While channel surfing the radio in the car on the way home yesterday, my ears pricked up on a story. The story reported on the struggles of sheep farmers in Sardinia. Besides meat and cheese, wool used to be a valuable product for the sheep farmers. However, as fast fashion has taken over the world, synthetic materials are replacing natural materials. And the decline in interest for wool textiles is steep. One farmer mentioned the price of selling wool doesn’t even cover the cost of shearing the sheep. Compounding the problem is the closing down of scouring plants for wool.

For the sheep farmers, an innovative solution is to turn it into fertilizers. Type in “wool for fertilizer” in the search engine and you’ll find dozens of sites selling wool pellets, as well as websites promoting benefits of using wool as a fertilizer. Besides good for the plants, this use also solves a major issue with sheep farmers, as they often face the issue of collecting a large amount of waste wool that are not suitable for textiles. This gives them a way to turn a “waste product” into productive use.

An eco-friendly, natural, nutrient-rich fertilizer is a great resource, for sure. However, as a knitter the report for me is like a little dark cloud that foreshadows a downpour. What if one day we can no longer find wool on the yarn market? What if someday we no longer have Icelandic wool, the highly twisted 5-ply gansey wool, and Shetland…?

In one of Hans Andersen’s fairy tales (The Swineherd) told of a princess who rejected gifts of a rose and a nightingale – not because she didn’t appreciate the beauty and fragrance of the rose or the sweet tunes produced by the nightingale, but because they were real and not made. The princess was then given a lesson by the prince who had gifted the rose and the nightingale. This story came to mind because I fear we’re like that princess, so focused on the bells and whistles of things humans can make that are quicker and cheaper that we end up not seeing the good things we have.

The world changes, I know. There is a Chinese saying that “The blue sea turned into mulberry fields”, meaning the world can change significantly through time. Well, some things are worth keeping.

Here’s the audio from The World: