Corriedale

Yeah, so agriculture, be- being an un- unsubsidized industry, New Zealand farmers are world leaders at responding to market incentives, and you look at the short history of New Zealand agriculture, you know, a few decades ago, wool was king, right? Wool was the number one income earner.

Just on our property here, our Corriedale flock, 65% of our sheep income, um, that was from mid-micron wool.

We then moved into the '90s and 2000s, and we increased lamb carcass weights from about 13 kilos up to 17 or 18.

Um, we then saw the dairy boom, uh, just in Marlborough here alone.

You know, so, yeah.

Get some more Romney or get some Corriedale or something like that.

And then just keep spinning.

You know, there's enough going on.

So how do you feel like, how do you feel like you get to participate in the story?

Yeah, I think it's a tricky thing, and I know one of the things is, like, um, I'm thinking about, like, the small batch yarns that I produced for five years.

And I did them mostly, almost, almost exclusively on my friend's, uh, Cathy's fleece because I got to know her through my spinning guild, and she had a f- uh, a flock of Corriedales.

We would pasture them in the summer on our, at our place.

Um, and then we'd go to shearing day, and I'd collect her fleece.

Um, but let's see what we've got going on.

So in the front, we've got this lovely, uh, mohair blend that we're kind of experimenting with right now, and you can just see the shiny locks of mohair, uh, blended together with some, I believe it's Corriedale wool.

Check that out.

How fun is that? Um, this is kind of experimenting for something coming down the pipeline in some time from now, but I'm sure you'll see more of it along the way.

Okay.

And it's a Corriedale/Border Leicester, which is why-

Mm-hmm

... it's such a nice long wool with such beautiful locks.

In a natural, right.

And this is our Corriedale, and if you don't know Corriedale, Corriedale is soft to the touch.

The fiber length is about this long, so you know, it's, it's got a, a lot of strength to it.

It's not gonna pill out.

Okay.

And in fact, co- comparable breed-wise.

There's, there's a lot of Cor, there's a lot of Corriedale in what we were getting in the US.

There's even more Corriedale in what we're getting in the-

What was the thing to watch? Sorry? What?

Corriedale.

No chance they put Corriedale on on Christmas Day.

The highest chance they did Corriedale on Christmas Day.

I did not see in the Venn diagram of our audience and Corriedale fans this happening, but it's happened.

What's your name? Amy.

Amy, thanks for being here.

Do you listen to the pod? No.