We had an ambitious plan: to grow the finest wool in this country and to re-introduce Merino sheep to New England. Once a wool grower’s pride and joy, the Merino sheep had all but disappeared from New England farms. With the rising popularity of synthetic fibers in the forties and fifties and sinking wool prices, the fine-wooled sheep had lost favor with farmers.

100% natural is popular again

The early eighties brought re-newed interest in all things natural, including natural fibers for clothing. And fine Merino wool became the industry standard for luxuriously soft wool. 100% pure Merino Wool was—and still is— a coveted label for high-end wool clothing. The chances for a fine-wool Merino sheep operation to succeed looked promising to us.

The first American superfine imports

In 1987 we imported the first two superfine Merino rams from Australia into America. Superfine Merino are bred in Australia and New Zealand for their superior fine wool. Now our breeding program involved testing and re-testing of our wool for fineness to make sure that our stud rams were producing high-quality progeny. Not only fineness of wool mattered to us, we wanted our fleeces to be brilliantly white, dense and long stapled.

A successful breeding program

Morehouse Farm is now one of the largest purebred Merino sheep farms in North America. Our stud rams can be found at leading fine-wool sheep ranches and farms all across the country and Canada. We’ve successfully grown and produced superfine Merino wool that equals the best around the world. We won top honors with one of our fleeces as early as 1986 at the World Sheep and Wool Congress, held in Edmonton, Canada. And our sheep have won at all major wool and livestock shows throughout the the country; from Louisville, Kentucky to Los Angeles, California and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Morehouse Designs

In 1988 we started a new venture called Morehouse Designs. We processed our fine Merino wool into knitting yarn. We also added rare black Merino sheep to the flock. By mixing wool from white and black Merino sheep, we were able to produce new shades of natural colored Merino yarn.   > Blending black and white wool for natural colors.   And we put together a collection of ready-made items—hats, mittens, scarves and sweaters, all knit and woven with our Merino wool. What started as a small shop on the farm led to a growing mail order business and a big, spacious store a mile from the farm.

With knitting becoming the hottest new hobby, Morehouse Merino yarn and knitting kits are gaining in fame and popularity daily. And harsh winters bring customers from all over through our doors in search of soft, no-itch hats and felted mittens and our fabulous collection of hand woven scarves and shawls.

From fleece to knitting yarn

Step 1:   shearing and sorting the wool
Once a year the sheep are shorn. A crew of professional shearers is hired to do the work. Shearing a Merino sheep is a job for a skilled professional, because hidden underneath a year’s growth of wool are skin folds and wrinkles and care must be taken not to cut the sheep. It will take them 2 to 3 days to shear the entire flock. Then the shorn wool, called fleece, is sorted by color and by quality. Using a mechanical wool baler, each lot is compressed into separate bales. The final bales will be the size of a kitchen table but will weigh as much as three hundred pounds.

Step 2:   washing the wool
Then the wool is trucked to a scouring facility for washing and cleaning (scouring is the technical term for the wool washing process). The wool is washed in large vats using very hot water and soap. One of the by-products of this washing process is lanolin. Before washing, the wool feels greasy and sticky. That grease in the wool is called lanolin. It is a natural lubricant produced by the sheep’s glands to protect the wool and to keep the skin smooth and supple. This grease will be extracted from the washing water, then later purified and used as base in cosmetics, creams and lotions.

There is another way to clean wool:   it’s called carbonizing. Carbonizing is a process where wool is put through a mild acid bath to dissolve vegetative matter. Because carbonizing harshens wool slightly—it affects the the way the wool feels—it would become necessary to add artificial softener later to correct the damage. At Morehouse Farm, we never carbonize our wool. We prefer to wash our wool to keep the natural softness intact. You may find small pieces of straw and hay embedded in our wool—we call them (jokingly, of course) the Morehouse Merino Mark of Authenticity. But you can feel good about it knowing that the wool you are knitting with or that you are wearing is pure, naturally soft Merino wool.

Step 3:   carding and spinning the wool
Then the washed wool is brought to a spinning mill, where it is carded and spun into yarn. On the carding machine, the wool passes through rollers covered with tiny wire spikes that untangle and straighten the fibers. The carded fibers are then divided into narrow strips called pencil roving, ready for spinning. And on the spinning frame the narrow strips are finally twisted into yarn.

We’ve experimented for many years to get the right amount of twist in the yarn, and blending black and white wools to produce pleasing natural colors. We plied (twisted together) different weights of our yarn for unique new looks and yarns. Some of our yarn has more twist for a smoother feel and look (shows off knitting stitches to their best advantage); other yarns have very little twist for that ultra soft feel and exceptional warmth, and lately we have been busy spinning yarn thick and thicker to meet the growing demand for bulky and chunky knitting yarn.