Whew, the summer really got away from me. I spent time in Montana and Wyoming on Sheep Industry business......while including a brief visit with Mother who is 94 and still knows who I am!
At the summer meeting of the American Wool Council, I was able to prevail in my proposal to explore the development of a tool that could help us in the shearing shed, read Barn for those of us in the east, to sort our clip thereby ensuring we get our "best" in the "best" bag, not quite in the not quite bag, etc. If we have learned nothing in the last twenty years, it should be that the more uniform our clip is the higher the price. At the bottom end of this example is the producer who puts tags, bellies, top knot and all else in the same bag and receives very little in return, thereby deducing there is no good market for the wool. The lesson should have been that the $0.10/pound represented the value of the worst part of the clip. Separate it into separate bags and get 10 cents for the tags, more for the bellies and skirtings, and even more for the best part of the fleece. The tool I envision would go even farther, it would let us differentiate between a few micron ranges to allow us to get more for the finer wool than those a bit less fine. North Dakota State and Montana State Universities are working with me and I hope to have a prototype to see by late January.
The summer Fair season is winding down, the Big-E is in session as I type this and for some of us, only one or two competitions are left. The rest of us are finishing up prep for breeding and getting ready for colder weather and winter.....brrrrrrr.
The fall set of meetings starts at Greenwood Hill Farm on October 2nd and the topic reviews sales tax requirements and tax issues in general.
