could mean less synthetic fertilizers use in agriculture and urban gardens, cleaner waterways, and less plastic alternatives. It could mean more income for sheep farmers. And maybe it would mean that someone else’s lambs have the chance to grow up to be sheep.
Linea Jantz is a freelance writer, based in Spokane, who has worked in day jobs including waste management, teacher, and paralegal.
