Sales lessons from Vermont sheep

HEADNOTE

When sweater makers didn't like the quality, a Vermont farmer came up with the idea to use "not-so-good" wool as mulch at construction sites to prevent erosion.

FOR the past four years, most Vermont sheep

farmers haven't been able to find buyers for their wool - that is, until Chester Parsons came up with the idea to use it for erosion control. The state's 500 farmers raise 18,000 sheep and lambs that produce approximately 115,000 pounds of wool annually. "Most of the sheep are raised for meat, but they all have to be sheared every year," explains Parsons, a sheep farmer who is also a livestock specialist with University of Vermont Cooperative Extension.

According to sheep farmer Laini Fondiller, shearing costs $3 to $9/animal, depending on flock size - often more than the price farmers get for the wool. Each sheep produces four to seven pounds of wool. Since a federal subsidy ended in the early 1990s, wool prices have continued to plummet from a dollar a pound to less that 25 cents. Fondiller says the quality of Vermont wool declined along with the price. "Sheep farmers started filling up their bags with wool just to get rid of it."

FINDING A MARKET WITHOUT A "WOOL POOL"

In the past, the Vermont Sheep Breeders Association organized a "wool pool" where producers could pool their wool for a buyer. The last wool pool was held in 1997. "Since then, we have not been able to get a wool buyer to even give us a bid," says Parsons. In 1999, wool sales in the state totaled only $40,000. "Some of the high quality wool is used or sold for hand spinning, but most of the wool can't find a market," he adds. "I was asking myself what would use up large quantities of not-sogood wool. Then I imagined rolling out wool mulch on a construction site or road project."

The first question to be answered was whether sheep wool could be used in place of present mulching materials such as commercial woven straw mat and loose straw or hay. Parsons applied for a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) grant and on June 1, 2000, received $30,000 through the USDA's Renewable Resources Extension Act (RREA). The RREA supports fish, wildlife, timber and watershed management programs, as well as programs to enhance outdoor recreation and the planting of trees in urban areas.

Three sites in Vermont were chosen for the first phase of the project: a former log landing in a state park in Underhill, and two steep, exposed banks on dairy farms in the towns of Berkshire and Swanton. "A log landing is a spot, usually near a logging operation, where trees are brought to be cut and loaded on log trucks," explains Parsons. Like most log landings, the Underhill site had been bulldozed level. "No topsoil was left and not much was growing on the site," he adds.

The farms sites were chosen, says Parsons, "because we were looking for exposed soil on steep slopes to be able to compare wool's mulching ability to commercial mulches." A site on the Trout River in Montgomery, was added in the summer of 2001. "This site is part of a local, state and federal agency proj ect to stabilize the river banks as a result of flooding in 1997 that widened and changed the course of the river," continues Parsons.

WOOL BLANKETS BETWEEN CHEESE CLOTH

One-inch-thick blankets of loose wool, held in place with plastic netting, were rolled out at the first three sites. At the Trout River site, the mulch is composed of a light layer of wool between two layers of cheese cloth. "The Trout River mulch is more like what we would expect a commercially made wool mulch to be like," says Parsons. "The cheese cloth is cotton, so it is an organic product like the wool." Parsons and his wife carded the wool into a thin layer, laid it on a layer of cheese cloth and added another layer of cheese cloth on top of the mulch. The mulch was then rolled onto a round tube and unrolled at the Trout River site.

Commercial woven straw mat and loose hay also have been applied at the test sites for comparison. "They seem to work okay," says Parsons. "One problem we did find with loose straw was a tendency for it to blow. away if a strong wind came un." If the sheep wool proves to be a suitable mulch material, there are a number of potential markets for the product, including highway departments, landscapers and forestry agencies. "The next challenge will be to figure out how to get the wool into a usable product at a competitive price," says Parsons. He met with Northern Vermont Resources Conservation and Development, part of the USDA Natural Resource and Conservation Service in late November, 2001 to explore this next step.

Parsons is in the second year of the three-year project. "Although we have another year to go, I think I can say that wool will work equally as well as the commercial mulch that we have compared it to," sums up Parsons. "But we have found another interesting phenomenon. At one site, the grass that is growing on the wool mulch is out-performing all of the other plots. There is definitely something about the wool that is making a difference. Next summer we hope to compare various thicknesses of wool mulch to see if that makes a difference."